As summer ends and temperatures drop, insect and rodent activity shifts. Flies, gnats, and mosquitoes become less visible, while other pests enter an active phase of their life cycle or begin seeking warm winter shelter. Stink bugs, centipedes, silverfish, boxelder bugs, spider beetles, and fleas appear in late summer and autumn, and spiders migrate indoors […]
Late October is the turning point for most home gardens. The first hard frost is close, and the work done in the next few weeks decides whether the soil comes back rich and workable in spring or compacted, weedy, and carrying disease. Winterizing raised garden beds is mostly routine cleanup plus a handful of protective
When the first frost kills the tomato patch, most gardeners pull the plants and start over next spring. The plants do not have to die. With a little space and the right tools, tomato plants can be carried through winter indoors and set back out in spring, which means favorite varieties survive from year to
Every September the big-box garden centers stack pallets of the same few fall flowers, and gardeners buy them by the cartload. Several of those favorites are overrated: they look great for two weeks, then flop, freeze, or fail to return in spring. Garden chrysanthemums are the classic example, but they are not the only one.
Houseplants earn their place in a home by doing more than decorating a corner: they add color, soften hard edges, and turn a blank windowsill into a living display. The catch is that every species has different tolerances, and the difference between a thriving collection and a row of empty pots usually comes down to
Sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) are cool-season annual vines prized for clusters of fragrant flowers in white, pink, purple, and cream. They grow best when the air stays cool, they flower before summer heat builds, and they respond more to sowing date than to any fertilizer program. Gardeners who sow in autumn give roots time to
The teddy bear cactus, known botanically as Cylindropuntia bigelovii and commonly as the teddy bear cholla, is a desert cactus native to Mexico and the southwestern United States. Its dense, pale spines look soft and fuzzy from a distance, which is how it earned its name. Up close the story changes: the stems are covered
Elephant ears fill landscape beds with oversized, heart-shaped leaves, but the tropical plants behind that foliage need help surviving winter. The group includes colocasias, alocasias, and xanthosomas, all of which stop growing when soil temperatures drop and can die outright under hard frost. Gardeners in cold climates choose between digging up the tubers for indoor
A semi above-ground pool sits between an above-ground pool and an in-ground pool in design and price. The water line extends above and below grade, so the pool is partially buried, partially hidden, and usually only a few feet deep with at least a foot of wall rising above the ground. Some examples start as
Leaf blowers clear a yard in a fraction of the time a rake does, but the noise carries well past the property line. Fire one up before the neighbors are awake and you trade convenience for fines, complaints, and a reputation as the loudest house on the block. How early is too early comes down
