Kerry’s Garden

I started out this morning planning to spend just 2 hours outside. I had a project that I thought was due on Monday and needed to get on it asap. Lo and behold I found out it wasn’t due till Thursday so… 10 hours later I am exhausted but oh so much is done. No [...]

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The large sassafras trees are starting to bloom. The birds really enjoy the fruit, the Japanese Beetles the leaves. Personally I like the root. A little sassafras tea on a cold winter day. mmmm This iris is either Lumicite or Lumilite, I cant read the writing. Its fairly short and pretty I think. My two [...]

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Some years back we had 4 apple trees where we lived. Each year they would get the characteristic yellow spotting of CAR on the leaves. I always looked for the alien looking galls on my neighbor’s cedar tree but was never able to spot them. This morning as I let the dog out I glanced [...]

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Almost 2 weeks ago (or was it 3??) I took some cuttings from my weeping willow and curly willow 4′ tall treelets. Last night I potted up many of the weeping willow. These cuttings were quite small in diameter. I’ve had great luck in the past rooting larger diameter cuttings. I wanted to see how [...]

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Several years ago a grad student at the University of Ky did some research on forecasting insect pest appearance by watching the development of flowering plants in the landscape. “Timing Control Actions for Landscape Insect Pests Using Flowering Plants as Indicators” came out of that research. In a nutshell he watched and recorded the pests’ [...]

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I took some time yesterday to dig 8 sassafrass seedlings out of the corner of the garden. I once had visions of a no-till garden but that came to a screeching halt when I realized that the sassafras trees were just too close to allow that. Sassafras spreads via root suckers and given a season [...]

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I found some sassafras fruit on one of our trees. I had wondered if the late spring frosts had trashed the blossoms but it appears that at least a few survived. I checked out the US Forest Service’s Silvics Manual and this is what it had to say about the fruit. Flowering and Fruiting- Sassafras [...]

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