Hamilton County TX Master Gardeners

07/31/2026

Great list of Texas Superstars Hardy Plants!

Key to environmental descriptors used in plant pages. See more…

07/03/2026

07/02/2026

Not every shiny beetle is the villain of the garden. ✨🐞

One of these beetles deserves a little appreciation. The other deserves a firm eviction notice.

🟢 Meet the Dogbane Beetle
• Iridescent blue-green to copper colors that seem to change in the light
• Usually found on dogbane plants
• Doesn't skeletonize roses, grapes, linden trees, or vegetable crops
• Part of the biodiversity that supports healthy landscapes

🚫 Meet the Japanese Beetle
• Metallic green head with coppery wing covers
• Five small white tufts of hair along each side of the abdomen and two at the tip
• Feeds in groups and leaves behind the familiar "lace-like" skeletonized leaves

Before reaching for a spray, consider beetle-by-beetle management:

✔ Hand-pick beetles early in the morning when they are sluggish
✔ Drop them into a container of soapy water
✔ Remove heavily damaged blooms if beetles are congregating there
✔ Skip broad-spectrum insecticides that can harm pollinators and beneficial insects
✔ Think twice before using Japanese beetle traps, which often attract more beetles than they catch

Let's be honest: chasing beetles around a 20-foot linden tree isn't realistic. But if they're congregating on roses, grapes, or lower branches, knocking them into soapy water in the morning can make a noticeable difference. The bonus? You're only removing the insects causing problems, not the iridescent dogbane beetle, native pollinators, or other beneficial garden visitors that broad-spectrum sprays may also impact.
Sometimes the best pest management tool is simply knowing who is who.
Identify first. Hand-pick when practical. Spray thoughtfully.

07/02/2026

The dragonfly stitching back and forth over your pond looks like decoration. It's the most lethal hunter in the yard.

🐉 Start with the machinery:

- Two compound eyes built from about thirty thousand lenses each, wrapping its vision nearly all the way around its head. It's still watching you after it's passed.
- Four wings on separate motors — so it hovers, flies backward, even upside down, locks onto one insect in a swarm, and stays on it to the end.
- It folds its legs into a basket and scoops mosquitoes straight out of the air.

That hardware adds up to something staggering. In lab studies, dragonflies caught up to ninety-five percent of the prey they went after — a strike rate that makes lions and great whites look like amateurs.

And the size range is its own surprise: hundreds of native species, from a darner as long as your hand down to an elfin skimmer no bigger than a housefly.

Here's the part worth holding onto. The dragonfly working your yard at dusk is running the day shift on the exact same mosquitoes the bats take over after dark. Between them, the air is swept clean around the clock — one crew you can see, one you can't.

You just never knew the yard was being patrolled in shifts. 🌿

07/02/2026

Shout out to our amazing Judge Yates!

Get in the patriotic spirit this afternoon at Hamilton Public Library with:

📚Red, White & Read Storytime with Uncle Sam at 1 pm. Kids enjoy a story and patriotic craft by led by Judge James Yates.

🎆 Celebrating America with Watercolor Class at 1 pm. Adults, teens and youth 10+ join local artist Jackie Cunningham to learn new watercolor techniques and create a patriotic masterpiece.

Happy Birthday, America! 🇺🇸

07/02/2026

Join us Saturday to celebrate!!

🇺🇸 THIS SATURDAY! 🇺🇸
Hamilton's Independence Day Celebration is almost here!
Join us on Saturday, July 4th as our community comes together to celebrate our nation, honor our freedoms, and enjoy a day of patriotic tradition.

☀️ 9:00 AM | Courthouse Lawn
🇺🇸 Reading of the Declaration of Independence
🇺🇸 Tribute to Our Flags
🇺🇸 Color Guard Presentation
🇺🇸 Raffle & Hot Dogs with American Legion Cunningham Post 222

🌭 6:00 PM | Pecan Creek Park
Free Hot Dogs courtesy of Hamilton Vol. Fire Department , Brookshire Brothers and Higginbotham Brothers

🎆 At Dark
Fireworks Display presented by Rancho Del Oso and Haile Realty Group LLC

Grab your lawn chairs, bring the family, and help us celebrate Independence Day the Hamilton way.

📣 Share this post and tag someone you'll be celebrating with this Saturday!

06/27/2026

Martha Stewart featured Dr. Robert Puckett, AgriLife Extension entomologist and associate professor in Texas A&M Entomology, explaining how to eliminate those pesky fire ants naturally. 🔥 🐜 https://bit.ly/4xNqjxu

06/27/2026

It’s not easy finding strawberry starts for our Texas fall planting, and I haven’t used this vendor yet, but plan on ordering soon!

Plant strawberries this fall & enjoy fresh berries early in the spring! How it Works: 🍓Plant: Choose from our selection of strawberry plugs and bare root plants. 🍓Cover: Protect your plants with straw or a row cover for winter. 🍓Harvest: Wait until spring and enjoy a plentiful, early ha...

06/27/2026

You saw a big orange-and-black butterfly drift through the garden and called it a monarch. Maybe. But there's a near-perfect copy flying the same gardens this month, and one line on its wing gives it away.

Meet the viceroy — the monarch's most famous look-alike.

From a few feet away they're almost identical: the same burnt-orange wings, the same black veins, the same white-dotted black borders. For generations this fooled people, and it fools predators too, which is the whole point — looking like a monarch is a survival strategy.

But you can tell them apart in one second, once you know where to look. Find the hindwing — the lower wing — and look for a black line that arcs across it, cutting straight through the orange veins. The viceroy has that line. The monarch does not. One extra black stripe across the lower wing, and the ID is done.

A couple of other tells back it up. The viceroy is noticeably smaller, with a quicker, more flapping flight, while the monarch sails on long glides. And the monarch lays eggs only on milkweed; the viceroy's caterpillars grow up on willow and poplar leaves instead.

Why does it matter which is which? Because they tell you two different stories about your yard. Monarchs mean your milkweed is doing its job. Viceroys mean your willows and wet edges are. Both are native, both worth having, and both caught in the same long decline thinning butterflies everywhere — so the more host plants you leave standing, the more of each you'll see.

So next time the orange butterfly passes, check the lower wing.

One black line across the hindwing. That's the whole test.