Recent Posts
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This time of year, watermelon is a treat. Everybody has a favorite way to eat watermelon. Mine is to put it in the fridge to get it nice and cold, cut it up in slices, and put a little salt on each bite as you eat it. If you don’t have a fridge around a…
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Mummy berry is a fairly common disease that affects blueberry plants. It can be a pretty devastating disease to your blueberry harvest. By the time that you see the affects of it, the opportunity to treat has passed. Let’s talk about mummy berry, how it works, and what you can do to manage it. Mummy…
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Seed saving is an old practice that has become less common in recent years. Before World War II seed catalogues that offered varieties of seeds from all over were not common, so if you planted a garden you would have to save your own seed each year to be able to plant again next year.…
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Corn earworm is a serious pest in corn, especially sweet corn. Let’s talk about this pest, what damage it does and what can be done to control it. Corn earworm and tomato fruitworm are really the same species of caterpillar. Its just that when we see them on corn it’s an earworm, and when we…
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Fall is approaching, even though we have a few more hot days left. Sweet sorghum in the fall is part of culture and history in the mountains. It used to be more common and there were sorghum mills scattered all over the place. There are still a few people who grow sweet sorghum for syrup…
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Fall brings a change in the weather and the growing season slows down. A lot of people will put their gardens up for the winter, but there are still some tasks that are better done when temperatures are down. Lower temperatures means less water loss from plants. This makes it an ideal time to start…
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The ground everywhere you go now seems like it’s littered with leaves. However, we shouldn’t think of leaves as litter. They are a natural product that is beneficial in a lot of ways. Let’s talk about some of the benefits that leaves provide, and why leaving them is good for the environment. In the fall…
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Ginseng is a plant that has long had an important place in Appalachia. It is important economically and culturally. Unfortunately, there is less and less ginseng growing in the wild. Let’s talk about ginseng, some of its history, and how to start your own ginseng patch. The market for American ginseng started in the 1700’s.…
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What do they look like? Periodical cicadas have red eyes and orange wings. They grow to be 2.5 inches long. They have a piercing sucking mouth that they use to suck juices out of plants. Annual cicadas appear every year and have black eyes with green wings. The emergence this year is from Brood X…
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Cedar-apple rust is a common disease in our area. If you have apple trees you have probably seen it before. It is an unusual disease in that it alternates between hosts. Let’s talk about this disease so that you can learn how to identify and control it. Cedar-apple rust (CAR) is from the Pucciniaceae family.…
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