MELINDA’S GARDEN MOMENTS

Nationally renowned garden expert Melinda Myers helps everyday gardeners find success and ease in the garden through her Melinda’s Garden Moments television segments. Melinda shares “must have” tips that hold the key to gardening success, learned through her more than 25 years of horticulture experience. Viewers from across the country find her gardener friendly, practical approach to gardening both refreshing and informative! On this page, Melinda shares some more extensive garden tips, which expands on the information provided in her one-minute TV segments.

Melinda’s Garden Moments Garden Tips!
New tips will be added throughout the growing season, providing timely step-by-step tips on what you need to do next in your garden! To view online streaming video of Melinda’s Garden Moments, visit http://www.melindamyers.com/learn-from-melinda/melindas-garden-moments-5.html

Selecting Healthy Plants

Purchase healthy plants suited to the growing conditions in your backyard to insure a great start to a productive and attractive garden.

Look for plants with deep green or appropriately colored leaves free from brown edges that indicate moisture stress. Then check along the stems and the undersides of the leaves. Brown spots, holes, bronzing, or speckling indicate insects and diseases are present.

Then lightly brush over the plants. If a cloud of white, fly-like insects appear, white fly is a problem, leave those plants behind. You don’t need to spend money bringing problems into the landscape.

And with transplants, bigger is not always better. Look for nice sturdy, stout plants. And see that they haven’t filled up the container with their roots. Pot bound plants don’t recover from transplant shock as readily.

The right purchase is the first start to a beautiful, healthy, and productive garden.

Just a bit more information: Go for the green, leaves, that is. Young flowerless transplants will adjust to their move from the pot to the garden more readily than those in full bloom. Flowering transplants expend their energy on flowering and forming seeds instead of developing roots.

You can help flowering transplants adjust. Remove the flowers at the time of planting. I know it is hard to discard the colorful blooms you have waited for all winter. But a little sacrifice now will increase flowering throughout the season.

Reduce the anguish and save a few blooms by staggering flower removal. Remove the flowers from every other transplant at planting and the rest a week or so later. Or perhaps you prefer every other row. Once you see the benefits it will be a bit easier to remove those flowers next time you plant.

For more gardening tips, podcasts and more, visit www.melindamyers.com


About Melinda Myers
Melinda Myers, best known for her gardener friendly and practical approach to gardening, has more than 25 years of horticulture experience in both hands-on and instructional settings. She has a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from The Ohio State University and a master’s degree in horticulture from University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a certified arborist, and was a horticulture instructor with tenure.

Outside the classroom, Melinda shares her expertise through a variety of media outlets. She has written 20 books, including Can’t Miss Small Space Gardening, and the Birds & Blooms’ Ultimate Gardening Guide. She hosts “Great Lakes Gardener,” seen on PBS stations throughout the United States, and “Melinda’s Garden Moments”, which air on network television stations throughout the country. She appears regularly as a guest expert on various national and local television and radio shows. She also writes the twice monthly “Gardeners’ Questions” newspaper column and is a contributing editor and columnist for Birds & Blooms and Backyard Living magazines. In addition, she hosted “The Plant Doctor” radio program for over 20 years.

For her work, community service and media presence, Melinda has received recognition and numerous awards, including the 2003 Garden Globe Award for radio talent and the Quill and Trowel Award for her television work, both from the Garden Writers Association. She has also received the Garden Communicator’s Award from the American Nursery and Landscape Association and the Gold Leaf Award for Arbor Day from the International Society of Arboriculture.

For more information, visit Myers’ web site www.melindamyers.com. The site features regularly updated garden tips, podcasts, a garden club, e-newsletter, books, appearance information, “Great Lakes Gardener” television schedule and more.