Lawn, Gardening & Pests
A yard that feels and looks like home. A bountiful harvest. Grow your own and sow something beautiful.
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Recent News
Understanding Insect Control
Insect control can be challenging to gardeners because insect pests have the potential to damage ornamentals, fruits and vegetables. The identification of the insect is the first step in determining whether it should be controlled and the recommended control measures.
Less than 3% of insects are considered pests. Therefore, encountering non-pest insects is highly probable. Misidentifying or treating a non-pest organism as a pest may cause a loss of time and money and increase unnecessary exposure to pesticides.
Read Understanding Insect Control
Effective Weed Control Methods
Weeds can compete with vegetables, reducing yield or affecting crop quality, and can serve as alternate hosts for diseases. Weed management is easiest to accomplish and most critical when the crop is young and actively growing.
Weeds emerge from seeds present in the soil. Preventing deposits of seeds is key to managing weeds long-term. Sanitize areas adjacent to the garden and ensure that materials, such as manure, composts, mulch and equipment, are free of weed seeds. Keeping the soil covered using a cover crop or mulch material also can help.
Read Effective Weed Control Methods
The Magic of Mulching
Mulch is any material used to cover, protect and enhance the soil around growing plants. Having a good layer of mulch on the garden provides a multitude of benefits for growing vegetation.
Mulching reduces watering needs by preventing evaporation of water from the soil surface. It saves time by providing a weed-preventing barrier, and it can even reduce disease pressure by stopping bacteria in the soil from splashing up on lower leaves during rain or watering.
AgAlert! Box Tree Moth
This summer (2025), a new invasive insect was detected in Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson counties of West Virginia. This pest is called the box tree moth and has the potential to kill boxwood plants. This insect pest is native to East Asia and was detected in New York in 2021. If you see the box tree moth or its damage on boxwood plants, please reported to the West Virginia Department of Agriculture at (304) 558-2212 or bugbusters@wvda.us.
Homeowners should destroy insects and infested material or the whole plant as soon as possible. Homeowners also shouldn't transport boxwood plants across county lines and should think about using different ornamental plants for new plantings. Nurseries and landscape companies should inspect their boxwood plants regularly and should obtain their plants from propagators that have been certified as free of the box tree moth. For more information about the biology and control of the box tree moth, visit here.
Watering Your Garden 101
Watering your garden is a simple but important task.
For a gardener, water can be your limiting factor. It’s critical that you consider access to water when determining where – or where not – to place your growing zone. If water isn’t accessible to the garden’s current location, a rain barrel could be installed on a structure to collect water and store for later use. Rain barrels can be a life saver, and the amount of rain fall that flows off a small roof is quite amazing.