Weeds! How to Beat Them or Enjoy Them

By AlessandraSimmonsJune 12, 2018March 15, 2019 Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs gardening

How to deal with weeds without using harsh chemicals is a question on most gardeners’ minds this time of year. When your plants are blossoming and doing well, so are your weeds. Thankfully, there are a few different weeding strategies you can employ. Companion plants and mulching One way to suppress weeds is to not…

Get Your Garden Soil Primed for Growing

By AlessandraSimmonsMay 22, 2018March 15, 2019 Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs gardening

Plants are a lot like people: they need a good amount of healthy food to grow. However, plant food looks quite different from ours. One source of food is sunlight. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants are able turn sunlight into sugar. We are not able to do this; the only product humans are able…

Enjoy the Abundance of Your Own Apple, Pear and Magnolia Trees

By AlessandraSimmonsMay 10, 2018May 11, 2018 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

Spring is in the air, finally! After a long winter, the first green on the trees feels well-deserved. Anyone who has pear, apple or magnolia trees in their yard will feel the abundance throughout the season. While all trees provide shade and beauty to a yard, these three in particular provide a lasting richness. After…

What to Plant When: A Fruit & Vegetable Planting Guide from Our Garden Center

By rebeccatalbotMarch 28, 2018March 28, 2018 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

It’s been a cold, snowy March in southeastern Pennsylvania. For some, this means we’re daydreaming even more about warm, sunny days and the vegetable gardens that come along with that. While you’re waiting to get your garden started, check out what Amy Lang, plant manager in the Wolff’s Apple House garden center, says about choosing…

Penn State Master Gardeners Are Helping to Bring Back Victory Gardens

By rebeccatalbotFebruary 22, 2018February 22, 2018 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

A hundred years ago, Europe was facing a severe food shortage as World War I turned farmers into soldiers and their farmland into battlegrounds. The United States began to encourage civilians to start “Victory Gardens” wherever they could: schools, parks, backyards, vacant lots, or even unused land that private businesses would allow them to use….

4 Ways to Attract More Birds to Your Backyard This Winter

By rebeccatalbotFebruary 8, 2018February 8, 2018 Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

When I visited my parents’ home in rural Berks County last month, all I wanted to do was look out the windows. I was plugging away at various writing projects in the upstairs bedroom that doubled as my office, but a cheerful flutter outside the picture windows kept attracting my notice. It was so peaceful to stare…

Growing What You’ll Actually Use

By JenniferHetrickJune 1, 2017November 2, 2017 Desserts, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Recipes

When you’re new to gardening, it’s all too easy to be a dreamer about what you grow. Anyone who already knows this scenario understands how it’s likely to over-plant through well-intended optimism. But then you don’t know what to do with all the food you have, and you hope friends and family don’t mind acting…

Coco Coir Makes an Earth-Friendly Alternative to Peat Moss

By rebeccatalbotMay 1, 2017May 15, 2017 Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

Avid gardeners know this problem well. We can’t leave for summer vacation without making sure we have a dedicated friend, neighbor or family member who will promise to come over every couple of days to water the garden. But, as you look ahead to your summer planting (and vacation planning), a new product at Wolff’s…

Beautifying Gardens in Winter & Prepping Ahead for Spring

By JenniferHetrickNovember 1, 2016November 21, 2016 Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Seasonal

Even though winter is just around the corner, that doesn’t mean gardens can’t have value during the cold season. In fact, several Wolff’s Apple House employees attended the Independent Garden Center Show East in Baltimore, Md., last year and heard Martha Stewart speak about this exact point and how a lot of people just don’t realize…

True or False? Test Your Garden Know-How!

By rebeccatalbotJuly 5, 2016February 13, 2018 Featured, Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

If you’re gardening this summer, your garden is probably keeping you busy! Take a break from weeding, watering and preserving your harvest and have some fun testing your garden know-how with this quiz fresh-picked from our growing collection of blog articles! True or False: “Hens and Chicks” is the name of a plant that requires constant maintenance. Some plants are more…

Making a Moon Garden

By JenniferHetrickJune 9, 2016August 12, 2016 Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Photos, Seasonal

When the night sky shines bright light down into your backyard, it’s a wordless hint that a moon garden just might be a good fit for the space. Holly Cusumano of Phoenixville is the chairman of the Philadelphia Unit of the Herb Society of America and has designed moon gardens at both her old home in Coventryville and where…

Cultivating Greens and Making An Easy Arugula Salad

By JenniferHetrickMay 12, 2016February 10, 2017 Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Leafy Greens, Locally Grown, Recipes, Salads, Seasonal, Summer Produce

Despite chilly, rainy days in the recent weeks of early spring, May will soon be showing us the brighter and warmer days which are perfect for planting garden greens. When it comes to cultivating different kinds of leafy greens to join into your meals, Robyn Jasko of Kutztown has the perfect background to give great…

Garden Mapping: Crop Rotation, DIY Pallet Fence & Garden Markers

By rachelvanduzerApril 27, 2016July 5, 2016 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

We all know it’s important to rotate our garden crops, but sometimes it just seems like it’s easier to plant the same crops in the same locations every year. After all, you probably chose the most perfect sunny spot for your tomatoes and took the borderline-shady spot for your cool weather crops, right? That’s where…

Small Space, Huge Garden

By AlessandraSimmonsMarch 29, 2016March 31, 2016 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Leafy Greens

It’s that time of year again to start thinking about your vegetable garden. Last year, I had the pleasure of gardening in my neighbor’s side yard. It was about a quarter acre, and I had the goal of growing as many veggies as I could in the season. Here are a few tips and tricks…

Three Ways to Prep Your Garden for Winter

By rebeccatalbotNovember 24, 2015October 26, 2016 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

In high school I volunteered at the Hay Creek Valley Fall Festival in Berks County, dressing up in smoky-smelling Colonial garb and tending apple fritters over an open fire. It was early fall, just into apple season, and yet I distinctly remember talking about the coming winter with a friend who was also working in the Colonial…

Garden-Fresh Veggies for Fall

By rebeccatalbotAugust 18, 2015November 24, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

If you are contemplating planting a fall vegetable crop but find yourself hesitating because you’ve already done so much work in the garden already, let Amy Bullock Loving of the Wolff’s Plant and Garden Center encourage you to keep on gardening until the first harsh frost. Amy cites one major reasoning to keep on planting…

Watering Smarts: Proper Plant Watering

By JenniferHetrickJuly 7, 2015July 8, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

While watering plants may seem basic enough as a task in spring, summer and autumn months, it’s often the case that people mean well but don’t know they’re watering incorrectly. As the farm femme behind B & H Organic Produce in Caernarvon Township, Erica Lavdanski does her best to educate her customers and anyone she…

Early Summer Crop Rotation Smarts in Your Backyard Garden

By JenniferHetrickJune 24, 2015June 25, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs, Hardy Vegetables, Root Vegetables, Summer Produce backyard, fertilizer, garden, hardy vegetables, soil, summer, vegetables

This week in June is a good time to think about what plants to add to backyard gardens after you’re ready to take out what you might have planted at the end of April or the beginning of May—likely radishes, turnips, lettuce, other cool season greens and maybe spinach. Erica Lavdanski of B & H…

Want to Reduce Waste and Improve Soil Structure? Compost!

By rebeccatalbotJune 11, 2015March 6, 2018 Featured, Gardening Advice: Flowers, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

“Landfills are full of things that don’t have to be there,” says Beth Finlay, Master Gardener Coordinator at the Penn State Extension in Berks County. The issue of reducing garbage is close to home for Beth. In scenic Berks County, there are four large landfills, one of which receives an average of over 5,000 tons of garbage…

Protecting Pollinators in Your Vegetable Garden

By rebeccatalbotMay 28, 2015May 29, 2015 Featured, Gardening Advice: Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs

My heart always lifts when I see a honeybee in my vegetable garden. Like many people, I’ve known for several years that honeybees are in trouble. In 2011, my sister showed me the documentary “Vanishing of the Bees,” which explained how honeybees had been disappearing across the globe due to colony collapse disorder and emphasized the…