So you lost plants this year to May’s slogfest and then to summer’s dry heat?

The full toll might not even be apparent until next spring when dead/damaged plants try to shift back into growth mode.

It’s true that 2025 has been a bit of a challenging year for plant-growing. Aren’t they all? But look at it this way … at least the destruction gives information that might help head off trouble in the future.

Dead plants are an inevitable part of gardening, and they can teach gardeners a lot.

As horticulturist Jimmy Turner once said, “The success of my garden is built on the compost of my failures.”

The trick is figuring out what went wrong in order to change the situation and avoid repeat plant deaths. Since plants don’t talk and can’t tell us what happened, that means resorting to detect

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