The Bruce Company Blog

written by Lisa Briggs
May is usually a gardener’s favorite time, and this year even more so! The seesaw spring had spring flowers developing in fits and starts, but the warm temps late last week pushed many plants hard, all at once.

written by Lisa Briggs
Did you read the book, The $64 Tomato… by William Alexander? Written in 2006, it was a tongue-in-cheek treatise on vegetable gardening, bemoaning the money spent to get one ripe tomato.

written by Lisa Briggs
April’s crazy temperature swings have had gardeners racing from the urge to get tomatoes in the ground and the scrambling to dig up floating row covers from the back of the garage.

written by Lisa Briggs
There are many commonly-planted trees, shrubs and perennials that are slow to emerge in the spring, especially after this spring’s roller coaster.

written by Lisa Briggs
It seems miraculous that fragile perennial plants and very early blooming trees and shrubs can survive the onslaught of the weather extremes in our very fickle springs. And some of the most delicate and dainty-looking of them all, are really among the toughest and most tenacious plants in the garden.

written by Lisa Briggs
The past few really warm days have given us a taste of the summer to come, but the unseasonably high temps should moderate for the weekend. I’ve always maintained that gardeners are the most optimistic folks on earth and, no matter what the weather is like, will be making their lists and checking them twice.

written by Lisa Briggs
Despite their adorable faces, bunnies can do an awful lot of damage to your yard. A couple of rabbits can strip the bark from young trees or decimate an entire vegetable garden overnight. They are also extremely adept winter pruners, mowing down as many small shrubs as they can reach.

written by Lisa Briggs
There are good reasons to grow vegetables from seed. There are so many more choices when you’re buying seeds. Ordinarily, the Garden Center has about 50 varieties of tomato seedlings on order. If you look at seeds though, you can chose from 118 different cherries, currants, slicers and pastes.

written by Lisa Briggs
Gardeners value butterflies for their usefulness as pollinators, as well as for their beauty. Did you know that about 130 of these brightly colored beauties can be spotted in Wisconsin?

written by Lisa Briggs
Don’t you find yourselves looking for any excuse to be outdoors in the early spring sunshine? It feels as though everything alive is aching to stretch- length of the days, leaves on the trees, germinating seeds.