Late summer is an excellent time to plan landscape renovations. If you establish plans now, then you will be ready to take advantage of fall, the best time to plant. Many Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program groups across the state hold fall plant sales now. Before you hit your first sale, there are a few things to consider.

During the summer, we think of flowers like petunias as those fragrant, spilling or tumbling flowers cascading over the rims of baskets and mixed containers. That same show of incredible color coupled with tantalizing fragrance can be achieved during the cool season with pansies like those of the Cool Wave series.

While walking around the Coastal Georgia Botanical Garden at the Historic Bamboo Farm in Savannah, Georgia, I was caught up in the beauty of grass that was so picturesque when it was backlit by the sun. It was a muhly grass, but not the pink, cotton-candy-looking kind admired in the fall. This was bamboo muhly native to Arizona. Plants native to Arizona aren’t often considered as adaptable to the hot, humid Southeast, but bamboo muhly is like having a piece of fine art in the garden.

To maintain a healthy compost pile, you need to maintain the proper moisture level. Compost organisms are like people — both need water to survive and function at their best. Inadequate water will inhibit the activities of compost organisms, resulting in a slower compost process. A high temperature is also desirable in a backyard compost pile, as it accelerates decomposition.

On Sept. 22, the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) will induct former Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Wayne Shackelford and pioneering poultryman Bill Baisley into the Georgia Agricultural Hall of Fame.

As concerns grow over the ability of the Upper Floridan Aquifer to keep up with demands for water from residents, farms and forests, four universities are teaming up to look at the economic sustainability of agriculture and forestry in north Florida and south Georgia that rely on this water supply.

Researchers at the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center have developed Brain Glue, a substance that could one day serve as a treatment for traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs. 

Georgia is closing in on the last few weeks of the 2017 pecan growing season, a make-or-break time for the crop and its associated profits.

University of Georgia cotton and peanut scientists will showcase their research in a joint field day on Wednesday, Sept. 6, in Tifton, Georgia.