Guess what? You may be in a different planting zone now and not know it. With little fanfare and scarcely a blip in the news, the USDA recently updated their hardiness zone map. You can visit their website to check if the changes affect you. The last time the USDA updated was in 1990. What does it mean? Well, climate…
On Friday, February 25th we left our Appalachian foothills home at 9:30am and drove to a nursery that grows tangerines, satsuma mandarins, naval oranges, kumquats, grapefruits, and other citrus in an outdoor orchard. No, not Florida! Even after touring the nursery for over an hour, stopping for lunch, driving slowly through heavy thunderstorms, and navigating rush-hour traffic, we still made…
Last season nearly every local gardener I know had tomatoes die from Fusarium wilt. We lost a large percentage of our crop to it (although with 80 tomato plants, we still had plenty to harvest). Then I saw GOFO’s office garden at Crescent Studios and could not believe my eyes. Unlike the other gardens I’d seen, their tomatoes didn’t have…
Today I did a lecture for the Greater Greenville Master Gardener’s Symposium titled “Unusual Vegetables and Fruits.” Since Greenville is zone 7b, the talk centered around plants that grow here. But some of these plants may grow where you live if you’re in a different zone. More people ended up at my talk than the symposium organizers were expecting which…