Now...let’s take it up a notch.

If your dad is a patio barbeque Daddy-o, plant a big patio container or two with a few veggies that he can cook up on the grill later this year: peppers, tomatoes, onions, and maybe some cilantro or basil.

Or how about that shade tree that he needs in the backyard? You know...the tree that will shade him while he is in dreamland in his hammock or chaise lounge? Come into the Greenery and we’ll help you pick the best one for him. Bring Dad along, he might have a special one in mind already. You can plant it together with him and watch it grow over the years, while you are growing too. Come see the Greenery staff for more great gift ideas for your Special Dad.

Most of all make sure all the dads are given "Royal Treatment." Fix him breakfast. Have a Father's Day BBQ or picnic in your garden. Do things that will let him know he's "King" for the day.

And you know what else is fun? Getting Dads to tell you about himself growing up. Here are a few things you can ask him about: his favorite color, the best movie he ever saw, his most memorable moment with you, his best friend, his hobby, favorite food, animals he likes, or even his most embarrassing moment and happiest moment.

• Cube London broil – 2” or bigger-use enough meat to feed all guests!

• Season the meat with olive oil, minced garlic, and Old Bay seasoning (seafood, poultry, meats, and salads); salt and pepper to taste.

•Skewer all meat together. Cook time is 15-20 minutes for medium rare.

• Cut up large pieces of sweet onion or red onion, yellow pepper, red pepper, orange pepper, thick slices of zucchini and yellow squash, whole baby bella mushrooms, and whole grape tomatoes.

• Season the veggies with olive oil, Old Bay seasoning (seafood, poultry, meats and salads), and minced garlic. Add a couple of shakes of red pepper flakes.

• Skewer all veggies together.

• Cook for about 15-20 minutes, along with the meat.

Coneflowers (Echinacea species) are native American wildflowers that have found their way into our gardens because of their stunning beauty and hardiness. Originally only available in shades of purple and lavender, coneflowers now come in a wide range of colors. Thanks to the efforts of breeders across the country, they can now be found in shades of pink, white, purple, yellow, orange and salmon. They come in a range of sizes as well, from dwarf coneflowers that grow only 18" high and wide to varieties that grow 4-5' high and half as wide.

The 3-5" diameter flowers on these robust deciduous perennials are arranged above sturdy, elongated, upright stems that are perfect for cutting and last in a vase from 5-7 days. The flowers have somewhat weeping petals that surround a coned center (thus, the name) and are produced from summer into fall.

Coneflowers prefer full sun locations and regular watering in well-drained soil that keeps them moist, but not wet. They require a couple of feedings per year of a good flower food to keep them healthy and strong.

Coneflowers make an excellent addition to any perennial garden and also look great in border or container plantings. They are a perfect selection for butterfly gardens. We invite you to stop by and bring some home today!

Do your last thinning on deciduous fruit trees after June drop, nature's way of getting rid of an overload of fruit. It may occur any time between early May and July but is most likely to happen in June. One day you visit your deciduous fruit tree and find a circle of immature fruit lying on the ground under the branches. You may worry if you are new to fruit trees, but don't panic! It's a natural part of the cycle. These trees often set more than double the amount of fruit they could possibly ripen properly, so they simply drop off part of it.

If you thinned out fruit on your trees earlier, you enabled the remaining fruit to grow larger and thus will have less fruit dropping now. Nevertheless, you may need to remove even more fruit than naturally drops in order to space your crop evenly down the branches. Inspect other deciduous fruit trees that are less subject to June drop and thin out their fruits also.

Clean up any fallen fruit under the tree before it has a chance to rot and spread disease. If it's healthy, chop it and add it to your compost pile (cover it with earth to keep away flies and rodents). Also water your deciduous fruit trees deeply in June and July.

Pretty, isn’t it? Like grass, only taller, wilder, less restrained. A true sedge and not a grass, it is a nuisance in the lawn – although the occasional plant can show real beauty in the very lack of its nice, neat, small blades.

Howard Garrett, a long-time organic advocate in Texas recently wrote: “There is only one guaranteed, foolproof method to completely kill nut grass. First, dig out every tiny piece of the plant including the seeds and nutlets. Make sure you sift the soil through a mesh screen. Dump the collected material on the driveway and burn it. Sweep up all the ashes and seal in a concrete box. Drive to the coast and dump the sealed box 20 miles off shore.”

A good sense of humor may be necessary in dealing with nut grass. It grows by spreading sideways, with multiple rootlets searching underground for water. When it finds moisture, the small root turns downward towards the water, sending another tender plant upward. Its most famous Cyperus family member is papyrus, an aquatic plant from which paper was first made. They both love sopping wet feet, thus are often found in overwatered lawns with poor drainage. Lawn weeds demonstrate that problems most generally exist with the lawn, rather than with the weed; provide the desired environment, and the weeds will come!

Most of us inherited poor lawns, or in search of the perfect suburban expanse, raced to plant our lawns without doing the necessary research. Did we use high-quality, amended soil? Was the grass seed used appropriate to the native conditions, taking into consideration the light and shade conditions? Was the seed an all-perennial blend? Probably not. Removing the underground ‘nuts’ is the best answer to ridding your lawn of nut grass, but they are recalcitrant, and most home owners will tell you that you can pull out nut grass, stomp it flat, cut it off, or poison the leaves, but with the roots still underground you will never be able to get them all. Regular mowing will at least keep nut grass from seeding, and combined with vigilant hand-pulling, you may eventually eliminate the problem.

Aeration of the turf is probably the most direct method to get some drainage going so that the battle with nut grass has a chance of being won. A core aerator can be rented from your local garden center or hardware store, which pulls out plugs, allowing air to enter your impacted soil. Then apply corn gluten meal which is a natural “weed and feed” to give your grass a good feeding and to prevent the nut grass seeds from germinating.

If you live with ducks, geese and guinea hens, they will unearth and eat the tubers for you! Barring that, experiment with a mechanical weed-puller designed to remove dandelions, like the Weed Hound; hopefully it will pull out those little tubers. Either way, you’ll be aerating the ground, and doing everything possible to fight the good fight!

Most herbicides including glyphosate will not kill nutgrass. The Greenery recommends Sedgehammer, a very selective herbicide designed for control of nutgrass and don’t forget the spreader-sticker!

By Tamara Galbraith

When it's summertime and you're working on a tan, your plants may begin to take on a pale, pasty look. What gives? Say hello to the fungus disease known as powdery mildew.

A common condition found on plant life throughout North America, powdery mildew is characterized by spots or patches of white to grayish talcum-powder-like growth. Fortunately, it is usually more of an effect than a problem itself. In other words, in addition to treating the plant, you'll probably want to take a look at the surrounding conditions and make some adjustments.

The primary way to keep powdery mildew (and other fungi) from attacking your plants is prevention. Start now.

First and foremost, make sure you give plants plenty of room. Good air circulation goes a long way. Trim plants that get crowded or bushy. Avoid overhead watering and do your watering in the morning so any water that does get on leaves has a chance to dry. If your plants are getting spray from a lawn sprinkler system, try moving the sprinkler a bit further away. If that's not possible, you might consider replacing your plants with more mildew-resistant plants or varieties.

If you do get powdery mildew, to halt it in its tracks, spray the affected plants with a good fungicide, such as Bayer Disease Control or Serenade Organic Fungicide.

Summer is upon us and so is the hot weather. We can choose to be miserable and suffer through the heat, or we can be smart and make a difference. One way to be more comfortable is to turn up the air conditioner and enjoy the arctic air. This works well until the utility bill comes. Energy rates have increased rapidly in the last few years, making the arctic air solution not very practical.

There is one solution that not only makes you more comfortable, but can also save you money or even make you money. The key to comfort lies in the landscape. With properly placed trees and shrubs, you can reduce your energy bill by up to 50%. When plants, especially trees, photosynthesize, they release a large quantity of water into the air resulting in natural evaporative cooling. Research has shown that an environment that is shaded by plants will have an air temperature that is 3 to 9 degrees cooler than non-shaded areas.

When planting trees and shrubs you should be careful where you plant or you will actually waste more energy than you save. You want to reduce the summer sun as well as allow maximum warming winter sun. Placing trees on the east and west sides of the house has maximum summer cooling effect. These shade the walls and windows when the sun is low in the morning and evenings. If you place trees that shade southern winter sun, you may well have an decreased energy bill. To create maximum savings, you need to select a large shade tree such as a Chinese elm or a camphor tree that will grow large enough to shade the southern roof in mid summer and lose its leaves in winter to allow the needed heating. Shrubs and vines also provide sun protection and increased insulation and result in significant energy savings.

Proper placement of trees and shrubs not only saves you money, but can also make you money. There is nothing that has a higher return on home resale value than the landscape. On the average, landscaping returns 110% of the investment and continues to increase over time.

So get out and make your summers more comfortable and more affordable by planting trees and shrubs in your yard today.

For TID customers, you are eligible for a rebate from TID. Just come into the nursery and ask for the Shade Tree Rebate Form.

These days, not even a backyard garden is free from danger. The vegetables and flowers over which you’ve labored so lovingly are prey for aphids, cutworms, mealy bugs, and many others.

What to do? Using chemical pesticides is so last century. We now know that broad spectrum conventional pesticides not only kill the bad bugs, they rub out the good ones as well. Without natural predators in our gardens, it’s a world of insects gone wild. In fact, more and more insects are showing resistance to heavy duty chemical pesticides. In a controlled experiment, fruit flies were exposed to DDT. Not only did it not kill them, the fruit flies had developed a way to metabolize the pesticide and use it as food!

If you’ve ever read a newspaper, a web blog, or watched tv, you know how vitally important it is to eat safe food. No matter how carefully you wash your vegetables that have been treated with chemicals, there is no guarantee that they don’t still contain traces.

What to do? Go natural! Fight bugs with bugs! Beneficial insects are the latest fad in fighting the bad bugs in your garden. Take for example, the common green lacewing (Chrysoperla carnea). Actually, take the offspring of this “aphid lion”; the adult lays her eggs on the foliage, each on the top of hair-like filaments. In a few days, the lacewing eggs hatch and the tiny larvae emerge with their voracious appetites for aphids, spider mites and red mites, thrips, whiteflies, long-tailed mealy bugs, the eggs of leafhoppers, moths and leafminers, small caterpillars, beetle larvae and tobacco budworms. Whew!

The larvae look like miniature alligators with tiny ice tong-like pincers that inject paralyzing venom. They then draw out the bodily fluids of their victim. Hey. We didn’t say that controlling the bad bugs in your gardens was a pretty thing. We just want you to know that there are safer and more naturally effective options to dealing with pests.

It’s become quite a business selling these mighty defenders of the healthy garden. Green lacewing larvae can be released on numerous plants such as cotton, sweet corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, apples and strawberries. About 10 lacewing eggs per plant, or 1,000 eggs per 200 sq. ft. will control a moderate aphid population. During the two to three weeks in the larvae stage they will each devour up to 200 victims a week. After this, they pupate by spinning a cocoon with silken thread and approximately five days later the adults emerge to complete the life cycle. There are five or six overlapping generations each season. Since the larvae feed for about two weeks, a second release, two weeks later, might be necessary.

Chrysoperla carnea, the “original” green lacewing just may prove to be the best all-purpose predator for your home garden.

How do you get lacewings? The Greenery has easy mail-in packages. Just purchase the package, fill out the card and your lacewings will ship straight to your mailbox!

How often should I cut my lawn?

Answer:
The easy answer would be once per week in the growing season. A good rule-of-thumb is to remove no more than one-third of the grass height at any one mowing. For example, if you are maintaining your lawn at 2 inches, mow the lawn when it is about 3 inches high. Cutting off more than one-third at one time can stop the roots from growing and will require more frequent watering during the heat of summer to keep the grass alive and healthy.

Following the one-third rule will produce smaller clippings that will disappear quickly by filtering down to the soil surface. If the grass becomes too tall between mowings, raise the mowing height and then gradually reduce it until the recommended height is reached. For the best appearance, mow and maintain your lawn at the best height for growth as determined by the type of grass you have.

You can usually mow a grass that spreads horizontally shorter than an upright-growing bunch-type grass. Grasses with narrow blades can generally be mowed closer than grasses with wide blades. If your lawn is under stress--such as heat, drought or shade--mow at a higher level of cut. Proper mowing is important in maintaining a healthy lawn because it encourages a dense stand of grass plants. A dense turf keeps out weeds through competition for sunlight and nutrients. A weak, thin turf allows weed seeds to germinate and grow.

Mowing practices can also affect the occurrence of disease. Many times an increase in disease can occur when turf is cut too low or is mowed when the foliage is wet.

One final tip: Don't mow in the same direction each time. Alternate your mowing direction and you'll have more upright grass growth and a smoother-looking lawn.