Great Evergreens for Screens and Hedges

'Spartan' Junipers (seen here) make a great drought tolerant, narrow hedge for tight spaces. Several varieties of shrubs are readily available that make great hedges, so look beyond the common disease plagued Leyland Cypress when choosing plants for screening! Local garden centers carry many different great evergreens for this purpose and fall and winter are the perfect time to plant them. When choosing a variety to plant as a hedge, consider its mature width and height, growth rate, and preferred growing conditions to select the varieties best suited to your needs and site conditions.

Find out about more great shrubs to use for screening and hedges in SE NC! Click here to read the entire article on the Pender County Cooperative Extension website.

Fall Gardening Chores

Cooler temperatures make gardening and landscape maintenance much more pleasant in the fall and there are several important jobs to do at this time of the year. Tasks like cleaning up will help your landscape get off to a healthier start next season, while soil testing will let you know what nutrients your lawn and landscape need to support healthy growth. Fall is also a wonderful time to plant trees, shrubs, and perennials, as well as spring blooming bulbs and hardy annuals like pansies and ornamental cabbages. So enjoy the beautiful weather during the next couple of months by getting out in the yard and having fun while caring for your landscape.

Read the entire article on the Pender County Cooperative Extension Website

Plant a Deer Resistant Landscape!

Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) is a popular native, drought tolerant, ornamental grass for sunny areas. Like all grasses, it is rarely bothered by deer. Other plants deer prefer not to eat include ferns, palms, plants with strong fragrances like rosemary, and those with thorny leaves and stems.

Deer frequently visit area landscapes, where their foraging can cause serious and costly damage. There are several options for reducing deer damage in the landscape, including fencing, repellants, and even guard dogs, but one of the easiest ways to reduce their impact is to landscape with plants deer prefer not to eat. Though no plant is deer proof, there are many good landscape plants for this area that deer find less palatable - a solution that is both effective and relatively low-cost, once you know which plants to choose.

Click here to read the entire article on the Pender County Cooperative Extension website. . .

Improving Problem Soils

Common soil problems in SE NC include poor, sandy soils as well as heavy, compacted soils that drain poorly. The most effective way to address these common soil problems is to incorporate organic matter, such as compost, into your soil.


Fall is the best time to plant in the southeast, but for plantings to be successful, gardeners must first prepare the soil so it can support healthy plant growth. In Pender County our soils vary considerably, and include nutrient poor, dry sands and heavy, poorly drained clays. Each of these extremes causes problems gardeners must first deal with before they can successfully grow a wide range of plants.

Learn how to improve problem soils by reading the entire article posted on the Pender County Extension website . . .

Perk Up Winter Landscapes with Hardy Annuals!

This colorful combinations includes bright yellow pansies and 'Redbor' kale, a vegetable being grown as a winter hardy ornamental. If you haven't planted hardy annuals yet, now is the time to get it done! Include ornamental vegetables like mustard or kale to contrast the colors and shapes of blooming annuals.

There’s a lot more than just pansies awaiting your fall landscape on garden center shelves this autumn! As the exciting trend of cool season gardening grows, more and more winter hardy annuals are making their way into local garden centers each year. Winter hardy annuals are plants, like pansies, that grow during they cool part of the year. Planted in fall, most provide some color through winter but really put on their main show in spring, usually cranking up flower production as soil temperatures rise in February. This show continues through late April when rising temperatures bring the curtain down on the spring act, at just the right time to purchase and plant summer annuals in their place.

To get the best performance from your hardy annuals, be sure to prepare the soil well by mixing compost into the top six to eight inches, and also apply a slow release fertilizer such as Osmocote or an organic fertilizer, which naturally release their nutrients over an extended time. To get the most bang for your buck, plant winter annuals in solid groups, rather than sprinkling them here and there all over the landscape, and choose bright colors like white, yellow, and orange. While pansies are what typically come to mind when planting winter annuals, there are actually several other varieties available at local garden centers. Keep an eye out for the following selections to add interest and color to your garden this winter and spring.

Click here to read the entire article on the Pender County Cooperative Extension website!

Plant Bulbs this Fall for Color Next Spring!

Though tulips are what come to mind when many people think of spring blooming bulbs, they are not a reliable perennial variety for Southeastern North Carolina. If you want to plant spring blooming bulbs that will come back year after year go with Spanish bluebells, summer snowflake, starflower, and daffodils.

Planting bulbs this fall is an easy way to guarantee a splash of color for your landscape next spring. Fall planted bulbs can be tucked in between perennials and deciduous shrubs, where they will come up and flower early in the season, before other plants start growing, bringing early color to otherwise drab borders. They also work well when planted underneath winter annuals such as pansies and violas, creating a layered effect when the bulbs come up to bloom in spring. Similarly, fall bulbs can be tossed into container plantings to add a new dimension of interest in spring. A trip to your local garden center will reveal many different types of bulbs currently for sale, but before buying you should know that some bulbs perennialize well in our climate, while others should just be considered annuals and will need to be replanted every year. Also, even though bulbs are available for purchase now, it is not the right time to plant them yet, so you will need to be able to properly store bulbs purchased now for planting later this fall.

Click here to read the entire article on the Pender County Extension Website

Controlling Caterpillars Organically

Cabbage loopers are one of several caterpillars frequently found feeding on fall vegetable crops. Fortunately they can be effectively controlled with organic products like B.t. and spinosad.

Fall is caterpillar season. Thousands of these hungry insects are currently munching away on the leaves of trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables throughout our gardens and landscapes. In landscapes, a few missing leaves are no big problem, but sometimes caterpillars come in masses, and can strip the foliage from a shrub or tree in a few days. This type of feeding damage is more serious and often warrants control. In vegetable gardens, feeding damage is less tolerated since missing leaves mean less produce. Plus, who wants to eat caterpillars with their cabbage? Fortunately homeowners do not have to spray synthetic pesticides to control these pesky critters since organic options are readily available from local garden centers.

Click here to read the entire article on the Pender County Cooperative Extension Website