How to Take Care of Vinca Flowers By Jenny Harrington The plant commonly called vinca (Catharanthus roseus) grows as a short, upright bush, covered in small pink or magenta flowers. It grows as a perennial in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 10 through 11 but can be treated as a summer annual elsewhere. Vinca’s close cousins, greater periwinkle (Vinca major), which grows in USDA zones 7 through 9, and common periwinkle...

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Want to jump start your garden for spring?  Seeding indoors is a great way to get your garden started! For the Love of Gardening If you start vegetable plants indoors, it is often helpful to list seeding dates on a calendar so that plants are ready for transplanting at the proper time. To do this, choose your transplant date and count back the number of weeks necessary to grow your own transplants. For example, cabbage, broccoli and...

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      June is a beautiful time in the garden. Cool season crops are peaking while summer crops are just starting to produce with herbs in full swing.    What’s Growing in Our Zone 6 Garden Now?      Most of the lettuce that are planted at the end of April are now ready to harvest with all of my spinach and kale bolting. Cabbage and broccoli heads are forming so harvest is close for them. Be sure to keep...

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Grow your own pest control, and perhaps never buy bug spray again! Look: mosquitoes are awful. They may be great food for birds and bats, but you don’t want them hanging around your backyard. You also don’t want to cover yourself in harsh chemicals to repel them. So, aside from making your property less friendly to the buggers by getting rid of any standing water (including those rain gutters!), what can you do to keep them away? It turns out...

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Heat Loving & Hearty Fun Summer Colors Lantana is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants in the verbena family. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa but exist as an introduced species in numerous areas, especially in the Australian-Pacific region. The genus includes both herbaceous plants and shrubs growing to 1.6–6.6 ft tall.   Lantana’s aromatic flower clusters (called umbels) are a mix...

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Are Hot Peppers Good for You? If you like to put hot spices or hot sauce on your food, you may be doing yourself a favor. Capsaicin, the alkaloid responsible for the spicy flavor in hot peppers, may offer benefits in the treatment of some diseases, according to an article published in 2011 in the journal “Molecules.” Peppers that contain capsaicin include jalapenos, habaneros, cayenne, serrano, cherry peppers and even bell peppers....

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