Have you had just enough of the weeds growing in your flower bed? I know I have. As an avid gardener with many other plates spinning in the air, I simply do not have the time to get out in the yard and hand pick these weeds or even mix up a batch of chemicals, walk through the yard and spray each weed individually hoping to kill them.

Designing a garden is one of the more intimidating things gardeners expect of themselves. It's challenging enough to learn all that you need to know in order to select, plant and care for landscape plants successfully. But design is not just learning how to plant and water. I it requires an expression of something from inside of us.

Mowers and string trimmers that use a monofilament line for cutting down weeds and grass can be very damaging to young trees. Young trees have relatively thin bark. If the line is allowed to hit the trunk part of the bark will be removed with east contact of the line.

August is a transitional time for your vegetable garden. While cool-season planting begins in earnest next month, some of the more heat-tolerant cool-season vegetables, such as the cole crops, can be planted into the garden now. And, since our first frosts generally don't arrive until late November or early December, we can also plant warm-season vegetables such tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers for fall production.

If you simply can't be satisfied with the occasional chance appearance of a butterfly in your garden, you might consider planting a butterfly garden... a landscape intended to attract butterflies.

After dodging the bullet with the short-lived Hurricane Barry, we analyze the difference between freshwater flooding and salt water flooding and how aspects of those two different types of flooding can have different impacts on your landscapes.

I've always thought of gardening as a green activity, but there's an argument that some of the things we do when we garden are not necessarily as green as we might think. Consider our use of gas-powered equipment, over-application of fertilizers, and careless use of pesticides.

How do we get our plants through the summer, especially with extended periods of drought followed by torrential downpours? We want to keep our plans from getting stressed.

Hydroponics is an alternative method for growing plants. This now modernized form of horticulture originated during the 1500s and can be used as a different approach to home gardening.

Now is the time to get tomatoes into the ground. Tomatoes are one of the most popular vegetables to grow in Louisiana. They require very little space when they're staked or tied and can produce up to five pounts of usable fruit per plant.

May is one of the most improtant months for vegetable gardening. This month, we're harvesting vegetables, pulling out lingering cold crops, planting new transplants, and more. If you planted your early spring vegetables at the right time, you should be harvesting bell peppers, tomatoes, snap beans, and squash at the end of May. Cucumbers and irish potatoes should be coming soon.

Have you ever eaten a peach? Like really eaten a fresh, local peach directly from the tree it was growing on? Home-grown peaches and grocery store peaches, in my mind, should be considered two different fruits. Peaches from the grocery store are dry and tasteless. A home-grown peach, either from the farmer's market or from your own backyard, is certainly one of the joys of life. Juicy, sweet, and fresh, there's nothing else that compares to a fresh peach.

Back in 2015, an ornamental grass with some colorful foliage called Fireworks Purple Fountain Grass gained some attention.

Warm season vegetables include tomatoes, peppers, and egpplants. But let's talk about cucumbers. One cucumber plant will typically produce 30 to 40 fruit. Take this into consideration when you decide how many cucumber plants to put into your garden. Do you really want that many cucumbers? What are you going to do with all of these cucumbers? Do you have anyone to give them to? Have you pickled before?

Mulching beds is an important part of a sustainable landscape.

Many plants grown for their flowers are cool season plants that thrive in South Louisiana from October through May. That makes right now an ideal time to harvest these edible flowers. Many of these plants began to bloom in late winter with their peak season right now.

There are two general issues to consider when you have pets and a garden landscape: keeping pets from harming your landscape, and keeping the landscape from harming your pets.

As gardeners, it's important to understand basic principles of plant life. And more critical than everything else is the fact that plants need light. It doesn't take many years of trial and error in the garden to learn that you must learn the light preferences of each plant and provide the right amount of light to that plant as closely as possible. Certainly other factors like soil, drainage, and climate are important, but nothing else matters if you don't get the light correct.

Louisianians have been appreciating the qualities of spicy foods for generations. The fire in Louisiana's cooking is provided primarily by the use of hot peppers or products made from them. Thanks to modern breeding efforts, we can now grow bell peppers that ripen to a red, yellow, or orange color, and can even be purple, lavender, or chocolate brown when unripe. Many pepper varieties are attractive enough to use as ornamentals in the landscape as well as in the vegetable garden.

Every year, local gardeners see pansies, violas, dianthus, snapdragons, and other flowers whose peak blooming season is in March through May. Invariably, these gardeners then go out to nurseries in April, purchase these plants, and plant them, wishing to recreate this beauty in their own gardens. Unfortunately, they're disappointed when their plants never reach the spectacular results they saw.