Gardening

(05/14/12) Boxes and pots offer a great chance for small-scale and perfectly located flower gardening. Cooperative Extension horticulturist Amy Ivy has tips on how to assemble and maintain successful containers, including how to recycle potting mix from year to year. She talks with Martha Foley.

(05/07/12) Sunday is Mothers' Day, and maybe you're thinking of one of those hanging flower baskets as a gift. Cornell Cooperative Extension Horticulturist Amy Ivy has some tips for buying and maintaining the "wow" factor for hanging flower baskets.

(04/30/12) The North Country climate isn't great for fruit trees. There are lots of apple orchards on Lake Champlain, particularly, but insuring a good apple harvest can be a challenge for the home gardener.

Cornell Cooperative extension horticulturist Amy Ivy has tips on other crops for home-grown fruit: berries.

(04/25/12) Co-operative Extension horticulturist Amy and Ivy and Martha Foley share tips, trials and suggestions for the gardening season with callers from around the region.

(04/23/12) The snow and cold rain today are a disappointing sort of counterpoint to this season's early warm spells. True, we need the moisture, but lots of gardeners will be looking closely to see what the consequences are for perennials that have gotten ahead of schedule, or the extra-early seedlings in the vegetable garden.

And who ever knew there were so many azaleas and forsythia bushes in the North Country? This year they are all blossoming, it seems: a rare show indeed. What happens to them? Cornell Cooperative Extension horticulturist Amy Ivy advises gently knocking the snow off those flowering shrubs if you can.

And she tells Martha Foley her technique for giving flower and vegetable seeds just a little boost on the window sill, instead of just planting them directly.

SPECIAL NOTE: join Amy and Martha Wednesday morning at 11 for a live call-in...all about your yard and garden. 11 a.m., April 25.

(04/16/12) Compost is a prized commodity among gardeners. It seems like there's never enough compost to go around As perennial beds and vegetables plots are prepped for the season.

Martha Foley has been making her own compost for years and years, but this spring found things hadn't "worked" over the winter as planned. Cornell Cooperative Extension horticulturist Amy Ivy walked us through her own strategy: two or even three bins.

(04/11/12) It says in the Bible that there is a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. Right now, it's time to plant, some things anyway. On this past Easter Sunday Tasha Haverty worked a trade with longtime North Country gardener, Isis Melhado. If Tasha helped with the onions, the reluctant Isis would explain a little about her method.

Weaver and gardener Isis Melhado lives outside Canton along the Little River, and times her planting by the phases of the Moon.

(04/09/12) Showers today will be welcome for gardeners who've planted spinach and other early season crops. In fact, it's a good time for a lot of early garden chores in the flower garden too. Amy Ivy shares her list with Martha Foley.

(04/02/12) There's a sweet spot, time-wise, for pruning shrubs. And the unusual warmth last month made finding that perfect time trickier than ever. Cornell Cooperative Extension horticulturist Amy Ivy explains when, whys and hows to Martha Foley. She's got tips on the proper tools this week, too.

(03/29/12) Phil Harnden, founder and former Executive Director of GardenShare, Martha Foley and Ellen Rocco confess to their gardening mishaps and mistakes, and take questions and comments from callers about gardening in this challenging climate.