Fresh holiday greens such as wreaths and garlands have a definite life span, but with the following tips you can keep them looking good so you can enjoy their wonderful scent and beauty throughout the holiday season.

If you aren't hanging or mounting your greens right away, lay them outside on the ground (best side up) in a cool shady location until you are ready to use them. Try to avoid getting the greenery wet.

Sunlight, heat and wind are the worst enemies for holiday greenery, so keep that in mind when hanging them up. Outdoors, wreaths will last much longer on doors with northern or eastern exposures. Southern or western exposures can cause greenery to dry and discolor much more quickly.

If hanging or mounting greenery indoors, be sure to keep it away from heating vents, and try to maintain room temperatures of 70 degrees or less. Also shutter direct sunlight window exposures to prevent excess discoloration.

Anti-transpirants help to slow down moisture loss, helping to maintain the color and reduce a potential fire hazard. Be sure to apply anti-transpirant outdoors at least one hour before decorating the greenery, so it can dry before you add all those personal touches to it!

Happy Holidays!

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• Prevent Peach Leaf Curl. Prune your peach & nectarine trees. When the leaves have fallen spray with Monterey Liqui Cop & again just before the buds break in late February/March. If leaf curl appeared this year, spraying is a must. Disinfect pruner blades with Physan.
• Start preparing for rose season. Invest in a pair of good quality sharp pruners. We carry Wolfgarten and Felco pruners. Don’t forget rose gloves. West County rose gloves provide thorn protection, as well as being lightweight and machine washable.
• Give first application of Sul-Po-Mag to your existing roses.
• Choose and plant sasanqua camellias and early long-blooming azaleas.
• Purchase poinsettias early in the month.
• Continue to plant winter vegetables. Harvest existing vegetables as soon as they mature.
• Snails and slugs love cool damp weather. Apply Sluggo in your vegetable and flower beds. Contains iron phosphate, a naturally occurring mineral that breaks down into the soil as fertilizer. Sowbugs and earwigs also a problem? Use Sluggo Plus, in addition to iron phosphate, it also contains spinosad.
• Temperatures as starting to dip into the mid to low 30’s, protect frost sensitive plants.
• Prune grapes, low-chill raspberries, and native plants. Prune wisteria by cutting off unwanted long twiners. Prune roots of vines that fail to bloom.
• Mow cool-season lawns, including Bermuda that's overseeded with annual ryegrass.
• Do not mow warm-season lawns, except St. Augustine (if it continues to grow). Feed Marathon lawns with Marathon All Season Lawn Fertilizer.
• Feed cool-season flowers with Dr. Earth Organic 6 Flower Garden for growth and bloom.
• Don't water succulents growing in the ground.
• Keep cymbidiums damp but not soggy. Protect cymbidium bloom spikes from snails.
• Remember to keep all bulbs, especially potted ones, well watered.

One needn't be a professional gardener to appreciate a houseful of greenery. In fact, most of us are stumbling along, learning a bit more each day about the plants with which we share our lives. And in return for the pleasure of form and color they add to our living environments, not to mention the fresh oxygen they release into the air, we often are too eager to reciprocate by over-tending them.

Root rot in houseplants is most commonly caused by over-watering. When a plant wilts, our first instinct is to water it, but if it does not respond to watering, and the lower leaves begin to yellow and drop, these are sure signs of root rot. The roots need both water and oxygen, and if they are given too much water, the oxygen cannot reach the root.

When first choosing your new plant, pick one with a healthy green color and which shows signs of new growth. Check the bottom of the pot to ensure that the plant is not root bound, and avoid plants with white or brown lumps on the leaves or stems.

There is no one way to water all plants. Succulents have fleshy leaves and stems that enable them to store water, while plants with large or very thin leaves usually require more frequent watering.

If you're planting in clay pots, remember that they are more porous, thus water evaporates rapidly from the sides. Plants placed in glazed or plastic pots will require less water. Plants in warm, dry, sunny locations need more frequent watering than those in cool, low-light environments.

A large plant in a small pot needs more water than a small plant in a large pot. And after rewarding you with a flush of flowering, plants may slow in growth and become dormant, hence needing less water.

Here's an easy way to tell if your houseplants are thirsty; insert your finger into the soil up to the first joint--if it is dry, time to water. Rap your knuckles against the side of the pot; if the sound is dull, the soil is moist; if the sound is hollow, time to water.

Look closely at the soil of your plant; if it is lightening in color, time to water. And lift up the pot; as the potting mixture dries, the plant lightens in weight.

Of course, choosing easy-to-care plants is the most efficacious manner of filling your home with the outdoors. We have a variety of easy-to-care-for plants that are wildly different visually, but which all provide the sense of nature that we strive for when filling our homes with plants.

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