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Common Names: garden phlox, summer phlox Family: Acanthaceae (acanthus Family) Description Garden phlox is an herbaceous perennial that returns consistently year after year from a thickened root stock. It gets as large as 4 ft (1.2 m) tall, with thin, finely toothed ovate or elliptic leaves 2-5 in (5-13 cm) long. The inflorescence is a large pyramidal cyme to 8 in (20 cm) across of salverform flowers, each about one inch (2.5 cm) across. (Cyme: a branched flower cluster; Salverform: a flower with a long tube that expands into flat petal-like lobes.) Phlox flowers have five lobes. The flowers are fragrant and their color varies from white to lavender in wild plants, with other colors available among the many named cultivars. Garden phlox has a long blooming period from early summer well into autumn. Location The wild form of Phlox paniculata grows naturally in the eastern U.S. from Wisconsin and Ontario, west to Missouri and Arkansas and thence south to eastern Texas and central...

Some ponds are never cleaned and the ponds and its occupants survive very well. However, a large number of ponds are created with high fish densities or are built in locations were the pond receives a great deal of debris over the year. Even if you start out with just a few fish initially, in a healthy pond they will breed to the point that the number of fish will push the environmental limits of your pond and biofilter. The debris may be the result of leaves blowing into the pond, the die-back of vegetative pond plants as well as fish wastes. It is these latter types of conditions that will necessitate you cleaning the pond eventually. The two most likely time points for cleaning are in the fall, to reduce the amount of accumulated muck on the bottom of the pond as you head into winter, or in the spring to remove material accumulated over the winter from leaves blowing into the pond, accumulated fish waste or catkins and similar materials shed by trees as they leaf out. Cleaning in t...

To ensure that your garden crops make the most of the rich, organic soil you create, you need to understand your soil’s pH. The pH describes the relative acidity or alkalinity of your soil’s makeup, and it has important implications for plant health and growth. Soil pH impacts beneficial fungi and bacteria in the soil and influences whether essential minerals are available for uptake by plant roots. What Is Soil pH? A solution’s pH is a numerical rating of its acidity or alkalinity. All pH is measured on a logarithmic scale from zero (most acidic) to 14 (most alkaline, or basic); 7.0 is neutral. The pH scale is used by chemists to measure the concentration of reactive hydrogen ions (H+) in a solution. Most food crops prefer a pH of 6.0 to 6.5, but you can have a productive food garden as long as your pH is about 5.5 to 7.5 (see chart in slideshow). A difference of just 0.5 may not seem like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, which means, for example, a pH of 7.0 is actually ...