Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.
“Can I mix different potting soils? I plan to repot a couple of spider plants (Chlorophytum comosum) to larger containers. They are doing good and are currently in Black Gold Natural & Organic Potting Soil. I have some of this potting soil left in the bag, but it’s not going to be enough. Should I buy more of the same or should I mix it with one of your other products?” Thank you. Question from Crea of Farmington, Missouri
Answer: Different potting soils do have different qualities, but it will not negatively impact your spider plant to combine different mixes that it will ultimately grow well in. Spider plants are adaptable and forgiving. Just be sure that the new mix you choose holds water well but also drains well. Check out all of our general potting mixes by clicking on this link. Each is described in detail with respect to its ingredients and qualities. If your spider plant is root bound, I recommend you click here to read a good article about what to do in this situation.
The new vegetable gardener will succeed if given the right information from the beginning.
With decades of vegetable gardening experience under my belt, it’s easy to take the years of knowledge for granted. It’s like riding a bike. I garden on cruise control and react or learn quickly when faced with a new challenge. In turn, years of teaching new gardeners have kept me in touch with the challenges they face. Sound, step-by-step advice is invaluable–potentially averting years of mistakes and poor yields. Getting the big picture of a new garden venture from the start will set the wheelbarrow rolling in the right direction. The new vegetable gardener will be quickly rewarded if modest goals are established from the beginning and time is set aside for the project.
Planning your garden on paper will help you visualize and plan for the project.
Plan Ahead: Determine your garden’s location, size, and crops before you break ground. Vegetable gardens require full sun (8-hours or more per day) and soil that drains well. Gardening is a commitment that often takes more time and labor than anticipated. If you have never gardened before, plan small in the first year to keep it enjoyable and manageable. It will help you succeed from the start and determine how to grow your garden in future years. (Click here for a good article about planning a garden, and click here for an article about rotating crops through the season.)
Sod removal takes work but is worth the effort.
Start Clean: Remove all of the turf from your soon-to-be garden bed. That means manually skimming off the sod with a sharp spade or using an automated sod cutter, which can be rented. I recommend the latter if you have planned a large garden. The bed should be small enough for you to reach into from all sides or large enough to add a walkway for easy access. Square or rectangular beds are easiest to mow around and manage.
Enrich your soil from the beginning!
Don’t Skimp on Soil: Your garden is as good as its soil. When siting it, choose a well-drained spot. If low ground is a problem in your yard, opt for a raised bed (Click here to learn more about preparing a raised bed garden, and click here for a raised bed plan). For garden success in year one, liberally feed your soil with organic matter, such as Black Gold Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, Garden Soil, and Garden Compost Blend, especially if your soil is rich in clay or sandy. Add at least 3 inches of the amendment to the soil surface, and till it to a depth of at least 8 inches. Use the amendment application formula below to determine the amount you will need.
Amendment Application Formula
([area to cover] ft2 x [depth in inches desired] x 0.0031 = ___ yd3).
Example: If you wanted to cover a 20 square foot area with 2 inches of compost, the result would be: 20 ft2 x 2 inches of compost x 0.0031 = 2.48 yd3.
Berming planting areas and covering with compost and straw will save weeding time and boost crops.
Raise and Cover: Tilling and adding lots of fresh organic material will loosen and lift your soil to enhance drainage and aeration for better root growth. To take it one step further, I always rake or hoe soil up into berms to maximize drainage and keep beds light for better root growth. Berming is especially helpful for root crops, like carrots, potatoes, and beets, and deep-rooted plants, like tomatoes. Finally, I add mulches appropriate for vegetable gardens, like seed-free straw, compost, mushroom soil, grass clippings, or leaf mulch, to keep weeds down. I generally put straw along walkways I’ve established in my garden and compost on the planting areas. Avoid bark mulch of any kind in vegetable gardens because it binds nitrogen, which is detrimental to heavy-feeding vegetables.
A little fertilizer will go a long way.
Fertilize: Good fertilizer formulated for vegetable growing is essential for bumper crops. Any all-purpose granular or slow-release vegetable fertilizer will do, though I recommend feeding tomatoes with a food specially formulated for their needs. Tomatoes are very heavy feeders that require a wide variety of nutrients to perform their best. Follow the product instructions to keep them well fed.
Choose Good Varieties: Don’t pick just any old tomato, pepper, or bean for your garden. Do your research and pick the best when it comes to yields, performance, and flavor. If you are not certain, always select award-winning plants, such as All America Selections Winners. These tend to be as full-proof as you can get. It is also wise to choose disease-resistant varieties, so keep a lookout for these as well. (Click on the links to discover our favorite sauce tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, mini vegetables, carrots, and fast-growing vegetables.)
Lettuce is an easy spring vegetable that needs cool weather.
Know Planting Times: It is essential to know when you can plant a vegetable, what temperature it likes best, and how long it will take to produce. Vegetables are broken down into cool-season and warm-season types, though some will grow well from spring to fall. Cool-season vegetables, like cabbage, lettuce, peas, and radishes, grow best in cool spring or fall weather, while warm-season crops, such as corn, okra, peppers, tomatoes, and squash, need the heat of summer to yield. Some grow very quickly, and others take months to produce. For example, radishes can be ready to harvest in as little as 20 days, but some pumpkins can take 120 days to produce fruit. So, knowing a crop’s days to harvest is important. Finally, you need to know your last frost date (click here for yours) to determine when it is safe to plant tender vegetables and fruits outdoors.
Some pumpkin plants can grow to 20′ across!
Know Plant Needs and Sizes: Identify each plant’s height and width to determine its garden footprint. You also need to know if supports, like tomato cages or bean and cucumber trellises, will be needed. One important tip for tomato growers is that bush (determinate) tomatoes only reach 1-3 feet and need small cages or stakes, but vining (indeterminate) tomatoes can reach 6-8-feet high and wide, so tall, strong cages are required. Follow spacing guidelines to give your vegetable the space they need to blossom.
When ripe, tomatoes are fully colored and give slightly when pressed.
Know When to Harvest: When is it ripe? Tomatoes and peppers will be fully colored when ready to pick. Beans should be plump and reach the advertised length. Zucchini and summer squash are best harvested small but firm. And, you will know when beets, carrots, and radishes are ready to harvest when their bulbous tops become visible along the soil surface. If you are not sure when to harvest a crop, ask us through our free horticultural advice service, Ask a Garden Expert.
Removing weeds as you see them will keep them from taking over.
Keep It Clean: Weed, weed, and weed some more. Even when you mulch your beds, they will arise. Weeds compete with vegetables for resources and can quickly overwhelm a garden if ignored. They may also harbor diseases and attract pests. Pull or hoe weeds as you see them. Even if you weed every few days or even every week, you will have few to no weed problems, which will give you more time to focus on plant care and harvest. Investing in good weeding tools makes the task lighter. I am never without my weeding knife (Hori Hori), strong hoe (Prohoes are the best), and Korean hand plow (Ho-Mi).
Reach out to friends, family, books, and online references when you have gardening questions. There’s always more to learn and new plants to discover. And, if you can’t find an answer, ask us a gardening question for free at Ask a Garden Expert. You can also search the hundreds of questions we have already answered. It’s our goal to help gardeners succeed.
We process premium Black Gold® Perlite for horticultural use, so it can be used and enjoyed by the everyday gardener. Use it as a potting soil amendment to increase the porosity and drainage of mixes, or use it alone to propagate plant cuttings. Black Gold® Perlite is also OMRI Listed® for organic gardening, so amend your favorite potting mixes with confidence.
When a gardener says, “I have moles in my garden.” I always let them know that moles do not harm garden plants.
“I have moles in my garden. How do I stop moles from eating the roots of my flowers. I have tried everything, and they still keep coming in my yard!” Question from Lisa of Agawam, Massachusetts
Answer: Moles in the garden can be confusing. Here’s why. They are carnivores that just feed on grubs, worms, and other underground invertebrates. In fact, they consume grubs that feed on the roots of perennials, so they’re actually beneficial. The problem is that other creatures, like voles and fieldmice, will find the holes and use them to access tasty roots below.
Some mole repellants do work, and there are quite a few on the market. Castor oil (Nature’s Mace Mole Repellant) seems to be the favorite. Bonide Mole and Vole Repellent Granules also get high marks. Some garden flowers are also supposed to repel moles. These include daffodils, strong-smelling alliums, easy-to-grow marigolds, and fritillarias, which have bulbs that smell like skunk.
Sonic mole repellers are another option, but from what I have read, they are only somewhat reliable but worth a try if you have a severe mole problem.
Mole tunnels and mounds are annoying to step on, but they aerate the lawn and are easily dug out, raked, and/or pushed down. Try several of these mole-repelling approaches, and see if they put a damper on your problem.
A packet of mixed tall zinnia seeds can cost as little as $2.50.
“On a tight budget, which flowers would you choose for zone 6b?” Question from Loretta of Utica, Kentucky
Answer: It is a good question in these days when many garden centers are closed or low on stock. The very best low-cost flowers are those annuals and perennials that are very fast-growing and quick to bloom from seed. A packet of seeds can cost as little as $2.50 and fill a garden with flowers. The best must also be easy to grow from seed, to ensure the gardener will see those flowers from germination to bloom. The seeds of a few annuals and perennials are easily started outdoors in the ground. They are generally large-seeded flowers with lots of stored food that sprout fast.
Here are the six best gardens flowers for lots of summer color at a very low cost. Every garden center, hardware store, or online seed vendor should carry seeds for these.
Best Low-Cost Flowers
Common Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus): The large pink, rosy-purple, or white daisies of these annuals never disappoint. Average varieties grow very tall–to 5 feet or more–and tend to fall over. That’s why I only grow compact forms. The best include Sonata Mix, which grows to 2.5 feet and has large flowers in all colors. ‘Cosimo Dancing Dolls’ is even shorter and has raspberry and white-striped flowers. There are many other compact varieties from which to choose, so peruse online seed sources for more.
Marigolds (Tagetes spp.): Pick a marigold, any marigold, and they will provide you with golden and orange flowers into fall. There are hundreds of varieties (click here to see a few), from large-flowered African marigolds to small-flowered French marigolds. They thrive in heat and never disappoint.
Morning Glories (Ipomoea hybrids): You can’t go wrong with these mid to late-summer flowering vines. The big pink, purple, blue, or white flowers open in the morning and close by the afternoon. My favorite is the very old-fashioned variety ‘Heavenly Blue‘, which has the clearest sky blue flowers with white and yellow throats. It is easy to find. If you have a fence or large trellis, consider planting a couple. The key to getting the large, black seeds to sprout quickly is to soak them overnight before planting. They have some toxicity, so do not let children plant them.
Purple Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea, Zones 3-9): Here is one perennial garden flower that is easy to start and almost always blooms in the first summer when planted in spring. The little seedlings of purple coneflower will grow quickly, if given good care, and should bloom by mid to late summer with their big, purplish-pink daisies.
Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus): Sunflowers are about the easiest seeds that you can start outdoors. You just need to protect the young seedlings from hungry bunnies, starlings, or deer. There are many varieties of different sizes and in different shades of gold, orange, and burgundy. (Click here to see a nice mix.) They thrive in heat and generally start blooming by midsummer.
Zinnias (Zinnia hybrids): Zinnias are about as easy to grow as sunflowers and come in loads of different color mixes. I like the colorful zinnia blends from Renee’s Garden Seeds. They are ideal for cutting, love summer heat, bloom nonstop, especially with deadheading, and look pretty along the back of a flower bed.
When planting seeds directly in the ground, you must prepare the soil and give them extra care. Make sure the spot where they are to be planted is weed-free, work up the soil, and amend it with Black Gold Garden Compost Blend or Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss. Sprinkle the seeds on the soil and lightly sprinkle a little extra peat or compost on top. Then keep them moist until they sprout. The best time of year to do this is after your last frost date (click here to find yours).
You can also find some other low-cost options. Six-packs of annuals are very inexpensive, and in spring you can purchase bags of Dahlia tubers for very little money. They come in lots of colors and sizes and are very easy to grow. Their blooms are some of my favorite for cutting.
I hope these tips fill your garden with many flowers.
So many flowering shrubs bloom for just a short time, while others offer summer-long flowers. If you want a garden with nonstop color for pollinators, try one of these 12 shrubs for reliable all-season bloom.
Coneflowers and black-eyed-Susans are two essential summer-flowering perennials for butterflies.
A well-designed butterfly garden should have flowers all season and contain plants that feed the caterpillars of butterflies as well as the adults. You’ll know if you’ve done well when monarchs (Danaus plexippus), painted ladies (Vanessa cardui), swallowtails (Papiliospp.), and other butterflies visit your garden frequently and even stay to grow and pupate.
There are two ways to maintain constant blooms for your butterflies. You can 1) strategically plant spring, summer, and fall-flowering perennials they like, and 2) be sure to also plant ever-blooming annuals for butterflies. So many garden flowers are favored by lepidopterans, the task is easy. Just a couple of visits to the garden center should do it.
Then there is designing your butterfly garden. I have created an example of an easy, beautiful butterfly border design (below) that contains common butterfly flowers. Use it as a guide for mingling perennials and annuals together to offer flowers and larval food for butterflies through the season.
What Makes a Butterfly Flower a Butterfly Flower?
Pentas lanceolata Graffiti Violet flowers are tubular, colorful, and provide a nice landing pad for this Painted Lady butterfly. These are essential traits for a true butterfly-pollinated flower.
The technical term for butterfly pollination is psychophily. Some flowers are primarily pollinated by butterflies because they have suites of traits that attract these insects. In general, butterflies have a poor sense of smell, long curled tongues (proboscises), good vision, and must perch to feed. To accommodate these traits, flowers most adapted for butterfly pollination are:
Not strongly scented
Tubular and filled with nectar
Colorful
Shaped for butterfly perching with flat-topped or domed clusters or wide-petals
If you look for these traits, you don’t necessarily need to know the names of butterfly flowers. You can visually identify them.
Eight Favorite Butterfly Annual Flowers
Zinnias of all kinds are classic annuals for butterflies, such as this tiger swallowtail.
If you are just starting out with butterfly gardening, the fastest, lowest-cost way to attract them is with ever-blooming annuals. These can be started from seed or purchased as starts from the garden center. Here are eight of the very best annuals for butterflies that will not disappoint. All should be planted in the ground after the threat of frost as passed. (Click here to determine your last frost date.)
Bloodflower (Asclepias curassavica): The beauty of this tropical milkweed is that its flower clusters of bright red, yellow, and orange just keep blooming throught the warm months. All butterflies love it, but the plants also feed monarch caterpillars. Often it will gently self-sow from year to year.
Bloodflower is a great tender milkweed for all butterflies, such as this Queen butterfly.
Purple Queen-Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota ‘Dara’): The lacy blooms of Dara Queen-Anne’s Lace are purplish-pink and loved by all butterflies. It is especially important to swallowtail caterpillars, which feed on the foliage.
Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus): Butterflies are attracted to this widely popular, low-cost bedding plant, which is easy, beautiful, and can be found at any garden center.
Heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens): The violet-blue flower clusters of heliotrope are equally loved by butterflies and bees. Keep the old flower clusters pinched off to make way for new fragrant domes of blooms.
Lantana (Lantana camara): Gardeners living in hot, dry places should plant lantana for its multi-colored blooms of gold, orange, pink, and red, which are irresistible to butterflies. Those in the Bandana Series are compact and colorful.
All butterflies are attracted to the long-tubed flowers of Madagascar periwinkle.
Egyptian Starcluster (Pentas lanceolata): Everyone who plants a butterfly garden should grow the effortless Egyptian starcluster. Varieties may have lavender, pink, purple, red, or white flowers. Those in the Starcluster Series have extra-large clusters.
Verbena (Verbena spp. and hybrids): There are so many fantastic garden verbenas and butterflies like them all. Superbenas are nonstop bloomers that come in many exciting colors, and the upright stems of Lollipop Brazilian vervain (Verbena bonariensis ‘Lollipop’) are equally attractive and popular with pollinators.
Zinnias (Zinnia hybrids): Plant any zinnia. Butterflies like them all. My personal favorites are the classic, low, spreading Profusion Zinnias, with the deepest orange-red Profusion Fire being one of the finest colors.
Eight Favorite Butterfly Perennial Flowers
Long-blooming perennials, such as coneflowers are a favorite food of butterflies and other pollinators.
Aster (Aster species and hybrids): Fall is a time when migrating butterfly species are on the move, and asters are one of the best flowers to feed them at this time. Their purple, violet-blue, pink or white flowers are also a delight. The compact, pale violet-blue flowered aromatic aster ‘October Skies’ (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium ‘October Skies’, USDA Hardiness Zones 5-8) is a billowy beauty that flowers in mid to late fall.
Butterflyweed (Asclepias spp.): This is an essential larval plant for monarch caterpillars, and its clusters of brilliant orange flowers are long-blooming and bright. (Watch the video below to learn more about the many different kinds available.)
Butterflybush now comes in very compact forms that fit well into perennial gardens.
Butterflybush (Buddleia davidii): There are so many different Buddleia from which to choose, but new super dwarf varieties make them ideal for perennial borders. The 2-foot Pugster®Amethyst has especially large, pretty, violet flower clusters.
Bluestar (Amsonia species and hybrids): The late spring or early summer blooming bluestar is an early garden flower for butterflies. ‘Storm Cloud’ is a spectacular form that creates a bushy 2-foot mound covered with clusters of pale blue flowers.
Coneflowers (Echinacea species and hybrids): The large daisies of summer-blooming coneflowers come in lots of colors and feed many pollinators. Their dry seedheads even feed songbirds in fall and winter.
Blazing Star (Liatris spp.): With bold spikes of purple flowers, blazing stars make quite a statement in the summer garden. Butterflies can’t get enough of their nectar. Try the Midwest-native prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya), which has massive flower spikes reaching 3-6 feet high from late summer to fall. The more manageable Kobold dense blazing star (Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’) is a spectacular bloomer with loads of rosy-purple flower spikes reaching skyward in midsummer.
Butterflyweed is one of the prettiest perennial milkweeds for the garden.
Tall Phlox (Phloxpaniculata): Butterflies are drawn to all phlox flowers. Two favorite tall phlox varieties for summer butterflies are the heavy-flowering, pure white ‘David’ (4 feet) and the coral-pink flowered Garden Girls™Glamour Girl (3 feet). Both are mildew resistant when most others are susceptible.
Willow-Leaved Sunflower (Helianthus saliciflious): The natural form of this wildflower reaches a whopping 8 to 10 feet, but the heavy flowering variety ‘First Light’ reaches just 3 to 4 feet and becomes covered with yellow daisies in late summer to fall.
Garden Designs
I sketched this warm-hued, 4’x6′ butterfly garden with plants that I like. (front=Profusion Fire zinnias, sides=lantana Bandana Cherry and bloodflower, second row=tall red Egyptian starcluster and orange butterflyweed, third row=purple coneflower and black-eyed-Susans, and last row= First Light perennial sunflowers.
There are several designing rules of thumb when it comes to planting any flower border. Here are the five most important.
Plant taller perennials towards the back or center of a flower garden.
Leave space for colorful annuals towards the front of the beds. Everblooming annuals will extend the floral show.
Consider flower color: Dot the garden with flowers in complementary colors that are pleasing to you.
Consider bloom time: Choose a mix of flowers that bloom in spring, summer, fall, and all season. That way, your garden will never look dull and colorless.
Create a rendering of your garden beforehand to get a sense of what it will look like.
Spring is the time to plan your butterfly garden and procure plants for it. Flower gardens are so much nicer when they feed wildlife, and butterflies are like flowers in flight. The more you have in your garden, the better.
“I have tree roots that have been exposed near the ground because of soil erosion. Should I try to recover with soil or leave it be? Will it kill the tree? I think they are the roots of a very large willow oak. There is also a very large poplar tree close by, too.” Question from Richard of Winston Salem, North Carolina
Answer: Extensive root exposure can be damaging to trees, so I recommend restoring the eroded area. Exposed, large woody roots are not a problem, but the broad exposure of smaller feeder roots can cause trouble and indicates a severe erosion problem.
Different trees can tolerate different levels of root-soil cover. Willow oak (Quercus phellos) has a shallow root zone and should not be covered with a thick layer of soil. Two to three inches of soil over the layer of smaller roots should be enough. Poplars have large, extensive root systems and are less prone to damage from high levels of erosion. Still, erosion is always troublesome in the landscape and should be stopped. It can also cause tree instability and make them far more prone to falling during storms.
Here are my recommendations for managing your erosion and tree-root exposure problem.
Identify and attempt to stop the source of erosion. If you can identify the water source, you can often divert the water. Your method of diversion would depend on the source. Feel free to provide more information regarding the source, so I can provide specific solutions.
Cover the exposed feeder roots with at least 2 to 3 inches of topsoil and press it down. We also recommend mixing a good organic amendment into the topsoil, such as Black Gold Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss.
Apply a straw mat or burlap erosion mat to keep the soil in place.
Plant plugs of groundcover for dry shade between the matting. A good groundcover layer will hold the soil in place as it becomes established (list below).
Keep the plugs watered and cared for until they begin to really grow and spread–around two to three months.
There are lots of good groundcovers for dry shade that reduce or stop erosion. These include creeping wire vine (Muehlenbeckia axillaris ‘Nana’, light shade, Zones 6-10), evergreen vinca (Vinca minor, shade, Zones 4-9), dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus ‘Nana’, shade, Zones 6-11), golden sweet flag (Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’, shade to part shade, Zones 5-11), and the evergreen creeping plum yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonia ‘Prostrata’, Zones 6-9), which I highly recommend.
If you like native groundcovers, consider wild ginger (Asarum canadense, shade, Zones 3-8), Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens, shade, Zones 4-9), and the pretty green-and-gold (Chrysogonum virginianum, part sun to shade, Zones 5-8).
