Is the site: 

• Sunny or Shady
• Wet or Dry
• Hilly or Flat

Each of these conditions will help you decide on plants you want to pick.  Plant labels will tell you if the plant is suitable for the conditions you have.

Size of Plant
Decide on a layout of plants that provides taller plants in back and shorter plants in front.

Color and Texture
Pick plants that have color provided by leaves or flowers.  You don't want everything blooming in the spring so pick carefully.  Also you don't always need color.  Texture like Oakleaf Hydrangea leaves provide wide areas that turn a crimson color in the fall and then plants with grassy like leaves such as Arkansas Bluestar have a whispy look and it turns a beautiful yellow in the spring.

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There are lots of fungus types.  How do you know you have them.  They usually seem to rear their ugliness in the warm days of spring or hot days of summer and usually when the low temperatures at night are above 70 degrees.


Here are couple easy ones to find
One easy type has a pinkish color and is called Red Thread or Pink Patch.  Another easy one to find is most of the grass is green but you have some spots about 6 inches to a couple feet in diameter.  This could be dollar spot or brown spot disease.


Basically if you lawn isn’t green it is probably because it needs to be watered or has a disease issue.


What can you do?
Water it correctly, 1 inch of water a week and only in the early morning.  If you have identified a fungus issue then apply a fungicide.  Most of these provide protection by keeping the fungus from spreading so once it is there the grass has to grow out of the brown spots.


Another Option?
You can do nothing.  A lot of the fungus issues will go away and the grass will grow back when the cool, rainy weather of fall arrives.


Grass seems to grow anywhere and under the right conditions.  Keeping it looking its best in the summer is challenging but remember how much you have to mow in the spring?  The grass always seems to grow like crazy under the right conditions.

Cool Season grass does best in spring and fall because it is cool at night and warm in the day.  Hot, dry summer is the stress it doesn’t thrive with.
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If you decide to water do it only in the early morning.  Late evening watering causes fungus problems and gives you something else you then need to deal with.


How to keep it from dying?
Water it with 1/4 inch of water every 2-3 weeks.  This won’t keep it green, in fact, it will probably start to turn brown.  This is the look of your grass in the winter.  It’s still alive though.  It is just going dormant. The small amount of water will keep the crown of the grass alive and ready to grow in the fall.


How to keep it green in summer?
Water it two times a week with a 1/2 inch of water at each watering for a total of 1 inch of water a week.  This provides water deep down and not just on the surface.  This should keep it green through the summer until the better fall weather arrives.


How to measure the water?
You need to put a container out in the yard to catch the water.  Check it after several minutes to measure how much water is in it.  This way you will know how long to water to apply the amount of water needed.

Winter is a great time to prune those bushes.  Take a day when the temperatures rise above freezing and the sun is out.  It’s nice to finally get out of the house.  Now which plants to prune.  If it blooms in the spring then don’t touch it.  However many plants bloom in the summer.  You can prune the paniculata hydrangea, the ones with large cone shaped, usually white flowers.  Evergreens, butterfly bushes, most clematis, and I like to prune spirea too even though they bloom in the spring.

Summer-bearing (1 crop per season)​
Ever-bearing (2 crops per season)
​Nova, Killarney Raspberry, and Fall Gold Raspberry plants can be Summer-bearing or Ever-bearing based on how you care for the specific plant.  Read below to find out how to care for each type of raspberry plant.

For the information in this article we will concentrate on 4 types of hydrangea.  These 4 types grow very well in in Indiana.  With a little knowledge about the 4 types you will be an expert and have beautiful flowers every year.

​Wet areas in a yard can come from several days of rain or winter weather that brings snow that melts and the water does not have any place to go because the soil is still frozen.  Maybe this is something that just started to show up.  Well then you probably need to check where your gutters are emptying or did you create a damn by building a raised landscape bed.  Whatever your reason, keep in mind that the plants listed below are for areas that dry reasonably well in a few days.