Gardening Tips

Spotting white or silvery patches on your squash leaves during a heat wave can send any gardener straight…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Reaching into your tomato plants on a hot afternoon and finding split fruit is one of the most…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Walking out to the garden and finding a plant loaded with green tomatoes that refuse to change color…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Cucumber vines can go from pumping out fruit to barely setting any in a matter of days once…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Crape myrtle shows up in almost every North Carolina front yard, but it fades fast once the flowers…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 27

Watching your tomato plant curl its leaves into tight green tubes on a scorching afternoon is enough to…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Watching your cucumber vines sit motionless in midsummer heat is genuinely frustrating, especially when you expected a surge…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Most nursery shelves pass right over St. Andrew’s cross, a compact native shrub that quietly flowers through much…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 27

Finding a dark, sunken spot on the bottom of your watermelon is genuinely discouraging, especially when the vines…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Butterfly weed is one of those plants that earns its place in a North Carolina yard quickly, drawing…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 27

Watching a cantaloupe vine take over your garden bed while producing zero melons is one of the more…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Your pepper plant looks great from the outside, full of leaves and loaded with flowers, but every blossom…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Owls have lived in North Carolina’s woodlands, fields, and suburban neighborhoods long before anyone thought to build them…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 27

Watching your eggplant drop flower after flower without a single fruit forming is one of the more frustrating…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Pull up a batch of carrots and you might find a tangle of forked, branched, or cracked roots…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Spotting a fox slipping through your backyard as the sun goes down can feel alarming, but for most…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 27

You water your beans faithfully, the vines look full and green, flowers keep popping open every morning, and…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 27

Watching a zucchini shrivel and rot at the tip is one of the more discouraging sights in a…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

That pale, papery patch on your pepper is frustrating, especially when the rest of the fruit looks perfectly…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Curling tomato leaves during a heat wave can send a gardener straight to the garden center looking for…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Walking out to your garden and finding a squash plant completely collapsed is one of the more unsettling…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Picking a tomato only to find it split open along the stem is one of summer’s most discouraging…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Spotting a stink bug on your curtain can send your mind racing toward worst-case scenarios, but the reality…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

Watching your cucumber plants droop on a hot afternoon can feel alarming, especially when you thought you were…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

That hawk riding the air above your backyard is doing something worth paying attention to, even if its…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

Pulling a cucumber off the vine and biting into something that tastes more like medicine than a salad…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Watching a potted tomato sit there all summer, barely growing and producing almost nothing, is genuinely frustrating. Before…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Watching a cucumber vine grow big and bushy while producing almost no cucumbers is one of summer’s most…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Most North Carolina gardeners know coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, but there is one native plant that quietly earns…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

July heat can stop a tomato plant cold, and watching a vine sit motionless while the summer ticks…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Your wooded property line is one of the first places you should think about when it comes to…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

Finding a sunken black patch on the bottom of your tomatoes is one of the most discouraging moments…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Every spring, a lot of North Carolina homeowners haul home bag after bag of mulch, only to watch…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

Watching your pepper plant bloom beautifully, then shed every flower before a single fruit forms, is one of…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

You planted one zucchini and ended up with a jungle of leaves, but the vines are empty. Before…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Sunny, dry slopes in North Carolina can defeat almost every plant a homeowner tries. The soil is shallow,…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 26

Watching your cucumber vines turn yellow during the hottest weeks of summer is genuinely worrying, especially when the…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 26

Hot summer weather can turn a thriving tomato patch into a wilting, struggling mess almost overnight. The good…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 25

American beautyberry is one of those shrubs that most North Carolina gardeners stroll right past at the nursery,…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

Watching your zucchini plant explode with bright yellow blooms while the harvest bowl stays empty is genuinely frustrating.…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 25

Lantana is one of the toughest flowering plants you can grow in a North Carolina yard, pushing out…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

If your hydrangea leafs out beautifully every spring but barely produces flowers, the plant probably isn’t the problem.…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 25

Spotting a dark, sunken patch spreading across the bottom of your tomatoes is one of the most discouraging…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 25

You planted cucumbers expecting a steady harvest, and instead you have long, leafy vines running in every direction…

By Ethan Brooks · Jul 25

Most North Carolina gardeners have watched a promising perennial slowly give up during a July heat wave, leaving…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

Two North Carolina native plants have been circulating online under a claim that one tree feeds wildlife all…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

Crape myrtles show up in almost every North Carolina yard, but they came here from Asia and do…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

Ticks are a real concern for anyone who spends time kneeling in a backyard vegetable garden in North…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 25

Ticks are a real part of summer life in North Carolina, and most people assume they just wander…

By Jasmine Hughes · Jul 24