By, the old guy with a pony tail at Mendham Garden Center
You can call it dirt, soil, root zone or a host of other terms. It’s the downside to the establishment and management of your lawn.
A turf manager once told me, “You can grow grass on a rock, just give it what it needs”. Although this is true, deep healthy topsoil works a whole lot better.
Continue Reading The Downside: Components of Healthy Topsoil
You’ve been busy all spring trying to get your garden ready for the growing season. Spring is winding down, and summer is almost here. Its time ot switch focus. New Jersey isn’t called the Garden State for nothing. With a little attention, your garden can produce delightful flowers and and veggies all summer long. Here are some tips to manage the heat, weeds and pests during summer months.
Here are some tips from our New Jersey gardeners’ supply center on how to get started. Continue Reading Summer Gardening New Jersey; Tips on Pruning, Watering, Weeds and Bugs (2 min read)
Want to understand what it takes to develop a lush green lawn?
You first need to understand the growing habits of cool-season turf grass, which is the predominant type of grass that you’ll find growing in New Jersey. Continue Reading Developing an Effective Fertilizer Program
If there’s one thing we know about birds, it’s this: take care of them, and they’ll take care of you.
Birds are what’s known as a “beneficial” animal, helping to pollinate flowers and feasting on the types of pests we don’t want in our gardens.
And while most other beneficial creatures – bees, ants, bats, small mammals – tend to vanish this time of year, there are still plenty of birds around. Continue Reading Feeding Your Feathered Friends: A Guide to Winter Bird Feeders
It’s winter, and while the rest of the world seems to be hibernating, you’re taking a page from that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song: you’ve got to get yourself back to the garden.
The ground outside may be frozen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t focus on your garden. There are things you can grow, and springtime preparations to make. Here are a few things you can do with your garden this winter. Continue Reading What Do I Do with My Garden in Winter?
It’s the closing moments of December 31, 2018. The old year is about to fade away, making room for the new one.
And after you’ve counted down until midnight and popped open the champagne, you take a minute to look into the future. You think about the resolutions you’ve made for the coming year…and wonder if you’ll be able to stick to them.
We can’t help you get to the gym every day or read more books. But we can offer some alternative resolutions, ones geared to your garden.
Here are 10 resolutions that can make gardening in Hunterdon County a new experience in 2019.
It’s November, and even though we haven’t sat down to our Thanksgiving dinners, it’s hard to miss the other, much bigger holiday waiting in the wings.
Christmas.
Pretty soon nearly every TV screen, store display, and front porch will be filled with yuletide trappings, and that includes our stores, where we’ll be selling an array of natural Christmas trees.
And that got us thinking about this tradition. Why do we cut down evergreen trees and put them in our homes? We decided to do some research and learned about the history of the Christmas tree. Continue Reading Oh Christmas Tree: The Story of a Holiday Tradition
Leaves can damage your lawn, so make sure you rake them up.
October is here! The leaves have turned from green to marvelous shades of red and gold, and in some cases have begun to fall.
But even though the weather is getting colder, there’s still plenty you can do with your garden. In fact, the cooler temperatures can help make October gardening a joy. Here are a few October gardening chores you should focus on this time of year.
Continue Reading October Gardening Chores: Getting the Most Out of Your Garden
Fall is here and school is back in session. By now you’ve probably gotten your kids acclimated to their regular academic routine, but what about your own education?
Specifically, your gardening education. You could always read the other entries in our Gardening Guide, where we use the collective knowledge from our garden center to discuss everything from lawns, to landscaping, to birdfeeders, but you might want something a little more in-depth.
There are a wealth of great gardening books out there, enough to fill a lot more than just one blog post. Here are a few of the best:
Continue Reading Back to School: 5 of the Best Gardening Books
Whenever people write poems about autumn, they tend to focus on the inexorable passage of time, and how fall seems like the end of the growing season.
But here at our Chester nursery, we choose to see autumn not as an ending, but as a new beginning, the start of a new growing season and a chance to try new things and prepare for the winter.
Continue Reading Summer’s End: Getting Your Garden Ready for Autumn
