Want to know the best way to keep your hanging baskets healthy, strong – and most importantly – loaded with blooms all summer long this year?

If there is one issue that seems to plague gardeners when it comes to their hanging baskets – it’s how to keep them healthy and blooming longer for more than just a month or two at most! Of course when you pick those new baskets out early in the year, they are always lush and full of blooms, but that changes so quickly.

Unfortunately, by mid to late summer, a large majority of hanging baskets begin to rapidly fade. What was once a bright bouquet of foliage and blooms often turns into an eyesore filled with brown leaves and a sparse collection of struggling flowers.

In today's epsiode - Jim & Mary cover three simple tips that will not only make it possible to keep your baskets thriving, gorgeous and blooming – but to do so all the way through summer and deep into fall!

This week Jim & Mary are talking hostas - or more importantly - how and when to fertilize hostas to keep them beautiful all summer long!

Unlike most perennials and annuals, hostas are almost always grown for their beautiful foliage. Although they do produce a long, slender stem of blooms in the summer, it is their incredibly colorful and large leaves that are really the star of the show.

With massive leaves that come in a variety of solid and variegated greens, whites, creams and blueish-green colors, they are simply perfect for brightening up the shadier portions of a landscape.

But if there is one trait of hostas that give gardeners fits, it’s that their amazing foliage often begins to fail long before fall arrives. In fact, for many, their hosta plants struggle just to make it through the middle of summer!

The good news is that with just the slightest of extra care and attention, hostas can keep their leaves strong the whole season through. And without a doubt – one of the easiest ways to ensure that is by giving them the perfect dose of energy! 

Getting your tomato plants off to a great start is one of the biggest keys to growing a big harvest of juicy tomatoes in the summer – and there is no better way to jump start your crop than putting a big dose of power in your tomato planting hole with four simple but powerful ingredients!

Tomato plants are one of the heaviest feeders of all vegetable plants. They need a lot of nutrients. Not only to produce delicious tomatoes, but to power all-important early growth. And strong, early growth is the key to setting the stage for a bumper crop of tomatoes. Jim and Mary cover how to plant your tomatoes with the power they need right from the start - with four key ingredients in their planting hole!

When it comes to growing healthy, productive vegetables and flowers in raised beds – success all begins with filling your raised beds with the perfect mix of soil! The soil you put into your raised beds matters. To grow great plants it needs to be lightweight, full of nutrients – and also drain well. Which is exactly why how you fill them up matters! 

It’s important to think of raised beds just as you would a container or potted plant. This is because they both have limited soil capacity. To be successful, a potted plant needs to have great drainage as well as be loose and lightweight. In addition, it also needs to packed with nutrients.
That is exactly the same formula for success when growing in raised beds. The soil has to drain excess water away in quick fashion. If it doesn’t, plants will struggle to grow and can easily rot out in the soil.


On this week's episode, Jim & Mary take a look at the best method for filling up your beds, and why simply loading them full of just plain soil is not good for your plants – or your raised beds life and longevity either.

When it comes to maintaining healthy plants and weed-free flowerbeds, mulch is the answer. There is little doubt that it has tremendous benefits for the flowers growing in your flowerbeds – especially when it put down correctly.

But let’s face it, the number one reason gardeners put down mulch is to stop weeds. And unfortunately, for many who go through the expense and effort of mulching their beds each year in hopes to finally put an end to their weeding chores – their mulching process actually only helps their weed problems multiply!

So how can you avoid all of that hard work and heartache? Jim & Mary look at the three most common miscues gardeners make when mulching, and how to put down your mulch perfectly for weed free and care free flowerbeds!

Are you using egg shells correctly in your garden and flowerbeds?
Egg shells are one of the most commonly recommended organic ingredients for powering up garden soil and plants. And for good reason! Egg shells are rich in calcium, which happens to be a critical nutrient for strong plant cell walls. Calcium is also vital for overall plant health.

Calcium also plays a critical role in the formation of fruit. In fact, when there is a lack of available calcium, common garden ailments like blossom end rot on tomatoes and peppers can be a big issue.
For all of the reasons above, egg shells, which are made up of over 90% calcium carbonate, can certainly help provide calcium to your plants and the soil they grow in.

But here’s the issue – most gardeners don’t use them in a way that maximizes their benefits. Today - Jim & Mary cover the best ways to use egg shells to give your plants and the soil the power it needs!

Jim & Mary discuss early spring daylily care - and how to best fertilize them for bigger blooms! The best time to fertilize daylilies is in early spring – and with one simple and easy application, you can set your daylilies up for bigger and better blooms than ever this year!
Daylilies are one of the most popular of all perennial plants for home gardeners. Not only are they easy to grow and establish, they also happen to be extremely drought tolerant as well. Even more, they require little in the way of yearly maintenance to keep them growing strong and healthy.
But if there is one thing that you can do for your daylilies to really maximize their blooming potential, it’s to give them a yearly dose of power in late winter or early spring, right before they begin to take off and begin to grow!

If you are looking for the best way to support your tomato plants this year without spending a fortune - today's episode covers how to create the perfect DIY solution that can hold the biggest of plants without worry!

Tomato cages have been around for years, but they can be expensive. Not only that, many cages simply grow out of the ground when plants get too big.

Tomato stakes are another option, but they too have issues. Not only are they hard to tie tomato plants to, they easily snap if plants get too big and heavy. And whether you use cages or stakes – the real issue is that they don’t last for long. In fact, most don’t make it past a season or two without needing to be replaced.


Jim and Mary walk listeners through the simple steps to build strong and sturdy tomato supports that make growing tomatoes easier than ever. And best of all - not only will they last for years and years, they are quite inexpensive to build too!

In this season's first episode, Jim and Mary walk listeners through the four simple steps to planting and growing cucumbers. See how with just a few simple tips and tricks, you can grow your best crop of cucumbers ever!

There is no harder time for birds than trying to survive in the harsh, bleak and cold conditions winter can bring - and there is no better way to help them through it than by feeding them on a regular basis!

Winter is extremely tough on birds that do not migrate to warmer areas. Not only can it be hard to find adequate shelter from the cold and precipitation, they have to be wary of predators that are hungry for food sources as well.

Today's podcast from Jim and Mary centers on the best way to feed and help birds have the food and protection they need to make it through the cold, harsh winter - and have them ready to help you and your garden next year by controlling insects and consuming thousands of weed seeds too!