Gardening Tips

You tuck a handful of onion sets into the ground in fall and picture a spring harvest of…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Ticks in North Carolina do not pack up when summer ends. In fact, fall is when adult blacklegged…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 21

A fat amaryllis bulb looks tough, but its roots can struggle when they sit in soggy mix. Many…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

A slow, domed shell moving between your tomato cages is hard to ignore. Many North Carolina gardeners wonder…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 21

Cool fall evenings can bring stink bugs to doors, window screens, and porch lights. Some of these visitors…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

You pull a beet from the row and find a root barely bigger than a marble. Beet seeds…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

A zucchini plant can look fine one afternoon and droop the next morning. Squash vine borers are the…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 21

A young fruit tree can look healthy in the fall and then show missing bark at the base…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Your Swiss chard looked great last month, and now the leaves are freckled, torn, or full of holes.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Your pepper plants are heavy with green fruit, and the days are getting shorter. A popular tip says…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Sweet potatoes grow quietly underground, so it is easy to forget them as fall weather shifts. Cold nights…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

That woody rosemary bush by your back door can look fine in November and sad and crispy by…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Late October rolls around, and your fig tree is still hanging onto hard green fruit. Do you wait,…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Hosta leaves can turn tattered and soggy by fall, and many gardeners blame slugs right away. Cleaning up…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Bats swoop over North Carolina yards at dusk, and many people hope they are quietly eating the mosquitoes.…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 21

You planted garlic cloves this fall, and now green tips are poking through the soil while the weather…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 21

Most North Carolina gardeners think of witchhazel as a winter plant, but the native kind can open its…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 21

Every fall, pine trees drop a blanket of needles that most of us rake up and haul away.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

A Christmas cactus that keeps pushing out fresh green stem segments but never sets a bud can be…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Bradford pears look pretty for about two weeks each spring, then they smell bad, split in storms, and…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

You run a hand down a tomato stem and feel small, bumpy swellings that were not there last…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

A Christmas cactus with floppy, wrinkled stems can look like it is giving up. Many people grab the…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

That pot of mums on your porch looks great now, but will it come back next year? Some…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Every yard seems to have one spot that makes gardeners sigh: a sunny, dry bank where the soil…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

You walk out to the garden and your fall collards look like someone fired tiny pellets at them.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Pulling every carrot before the first cold snap feels like the safe move, but some gardeners leave the…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Drive through almost any mountain neighborhood near Asheville or Boone and you will see the same few trees…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

Fall planting day feels hopeful, but a few missteps can leave you staring at an empty bed in…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Loose, leafy Brussels sprouts can be a letdown after months of care. Some gardeners hear that snapping off…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

A few hummingbirds are still moving through Southern yards when the leaves start to turn. A clean feeder…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

You step onto the porch and spot a small lizard on the railing, then another on the fence.…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

You spent months growing pumpkins and winter squash, so it hurts to find a soft, leaking fruit on…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Butterfly bush earns its name every summer when adult butterflies crowd its purple spikes. But a garden that…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

Your fall spinach was looking great, and now the leaves are turning yellow while the veins stay green.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

You walk out to the garden after a stormy night and find a once-perfect cabbage cracked wide open.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

A shrub chewed down to lace can make any gardener want to do something fast. Many people hear…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 20

Rub a leaf of a scented geranium and you get a burst of lemon, rose, mint, or fruit.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 20

Mint is supposed to be the easy herb, so stretched, washed-out stems in a pot can feel like…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

A fox trotting across the lawn at dusk can make any homeowner stop and stare. When it shows…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 19

Your tomato and pepper pots may still be loaded with fruit, but the weather has started to shift.…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

You carried your basil, parsley, and chives inside before the cold hit, and now the leaves are fading…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Most of us have stared at a woodpile or a tangle of shrubs and wondered if something is…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

You walk out to the kale bed after a chilly night and the leaves look rough, or they…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Bringing a favorite pepper plant inside for winter can give you a head start on next season. But…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Seeing your strawberry bed look thin and bare in late fall can make you worry that the plants…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Few things sting like watching a favorite geranium turn to mush after the first frost. With a little…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Black-eyed Susans get all the love, but in sticky North Carolina clay they often flop, rot, or fade…

By Jasmine Hughes · Oct 19

A fall cauliflower head can go from creamy white to yellow or greenish faster than you expect. Sunlight…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19

Pull a leek from your fall bed and find it no wider than a pencil, and it is…

By Ethan Brooks · Oct 19