Gardening

• Most Topular Stories

• Constructing Lunch

  You Grow Girl.

  Gayla

  15 May 2012 | 11:53 am

  We’re hitting that magical time of the season when a growing portion of our meals are gleaned from the garden. I enjoy moving around the space, snipping bits of this and that from here and there. I have edibles tucked in everywhere. There are lettuce seedlings in every bed, except the dry one. They would not fair well there. Yesterday’s lunch, a simple salad (Except the eggs. No chickens here. Le sigh. Oh, and the cheese.) came from the garden. Here’s my process: Photo Top Left: ‘Four Seasons’ lettuce. This is the same lettuce that miraculously overwintered. I…

• Putting the P back in Fertilizer

  Backyard Gardening Blog

  Administrator

  3 Apr 2012 | 7:49 pm

  So we have come to this, you’ve heard of the “golden rule” but this is perhaps the “golden question” can you use pee to fertilize your garden? The answer is yes. Not only have you been wasting a perfectly good nitrogen source down your toilet, you’ve also been using water unnecessarily too. My city bills me for water usage, and I figure every time I pee outside I’m saving a nickle while providing free fertilizer to my garden. For those who do not know, pee is sterile, yes, it is. Unless you have a UTI, it is sterile. Pee is filtered from the blood,…

• Herbaria (May 16, 2012)

  You Grow Girl.

  Gayla

  16 May 2012 | 12:56 pm

  Every week, from now until I can no longer find anything living to fill up the boxes, I will be photographing and posting a collection of flowers, leaves, stems, and other plant parts that are in my garden. This is an experiment in celebrating diversity and I hope it will allow me to focus more closely on the beauty that is inherent in the different parts of each plant. It will also serve as a visual file of the seasons. I hope you enjoy these as much as I know I will enjoy putting them together. I can’t wait to show you more! The garden is so full and alive right now, I could have put…

• Toothache Plant Peek-A-Boo Spilanthes Oleracea Numbs Your Mouth When Eaten; A Perfect Cocktail Plant

  The Casual Gardener

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  14 May 2012 | 7:52 am

  Sometimes called Toothache Plant, sometimes called Eye Ball Plant, Peek-A-Boo Spilanthes Oleracea is a very unique edible addition to your garden. Named after its unique ability to numb your mouth when chilled, I found it a creative addition to summer salads and martinis. Peek-A-Boo causes a tingling feeling from the constituent Spilanthol. It has a local anesthetic effect which is numbing, much like the effect of Novacain used at a doctors office. Below you see the face of my friend after he tried chewing one of the eyeball buds of the flowers. He also cursed repeatedly and jumped up and…

• Is Strawberries & Cream The Right Gift For Your Mother?

  Cold Climate Gardening

  Kathy Purdy

  9 May 2012 | 12:26 pm

  A while back I was asked if I’d like to receive a sample of Strawberries & Cream hydrangea, a gift plant targeted at Mother’s Day. I agreed, but was astonished to receive not one, but six plants: Strawberries & Cream Hydrangeas shortly after they arrived. As you can read on the tag below, these hydrangeas are intended to be given as gifts and treated as indoor plants, similar to how you would treat poinsettias. Read the label: it's only hardy to Zone 7--or is it Zone 6? It is a bit confusing to be told it can be grown outdoors in Zones 7-9 and then be told it is…

• 

  You Grow Girl.

• Herbaria (May 16, 2012)

  Gayla

  16 May 2012 | 12:56 pm

  Every week, from now until I can no longer find anything living to fill up the boxes, I will be photographing and posting a collection of flowers, leaves, stems, and other plant parts that are in my garden. This is an experiment in celebrating diversity and I hope it will allow me to focus more closely on the beauty that is inherent in the different parts of each plant. It will also serve as a visual file of the seasons. I hope you enjoy these as much as I know I will enjoy putting them together. I can’t wait to show you more! The garden is so full and alive right now, I could have put…

• Constructing Lunch

  Gayla

  15 May 2012 | 11:53 am

  We’re hitting that magical time of the season when a growing portion of our meals are gleaned from the garden. I enjoy moving around the space, snipping bits of this and that from here and there. I have edibles tucked in everywhere. There are lettuce seedlings in every bed, except the dry one. They would not fair well there. Yesterday’s lunch, a simple salad (Except the eggs. No chickens here. Le sigh. Oh, and the cheese.) came from the garden. Here’s my process: Photo Top Left: ‘Four Seasons’ lettuce. This is the same lettuce that miraculously overwintered. I…

• Planting Combination: Chartreuse Hosta and Pink ‘Spring Beauty’

  Gayla

  14 May 2012 | 12:21 pm

  I am loving this combination of the chartreuse ‘Designer Genes’ hosta, flanked by the delicate Claytonia virginica ‘Spring Beauty’ blooms. See also: Sierra Spring Beauty (Claytonia nevadensis).

• Give Me Your Rusty Metal and Your Beautiful Decay

  Gayla

  7 May 2012 | 12:10 pm

  Last night, I gleefully laid out the collection of items I had purchased from the flea market onto the floor and imagined how I will use them in the future. Most of the items were purchased for the garden and some will make an appearance in the photos I take for future book and assignments. Most of the items that show up in my work projects are also used by me in my home. Few are purchased for one-time usage and then shuffled out the door. Perhaps it would be better that way, but I am a collector, always have been. Still, I can’t recycle the same plates, bowls, and fabrics book after…

• What Is It?

  Gayla

  4 May 2012 | 9:10 am

  God, how I love an overnight rainfall. There is nothing more optimistic than waking up to a bright and sunny day with the soil moist and fresh smelling. These are the perfect conditions for weeding. The softened soil makes it easy to slip weedlings (a spelling slip that I’m not gonna change) from the soil, and the pleasant atmosphere brings an added sense of joy to the task. I’ve made it a habit over the years to learn about and identify as many plants in the seedling stage as I can so that I know at a glance who stays and who goes. Some seedlings are worth cultivating, but others…

• 

  The Casual Gardener

• Toothache Plant Peek-A-Boo Spilanthes Oleracea Numbs Your Mouth When Eaten; A Perfect Cocktail Plant

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  14 May 2012 | 7:52 am

  Sometimes called Toothache Plant, sometimes called Eye Ball Plant, Peek-A-Boo Spilanthes Oleracea is a very unique edible addition to your garden. Named after its unique ability to numb your mouth when chilled, I found it a creative addition to summer salads and martinis. Peek-A-Boo causes a tingling feeling from the constituent Spilanthol. It has a local anesthetic effect which is numbing, much like the effect of Novacain used at a doctors office. Below you see the face of my friend after he tried chewing one of the eyeball buds of the flowers. He also cursed repeatedly and jumped up and…

• “Garden2Blog 2012” Event – Day 2 – P. Allen Smith Has A Working Farm With Real Poop

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  12 May 2012 | 6:54 am

  Trudy is a horse who lives and works at the Garden Home and Farm with P. Allen Smith near Little Rock, Arkansas. We bloggers who participated in the  Garden2Blog 2012 Event found out that P. Allen Smith’s property is indeed a real farm, with real horses, and real issues (like manure). In the photo below you see Mimi San Pedro happily pointing to the first thing we spotted when we got off our bus ride from Little Rock. Yep. A giant steaming pile of horse manure left by Trudy. Now do not get me wrong, there were a few sophomoric jokes about the poop. Face it, we are garden bloggers and…

• “Garden2Blog 2012” Event – Day 1 Part 2 – P. Allen Smith Cooks Up Some Catfish

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  10 May 2012 | 8:51 am

  Part 2 of Day 1’s cool Garden2Blog 2012 Event with P. Allen Smith and 20 of my closest blogger friends was held at P. Allen Smith’s Gaines Street home in Little Rock, Arkansas. This interesting property is filled with garden rooms which present amazing views from any window in the home as well as from the street. Simply gorgeous. Above you see his adorable garden shed. I loved the hooks on the side of the little house that allowed you to hang tools while you are working in the raised beds. His inclusion of bold oranges and greens really brings color to his employees vegetable gardens…

• Share Garden Seeds With Neighbors

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  9 May 2012 | 8:41 am

  Yesterday my dear friends Eugene and Bev Bordelon brought green beans down for me. They have planted them for years and Bev cans up tons of beans to feed her family. It was wonderful – I played with Pepper Bordelon, a little black poodle, while they told me great stories about these beans.I was inspired and grateful they thought of me. Feeling fantastic because of a gardener = priceless!Spread the garden love my peeps. If someone you know needs help feeding their family or is just special to you, please share some garden love with them. It will make them feel less alone, more special and…

• “Garden2Blog 2012” Event – Day 1 – P. Allen Smith Brings Elegance To Gardening

  Shawna Lee Coronado

  8 May 2012 | 10:59 am

  This year’s Garden2Blog 2012 Event with P. Allen Smith and 20 of my closest blogger friends was kicked off near Little Rock, Arkansas in a garden designed by P. Allen Smith. Discovering the elegant gardens and home of Marlsgate Plantation owner, David P. Garner, Jr., while having Allen as our personal guide on the journey was fantastic. Marlsgate is a Greek Revival Mansion with a traditional garden. It sits in the middle of sweltering Arkansas heat in the south. There are oak trees and green fields which frame the home. David’s charismatic personality and southern charm delighted all of…

• 

  Cold Climate Gardening

• Is Strawberries & Cream The Right Gift For Your Mother?

  Kathy Purdy

  9 May 2012 | 12:26 pm

  A while back I was asked if I’d like to receive a sample of Strawberries & Cream hydrangea, a gift plant targeted at Mother’s Day. I agreed, but was astonished to receive not one, but six plants: Strawberries & Cream Hydrangeas shortly after they arrived. As you can read on the tag below, these hydrangeas are intended to be given as gifts and treated as indoor plants, similar to how you would treat poinsettias. Read the label: it's only hardy to Zone 7--or is it Zone 6? It is a bit confusing to be told it can be grown outdoors in Zones 7-9 and then be told it is…

• Freeze damage assessment

  Kathy Purdy

  3 May 2012 | 8:50 pm

  I went back to the old garden today to dig up some plants, and noticed freeze damage on many plants. It is surprising what gets knocked back and what doesn’t. Most of the lilies looked fine, but the asparagus that was about the length of my finger last week was mush this week. My Camassia leichtlinii ‘Electra’ was also reduced to a sorry brown mess: This camassia was too far along in growth to sustain a hard freeze without damage. Normally this bulb blooms near the end of May and looks like this. Here's what this camassia usually looks like at the end of May. Who knows what…

• MOO Minicards Giveaway

  Kathy Purdy

  1 May 2012 | 5:00 am

  Asheville Fling, the annual garden bloggers meet-up, is coming up in a few weeks, and I’ve been thinking about MOO cards. I discovered MOO’s MiniCards in time to take some to the first garden bloggers’ fling in Austin, and I’ve been bringing them to every fling I’ve attended. Here's a selection of the MOO Minicards I will be bringing to Asheville. I think close-ups of flowers work best with the small format. They have my url, Twitter, and Facebook info on the back, as well as my name, location, and hardiness zone. To me, they are a great way to share a…

• Wildflowers Along the Road: Wildflower Wednesday

  Kathy Purdy

  25 Apr 2012 | 9:39 pm

  It is getting to be peak wildflower season in my part of the country, a couple of weeks ahead of the usual time. I took a walk in my new neighborhood, and this is what I saw. Arisaema triphyllum - Jack-in-the-pulpit This is growing on our property, along the path I am making by the big brook. Caltha palustris - Marsh marigold This is growing on our property along the small brook. Cardamine pratensis - Lady's smock This grows in our lawn. Dentaria diphylla - Twinleaf toothwort This grows alongside the road. I think it is related to the Lady’s smock. Equisetum hymenale - Horsetail…

• Lilactree Farm Garden Notes, No. 1. 2012

  Brian Bixley

  18 Apr 2012 | 7:49 pm

  “I think we may have a wider approach to garden design if we have been helped to appreciate other forms of art; to be aware of basic principles – balance, repetition, harmony and simplicity – which apply to all forms of creativity. To look for these ideas in painting and architecture, or hear them in music, has certainly influenced me as much as knowing whether to put a plant in the shade, or in full sun.”   Beth Chatto Ten Days in March. All easy Mulmur winters are alike but a difficult winter is difficult after its own fashion. An easy winter is one in which 30 cm. of snow settles…

• 

  A Way to Garden

• doodle by andre: sub-tropical separation anxiety

  margaret

  16 May 2012 | 4:29 am

  IT FEELS LONELY IN HERE, or at least it will by the end of the week when the last of the children (some larger than I am) are all outdoors at summer camp. You’re absolutely right, Andre Jordan; it’s a bit of a shock and will take some getting used to. (And by the way: Was that Jack’s voice you are invoking in the window-as-thought-bubble? To set the record straight: He never calls me darling; it sounds something like “Meow,” which I take to be short for “Margaret” or “Mommy,” not quite sure which.) Related posts: doodle by andre: case of…

• garden-tour aftermath: the asked-about plants

  margaret

  14 May 2012 | 8:48 am

  I AM ALWAYS FASCINATED to hear what visitors comment or ask about on Garden Open Days, the first of which was Saturday and bought 275 new and old friends. I make a bet with myself on which plants it will be that rate the most, “What’s that?” or “I love it” reactions–but this year there were a few new ones on me, even after 15 years of hosting visitors. Want to see what got the most attention (besides the cat)? Saturday’s event included a giant plant sale by Broken Arrow Nursery (shopping in my own driveway?–divine!) and a triple-homicide…

• new: what’s growing at your place? share a photo!

  margaret

  13 May 2012 | 11:35 am

  FOR YEARS I HAVE WANTED to be able to see your gardens, too, and the to-do item labeled “get public photo-uploader plugin” has been on my website wishlist forever. (Don’t you love it when I talk geek? Even crazier than botanical Latin, isn’t it?) A drum-roll, please: It’s finally here! Now you can post your photos on my website. I always show you my garden–so now how about you show me yours? My wish for a photo-uploader that you could use to post pictures to A Way to Garden was inspired by my friend Pam Kueber of RetroRenovation, and her wildly popular…

• 

  Doug Green's Blog

• You Don’t Talk To A Conversation

  Doug

  12 May 2012 | 7:31 am

  Once again, I see the spectre of age-rage happening around the blogosphere. What’s with all the let’s-get-the-young-people-gardening angst and counter-angst? It might help by starting with a quote from Marshall Macluhan to set the stage, “Youth instinctively understands the present environment – the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth.” When you and I were young Maggie, we implicitly understood the nature of television and laughed at those who told us it would rot our minds and ruin civilization as we knew it (maybe as those radio folks knew it) When…

• Does Facebook Replace Blogging?

  Doug

  18 Apr 2012 | 7:46 am

  I suspect the question is a bit broader than that and can instead be posed as, “Does Social Media Replace Blogging?” And the answer – it depends. It depends totally and completely on why you’re blogging. If you’re blogging to display your creative writing talents, then obviously no, social media doesn’t replace blogging. You need a space of unlimited area and length, one that can display your writing and perhaps images to full advantage. One that is fully under your control and blogging fills that function. This is a marketing function for your creative…

• When Answering Garden Questions and Google Don’t Mix

  Doug

  16 Apr 2012 | 6:59 am

  It has been an interesting three weeks in my tech world of online gardening publishing. The CMS I use was “upgraded” in a major way with some interesting new options coming down the pipe but like a lot of tech things, there were a few “bugs” involved. One in particular was quite ugly and while the sites themselves didn’t show any problems if you didn’t change anything, as soon as you added an article, the entire site update system crashed. Bottom line – after discovering the bug I backed away from updating any more of my sites (now repaired and…

• I’m Thinking of Stealing Some Plants This Spring

  Doug

  27 Mar 2012 | 8:32 am

  Every now and then, I check who’s stealing my images from my websites and who’s copying my articles for their own website use. Normally, the number one culprit are the spammers and scrapers who send their bots out to find stuff and mechanically insert it into spam webpages. This week, that was true again. But running a close second were the garden centers, nurseries, landscapers and landscape architects. Somebody must have told them they needed a website so they went out and built one – stealing the images they needed. In this case, taking the image of this vegetable garden.

• Ebook: Flower Gardening with Spring Bulbs

  Doug

  19 Mar 2012 | 7:42 am

  My 16th ebook just went live on Amazon this weekend. It answers the questions around having and growing a great spring flower color show – the kind that takes away your breath and restores your gardener’s soul after a long winter. For example, it tells you the tricks for growing and having your tulips flower from year to year and not just produce green leaves year after year (if that’s happening, dig them out – they’re pretty much done). Follow the two simple rules in the book and you can have tulips flowering for their normal 3-5 years with no problem. Click…

• 

  About.com Gardening

• Pinch Me! Helping Your Plants Branch Out.

  16 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  Is it that time already? I feel like I just got my plants in the ground and yet they're begging to be pinched back and deadheaded. Perennials really are little attention seekers, aren't they? And after all these years, you would think basil plants would have learned to branch out on their own. Every year we have to train them.  Oh well, I garden because I love it and primping plants is a large part of gardening. After all, they'd be perfectly happy to bloom once and go to seed. We're the ones who expect them to perform week after week. So grab your pruners and get out there. It's time to…

• Rose Gardening - A Problem Waiting to Happen?

  15 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  Rust - Powdery Mildew- Black Spot. Could we be talking about roses" I've said before that growing roses shouldn't be so worrisome and dreaded. Unless you are growing your roses for show, a little spot now and then isn't cause for alarm. Nevertheless, we all grow our roses for their beauty. So to keep them looking good all season, here are some tips on avoiding problems and what to do if a disease should find its way to your garden....Read Full Post

• Full of Beans

  14 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  It's warm enough for the iris to  bloom here, so I planted beans this weekend. I always direct sow my beans. They grow quickly. I grow both pole and bush varieties. The pole beans take a while to start producing and the bush beans fill the void. But they also take up a lot of space, so I'm growing them in large containers this year....Read Full Post

• Keeping Your Garden In Color

  12 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  When I first started gardening, many of my plants were either hand-me-downs or impulse buys. My garden plan consisted of "squeeze it in." Some of those plants have since disappeared and a few have made themselves quite at home. I can't really claim to have improved my garden plan, but I have taken note over the years of what looks good when and I have tried to pair little vignettes to have something featured at any given time during the summer....Read Full Post

• Living Mulch

  10 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  We're having a problem with a ground covering weed, in our Master Gardener display garden. It's probably caused by a combination of a mild winter and overly rich mulch. My solution would be to get more plants. More plants =Less exposed soil. And my top picks would be some colorful shrubs. I love gardening, but even I don't want to spend all day plucking and pinching. There are so many more options in shrubs these days and they're so much less fussy about where they grow than most flowers are. Susan Harris, over on Homestead Gardens, starts us off with 5 Great Shrubs to Fill Up a Garden. They…

• 

  Plant Whatever Brings You Joy

• Borage

  Kathryn

  2 May 2012 | 4:30 pm

  Borage Honestly? Prior to moving here I had never heard of an herb called borage. I found it in abundance in the kitchen garden and had to inquire about what it was. To this day I call it BOR-age, as if were two clear syllables. And French. I have since learned that herbalists (around here, anyway) pronounce BOR-age to rhyme with porridge. In any case its Botanical name is Borago officinalis. It was thought by some to originate centuries ago in Assyria. It has made its way to several continents, and no wonder. This is a strong, vital plant none too fussy about the soil in which it grows, in…

• Steller’s, Part Two: An Intimate Affair

  Kathryn

  21 Apr 2012 | 5:35 pm

  I might have, had I imagined, known that the Steller's Jay and I had not yet reached the limits of what our new friendship might hold. But I missed it, as, while I have years of experience raising and caring for canaries, and finches, and chickens, and a duck named Peggy (which ended very badly a long time ago in Sausalito and let's just leave it that it involved a raccoon, boo hoo hoo) all of which I found amazingly enriching, but even though I befriended the scrub jays and fed them for years, I have never, ever, had an experience with a wild bird like the one I'm having this spring with my…

• Newest Friends: Steller’s Jays

  Kathryn

  1 Apr 2012 | 5:10 pm

  Honestly, this story begins a full two years ago, even though it culminates in the last three days in these pictures. It began with a single bird talking to himself somewhere near my large back garden, though clearly not in my garden. The chattering reminded me of the same kind of talking on and on that English budgies get into, clearly a joy simply in hearing oneself talk. Anyone who has had budgies will know of what I'm speaking. But just to make it crystal clear, if you will go here, and listen solely to the Male Song, you will hear what I heard. I was actually a bit alarmed as I truly…

• Healing Journey with Luna the Cat

  Kathryn

  8 Mar 2012 | 5:38 pm

  Luna Today is the 14th birthday of my Maine Coon cat, Luna, and it would be all smiles and glory if we had not been on a very intense healing journey for the last three weeks. The mere fact she's still on planet Earth is well worth celebrating. That is for sure! And many more details to be happy about. But the thrust of this post is to share this unexpected journey, as I am learning that while I personally had never heard of this turn in the road, nor had anyone I spoke with, there are those out there who are, in fact, learning of this possible chapter, and having invested many hours into…

• A Look Back, A Look Around

  Kathryn

  25 Feb 2012 | 4:55 pm

  door detail The county of Mendocino lies 100 miles north of San Francisco, and stretches out to the Pacific Ocean. Topographically it is very rugged and is traversed through various terrains on two lane roads, some of which run through the oldest redwood forests on Earth. Those who have visited or read about this county are most likely aware that much of the mid-19th century architecture has landmark status and that the entire town of Mendocino is on the National Register of Historic Places. Thus in all the literature about Mendocino County there is much illumination about the architecture.

• 

  NYT > Home & Garden

• T Magazine: Arms in the Air

  By T MAGAZINE

  16 May 2012 | 1:05 pm

  For the travel issue's T, the artist and photographer Adam Wallacavage turned his trademark - tentacled chandeliers - into the magazine's.

• T Magazine: Drawn to Simplicity | Philippe Weisbecker's 'Greenhouse Studies'

  By ALEX MOSHAKIS

  14 May 2012 | 2:27 pm

  Weisbecker's latest book is a charming mix of hand-rendered sketches and hastily Xeroxed reference imagery.

• Currents | Deals: Sales at Artemide, Sferra and Others

  By RIMA SUQI

  14 May 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Discounts on lighting, bedding, furniture, rugs and more.

• Property Values: Real Estate for $700,000

  By MIKE POWELL

  11 May 2012 | 1:38 pm

  A house in Hawaii, a contemporary in Connecticut and a midcentury modern in Los Angeles.

• When Children See Internet Pornography

  By AMY O’LEARY

  11 May 2012 | 1:01 pm

  If it hasn’t happened already, it will: at some point, even by accident, your child will click on pornography.

• 

  May Dreams Gardens

• Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - May 2012

  Carol

  14 May 2012 | 11:05 pm

  Welcome to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for May 2012. Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 6a garden in central Indiana, we are seeing blooms in mid-May that we don't normally see until early June, including those of the Japanese tree lilac, Syringa reticulata 'Ivory Silk'.  This is good because the other lilacs in the garden which would normally bloom in time to cut a big bouquet of them for

• An impractical good choice of Wisteria

  Carol

  14 May 2012 | 4:51 am

  If one is going to do something  impractical like purchase a wisteria, at least purchase a native wisteria like Wisteria macrostachya, sometimes referred to as the Kentucky wisteria. Why is it impractical? This is a woody vine that grows up to 25 feet so it will need some support, some strong support.  I've just about figured out how I'm going to provide that support.  I need a bit of

• On Mother's Day

  Carol

  13 May 2012 | 7:40 am

  A "vintage" card for Mother's Day... Circa 1966 Found in my mother's files, saved for over forty years. I don't even remember drawing it, but what other Carol M. could there have been? Happy Mother's Day to all.

• Allium schubertii captures spring feeling

  Carol

  11 May 2012 | 7:32 am

  I've recently discovered  a new spring flower that perfectly captures the frazzled feelings of so many gardeners in the spring when... - everything is blooming all at once, - you are purchasing plants at the garden center faster than you can plant them, - everything is blooming early, leaving you with a rushed feeling, - you actually are rushed because perennials like asters and mums need to

• Tree blooms and birds up close

  Carol

  10 May 2012 | 5:43 pm

  Blooms of Catalpa speciosa In other news of the garden this spring, I've noticed that the early bloom phenomenon continues. Catalpa speciosa trees are blooming now with big, white ruffly blooms that are usually so high up from the ground that they just look like popcorn from afar. But when you slow down to take a closer look, the catalpa blooms look rather exotic, like something from the

• 

  Backyard Gardening Blog

• Four Herbs Everyone Should Grow

  Administrator

  30 Apr 2012 | 9:24 am

  It has been a horribly cold April here in Michigan, after a blissfully warm March. I haven’t wanted to go outside, let alone do any gardening, I hope May is better. I have, however, wanted to do a post on herbs for awhile and since I’ve got nothing else to post about (except maybe to complain again about late frosts) I thought I would do so now. I really enjoy growing herbs for a few reasons. I like to cook, and no matter how you slice it fresh herbs generally knock the pants off of store varieties. I like to save money, and herbs are pretty expensive in the store, especially…

• Putting the P back in Fertilizer

  Administrator

  3 Apr 2012 | 7:49 pm

  So we have come to this, you’ve heard of the “golden rule” but this is perhaps the “golden question” can you use pee to fertilize your garden? The answer is yes. Not only have you been wasting a perfectly good nitrogen source down your toilet, you’ve also been using water unnecessarily too. My city bills me for water usage, and I figure every time I pee outside I’m saving a nickle while providing free fertilizer to my garden. For those who do not know, pee is sterile, yes, it is. Unless you have a UTI, it is sterile. Pee is filtered from the blood,…

• First Flower of 2012

  Administrator

  13 Mar 2012 | 2:41 pm

  My first bloom of 2012 has surfaced. A crocus as normal, this time out by the road. Though a yellow crocus again. It bloomed on the 10th, which is early. In 2011 my first bloom, also a yellow crocus was the 15th. In 2010 it was on the 16th, in 2009, again a yellow crocus, it was on the 15th. In 2008, which had a really cold Spring it wasn’t until early April. That is the extent of my records. So it portends a slightly longer growing season to have it come a week earlier than the recent norm this year. Should get better yields on my fruit trees and vines, if a late cold snap…

• How to Build an Island Bed with Retaining Wall Bricks

  Administrator

  4 Mar 2012 | 12:38 pm

  Island bed? What is that? No, it isn’t a bed with palm trees. An island bed is a bed not connected to anything, such as your foundation or property line. It exists as an island, alone in a sea of grass. This blog post will be about how to make a raised one with retaining wall bricks. Why build it up as a raised bed? Well, in additional to looking better, giving you the opportunity to improve the soil, and improving drainage. You also have to bust up less sod, which is my least favorite gardening task, and I’m sure your’s as well. Step 1: Draw your shape The first thing you…

• Do Not Buy a Plastic Greenhouse

  Administrator

  25 Feb 2012 | 2:19 pm

  In 2010 I blogged about a new little greenhouse I had bought covered in plastic. I bought it at Lowes and was pretty happy with it, it allowed me to start seeds early outdoors (I have problems indoors due to a lack of a south facing window, kids, and cats). I gave it a pretty good recommendation, I hereby rescind that. In 2011 during the summer, one year old, I noticed the plastic had started to fail at the top. I even kept it in the shade most of the time. By now the plastic is all but gone on top, so much for holding in heat and moisture eh. You know how we’re told that plastic takes…

• 

  Plant Talk

• GreenSchool in the Rain Forest: A Third Grade Excursion

  Tai Montanarella

  16 May 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Prospect Hill Elementary's whip-smart third graders just got back from the rain forest, and they didn't even have to take a plane.

• NYCWW: Celebrating Nature in the City!

  Marielle Anzelone

  16 May 2012 | 8:29 am

  NYC Wildflower Week is going on now, with exciting events throughout the five boroughs!

• Morning Eye Candy: Diptych in Mist

  Ann Rafalko

  16 May 2012 | 5:00 am

  Two different shrubs, two different gardens, two very similar photos; like color negatives of each other.

• Behind the Scenes in Monet’s Garden

  Matt Newman

  15 May 2012 | 3:39 pm

  Everything comes together as we near the opening of Monet's Garden.

• Mist in the Air

  Matt Newman

  15 May 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Naomi's art captures the essence of the Rock Garden we aim to restore. Cast your vote!

• 

  Urban Wilderness

• On Westmount Squirrels and Education

  kd

  3 May 2012 | 10:30 am

  Last summer I wrote about a particular young squirrel which had developed an obsession with the old school desk on our back porch (http://urbanwildplants.blogspot.ca/2011/07/this-squirrel-is-nuts.html). In the months that followed that post, the chair was the target of repeated bouts of its, umm, "undivided attention".Was the squirrel in need of gnawing practice or expressing its "creative" side?  Was it practicing "reverse engineering"? Did it have a dietary deficiency that it could only fill by eating aged oak and the waiting times to consult with a wise elder about its problem were…

• A new critter in The Wilderness -- OR -- Please don't eat/trample/otherwise destroy my Wakerobins!

  kd

  2 May 2012 | 11:29 pm

  Lila, believed to be an Aussiedoodle, joined our family in late February.  It was a delight watching her romp through the snow (what little of it there was this winter: I'm NOT complaining!) -- the whole yard was covered in pawprints (etc.).  At just 9 months old, she was revelling in experiencing her first winter. I, on the other hand, dreaded what would happen once spring arrived and the plants started to come up -- I envisioned the Urban Wilderness being replaced by Urban Wasteland when subjected to Lila's enthusiastic romps. I wondered about how easily I could rename the blog. I…

• Beans Grow on Trees. Really.

  kd

  1 Sep 2011 | 10:55 am

  I planted some climbing beans this spring and provided a trellis for them -- 5 feet of vertical climbing room should be enough, right?  Apparently not, as I discovered.  The bean plants decided that the nearby lilac tree was a much more appealing place to grow and now there are beans around 14 feet (or more!) above the ground.  Note to the neighbourhood birds, squirrels and raccoons: These beans are yours if you want them.

• The first black raspberry harvest!!!

  kd

  21 Jul 2011 | 2:53 pm

  OK, so there are barely enough berries to add to a bowl of ice cream. Nevertheless, given that I didn't have to plant them or fuss over them in any way and I still got delicious berries in my bowl,  I'm a very happy gardener.    Three cheers for urban wilderness and a nod of thanks to the birds who I suspect were responsible for "planting the seeds" as it were.

• This Squirrel is Nuts!

  kd

  19 Jul 2011 | 4:46 pm

  It keeps returning to this old school desk that's on the back porch and licking it and gnawing on it.  We have to keep chasing it away.  It seems young so perhaps it hasn't yet figured out that the desk isn't an exotic kind of nut.  Either that, or it's a student-wanna-be, in which case its first lesson will be that a chair is not food.

• 

  Gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains

• 30 Apr 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Christine Wood

  30 Apr 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Hi! I'm Christine Wood and I am gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is challenging. This is my Garden Journal! You can see lots of video of the deer and birds at 'Sunnygardener' on Youtube!April 2012...My Annual Veg WagonMay 7...The Veg Wagon. First, let's talk tomatoes!  Last year was a poor year for ripening tomatoes, due to the cooler temps and lots of fog.  This year I hope will be better.  I have had super success with green beans, lettuces, squash...you name it...and I do not plant directly into the ground, as I have a  big gopher problem here in the…

• 

  bloomingwriter: gardening in Nova Scotia

• Rarities and Radio Shows

  Jodi DeLong

  6 May 2012 | 3:20 pm

  We're already well into May and there's been little time for posting. That's because this is the busy season for garden speakers, gardeners, and just normal life-living. I've been grateful to be so occupied with various events, including the Saltscapes Expo last weekend and this weekend's native plant sale at Acadia's Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens, plus appearing on Niki Jabbour's radio show, The Weekend Gardener. Still, I did get a little weepy when I noticed Lowell's trilliums are coming into bloom. I sure hope he can enjoy them, too.  Read more »

• Slow down, Spring, you move too fast!

  Jodi DeLong

  20 Apr 2012 | 6:31 pm

  It seems there's a trend across the continent for a blazingly fast spring. I don't know whether we're starting to be like Australia (where this fabulous plant, Kangaroo Paw hails from, but is used for containers and specimen plants here), or just what is going on, but things are moving quickly in the nurseries and in our gardens. The early warm weather is catching all of us off balance, but our local nurseries do have plenty of product to sell, and more plants arriving daily. Over at Blomidon Nurseries, there is a nice collection of heaths and heathers, And some of the earlier blooming…

• Top Ten Easy Perennials

  Jodi DeLong

  8 Apr 2012 | 9:23 pm

  I know I haven't posted in a while, and for that I apologize. Grieving is hard work, as is the business of coping with life without my beloved. Some days are easier than others. What really works best is for me to work, talking about plants, writing about plants, working on bloominganswers.com, and so on. The hints of spring in the air are helpful also, although the surprise snowstorm we got as an Easter resent was neither helpful nor appreciated. However, we're not going to talk about that any further. We're going to talk about plants. We all love Top Ten Lists, although I find…

• The spirit of dragonflies

  Jodi DeLong

  5 Mar 2012 | 1:38 pm

  Time moves on, whether we want it to or not, and while I'm still deeply immersed in grieving, it's important that I continue to write, continue to encourage fellow gardeners, and otherwise celebrate what is truly good in this world.  We're over halfway through FARCH, that interminable time that starts on 1 February and ends usually at the end of March, but sometimes not til May or June, if last year was any indication. We've had an oddly mild and not-really-winterish winter, and whether that means we'll have an early, easy spring or something quite different, who really…

• Bouquets of Thanks...

  Jodi DeLong

  19 Feb 2012 | 1:25 pm

  It's been just over two weeks since my last post, though it seems like an eternity of things have happened. When one's world explodes, it's hard to pick up and put it all back together again. But since I'm the sole supporter of my world now, I have to keep working, keep focusing on the future, even as I grieve. It's not easy, but people do it all the time. And I will as well. While grieving and functioning at the same time are not easy tasks, the process has been and continues to be made somewhat easier by the outpouring of support from friends and family, colleagues and associates, both as…

• 

  Digging

• Gardens on Tour 2012: Brecourt Manor Garden & Foliage Follow-Up

  Pam/Digging

  16 May 2012 | 12:02 am

  The fourth garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, at 7316 Brecourt Manor Way in southwest Austin, was also the smallest, with only the back yard “gardened up.” The back yard opens to a view of the greenbelt beyond, so native plants were chosen to blend with the view, and entertaining areas are kept to either side of the lot so as not to block the view from the house. I like the distinctly Texas-style roofed pergola that shelters the dining patio. Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) blooms beside a dry creek. A disappearing fountain is tucked beneath a…

• Gardens on Tour 2012: Zadock Woods Garden

  Pam/Digging

  15 May 2012 | 6:29 am

  The third garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, at 6400 Zadock Woods Drive in southwest Austin, was perhaps my favorite of the bunch because of the cheerful native-perennial beds out front, the inviting, shaded patio in back, and the attractive mix of enclosing garden beds (bermed streetside beds out front; fenceline beds in back) and reduced, gently curving lawn. None of the gardens on the tour was truly a gardener’s garden (always given away by quirky little plant collections, jam-packed beds, and a knowledgeable homeowner out talking with visitors), but…

• Gardens on Tour 2012: Ridgecrest Garden

  Pam/Digging

  14 May 2012 | 7:21 am

  The second garden on this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, in the high-dollar Westlake neighborhood, was the exception to the smaller suburban gardens that dominated the tour. Although the garden beds (designed by Lann Sawyer of Lannscape) at 1400 Ridgecrest Drive would scale well to a typical lot and budget, they are studded with a collection of oversized stones and other large-scale art, like these stone pillars. The bermed beds themselves are planted simply with coneflowers, feathergrass, silver ponyfoot, iris, and the like, creating a frame for the homeowner’s…

• Gardens on Tour 2012: Shadow Mountain Garden

  Pam/Digging

  13 May 2012 | 9:46 am

  Selected to inspire the 99%, not the 1%, this year’s Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour in Austin was a big success. Past years have sometimes leaned too heavily on mansions with fantasy hardscaping and gardens that seemed beyond the reach of the average Joe. But this year the homes were, with one fun and interesting exception, attractive middle-class suburban homes with practical, grass-reducing, liveable gardens to complement them. I toured with a group of garden-blogging friends, and we started at 6309 Shadow Mountain Drive, a Northwest Hills garden that was redesigned in…

• Dallas Open Days Tour 2012: Passmore Garden

  Pam/Digging

  12 May 2012 | 6:53 am

  My third stop on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days tour last weekend was the garden of Paul and Kay Passmore, whose new home of stone, steel, and glass is surrounded by a one-year-old, wildlife-attracting, native-plant garden. Here’s the official description: The gardens surround a new contemporary house on a half-acre property in North Dallas. The landscape was installed between spring and fall of 2010. The owner is a master gardener who likes to focus on native and water-wise plants to create a habitat that invites nature—birds and butterflies—into the garden. Zoysia lawn…

• 

  blithewold.org

• Euphor(b)ia

  Kristin Green

  15 May 2012 | 7:30 am

  For this mid-May Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, I’m going to postpone the usual list of all of the amazing things that are blooming suddenly all at once and go into euphoric raptures about a single fantastic genus that has been blooming for a while now. One of them [...]

• Plants with promise

  Kristin Green

  10 May 2012 | 10:50 am

  When it’s pouring rain outside, the greenhouse is definitely the best place to be. It’s not exactly warm on a gray day and it’s not completely dry either but it is full of summer’s promise. Visitors can’t help asking if the plants are for sale. It’s a good question because I’d want them for my [...]

• Planting weather

  Kristin Green

  8 May 2012 | 1:52 pm

  Now that the heat of April is behind us, we’re taking full advantage of the coolness and rain of May. The weather is a little backwards but we’ll take what we can get when it comes to planting weather. With a few days of rain in the forecast we were really thrilled to have a [...]

• Spring tapestry

  Kristin Green

  4 May 2012 | 9:11 am

  Word from our Visitor’s Center is that visitation drops off in May. I can’t imagine why. We might not be promoting daffodils anymore but there is still so much going on here. More and more every day. This week, after the Wednesday volunteer group (The Rockettes) planted the sweet peas along the cutting garden fence, [...]

• Limbo

  Kristin Green

  1 May 2012 | 1:44 pm

  Given that March felt like May and April felt a little like July, it’s been really hard not to move everything outside and start planting annuals and tomatoes as if it’s safe. But then didn’t April end on a sort of February-ish note? That was just the warning we needed (I guess) to sit tight [...]

• 

  Ellis Hollow

• May bloom day scan mandala

  Craig

  15 May 2012 | 8:26 am

  My second attempt. Still have a lot to learn. Larger view.

• April bloom day scan mandala

  Craig

  15 Apr 2012 | 1:06 pm

  I stumbled across hunterharmony on Pinterest awhile back. She did some really cool things with some of my bloom day scans (here and here). Why didn't I think of that? Well thanks for the inspiration hunterharmony. I'll never lay flowers on the scanner again without thinking of the possibilities.

• Remembering Fred

  Craig

  8 Apr 2012 | 5:38 pm

  We have our daughter Corey to thank for bringing Fred into our lives. He was a stray, picked up by a rural animal shelter. He dodged his first bullet by landing in the Tompkins County SPCA's no-kill shelter, where she was volunteering. He was a bit unruly, peeing on the rabbit cage on the way out when we took him for a test walk. But when Corey drew a picture of 'Zorro' (as he was known at the SPCA because of his mask) with the word 'Please' underneath and hung it outside our bedroom door, we couldn't turn them down. He terrorized our other dog, Jade, for three weeks before they became fast…

• Titan arum time lapse

  Craig

  31 Mar 2012 | 8:08 pm

  Finally had a chance to pull together a time lapse from the still camera I had running during the titan arum bloom-time at Cornell. We had more than 10.000 people visit (many standing in line for more than an hour) and close to half a million views on livestreams. It was a blast. More info at the Titan arum blog.

• Spring, quickly

  Craig

  24 Mar 2012 | 7:01 pm

  I missed a month of spring in the week or so I was working close to 24/7 on the titan arum blooming at work. But I did have a few minutes to shoot some pix as the early spring bloomers rushed by with the unseasonably warm weather. Crocus Hellebore Iris reticulata Iris histrioides 'Katharine Hodgkin' (thanks Lynn!) Don't know how this pulmonaria hitched a ride into the garden. Ugly foliage but great flowers. Pussy willows were in their prime one of the few days I was home early enough to take pix.

• 

  Flatbush Gardener

• Patent Lies: What's "Native"? And What's Not.

  Flatbush Gardener

  15 May 2012 | 12:17 pm

  Echinacea pallida, Pale Coneflower, growing in my urban backyard native plant garden. I was appalled to see the National Wildlife Federation publish on their Web site, without qualification or counter-point, a press piece by the "Brand Manager... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Native plants blooming in my garden today

  Flatbush Gardener

  28 Apr 2012 | 9:56 am

  Lonicera sempervirens, Trumpet Honeysuckle, blooming in my urban backyard native plant garden and wildlife habitat this afternoon. My little urban backyard native plant garden is in its peak Spring bloom: Amsonia tabernaemontana, eastern... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Rest for Winter's Dead

  Flatbush Gardener

  31 Mar 2012 | 3:47 pm

  Amelanchier Flower Buds With a score or so species, subspecies, and natural hybrids native to northeastern North America, the genus Amelanchier goes by several common names, many of which represent the plants' phenology: Shadblow It blooms -... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Emergence

  Flatbush Gardener

  25 Mar 2012 | 9:19 am

  Our unseasonably warm weather has turned the phenology dial up to 11 in my urban backyard native plant / wildlife habitat garden. Last Wednesday, the furry buds of Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Autumn Brilliance' were extending. Yesterday, four... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• BBG 2012 Calendar: Your Take

  Flatbush Gardener

  19 Nov 2011 | 7:44 pm

  Updated 2011-11-20 My photo of Patrick Dougherty's "Natural History" blanketed in January's snow opens Brooklyn Botanic Garden's 2012 calendar. Earlier this year, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden solicited submissions for a visitor-sourced... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  Heather's Garden

• Happy Mother's Day

  Heather's Garden

  13 May 2012 | 9:40 pm

  You may not remember, but this blog came about because I needed a way to show my mom everything I was doing in the garden.  All these years later she still hasn't seen the garden in person!  She's the only one who bugs me when I don't post (which I haven't done much lately).  My Mother's Day was spent in the garden with my family -- it's amazing how much work 4 adults can get done in 4 hours -- and it was the best present ever! SS2 weeded the raised beds by the patio plus the containers and together with SS1 picked up the furniture we that was still…

• There Will Be A Garden

  Heather's Garden

  13 May 2012 | 12:35 am

  There hasn't been a whole lot of gardening going on around here still formerly Hurricane Irene hit at the end of the summer.  We pretty much packed away the garden and didn't look back.  We were very lucky that we got to go down to Florida twice this winter -- the second time because I was laid off from my job at the end of February.  Not worry, I've already started a new position and I'm very happy.  Unfortunately it's a return to more traditional 9-5 office hours with a 45 minute commute each way, so I won't be at home as often as I used to…

• Happy New Year!

  Heather's Garden

  29 Jan 2012 | 8:23 am

  Will 2012 bring a renewed interest in posting for me?  Unknown, but I can share this year's calendar with you. As I began to review 2011's images an obvious theme emerged -- butterflies.  Well to be exact 10 butterflies, a moth, and a caterpillar.  The text from this year's message: As I sat down to compile photos for this year’s calendar an obvious theme emerged.  Between the photos I took in early April on a spontaneous road-trip to Myrtle Beach (poor Lee stayed in the frozen north) and the photos I took in late July on a very much planned trip to Key…

• I Swear I'm Okay

  Heather's Garden

  6 Dec 2011 | 7:12 pm

  My mother has been begging me to post, "People are probably worried about you."  And I just got an email from an on-line friend asking if I was okay.  I am, but this fall took a lot out of me.  From Irene to Hogwarts to work, I really didn't have any free time during September and October.  The only gardening I did in October was to pot up some of my herbs and bring them to the Blackstone Library to create an herbology station (photo credit Tricia Bohan Photography): Here is an incredible video of the kids portion of the Hogwarts fundraiser created by…

• I Have A Really Good Excuse

  Heather's Garden

  3 Oct 2011 | 11:32 pm

  How is it possible that I haven't posted since August?  Post Irene we've really just ignored the garden, but I have a good excuse.  I'm co-chairing a fundraising event for my local library.    Please check out the website (I designed it, so don't expect it to be perfect) and if you're local please consider buying tickets and joining us for what is sure to be an incredible weekend of events!

• 

  Ledge and Gardens

• Bloom Day - May 15, 2012

  Layanee DeMerchant

  15 May 2012 | 9:12 am

    This May's Bloom Day finds the garden lush and green with many flowers blooming a couple of weeks ahead of their normal scheduled bloom. Certainly the green growth is weeks ahead and you can see from the overall picture above that green is the predominant color. The bleeding hearts are still blooming quite heavily and I don't tire of them as I do the daffodils and forsythia. Perhaps it is the color pink which is much more soothing than bright yellow of early spring. Or, perhaps, the leafing out of the trees softens the light in the garden.   The flowers are a bit…

• Garden Art

  Layanee DeMerchant

  10 May 2012 | 2:13 am

  I will leave it up to you to determine if the above tulip 'Gavota', purchased this past fall from Colorblends, is art in the garden. I am quite enjoying nature's brush strokes of color on these tulips. They work well with the Heuchera 'Caramel', the spirea and the globe.  The hand blown orange globe certainly is an artistic piece and was made by a local artisan, Neal Drobnis. You can read more about his work here. The globe was given to me by friends and I have moved it here and there finally settling it just behind the Spirea 'Magic Carpet'. I love the…

• 'Yard Crashers' at Ledge and Gardens

  Layanee DeMerchant

  3 May 2012 | 10:51 am

  Front Row: Kiki, Meena, Rohan,Sister Lyn, Kasey,Sister Kathy, Layanee Second Row: Linda, Miggy, Brenda,Sister Eileen Third Row Standing: Beth, Laura, Daughter Emily with BIL Steve behind her, Mom, Rob, BIL Bob(in back),Rocky, Pat, Chris the EM, Gisele and John  Missing: Joyce Chapman, Nicole, Ronan & Wyatt CardarelliWhen the doctor says "no digging, dividing, edging, mulching, yadda, yadda, yadda, what is a gardener to do? We all know most doctors are not that specific. What they say is "No lifting anything over 10 lbs." Oh, you can try to do those things but the body…

• 

  the back quarter acre

• Topping dahlias

  15 May 2012 | 12:07 pm

  Last year, my dahlias grew so tall that I had to stand on tip-toe to reach the blooms at the top of the plants.  Varieties that were advertised as five footers stretched to seven feet or more.  Staking quickly degenerated into an ugly wrestling match in which my poles, twine, and personal dignity suffered humiliating defeats. By the end of the summer, the plants were listing to the side like a row of inebriated red, orange, and burgundy bedecked party-goers.So this year I wanted to make sure that I was careful to top the dahlias.  Bloomin' mad dahlia aficionados…

• Spring woods

  10 May 2012 | 10:25 am

  Readers may remember that I wrote earlier this year about the growing enthusiasm for the preservation of a piece of parkland across the street from my house.  These woods had been threatened by an ill-conceived plan, roundly defeated at town meeting, for their development.  One of the several benefits from that attention was an Earth Day clean-up.  While I was enjoying some welcome mother-daughter time in Phoenix on the day of the event, my husband contributed hours removing invasive plants, construction debris, and general trash from the woods. Every…

• Daffodil dilemma

  17 Apr 2012 | 12:23 pm

  Why so few daffodils in the garden this spring? Except for a stand of white "Mount Hood" bulbs, which are regaining strength as a side benefit of the regular fertilization of the evergreens around which they are planted, the daffodil showing has been pretty sparse.  I'm seeing problems: a bit of bud blast and lots of plants sprouting only leaves.The American Daffodil Society provides some explanations for daffodils that fail to bloom and offers tips for growing daffodils.  Too bad that I didn't get the memo earlier.  Fertilize when the leaf tips…

• Springing dahlias?

  15 Apr 2012 | 9:08 pm

  It's mid-April. and I'm embarrassed to confess that only this weekend have I made my first spring foray into the garden.  The last few weeks have been busy with travel and family activities--I'm not complaining, mind you--so my time hasn't allowed digging around in the dirt.This weekend was perfect gardening weather--breezy, sunny, and just warm enough to ease these old bones. Pruning, clipping, and weeding commenced.  In the weeks ahead, it will be all about compost spreading and fertilizing.  The days are light longer, so at last my after-work routine can incorporate some…

• Bookending visits to a sunken surprise

  10 Apr 2012 | 9:23 pm

  Last fall, I wrote about the happy discovery of a sunken garden on the grounds of the Radcliffe Institute.  Back then, the blooming season was creeping to a close, so I promised myself to pay another visit when the seasons had turned.  Once again, quite by chance, I found myself in the neighborhood earlier this week and decided to check in.A few clusters of daffodils were spread along the banks of the walkways.  New growth--masses of Siberian and bearded irises--was just popping up.  One or two white tulips had launched, but the major volley was still in…

• 

  A Leafy Indulgence

• California In Virginia

  Swimray

  5 May 2012 | 11:10 pm

  A month earlier than last year, the California Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are blooming their pretty little butts off. These are the same that were planted from a free seed mixture last year and overwintered on the south side of the house in my protected micro climate. As reported earlier, these annuals can survive a winter if there is no severe ground freeze (as in last year's mild winter.)There were yellow, orange, and creamy white last spring and grew about 6-inches tall (15 cm). The white ones disappeared this year, and the plants that overwintered are a bit taller at a foot (30…

• April 2012 Flowers In The House

  Swimray

  30 Apr 2012 | 9:02 am

  Indoor flowers on the last Monday of the month I brought in a few rhododendrons from the tangle of rhodies in the rear corner of the yard - otherwise known as the last frontier. This area has yet to be tamed, while the rest of the front and back have been cultivated. "Anything grows" is the motto for this dark inaccessible jungle. I keep promising myself to explore it someday, and eventually tame the savage plants that make it their home. We can't have rhododendrons indoors without something to tickle the olfactory senses since with rhodies you just look, not smell. Thanks to a two month head…

• Bronze Beauty

  Swimray

  20 Apr 2012 | 9:03 pm

  From the title, I would expect to get a lot of hits on searches for this post, just like I did on my post titled, "Maximum Maggie," the star magnolia [posted 23.03.2009]. I could not figure out why my blog analytics showed that the number of searches for "Maximum Maggie" was off the charts. With a test search of my own, I found the top result on Google for Maximum Maggie was to a busty porn star's web site. I was disappointed to think people were looking for her site instead of my magnolia.Bronze Beauty is what I think my Aguja (Ajuga reptans) cultivar is after comparing online photos of…

• April 2012 Bloom Day

  Swimray

  14 Apr 2012 | 8:58 pm

  Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day What's blooming in the garden on the 15th of the month. There are a few blooms in the garden this time, between spring and summer. Did I mean spring and summer? What season is it really, with frost the past few nights, and temperatures in the 80's (upper 20's C) tomorrow. Outstanding at the moment are the California poppies that overwintered. Their performance earns them a future post.You can find other garden bloggers' April bloom days at the blog May Dreams Gardens.California poppies (Eschscholzia californica)Salvia 'May Night' (Salvia x sylvestris)Geranium…

• Color Me Happy

  Swimray

  7 Apr 2012 | 6:02 pm

  In the past few years I have become more aware of planning and consideration of color combinations. It probably stems from those dreamy magazine landscapes that grow the same plants that I have but don't look like a patchwork quit. I used to gaze out the window at this time of year and see a yard full of several different shades of purple, with no other color. Only height, width, and season were really considered in any planning attempt. Although not yet adept at color planning, at least now colors are considered when deciding where to place the latest acquisition. This spring I was able to…

• 

  A Leafy Indulgence

• California In Virginia

  Swimray

  5 May 2012 | 11:10 pm

  A month earlier than last year, the California Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are blooming their pretty little butts off. These are the same that were planted from a free seed mixture last year and overwintered on the south side of the house in my protected micro climate. As reported earlier, these annuals can survive a winter if there is no severe ground freeze (as in last year's mild winter.)There were yellow, orange, and creamy white last spring and grew about 6-inches tall (15 cm). The white ones disappeared this year, and the plants that overwintered are a bit taller at a foot (30…

• April 2012 Flowers In The House

  Swimray

  30 Apr 2012 | 9:02 am

  Indoor flowers on the last Monday of the month I brought in a few rhododendrons from the tangle of rhodies in the rear corner of the yard - otherwise known as the last frontier. This area has yet to be tamed, while the rest of the front and back have been cultivated. "Anything grows" is the motto for this dark inaccessible jungle. I keep promising myself to explore it someday, and eventually tame the savage plants that make it their home. We can't have rhododendrons indoors without something to tickle the olfactory senses since with rhodies you just look, not smell. Thanks to a two month head…

• Bronze Beauty

  Swimray

  20 Apr 2012 | 9:03 pm

  From the title, I would expect to get a lot of hits on searches for this post, just like I did on my post titled, "Maximum Maggie," the star magnolia [posted 23.03.2009]. I could not figure out why my blog analytics showed that the number of searches for "Maximum Maggie" was off the charts. With a test search of my own, I found the top result on Google for Maximum Maggie was to a busty porn star's web site. I was disappointed to think people were looking for her site instead of my magnolia.Bronze Beauty is what I think my Aguja (Ajuga reptans) cultivar is after comparing online photos of…

• April 2012 Bloom Day

  Swimray

  14 Apr 2012 | 8:58 pm

  Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day What's blooming in the garden on the 15th of the month. There are a few blooms in the garden this time, between spring and summer. Did I mean spring and summer? What season is it really, with frost the past few nights, and temperatures in the 80's (upper 20's C) tomorrow. Outstanding at the moment are the California poppies that overwintered. Their performance earns them a future post.You can find other garden bloggers' April bloom days at the blog May Dreams Gardens.California poppies (Eschscholzia californica)Salvia 'May Night' (Salvia x sylvestris)Geranium…

• Color Me Happy

  Swimray

  7 Apr 2012 | 6:02 pm

  In the past few years I have become more aware of planning and consideration of color combinations. It probably stems from those dreamy magazine landscapes that grow the same plants that I have but don't look like a patchwork quit. I used to gaze out the window at this time of year and see a yard full of several different shades of purple, with no other color. Only height, width, and season were really considered in any planning attempt. Although not yet adept at color planning, at least now colors are considered when deciding where to place the latest acquisition. This spring I was able to…

• 

  A Garden in Bethlehem PA

• Dry Shade

  Marie

  24 Apr 2012 | 1:37 pm

  Growing plants in dry shade can be a problem.  The Spotted Dead Nettle (Lamium maculatum) thrives In the dry shade of our old French Lilac. I moved the dead nettle two or three years ago.  They are starting to fill in and provide bright leaf and flower color.Thirty cultivars provide a diverse plant list to choose from.  Among Glories of Snow and Grape Hyacinths (above), 'Purple Dragon' on the left shows a lot of silvery leaf.  'Elizabeth De Haas' to the right has a silver stripe.  The flowers are almost identical.Lamium 'White Nancy' differs only in flower color.This…

• Spring Ahead

  Marie

  1 Apr 2012 | 6:37 am

  Spring ahead means more this year than a change to daylight saving time.Spring in the garden this year is weeks ahead of schedule..PJM Rhododendron (above),usually blooms in the middle to end of April.It wasn’t bothered by below freezing temperatures the other night. Last spring, I trimmed about 1/3 off and I’ll cut it back by another third when it’s finished blooming this year.It’s just getting too big for the space. About ¾ of the mulch has been spread. The Helleborus’ (Lenten Rose ‘Royal Heritage’) nodding blooms continue their long bloom time.Mulch makes it all look…

• More Philly Flower Show Photos

  Marie

  29 Mar 2012 | 6:06 am

  From the tiny scuba tanks to the little hanging baskets, Miniature Setting winner Irene Sobotincic’s “Taking the Plunge” scuba shop captured a still life of homegrown Hawaiian commerce.Anthurium and red lights mimicked a lava flow in the popular display “Pele” bySchafer Designs.A few of the thousands of orchids in the displays.Temple University Ambler School of Environmental Design is always an environmental treasure trove.This year a rain garden accompanied by a handout with a diagram and plant list was another testament to Temple’s attention to detail.A model of Philadelphia…

• Philadelphia International Flower Show

  Marie

  19 Mar 2012 | 4:56 am

  HAWAII, ISLANDS OF ALOHAIf ever my digital camera is going to give me problems, you can bet it will be at the Philly Flower Show. I’ll post a few of the less grainy pictures later.I must say I was a little disappointed with the show. I couldn’t put my finger on what didn’t quite work. Finally it came to me - Hawaii is bright and colorful - The convention center was dark as usual. I think this is one time overhead lighting would have enhanced the show. Despite thousands of colorful orchids and hundreds of stately palm trees, the displays never seemed to capture the essence of Hawaii.Of…

• Perfect Weather for Spring Cleanup

  Marie

  15 Mar 2012 | 6:07 am

  before after Thank you Mother Nature.The beautifully warm days recently have given a jump start to spring garden cleanup. I am feeling very organized this year. Last fall I did a better than average fall garden cleanup so there’s not as much to do this spring. Add a week of heavenly spring weather and I’ll be ready for mulch next week.Another help to move the cleanup along is the tool I bought at the Philadelphia Flower show. It’scalled a Leaf Lifter from Better Garden Tools. It's saving my old back.

• 

  Bumblebee Blog

• An Inspiration and DIY Recipe Book: Handmade Garden Projects – And a Giveaway!

  Robin Ripley

  15 May 2012 | 3:23 pm

  Some people are just born clever and handy.  These are the people who don’t fear the sound of power tools or those long, scary aisles of bits and pieces in the hardware store. They have DIY in their DNA. Others of us need a little hand-holding, a kindly pep talk and a wee bit of a [...]

• A Little Dog, Peonies and Wisteria – Happy Mother’s Day!

  Robin Ripley

  13 May 2012 | 7:53 am

  I had my Mother’s Day breakfast outside this morning in the potager. My gardening companion was one of my Papillon babies, Sophie. The company was charming and the view was beautiful. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Click on photos to embiggen.  

• Revving Up for Summer

  Robin Ripley

  7 May 2012 | 5:46 pm

  We have been on a planting orgy around here. Not only is this the time of year when most of the vegetable seeds and seedlings go into the potager, we have also embarked on a major campaign to add more shrubs—particularly flowering shrubs—to the property. Thank goodness Harry is a good sport and has a [...]

• Wordless Wednesday: Wisteria

  Robin Ripley

  2 May 2012 | 7:33 am

• 1 May 2012 | 11:24 am

  Robin Ripley

  1 May 2012 | 11:24 am

  May Day! May Day! Calm down. No one’s in distress here by the Chesapeake Bay. It’s just May 1—May Day! A little trip over to Wikipedia enlightened me about this very special day. Apparently (although I did not pull out my calendar to fact check), May 1 is exactly half a year from November 1. [...]

• 

  GardenDesignOnline

• Doris Duke Gardens Open Again

  Jane Berger

  15 May 2012 | 6:12 am

  photos: Duke Farms - click to enlarge The wildflower trail, shown above, is just one of myriad new features at the estate of the late heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke, which opens again to the public on May 19th. In accordance with Duke's wishes, the 2740-acre property is now an...

• Monet's Garden at the NYBG

  Jane Berger

  12 May 2012 | 11:12 pm

  photos:NYBG- click to enlarge If you can't get to Giverny anytime soon, then head to the New York Botanical Garden for a major exhibit this year (May 19-October 21) on Claude Monet's life, his artwork, and his passion for gardening. In May and June, displays in the Enid Haupt Conservatory...

• Mother's Day Rose

  Jane Berger

  10 May 2012 | 6:12 am

  click to enlarge A special rose for Mother's Day -- available, as far as I can find, only from Vintage Gardens in Sebastopol, CA. According to the comprehensive rose site, www.helpmefind.com/roses, this rose is a rambler, developed in 1901 by Michael H. Walsh, and it's also known as 'Debutante.' It's...

• Top Outdoor Living Trends 2012

  Jane Berger

  8 May 2012 | 9:03 am

  ASLA / Nelson Byrd Woltz ASLA has released its annual survey of residential garden trends, and the most popular elements continue to be outdoor living and garden areas with lots of entertaining space. Almost 95 percent of landscape architects surveyed said that gardens and landscaped spaces were popular, followed by...

• National Mall Design Winners

  Jane Berger

  5 May 2012 | 11:12 pm

  The Trust for the National Mall has announced the winners of a major competition to redesign three important public areas of what's often called "America's front yard." At Constitution Gardens, (image above), near the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and the Reflecting Pool, Rogers Marvel Architects & Peter Walker and Partners teamed...

• 

  Life In Sugar Hollow

• Life As We Know It

  Tracey

  8 May 2012 | 8:37 am

  Several firsts this weekend - first success at real strawberry jam (previous attempts were more like strawberry sauce), my first no-knead artisan bread (try it!), our first time hosting a beehive (second from bottom photo), first time strawberry picking with Willa, my first peony (top left photo) and our first batch of chocolate covered strawberries (but definitely not our last). Also, I bought my first yellow rose and my first foxglove.{Coming soon - our first set of kittens and their mama!} Go here to take a beautiful peek into Virginia Woolf's home and gardens.

• Things I'm Afraid To Tell You

  Tracey

  4 May 2012 | 11:49 am

  Inspired by EZ at Creature Comforts. From EZ:Do you happen to remember the link I posted to this article by Jess Constable last Friday? Well Friday afternoon over on twitter, all it took was one tweet from Erin followed immediately by Nichole, before suddenly a flood of bloggers raised their virtual hands to say that "Yes, they too were concerned / frustrated / flummoxed about the vast cavern between true reality and the presentation of "reality" on blogs." That twitter conversation quickly morphed into a challenge spurned on by another post of Jess' where she shared "Things I'm Afraid to…

• Garden Week :: Staunton

  Tracey

  26 Apr 2012 | 7:20 am

  The Garden Week gods smiled down on me and opened up the Gospel Hill neighborhood of Staunton for this year's tours. I LOVE this neighborhood and have for a long time. As I mentioned in my Breathe article, Garden Week gave me footing to be less of a creeper/lurker and instead, a paid guest!

• The Women's Land Army

  Tracey

  19 Apr 2012 | 11:11 am

  Source: bbc.co.uk via Tracey on PinterestSource: screenterrier.blogspot.com via Tracey on PinterestSource: womenslandarmytribute.co.uk via Tracey on PinterestI just discovered this show, 'Land Girls,' on Netflix and can't stop watching. During WWII, British women worked the farms to insure that food supplies for the country wouldn't dwindle while the men were fighting on the front. This BBC show from 2009-2011 is based on these women - The Women's Land Army. {You can stream the first season.}

• Away (and Gearing Up)

  Tracey

  18 Apr 2012 | 10:03 am

  We had another adventure earlier in the month. The Eastern Shore, Chincoteague and Assateague. Beach breezes, sand, low tide smells (which I like out of nostalgia), seafood, boats, wild horses, lighthouses.It is raining here today - which we desperately needed. I'll be ready to plant this weekend, now.Some things I am looking forward to in the garden:Seeing how our first cover crop/green manure improved the vegetable garden's soil. I sowed some winter rye last autumn, it grew all winter and Corey tilled it into the tomato bed last night.Trying my hand at propagating an old, fragrant rose from…

• 

  Lois de Vries' Garden Views

• The Home as Castle at the 2012 Mansion in May

  Lois J. de Vries

  5 May 2012 | 12:18 pm

  Photo courtesy of Dan Chomuk of Cording Landscape Design I missed the press event for this year’s Mansion in May, but am hoping to see it later this month. A designer showhouse and gardens presented by the Women’s Association of Morristown Medical Center, the setting is a spectacular castle near Morristown’s fabulous “Millionaire’s Row.”  Sixty landscape and interior designers have done a

• Rethinking Depression: Tools to Cope With the Ups and Downs of Gardening

  Lois J. de Vries

  21 Apr 2012 | 7:01 am

  Gardeners can tick off a litany of potential reasons to get depressed: A copse of 60-year-old trees destroyed in an ice storm; house and garden vacuumed off the face of the earth by tornado; flooding by hurricane; seasonal drought; bee colony collapse disorder; whole forests decimated by alien insects; extensive flowerbeds destroyed by mold, fungi, or white-tailed deer; an entire season’s

• Dr. Eric Maisel - Rethinking Depression

  Lois J. de Vries

  13 Apr 2012 | 2:32 pm

  GUEST BLOG: On April 21st I will interview my writing coach, author Dr. Eric Maisel, about his book Rethinking Depression, which was recently released in paperback. It blows the lid off the need to label and medicate oneself as depressed just because life isn’t one continuous bed of roses. Gardening creatives can design a pathway that carries them through tough times by developing the deeper

• Tribute To Emma 5B, My Constant Gardening Companion

  Lois J. de Vries

  28 Mar 2012 | 11:32 am

  Our beloved Black Lab Emma lost her battle with Canine Cushing’s disease on February 1, 2012, just one day after her 11th birthday. While all dogs are special, Emma 5B was not your usual dog. For those who may be wondering, Emma 5A (aka Baby Emma) died of an illness that couldn’t be diagnosed and lived only 6 months. We grieved for 6 months longer. Perhaps we really never got over it, because

• How To Plot The Perfect 2012 Gardening Resolutions - 3

  Lois J. de Vries

  24 Feb 2012 | 4:25 pm

  Finally, always keep something in the kitty for unexpected opportunities. Readers familiar with the story of my Kwan Yin statue (click here) will not be surprised to hear that one of this year’s Christmas presents to ourselves was a carved stone entwined fish fountain that I’ve been looking at for three or four years. Now that the front garden is protected by deer fence, the fountain has a

• 

  Transatlantic Gardener

• Buying clematis by mail order (US style)

  Graham Rice

  16 May 2012 | 3:45 am

  Not long before I came over to England, I decided to order some clematis. We don’t have all that many and I thought it was high time we added some more. Local nurseries have a very limited selection, and they’re not cheap, so I looked at some mail order suppliers.I wanted small plants – I prefer not to pay to ship big pots full of soil across the country; if I order smaller plants, much lighter in weight, I can have plants more for the money. OK, I know that what I’m actually paying for when I buy large plants is time, maturity. But they’ll probably have to be cut back to fit in the…

• Heathrow euphorbias

  Graham Rice

  10 May 2012 | 2:00 am

  A surprise driving away from London’s Heathrow airport the other day. There’s a huge intersection where the road from Heathrow joins the M25, London’s 117 mile, six and eight and ten lane, orbital motorway. At one point there’s a traffic light and there, by the side of the road, spilling out through the fence, were three huge euphorbia plants, Euphorbia characias.So, I drove - carefully - all the way round again, extracting my camera from the bag on the seat alongside me as I went. I manoevred across into the lane alongside the euphorbias and – the lights had changed. I came to a…

• Book Bullet: A Year in The Life of Beth Chatto’s Gardens by Rachel Warne

  Graham Rice

  6 May 2012 | 3:00 am

  I was surprised by this book: I was simply not prepared for it be almost entirely pictures. And of course, being a writer, I find this slightly shocking!Beth Chatto herself begins with a foreward in which explains how Rachel Warne’s pictures showed her new truths about the garden she’s been developing since the 1960s. The scene is then set by a biographical introduction from Great Dixter’s Fergus Garrett, who also contributes short introductions to the four seasonal collections of photographs.Intermixing broad views of the garden with galleries of portraits of its plants, the…

• Does this make me a bad person?

  Graham Rice

  2 May 2012 | 2:12 pm

  Not long after we moved to Pennsylvania, I planted two plants at the edge of the little creek that flows through the corner of our property. It was all a bit bare, and I thought some quietly colourful plants would brighten things up.One that I planted was Lysichiton camtschatcensis. This is the white flowered Russian version of the yellow flowered American native Lysichiton americanum. As the name indicates, it comes from the Kamchatka Peninsula, just across the narrow Bering Strait from Alaska. Sarah Palin must have had a good view.For the first few years, all that happened was that the…

• In the family: Lies I Told My Little Sister

  Graham Rice

  28 Apr 2012 | 2:54 am

  Once in a while, I tell you about interesting things that my family is doing - especially if there's on online component. So here's some news: my wife, judywhite, who's a noted garden writer and photographer, is in the midst of something truly awe-inspiring. She decided to break out of the horticultural mode, to write her first screenplay – and it's being turned into a feature film called Lies I Told My Little Sister! Filming starts in three weeks.The film is a drama-comedy set on Cape Cod, about family dynamics and sibling rivalry, and it’s been fascinating to watch all the…

• 

  WashingtonGardener

• Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day May 2012

  WashingtonGardener

  15 May 2012 | 11:45 am

  Here are a few interesting blossoms in my garden this morning. Took these between the rains. We are finally getting some decent precip here in the Mid-Atlantic USA (Zone 7), not just a few spits here and there. I have so much flowering right now, but this is what caught my eye... Nigella (Love in a Mist) -- I threw these seeds in my sidewalk median strip a few years ago, they finally came up for me. I love the true-blue color and the delicate foliage of this plant. Verbena bonariensis (aka Brazilian Verbena or Verbena-on-a-stick) self-seeded along my…

• Great Plant Bargains at GardenMart

  WashingtonGardener

  11 May 2012 | 9:46 pm

  Silver Spring Garden Club's annual GardenMart Plant SaleSaturday, May 12, 2012, 9:00 am - 1:00 pmBROOKSIDE GARDENS - Visitor Center grounds at 1800 Glenallan Ave, Wheaton, MDFREE to attend• Perennials• Herbs• Native Plants• Shrubs• Annuals• Heirloom and Select Tomatoes + Peppers• House Plants• Bedding Plants• Vegetables• Hanging BasketsMother’s Day GiftsFABULOUS Garden RaffleRain or ShineCash or Check only. (Note: No ATM on site.)GREAT Pricing!ALL of our plants are LOCALLY grown and sourced. Many are from member's own gardens and are proven to thrive in our…

• Fenton Friday: Update from my Community Garden Plot

  WashingtonGardener

  11 May 2012 | 12:54 pm

  First tomato plant of the season - tip break up eggshells for extra calcium in the plant hole and put in the plant support at same time, because adding the support later can damage the roots and your plant. This one is 'Azoycha' a Hungarian variety I got from a plant swap. one perfect Cherry Belle radish Pile of weeds - just a few scattered around my plot, but they add up especially if you don't keep on top of them.

• Video Wednesday: Bird Bath

  WashingtonGardener

  9 May 2012 | 3:32 pm

• Kill Weeds with Vinegar

  WashingtonGardener

  7 May 2012 | 12:26 pm

  We've shared this tip before in Washington Gardener Magazine, but I thought it was worth repeating here for any newbie gardeners:Vinegar is a safe, cheap, and easy weed-killer. This works best on a sunny, not windy day. Spraying with vinegar (full strength from the hardware/cleaning supply stores, not the grocery store kind) with a dash of dish soap added for "clinge." Spray on in the morning and let the sun "fry" the weeds all day. Wait a few days for full die-back and then pull them. This is so helpful in border places like on a fence line and along pavement cracks where…

• 

  A Tidewater Gardener

• Bloom Day - Maychance

  Les

  15 May 2012 | 6:40 pm

  Like last month's Bloom Day, this one finds me with little free time.  However, I can see light at the end of the tunnel.  Two days off per week, kayaking, day trips, vacation time and summer are coming into view.  The little bit of time I have spent in the garden has shown me what a mild winter and recent rains can do.  Things that have languished for years have taken on new vigor, to the point

• Fog and Roses

  Les

  5 May 2012 | 10:11 pm

  Friday morning found me once again in Portsmouth for another TV segment, outdoors in the fog.  It was probably not the best weather to televise the "after" part of a garden renovation we did for the station, but sometimes you have got to go with what you have been given.  However, the weather was good for photography, unless you were wanting to get a picture across the river of the Norfolk

• A Small Homage to Derek Jarman's Garden

  Les

  26 Apr 2012 | 9:38 pm

  Years ago while browsing gardening books, I came across the title Derek Jarman's Garden.  Something in the recesses of my brain recognized that name, so I opened the book and was immediately intrigued by the images.  Further prodding of the gray matter helped me remember where that name came from.  I was transported back in time to a film appreciation course I took in college populated with

• Bloom Day - 2BZY2TRN (too busy to talk right now)

  Les

  15 Apr 2012 | 3:15 am

  I spend too much time at work, I have insanely agreed to have my garden open for a tour in two weeks, and life is happening. There is little time for idle talk, so let's get right to this month's offerings. Rhododendron x 'George Taber'  - George Taber Azalea Rhododendron x 'Mrs. G. G. Gerbing'  -  Mrs. G. G. Gerbing Azalea Rhododendron x 'Formosa' - Formosa Azalea Salvia x sylvestris 'May

• A Good Friday

  Les

  7 Apr 2012 | 6:23 am

  Yesterday my son and I headed to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg.  When we left it was gloomy, overcast, chilly and very windy, I thought for sure we would have the park to ourselves, but the sun came out, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Fortunately for us, many of the people there were towing small children and strollers, so the lines at the really good rides were shorter.  I hope regular

• 

  clay and limestone

• May Blooms For Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-2012

  Gail

  15 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  A few blooms to help us all celebrate the marvelous and magnificent month of May.Iris 'versicolor'Blephilia ciliata (Downy Wood mint)Oenothera fruticosa (Sundrops)Penstemon calycosus affectionately known as Penstemon XGillenia stipulata (American Ipecac)Aquilegia canadensisSpigelia marilandica  (Indian pink)Tradescantia Agastache 'Golden Jubilee' in the Susans' bed with Oenothera speciosa, Asclepias tuberosa in the backgroundHave a marvelous and magnificent May Bloom Day!xxoogailNow, it's time to visit  May Dreams Gardens, where our delightful hostess, Carol, has set up the Mr…

• The Faux Gardener

  Gail

  13 May 2012 | 5:00 am

  Let me tell you a story. It's a gardening story about my mother and a little about me. My mother never in her 83 years of living tried to give anyone the impression that she liked gardening. She didn't like the hot sun and wasn't the least bit interested in sweating.  She loved air conditioning more than fresh air. She was city girl through and through.The year before she passed away, she moved to a retirement community, where she made new friends and participated in all the activities. She became part of a group of women called the Fun-shine Group. They were so popular…

• Bumbles Love Penstemon

  Gail

  11 May 2012 | 7:30 am

  ....and so do I!Penstemon calycosus formerly known as X!The infamous Penstemon X is in bloom.  Long time Clay and Limestone friends  have already met X and heard the story.  But, if they don't mind I would like to share it with you now. Bumbles dart in and out and lucky is the gardener who can snap a photo or two"Many years before Clay and Limestone, this sloped land was a rocky forest of native trees, shrubs, perennials and ephemerals. Fifty years ago a developer's bulldozers cut streets through the woodland. They built brick houses that had deep backyards and grassy…

• I Feel Bad About My Vinca

  Gail

  9 May 2012 | 8:30 am

  Penstemon calycosus in the GOBN...and the other invasive plants in my garden. If I didn't fight it the vincas would overrun the GOBNI really do. I haven't been able to get rid of it.  I've tried, but, it's even more tap-rooted to this garden than I am. Even if I hired a crew to work sunup to sundown on eradication they would never finish.  Removing invasives in this garden is like painting a really long bridge, just as you finish it's time to start all over again. Luckily for me,  previous owners did not pesticide away the wildflowersI have a theory that way…

• Sometimes I Like My Garden, Sometimes I Don't!

  Gail

  4 May 2012 | 5:00 am

  It's a clown pants colorama mixture of natives and carefully chosen exotics that makes me smile.Central Basin natives and carefully chosen exoticsThis morning my across the street neighbor told me the garden was beautiful.  That made me so happy.  Central Basin native Baptisia australis is a colorful companion for Peony 'General MacMahon' Although, I garden for my own pleasure, getting positive feedback from neighbors feels fantastic.  Rosa 'Lovely Fairy'  is another strong color in the garden.  Especially in a garden with as few design restraints/rules as…

• 

  Dirt Therapy

• Roses D-F

  Phillip Oliver

  11 May 2012 | 8:54 pm

  Daydream - This rose was selected as an All-American Selection in 2005. Most of the roses I grow are older varieties but occasionally a rose catches my attention and I can't resist. This was the case with Daydream at our local Home Depot a few years ago. I have been very pleased with it. It is a low-growing rose, well rounded and covered with fushia-pink single blossoms throughout the season. The blooms remind me of an old rose which is probably why it first caught my attention. Daydream Daydream in the border - its low-growing habit makes it a good choice for the front of the border. Dusky…

• The "C" roses

  Phillip Oliver

  9 May 2012 | 8:09 pm

  Caldwell Pink - This rose was discovered in Caldwell, Texas and some think it might be the same as "Pink Pet" but regardless of its true identity, it is one tough landscape rose. It is rather tame in our garden but at Michael's salon, where I planted a sprig a few years ago, it has become a monster of a rose and roots wherever the canes drop to the ground. He jokes that we could open a nursery and sell only "Caldwell Pink" roses. Lilac pink flowers appear late in spring and throughout the season on a 4' tall shrub that will cascade if given the room.  Caldwell Pink Carefree Delight -…

• Gardening: Not for the Faint of Heart

  Phillip Oliver

  7 May 2012 | 10:11 am

  My friend Rebecca posted this on her blog (a private blog) and she gave me permission to repost it here. I didn't know she was taking photos. It does look a bit scary doesn't it?!! ************************ My friend Phillip and I went to the land fill the other day to get mulch/dirt for our gardens.  Usually we have to load our trucks ourselves, which is a bit of work.  This time, a very helpful city employee was there and loaded our trucks for us.  It was great to have the help.  It saved us lots of time and effort.  At the same time, it was a little unnerving to…

• The "B" roses

  Phillip Oliver

  4 May 2012 | 11:21 pm

  Belinda -  I love the hybrid musks and am constantly recommending to people, especially those with shade. Of course all roses love sunshine but some can tolerate a bit of shade better than others. I have hybrid musk roses that bloom and perform beautifully with only 4-5 hours of sun. Belinda is one of the first I grew. Like most hybrid musks, it has a mounding habit, about 4 feet high and 5 feet wide. A once bloomer. Belinda Blaze - This old workhorse has been around since 1932 when it was introduced by Jackson & Perkins. It is easy to find and readily available. Unlike most of the…

• Rose Inventory A-Z - The "A's"

  Phillip Oliver

  2 May 2012 | 5:44 pm

  So here goes with the rose inventory. I didn't realize how much work this was going to be. Of course, getting photos is the hard part. I'm sure I will miss some along the way but hopefully I can catch them in the end. Roses A Altissimo - This poor rose is squeezed into a tight spot - in between a Colorado Blue Spruce and a red maple tree along the front fence. It blooms every year and I really should consider moving it - where, I'm not sure. This is one of the deepest reds I've seen in roses. It is a climber although the canes are very stiff. They stand straight up in the air and I think they…

• 

  Natural Gardening

• Community gardens

  LKW

  15 May 2012 | 9:01 pm

  I love visiting community gardens. They come in all shapes and size (and levels of maintenance, too).  Some have art work, some are focused on production of vegetables, and others are a mix.Burton Street Community Peace Garden is on the Asheville Fling (the fifth Garden Bloggers Fling) first day tour. As a bus "captain" -- I was doing my homework.  The Fling is this weekend. My first drive-by found me unimpressed.But a second, more thorough visit, revealed the eclectic nature of the space and the enthusiasm that both gardeners and artists have brought.  Check out this…

• Philadelphus inodorus

  LKW

  13 May 2012 | 7:09 pm

  A native mock-orange, Philadelphus inodorus is a plant I've not actually seen in a natural habitat, although it's native to limestone areas in the Eastern U.S. Philadelphus inodorusIt thrives in garden plantings, however, and this old plant, next to our small house in the mountains, is a great example.  This shrub flowers profusely each spring, without any care whatsoever (the neighbors are renters and not inclined to gardening, although our efforts, on their behalf have encouraged sporadic improvements).It's a lovely plant, and deserving of inclusion in modern plantings, too, although I…

• Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden

  LKW

  10 May 2012 | 8:52 pm

  Thomas Jefferson's contributions to the scope of American life are remarkable.  My mother had a deep interest in his writings, philosophy, and contributions, so a family visit to Monticello in my early teens made an impression.Later visits, after the renovations of Jefferson's gardens had begun, found me fascinated by the scope of his interest and knowledge in all sorts of plants, as well as vegetables. By that time, my interest in historic and heirloom vegetables (and vegetables of all kinds) and the history of plant exchanges and gardening in the Americas and beyond had been kindled,…

• A glorious full moon

  LKW

  6 May 2012 | 9:56 pm

  Last night, coming back from dinner, the almost full moon was exceptionally large and luminous above the horizon, looking towards downtown Asheville from Broadway. I'd heard a piece on NPR earlier in the day about how exceptionally close the moon is currently to Earth, so I was keyed into thinking this was special.I wish I had my camera, I said to my gardening companion, thinking if I dashed back, I might have got a decent shot.  But it was getting late, full moon photos aren't that remarkable after all, etc. (I've made plenty of posts on the subject already!)Tonight, the moon will be…

• Blogging and gardeners

  LKW

  5 May 2012 | 8:43 pm

  Getting ready for the arrival of garden bloggers from across the country for the 5th Garden Bloggers Fling in Asheville, NC has been fun (and taking up a bit of blogging time).  My recent two Fling posts were about Asheville and the NC Arboretum.But, it's such fun to be welcoming blogging friends to our small mountain city, and enjoying the real-time community with like-minded bloggers. Gardeners are normally generous and interesting, and it's been a pleasure to get to know them through their blogs, but even more fun in person.I'm looking forward to a great few days!

• 

  Outside Clyde

• Two Flowers For Bloom Day

  Christopher C. NC

  15 May 2012 | 11:11 pm

  A yellow Louisiana Iris with a black and white Spot. A blue Baptisia gaining ground in the Lush. That is all I have time for this Bloom Day in May.

• One Word each

  Christopher C. NC

  14 May 2012 | 10:36 pm

  Frozen Unfrozen Black Standing Inspection House Shrubberies Bloom Colors Growing Iris Later

• The Gardens Will Be Well Watered

  Christopher C. NC

  13 May 2012 | 8:49 pm

  It rained all day. I did a little cleaning and paced a lot. There was all kinds of desk type work I could have done. I got some of it done. Days like this prove to me I could never work in an office type desk job. I would simply go stark raving mad. The rain is good. I planted a clearance rack tray of Phlox divaricata and a geranium that followed me home yesterday. No need to water them in now.

• Black And Blue And Red

  Christopher C. NC

  12 May 2012 | 10:37 pm

  The real black iris has arrived. Along with the purple blue Siberian iris. And there is a deep red iris. All you have to do is find them in the near three acres of wild cultivated gardens. Let the botanical treasure hunting begin.

• A Little Bit Of Phacelia and Some Vegetables

  Christopher C. NC

  11 May 2012 | 10:48 pm

  I have only been showing you the phacelia in Haywood County. But as you move to the top of the ridge top garden and look over the fence into Madison County, Oh my, there is just as much phacelia over there. Its spread has been exponential in the five springs that I have been here. We have a little bit of phacelia around here.

• 

  Growing The Home Garden: Gardening in the Home Landscape

• Sowing Shade Garden Seeds

  16 May 2012 | 8:33 am

  Last week I put together a couple flats of shade garden plants that I'm attempting to grow from seed.  I've had pretty good success before with my heucheras and thought I would give a few other shade plants a try!  A couple years ago I intended (but never got around to) to begin sowing shade garden plants and began saving seeds for coleus, hostas, and heucheras.  I saved the seed in baby food jars (we have plenty of them around) in the refrigerator.  I even labeled the jars with the year I gathered them so I know that they were harvested in 2010. Seeds stored in the…

• Trying to catch My Breath!

  14 May 2012 | 8:55 am

  I've been so busy that I've neglected the blog for a few days.  I even had to miss posting the Friday Fives last Friday in order to get everything done!  Fortunately the weekend rains and Mother's Day gave me a bit of a break to catch my breath but I still feel like I have a to do list a mile long to accomplish.  I hesitate even to show you the current state of the garden.  The weeds are growing a mile a minute and I just haven't had a chance to get out there.  (With over two inches of rain from the weekend they will grow even faster now.)  You're probably…

• Viburnum dentatum in Bloom! (Arrowood Viburnum)

  9 May 2012 | 8:35 am

  Viburnum dentatum is one of my favorite shrubs in our garden.  It's not as showy as the Japanese dappled willow or the purple beautyberry.  It's not as flashy as roses nor does it provide year round color like the 'Otto Luyken' cherry laurels.  But it does have an important role in our garden.  This viburnum never fails to flower prolifically.  Which means that the birds enjoy it immensely when the flowers fade and turn into a bounty of blue berries! The berries last only a few short days because once they ripen up the feast begins! The flowers are pretty nifty…

• Propagating Grape Vines with Greenwood Cuttings

  8 May 2012 | 8:36 am

  I'm always looking for new plants to experiment on to see if I can get them to root.  Yesterday I took some cuttings from a grape vine at my mom's house.  Grape vines are pretty popular with home gardeners who want to grow their own food in the backyard so I thought I'd give them a try.  I haven't successfully rooted grape vines before so these cuttings are somewhat of an experiment! These are most likely from a Concord grape. How to Root Greenwood Grape Vine Cuttings First I trimmed off a few branches that needed removed.  Grapes need frequent maintenance pruning to get…

• What Would You Plant Here?

  7 May 2012 | 8:02 am

  Hello home gardeners, I need your suggestions!  You see a couple years ago my dad helped me build the  Blue Garden Shed.  One of the things I was eager to install was a green roof but I determined that I didn't have the knowledge or the money at the time to do it correctly. As s substitute one of the things I incorporated into the shed was a front door overhang.  I made the overhang so that it could be a planter box in effect it could have been a small version of a green roof.  The problem is - I never planted anything in it!  To this day the front door overhang…

• 

  Conscious Gardening

• The Life of a Tree

  ConsciousGardener

  9 May 2012 | 3:59 pm

  So, here we are...a few months later...Juliette our fair owl left when I went  to Kansas City to be with my Mom.  It's been a busy spring, so we finally got around to taking the rest of the tree down...which is great, because ideas tend to come with time and dreaming. Robbie wants to do the honors! The fine saw dust is all around, but when the saw goes directly down, against the grain the wood curls. The revealing moment! And there ya go!  Two seats in one! The day is almost gone...but I've got a patio to build around the two chairs this…

• Today, in the Garden

  ConsciousGardener

  25 Apr 2012 | 12:26 pm

  I got out and watered this morning...I know the water restrictions are coming, so I'm getting the plants used to twice a week waterings...now.  Across from my fruit trees in the West Greens Garden, I have a rose, artemisia, a few firecracker ferns and the rest is dedicated to butterflies and hummingbirds.   Ms. Monarch on Butterfly Weed Gulf Fritillary on the Passion Flower Vine  more Monarch!   This wasn't such a great discovery...the rest of the tree seems fine, but I've got ants all over this year...mild winter?  They're all over my artichoke…

• Earth Day!

  ConsciousGardener

  22 Apr 2012 | 3:40 pm

  April Fool's Day is long gone now but it was my 5-year blogging birthday.  Today, I hardly blog at all...I've learned that I really prefer actual gardening, rather than writing about it.  I still research things as needed but only if I have to...I prefer to learn by process, and by making mistakes.  Somehow, the lessons learned kinetically stick with me...whereas reading them, without immediate application, does not.   The photo above shows a few dependable plants of note: heart leaf skullcap, river fern and spider wort.  By the end of summer, the…

• An Owl's Love Story and my Tree

  ConsciousGardener

  22 Apr 2012 | 10:26 am

  I wanted to take a few photos of the storm damage and the American Elm that was being taken out.I walked out into the yard to snap a few shots and this is how the garden looked...And there she was...not our boy, Hootie...but his mate.It's the first time we saw her...we thought Hootie had left in February...and now, the day the tree was to come down because of girdling and rot, we find a new resident.  The arborist assured us that the owl would leave once the chainsaws got going....So, I took a seat...and waited for it all to unfold.  Everything is lovely in the garden right…

• Valentine Blossoms for BloomDay

  ConsciousGardener

  15 Feb 2012 | 3:36 pm

  Soooo, it's been 3 months since I've blogged...oh well. I've been busy birding, camping, reading, making things, hanging out with some of the coolest people I've ever met, planting and planning. Plus, I went back to full-time work briefly this fall, teaching art...but I'm back to making things and wondering what I'll be when I'm grown up. Such is the life of a drinker and dreamer, or as my friends say "free-spirit" and what my family probably calls a "lost soul." This winter has been strange...unusually wet after the drought of the summer and unusually warm...which just confuses the plants to…

• 

  Sharing Nature's Garden

• May showers also bring May flowers...

  Diana

  15 May 2012 | 9:34 pm

  I know why Carol of May Dreams Gardens dreams of May.  We've had just that kind of May this year.  Full of sunshine AND rain - giving all our parched gardens a good long drink before the relentless summer takes its toll. Garden bloggers around the globe join Carol on the 15th of each month to share what's blooming in their gardens.  Come take a stroll with me and see what catches my eye in the garden today.This beautiful ditch lily, a passalong from Lori, of Gardener of Good and Evil, who literally dug it up from a ditch in Wisconsin and brought it back to me in a bucket in the…

• More Texas wildflowers to enjoy...

  Diana

  14 May 2012 | 8:16 pm

  The deer nibbled on some of these coreopsis tinctura when they first started growing in the spring, but they persevered and are now full of blooms.I love how they look against the structure of the grey Gopher plant.This is in the bed planted outside our back fence where there is no irrigation.  Once or twice a month in the middle of the scorching summer heat and drought I drag an extra long hose out there and water a little.  It's my drought- tolerant test bed.  These are REAL drought conditions.We've had lots of fall and spring rain, so the plants are quite happy -- for now!

• Mother's Day Flowers - in and out of the garden

  Diana

  13 May 2012 | 7:27 pm

  Happy Mother's Day.It's been a great Mother's Day weekend for me.First, my son graduated from college yesterday with two degrees and we spent the afternoon and evening celebrating with lots of family and friends in our garden.Then today, my daughter presented me with her hand-painted poster of hand-painted Texas wildflowers, all created with meticulous detail. How wonderful that the garden is the gathering place and inspiration for sharing love in our family.I feel very blessed.  Can you name the wildflowers and 2 cutting flowers in the painting above?  Let's see how many you…

• Loving my lush Central Texas garden

  Diana

  9 May 2012 | 12:27 pm

  My garden is reaping the fruits of Mother Nature's labor.  Our wonderful spring rains have reinvigorated the gardens here in Central Texas, especially mine.Lush isn't a word I typically use to describe my garden.  Hardy, drought tolerant, hot...those are the terms that come to mind most often.   But after this morning's rain, I took a walk to look at all the lush hues of green in my garden.  I hope this means that the deer have plenty to eat elsewhere -- I'd like to enjoy all this juicy foliage for a while.Before the sun gets blistering, it's nice to enjoy this mottled…

• Purple plumes peeking out in the spring garden

  Diana

  5 Apr 2012 | 7:38 am

  As the temperatures creep up to early summertime highs here in Central Texas , irises, salvias and other purple plumes are putting on a pageant in my garden.Maybe I like the purple and blue hues so much in my garden because they seem to cool off our scorching heat.At least they give the impression that it's cooler in the garden.And because blue hues on the color wheel make things seem to recede, they also make my garden seem bigger.One of my very favorites is Indigo Spires. It's tall, deep purple blooms sway in the breeze and make a real statement.Luckily for me, the salvias I'm collecting…

• 

  The Transplantable Rose

• Garden Bloggers Bloom Day April 2012

  Annie in Austin

  20 Apr 2012 | 1:33 am

  Spring 2012 has brought some pleasant surprises, like blooms on the Hesperaloe/Red yucca - the first flowers in three years.The mild winter allowed the unfrozen Loquat tree to give us fruit as well as flowers.But our tree seems to be better at making flowers- the fruit is quite small with very large seeds so it took an enormous amount of loquats to yield enough pulp for one batch of loquat salsa and a few jars of loquat jam.It wasn't exactly a surprise when the 1940 US census records were released at the beginning of April - genealogists and family historians were counting down the days.

• The Whitebud is Late for March GBBD

  Annie in Austin

  16 Mar 2012 | 10:54 pm

  Welcome to a pretty good Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post for May Dreams Carol! Spring looks more normal this year after rains have lessened the drought - my garden has more flowers than a sensible person could expect after the last 3 years, surviving hail, record heat, record drought, record cold and a sideswipe from Hurricane Hermione. The green of annual grasses gives the look of a lawn. The coral honeysuckle- Lady Banks rose combo on the arch are once again in synchThere was enough moisture to make Bluebonnet seeds sprout and grow. Salvia greggii is starting to bloom, the Blackfoot daisies…

• Garden Bloggers Bloom Day February 2012

  Annie in Austin

  15 Feb 2012 | 11:52 pm

  This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog. February 2011 kept us below freezing for 3 straight days, killing some plants and damaging many. So far this February of 2012 has given us cool temperatures rather than freezing cold nights, and there has been some rain. Although the amount of rain that has fallen on my garden is much less than those official measurements from Austin Bergstrom Airport or Camp Mabry, in combination with no nights below 27°F, it was enough to pump up more blooms than usual for February.There's a complete list of what's in bloom today at…

• Garden Bloggers Bloom Day January 2012

  Annie in Austin

  15 Jan 2012 | 6:10 pm

  Repeated freezes have edited the garden, removing the warm-weather annuals and sending perennials into dormancy. But the temperatures haven't dipped below 25°F (that sometimes magic number) while late fall rains fell softly, letting enough water sink down to soften the ground so we can dig in the earth once more.That relatively mild weather has allowed the loquats to bloom for two months and has given the Camellia sasanqua 'Shishi Gashira' its longest flowering season ever- Lack of deep freezes has encouraged flowers for over a month to pop out along the arching branches of the Loropetalum,…

• November Bloom Day - Expected and Unexpected

  Annie in Austin

  17 Nov 2011 | 2:45 pm

  Written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blogThere's a complete list of blooms for November 15th (along with more photos) over at my Annie's Addendum blog. Please take a look! I did my best with the botanical names but I'm not a botanist - let me know if you think something is wrong.Spot watering/hand watering has kept quite a few things alive in spite of drought and heat. The almost-3 inches of rain that fell on October 9 helped the shrubs and the cooler weather has helped everything - including the gardeners.A few weeks ago the Abelias began blooming and suddenly Monarch…

• 

  In the Garden Online

• Wordless Wednesday: Everybody Loves Viburnums

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  9 May 2012 | 9:14 am

  [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Updates and Miscellany

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  1 May 2012 | 7:31 am

  It’s a new month, and, even better, it’s one of my favorite months of the gardening season! In May, the tomatoes get moved out from under the basement lights and out into the garden.... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• On Weeds and Rebirth

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  4 Apr 2012 | 8:34 am

  I walked through the garden this morning. There is so much to be excited about: the lilacs are loaded with buds, the forsythias are in full, blazing bloom, and the mesclun and peas are coming up... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Week in Review, Midway through February

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  17 Feb 2012 | 9:06 am

  I’m going to try (try being the operative word here…) to do a regular Friday recap here on In the Garden Online. I’ll cover stuff I enjoyed reading, stuff I wrote, and whatever else... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• On Being Stubborn

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  13 Feb 2012 | 8:04 am

  I read a post this morning on my friend Gina’s blog, and I started writing her a monumentally-long comment. And I decided that rather than take over her comment section, it would probably be... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  Kiss my Aster!

• KMA does G2B12

  Kiss My Aster!

  11 May 2012 | 4:45 pm

  Last week I went to Little Rock for a little bloggerfest called Garden2Blog that P Allen Smith and his radical army put on. I flipping loved it. A scad of other bloggers went so if you want to read about what we saw and ate... read their blogs. I want to thank the sponsors that paid for our trips and stuff in my own special way. This is part one of 2.

• A Half-Assed Book Review and Full-Assed Giveaway

  Kiss My Aster!

  4 May 2012 | 7:44 pm

  A few weeks ago, I got a copy of Niki Jabbour's The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener in the mail. It's arrival pretty much coincided with the arrival of a REALLY early spring here in Chicago. So I've been so busy with work, that I've only paged through it. But man, it's like reading a menu with mascarpone stuffed French toast on it and not being able to order it.  Because when I flip through it... this book is hella sexxy. It's really step by step, meaty as hell and has tons of photos, most with cute-as-a-button Niki doing garden chores. I can't flipping wait to sit down and read the…

• Listen (doo dah doo) Do You Want to Know A Secret?

  Kiss My Aster!

  1 May 2012 | 10:46 am

  Doo dah doo Do you promise not to tell? Whoa oooh Closer... December 2012 release What do you think?

• New post at Fine Gardening

  Kiss My Aster!

  30 Apr 2012 | 10:45 pm

  Check it out. Here.

• For Sale: Vintage Sofa (And A Little Lagniappe)

  Kiss My Aster!

  25 Apr 2012 | 7:08 pm

  The facts: 1. We moved and were in need of a second sofa. 2. We don't have a lot of chowdah (money) 3. We like vintage stuff 4. Dan found a vintage pink sectional, in Gary Indiana, that had reportedly been in plastic since the 1950s. 5. Dan made plans with his ass-kickin', Tank Girl sister to go get the sofa in Gary, throw it in the back of her dump truck and deliver it to our house. Yeah, she has a dump truck. She's pretty bad ass. I did not go with them. I cannot vouch for anything that did or did not happen after the above bulleted list Hearsay: 1. The sofa did have its covering, but it…

• 

  Mr. McGregor's Daughter

• May '12 Bloom Day

  15 May 2012 | 8:34 pm

  Cornus alternifoliaHappy Bloom Day, everyone! I almost didn't get this post done on time. I had been so busy putting together the presentation for the talk I gave last night at the library about the... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Wordless Wednesday: Abstract in Blue

  9 May 2012 | 7:30 am

  [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• A Clematis Correction/Caveat

  6 May 2012 | 11:39 am

  Dear gardening friends and readers, I got a lovely email yesterday from Edith Malek the Clematis Queen informing me that Clematis 'Asao' isn't supposed to have chartreuse foliage and that... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Plant Shopping: Clematis 'Asao'

  4 May 2012 | 11:42 am

  On her way out the door to school, my daughter stopped by the dining table where I was still having breakfast. She pointed to a Clematis bloom in the vase and asked, "What's that flower, I... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Exciting News Flash!

  30 Apr 2012 | 5:14 pm

  Pardon the hyperbole, but it is mostly true. Something has happened, and I find it very exciting. Never mind that this has happened before, because it has never happened so spectacularly. Okay,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  My Skinny Garden

• Troy-Bilt Saturday 6, We're Back!

  13 May 2012 | 11:47 pm

  You know how I know I'm not a real journalist/salesman/marketing type person? Because I've been trying to think of the right way to write this post about how I'm partnering with Troy-Bilt again for the second year in a row and it's caused a war in my head. On one side there's the voice saying to just announce it. Be positive, sterile. Something like "I've teamed up with Troy-Bilt again! I'm so excited to be able to review their awesome products, give some away, write some articles for them because, hey! I love to write about gardening!"  On the other side there's what I really want…

• Highs and Lows of Life and Gardening

  28 Apr 2012 | 7:54 pm

  I read something the other day about how stupid it is to limit what you write about on your personal blog when your personal blog is in a niche, like say, gardening. I took this as a sign from the eGods that that I should just write. So many days go by that I have things to say but don't publish anything because the gardening angle isn't clear to me.  Don't get me wrong, I can always find one but sometimes it's exhausting. On the gardening front I have been plant sitting a flat of seedlings for a coworker. I'm freaking out about them because some of them are in serious need of thinning.

• Garden: Like a House of Cards, Part 2

  31 Mar 2012 | 8:38 pm

  Back in late December 2011 my husband and I started a program at the gym designed to lose weight. It included regular meetings with a dietitian and working out with a personal trainer three times per week. I remember the first meeting with the dietitian when she asked me what my motivation was for signing up for the program, I said that I couldn't find the motivation to lose the weight, to get healthy on my own so I  decided I'd pay somebody to try to motivate me. I thought she was going to reject me on the spot. Return my money and send me on my way.  "Without a high level of…

• One Seed Chicago: Voting Ends April 1st!

  30 Mar 2012 | 4:26 am

  Vote for your favorite herb seed here!  Voting ends April 1st. Candidates:        Chamomile        Basil        Cilantro I can't believe it's March 30th and I'm just now getting around to writing about one of my favorite annual gardening projects, One Seed Chicago. One Seed Chicago is a program hosted by NeighborSpace, Chicago's land trust for community gardens.  Mr Brown Thumb is the ambassador of the program. You may have seen him educating folks about the program at various gardening events around the city. Each year…

• Garden: Like a House of Cards, Part 1 of 5

  26 Mar 2012 | 8:13 am

  Where I go on an on about why I'm a gardening failure to the point that I need to break it into multiple posts. Where I write and write until the answer comes. Settle in. This could take a while. If you've read my blog very long you know that over the past few gardening seasons I've petered out.  Given up at the end.  Let things go to shit. Left ripe fruit hanging on the vine. And each year "the end", my end of my gardening season, just keeps getting closer and closer to the beginning.  My season shorter and shorter. My harvest less and less. My motivation shrinking. My shame…

• 

  Our Little Acre

• Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway: Handmade Garden Projects

  Kylee Baumle

  14 May 2012 | 10:46 pm

  Lorene Edwards Forkner I had the pleasure of meeting Lorene Edwards Forkner and visiting her garden in Seattle last summer, when I attended the Bloggers' Fling held there. The entire event was fabulous - my first visit to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest - and it was a treat to see so many wonderful gardens. If you've ever met Lorene, you know that she's a bundle of energy and you rarely ever see her without a smile on her face. Her gardens reflect that energy and her creativity shines in all the personal touches she put there. Many of those things I saw in her garden are illustrated in her…

• Guest Post - My Mom

  Kylee Baumle

  13 May 2012 | 9:30 am

  Christmas 2011 Many of you have gotten to know my mom through my blog a little bit and several of you have had the pleasure of meeting her in person. You know that she's a whirling dervish, with a passion for gardening and the energy of three people. That's why she has accomplished so much in her life. My dad has done his best to keep up with her, helping her implement many of her ideas, and the two of them will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on June 8th this year. On more than one occasion, Mom has talked about starting a blog. I know she'd have a lot to say. But she has never…

• Please Don't Make Me Eat Them

  Kylee Baumle

  12 May 2012 | 2:00 am

  I hate fresh tomatoes. Let’s let that sink in a little bit. For those of you who love them and live for the summer days when you can sink your teeth into those love apples – really now, love apples??? – it has been brought to my attention that I just might not be American, what with hating fresh tomatoes and everything. But I thought it was “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.” Check, check, check and my-first-car-was-a-Chevy-Nova check. 'Brandywine' tomatoes in my 2008 garden They’re red. I’ll give you that. Red is, after all, my favorite color. In fact, tomato red is…

• Garden2Blog 2012 with P. Allen Smith - Marlsgate Plantation

  Kylee Baumle

  11 May 2012 | 8:43 pm

  You may recall that I attended the first annual Garden2Blog event held in and near Little Rock, Arkansas, last year and hosted by P. Allen Smith. Allen is the creator of P. Allen Smith's Garden Home and P. Allen Smith's Garden to Table, both airing on PBS, as well as the author of several books, including his most recent, P. Allen Smith's Seasonal Recipes from the Garden. I was privileged to get to attend again this year, along with 23 other garden writers, on May 1st and 2nd. This is the first of several posts about that event. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our first stop on the…

• Wordless Wednesday: Coral Peony

  Kylee Baumle

  9 May 2012 | 10:39 am

• 

  Our Twenty Minute Kitchen Garden

• Volunteer at a Garlic Mustard Pull at Huron Hills Golf Course on Saturday, April 21

  20 Minute Jan

  19 Apr 2012 | 6:00 am

  Community members are invited to participate in a Garlic Mustard Pull at the Huron Hills Golf Course on Saturday, April 21 between 10 am and 1 pm. The event will take place across the street from 3115 Hunting Valley Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48104. Volunteers will be led by Eagle Scout Michael Saunders of Troop [...] Related posts: Hurry Up and Plant Some Garlic! Harvesting the Garlic Build your own Rain Barrel at a Project Grow Workshop this Saturday

• Advice to new gardeners: focus on cold weather crops until the danger of frost is past

  20 Minute Jan

  14 Apr 2012 | 10:33 am

  Dear Mark, Jay, and other new gardeners, Don’t allow yourself to be fooled. The unseasonably early spring may have you thinking that it’s time to “put in your whole garden.” The nurseries, garden centers, and outdoor departments of the big box stores are certainly brimming with seeds and seedlings of all kinds. Those indicators, however, [...] Related posts: Holy Frost Advisories, Batman! Frost Bites FROST!!!

• Spring ahead on next year’s garden design

  20 Minute Jan

  12 Apr 2012 | 5:00 am

  The weather conditions so far this spring have been very accommodating to blooming plants. Like me, you may have noticed that the redbud, crabapple, and other flowering trees have been stunning. The forsythia stands I passed positively glowed with blossoms. The daffodils and tulips on displays have also been delightful. I’m waiting anxiously to see [...] Related posts: The Scent of Spring 100 Year Old Lilac Rites of spring gardening like cleaning-up and shredding leaves

• Local clubs provide opportunities to make new gardening friends

  20 Minute Jan

  3 Apr 2012 | 5:00 am

  One of the unexpected benefits of participating in the Master Gardener course last year was that I have acquired some gardening friends. We met regularly over the course of the last summer to work on community projects together, repeatedly proving the adage that many hands make light work– or at least lighter work and more [...] Related posts: Local Heroes: Ann Arbor Project Grow Gardening Wings: on becoming a Master Gardener Upgrading your gardening skills in the off-season

• Reasons to garden: Hope

  20 Minute Jan

  31 Mar 2012 | 8:11 am

  Last summer, we planted a stick in our front yard– at least, it looked like a stick. More specifically, however, we planted a serviceberry “tree” in seedling form. We had to mark the site with gardening stakes to remind ourselves and others not to mow or trod on our delicate new plant. We wanted to [...] Related posts: Reasons to Garden: Finding Surprising Things Currant Bush: Symbol of Hope and Forgiveness 4 Reasons to Grow Horseradish

• 

  The Gardens of Petersonville

• An Orange Rose

  Sheila

  16 May 2012 | 9:08 am

  Orange is not exactly my favorite color in the garden, but I incorporate it for a few reasons. The house color in SJC is a "Tuscany Gold" and pastels and pinks do not look good near it so I have to go with roses and flowers that have more of a yellow undertone for aesthetic reasons (I do use pinks further out in the yard away from the house). Hybrid tea roses require more maintenance than I prefer to give, so most of my roses are of a less fussy nature. Then what is this orange (actually red and yellow) hybrid tea rose doing in my flower bed? Kind of a silly reason really. This one is called…

• What's Blooming in the Moonlight Garden?

  Sheila

  14 May 2012 | 10:31 am

  Spirea  Hellebore Ozothmnus (Rice Flower) Shasta Daisies and Heliotrope Lots of White Roses (this one is Bolero) Snowball Viburnum Margarette Daisies, Snapdragons, Pelargoniums and Iris Carpenteria Californica My Moonlight Garden in SJC is finally really coming into its own with lots of shrubs with white flowers getting to the size where they put on a nice show. It is not an easy area to photography because the beds are narrow and border a DG path that wraps around a large play lawn. It would probably be more impressive in large, wide beds where the abundance of white is compounded by…

• No Pressure

  Sheila

  10 May 2012 | 12:07 pm

  This is the first time in a couple years that I have not entertained garden tours of my SJC garden. For the past few years I have had at least one, sometimes up to four garden tours here. I really don't mind hosting them. Like throwing a party, it forces you to get busy and take care of all those plans that are easy to put off for another time. A deadline is a powerful tool for getting your act together. I also find gardeners are the most generous and understanding guests and are happy to pass out compliments. I was a docent at a garden last week on the Laguna Beach Garden Tour. It is truly…

• Elevation Changes

  Sheila

  9 May 2012 | 9:35 am

  I have always gardened in places that have some kind of elevation changes. Southern California is a very hilly place and many homes either are built on a hill, have hills within the property or backup to hillsides. I wouldn't have it any other way. Although hauling supplies up and down hillsides like in my Laguna garden can be a daunting task, it did keep me healthy for years without going to a gym. Our home in SJC is also built on a slight slope and was terraced long before we arrived. Walking into a garden area should be an amazing experience, but a dramatic change in elevation only…

• Welcome Back

  Sheila

  7 May 2012 | 2:52 pm

  I am so happy that my 'Lime Green' nicotiana (flowering tobacco) was reseeded and returned this year (although I thought it was a weed at first and almost pulled it out). I love my green flowers mixed in with my purples in the garden by the front door in SJC. I had coveted this reseeding annual for a while and now I am thrilled it has become a fixture in this garden bed - at least for this year.

• 

  The Blogging Nurseryman by Trey Pitsenberger

• Exciting times in gardening

  Trey Pitsenberger

  8 May 2012 | 12:25 am

  I have been remiss in cultivating this blog, and thank a long time reader for reminding me to do just that. We have been busy at the nursery with a spring not dominated by cold and rain, like last year. … Continue reading →

• Support your locally run garden businesses

  Trey Pitsenberger

  18 Apr 2012 | 10:12 am

  Having been in the garden center business for 30 years, I have seen all sorts of changes. A very powerful and positive change is the ability of gardening businesses to communicate with one another via The Internet. Sure, we communicated … Continue reading →

• Where the “new plant” action is

  Trey Pitsenberger

  11 Apr 2012 | 10:09 am

  According to the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA) the winner of the “Garden Idol 2012″ award is “The Scallywag Holly” from Monrovia Growers. The Garden Idol awards are are held at The ANLA annual clinic and are for what … Continue reading →

• Mastery, and staying small

  Trey Pitsenberger

  6 Apr 2012 | 10:36 am

  My friends in the horticultural businesses have two choices. One is to align yourselves with the increasingly boring world of mass merchants, plant trademark companies, and mega growers. The second option can seem lonely at first, but  in my opinion … Continue reading →

• “This is the most significant plant disease invasion into California in modern history”

  Trey Pitsenberger

  3 Apr 2012 | 10:00 am

  California’s citrus industry accounts for $2 billion in revenue. You would think a disease that threatens the industry would get more attention, yet this is the first I have heard about it. According to Yahoo news, “state bug detectives fanned … Continue reading →

• 

  North Coast Gardening Blog

• Gardening Article: Balcony Gardening

  North Coast Gardener

  16 May 2012 | 10:00 am

  Have you ever come across an idea and thought, "Where has this been all my life?" Having lived in various apartments for over ten years, my gardening has always been limited to a few sad rosemary and basil plants by the kitchen sink. When a friend mentioned vertical gardens, I was blown away. My tiny balcony suddenly can be more than bicycle storage. Below are the steps I followed to create my own vertical garden; however, there is a lot of room for creativity in this sort of project so you can use my instructions as guidelines.Getting StartedFirst, I gathered the basic materials. Many tools…

• More Spring Trimming in the Garden

  North Coast Gardener

  9 May 2012 | 10:00 am

  Spring trimming gets started as soon as the rains will allow here in my north coast garden. Not surprisingly, between the window blowing out during a storm, good old tiredness, and the usual winter rain deciding to descend on us in spring, there has been less going on in terms of trimming and the usual garden care this spring. When we finally did get out in the yard more in April we started trimming and cleaning up as much as possible.First I began with more heather trimming. There is another flowerbed that needs some heather trimming but I got the main flowerbed trimmed up of old heather…

• Let the Spring Garden Trimming Begin

  North Coast Gardener

  2 May 2012 | 10:00 am

  This last weekend was spent with trimming back the garden in mind. I am late trimming back the heathers that already bloomed this winter, usually I get to them a little sooner than this. What with too many hours at work, the recent storm that helped push our already weakened front window out of its frame onto the lawn and part of the back gate falling down during the same storm, we've had our hands full. There is more than enough to do on a regular basis in our garden and so I've put on my patience hat and decided I'll get done what I get done. The good thing about gardens is they generally…

• Gardening Article: Spruce Up Your Garden with a Decorative Penny Ball

  North Coast Gardener

  25 Apr 2012 | 11:39 am

  Unique decor pieces can make your garden picture perfect and welcoming to friends, so don’t settle for mundane when fixing up a garden. Decorate your outdoor room just as you would a room in your home – with personality and flare! Choose colors and fixtures that will compliment your outdoor furniture. Items to consider for your garden are candles, potted plants and even vintage fountains. If you are more of a do-it-yourself gardener, considering making your own decorative penny ball!A Garden Penny BallA penny ball will add the perfect touch of shine to your garden without overwhelming…

• Clematis Vines or Passionflowers Vines, Which to Choose?

  North Coast Gardener

  11 Apr 2012 | 10:00 am

  My plan since last summer is to redo the two large trellis boxes out in the front yard. My husband thinks we can do this fairly easily, I'm not as convinced since there are two pink jasmine vines and two passionflower vines in the boxes. For whatever reason none of them are growing well so my plan consists of pulling out the current non-producing vines, hopefully saving them to plant elsewhere, and planting some new vines in their place. You'd think as crazy huge as the passionflower vines on the front fence and the pink jasmine grow in our yards they would do well in the trellis boxes. My…

• 

  Garden Wise Guy

• Deck The Halls, Forget The Holly

  Garden Wise Guy

  9 May 2012 | 11:04 pm

  I'm really upset with my dearly departed mom. As much as I imagine myself an in-your-face, intolerant critic crusading for high horticultural standards, when it comes to face-to-face encounters, she raised a quietly considerate coward.The same goes for flaunting my horticultural paradise when I post stuff on-line. It would be so tempting to pose, tongue sticking out, next to retina-dazzling hibiscus flowers while my gardening pals in the Midwest chip booger icicles from their livestock's nostrils. But I don't want to be the cause of my buddies sliding into a wintery depression as they watch…

• Santa Barbara Zoo – From Jungle to Jewel

  Garden Wise Guy

  9 May 2012 | 11:01 pm

  "It was a Thursday afternoon, around 1959, when I volunteered to help Bob Kallman and the Jaycees clean the tangle of Eucalyptus, vines, and weeds at the Child Estate. The house had been razed by the fire department and the place was a mess." Ted McToldridge was filling me in on a bit of local history as we strolled the lushly planted paths commanding panoramic views of the Santa Ynez Mountains, Andree Clark Bird Refuge, and Pacific Ocean. "It was the kick-off event to develop a new park that would include a community center, ice skating rink, botanical garden, and farmyard."Long ago, this…

• The Flip Flops Are Hung By The Chimney With Care

  Garden Wise Guy

  9 May 2012 | 10:54 pm

  As the end of 2011 nears, I've been checking off all the significant dates on my calendar. I just survived National Undo the Top Button of Your Slacks For One More Bite of Turkey Day. But I sat out Black Wear A Football Helmet To Shop for Deals At Midnight Friday.On the heels of these revered holidays comes the ever-perplexing fortnight known at our house as Are We Gonna Get a Christmas Tree This Year? Let's face it, Santa Barbara isn't exactly the land of winter holiday icons. Segways are more practical than one horse open sleighs, LEDs take the place of icicles on our eaves, and there are…

• Motel Landscaping with a Santa Barbara Vibe

  Garden Wise Guy

  24 Feb 2012 | 11:42 pm

  Got guests visiting the Central Coast for the first time this holiday season? If they hail from the land of the ice and snow, are you hoping for 80-degree days just so you can get your smirk on? I can only imagine what it's like for visitors who just spent their upstate Michigan morning flame-throwing through the glacier blocking their driveway, and a few hours later, being greeted by sky-scraping palm trees, luxuriant birds of paradise, and exotic succulents dotting the landscape.Santa Barbara is a tourist-oriented town, and as you'd expect, lots of hotels and inns cultivate that Santa…

• Trinity Gardens – Open Hearts & Dirty Fingernails

  Garden Wise Guy

  24 Feb 2012 | 11:39 pm

  Something wonderful happens when people who care about other people meet in a garden. In this case, a handful of Trinity Lutheran Church members are plowing forward with their vision to grow food for the needy, teach kids about healthy eating, and provide a space where locals learn to cultivate hand-grown food.Earlier this week, I was standing at the south end of the church's parking lot at 909 North La Cumbre Road, getting the grand tour from Judy Sims -- a legend in Santa Barbara's school gardening movement -- and Linda Vogel, two of the dynamos behind Trinity Gardens.According to their map…

• 

  Skippy's Vegetable Garden

• seedlings

  kathy

  11 May 2012 | 9:46 pm

  These are photos of my seedlings growing this past week. They have been inside til today when I moved them out to my cold frame. I hope the weather will be warm enough to plant them soon.

• Skippy

  kathy

  11 May 2012 | 2:52 pm

  another garden animal .... Looks like I need to start doing some weed whacking on those paths.

• robin nest

  kathy

  11 May 2012 | 10:43 am

  Today I realized there are 4 chicks in the robin nest outside my window. They are growing very fast. I will live stream video until they fledge: http://www.livestream.com/robininthegarden

• photos of my plot

  kathy

  6 May 2012 | 8:44 pm

  This weekend, I planted bunch of seedlings. Broccoli, parsnips, carrots, beets, bok choy, radicchio, and onions. I see that several plants from last year reseeded: bachelor buttons, borage and dill. I also planted a bed of potatoes and expanded my asparagus bed.

• new arbor

  kathy

  6 May 2012 | 8:43 pm

  I have a new addition to my community plot. My husband made me an arbor. We found a couple of trellises on sale at a local garden shop. He made a cross pieces for the top. I am looking forward to planting squash or cucumbers up and over this.

• 

  A Garden Journal Diary of Ilona's Garden

• Gardening and the Younger Generation

  Ilona

  12 May 2012 | 10:41 am

   I was going to put up a post full of pictures of my trip to Dawes Arboretum and tell you news about what is going on there.... but I didn't get to it yet. I gardened. I lived my Real Life. But then Trey tweeted something about Doug Green's blogpost today, and I read that post and it inspired an old fashioned blog effort at conversation. Who knew things like that were still possible? Half kidding. To catch you up before I start telling you what I've noticed about the trouble with lighting garden passion fires under the next generation, here are the links. @pitsenberger tweeted "Doug…

• An Ohio View of Spring

  Ilona

  11 Apr 2012 | 11:26 am

  I have been gardening, but had a little motivation to take some photos between digging and weeding marathons. Here are some of the pictures from this past month's flowers. Everything was very early and now have frost damage, but it was absolutely gorgeous while it lasted. Not as pretty as last year These are the Renown tulips, which in the early heat put out lots of fat green leaves, but not as many blooms. Small sample of the daffodils The daffodils, however, were a different story. I had loads of daffodils, except for a few places where they need division. that is what I love about…

• More Than Pretty

  Ilona

  16 Mar 2012 | 9:01 am

   It's true, and that was something I wrote about in these garden thoughts. But pretty can make some of life's all too real tragedy bearable. It is that fine balance, really, that the making of art revolves around. There is a time for photo documentary and there is a time for photoshop... to put it in familiar terms. One thing that often bothered me about the art world was the restrictive elitism of all that angst which was supposed to mean you were a "real artist"; and one thing that I loved, conversely, about gardening was the way a garden was an expression of whatever you feel is…

• Inspiring English Garden Advice

  Ilona

  14 Mar 2012 | 10:26 pm

  I enjoyed watching this video and listening to the ideas on garden color and some of the garden flowers that a talented designer uses and combines. Although we can't use all of them here in the Midwest, we are able to use some, and the ideas on color and garden methods are quite useful. Hope you like the video as well. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © 2012 written for Ilona's Garden Journal. An excellent blog.

• Garden Thoughts on a Garden Voice

  Ilona

  8 Mar 2012 | 4:20 am

  "The chief vice of gardens is to be merely pretty." -Fletcher Steel I came across that quote when reading grounded design, the blog of a landscape architect, on "Why We Plant"...and it got me thinking. It is an idea that can be extended to many an artistic endeavor. I think that people who are in the business of beauty most find themselves bored by the merely pretty and taken with a presentation of something with the ability to portray and catch more of human emotion. If you watch "Top Model", this idea pops up quite a bit: just a pretty face is considered a liability in a sea of pretty…

• 

  Gardening Tips ‘n Ideas

• Hanging Gardens for Apartments

  Stuart

  13 May 2012 | 6:00 pm

  For those spacially-challenged gardeners who find living in their apartment borders on claustrophobic tendencies this may be the answer. Gizmodo have just posted How to Grow Your Own Little Hanging Garden Of Babylon using merely the window opening. Gardening For Apartments With No Balconies The idea allows gardeners to hoist their plants outside into the sunshine for maximum growth but easily reels back in so that the gardener can engage with the plants again. The three planters can be accessed to provide nutrients, allow the gardener to perform some pruning tasks and even pick produce if…

• Garden Crime is Growing

  Stuart

  9 May 2012 | 5:51 pm

  Remember the days when you could leave your front door unlocked as you whizzed down to the corner store? Or, the car could be left unattended with the engine idling and the windows down? Keep Your Garden Under Lock and Key I’m a little too young to remember those days myself, but folklore has been handed down to me by my forefathers of a bygone era. And it seems that leaving your tools where you need them may not be as safe anymore. According to this report thieves broke into an allotment shed and stole a lawnmower, rotovator and pump while in another police are advising gardeners to…

• Pallet Recycling In Your Garden

  Stuart

  6 May 2012 | 5:54 pm

  In this day and age recycling anything that moves has become popular. However, while recycling is a good thing it pales in comparison to re-using because it usually involves more effort to recycle and further costs. So, here are some ideas for pallet recycling without having to pull your pallets apart. Pallet Recycling In Your Garden Will Move a Heap of These Ideas for Pallet Recycling Pathways When gardeners design their paths and pathways they usually do so thinking of the most trendiest material to construct them from. Little thought is given as to where that material was sourced –…

• 10 Unique Mothers Day Gifts

  Stuart

  30 Apr 2012 | 6:02 pm

  Finding unique mothers day gifts shouldn’t be too hard considering your mother is very unique – she’s one of a kind in fact. Rather than inundate her with the tired and tested hum-drum presents; chocolates, flowers, slippers or a voucher to her favourite store maybe it’s time to think outside the box. First, you need to recognise what is actually unique about your mother: what are her interests? How does she spend her time? Has she been hinting of gift ideas in your conversations? Finding Unique Mothers Day Gifts Is Worth The Effort 10 Very Unique Mothers Day Gifts If…

• Ever Wondered What It Takes To Be A Garden Judge

  Stuart

  25 Apr 2012 | 5:42 pm

  To judge a garden, and enjoy it at the same time, is certainly an art. Controlling your mind so that it can analyse certain elements and structure over allowing the senses to revel in a landscape takes a certain amount of discipline and self control – surely. Photo Credit: bfick via Compfight And to remain impartial – because let’s face it, not every garden is “our” cup of tea. So, it must take a special person who can engage both sides of their brain to be a garden judge. Someone who can walk through any garden and remain analytical but allow every breath to…

• 

  Gardener to Farmer

• P Allen Smith and Garden2Blog II

  Jean Ann Van Krevelen

  11 May 2012 | 6:12 pm

  This is the second year that I've been invited to attend P Allen Smith's Garden2Blog event. I kinda doubt I will be invited again. Let's just say that I was a little out of control. I ran amok, if you will...I was on hottie overload. Here's what it resulted in: Tag teaming with Amanda Thomsen to catch a live chicken Taken by one of my fellow G2B'ers Getting in to Allen's copper bathtub (while clothed) and having him pretend to bathe me Telling a camera crew that Allen should consider making his home into a Dollywood style theme park Being a part of a team that created a beautiful container…

• The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener and Proven Winners Plants Contest

  Jean Ann Van Krevelen

  4 May 2012 | 9:02 am

  My friend and collegue, Niki Jabbour, has written an outstanding book called The Year Round Vegetable Gardener. Storey (the publisher) contracted me to do PR for the book, so I have had several months to peruse its beautiful pages. It is probably one of the most useful gardening books I've read in a while. And when I say useful, I mean pick-it-up-anytime-I-have-a-question useful. The cool thing about this contest is that Proven Winners is kicking in a box of their 2013 plants. Yep, 2013...stuff that no one else has yet. Personally, I think it would be great to gloat about that to all of your…

• The Top 5 Hottest New Plants for 2012

  Jean Ann Van Krevelen

  10 Apr 2012 | 3:47 pm

  Recently, Proven Winners sponsored me on a trip to see their trial gardens. I've been writing about it on the Proven Winners' blog (where I am the National Garden Guru). While I was there, I saw the most gorgeous new introductions for 2012. And rather than ramble on with words (as I usually do) I am going to show you with photos: 1) ColorblazeKeystone Kopper: Alright, I have to start by admitting that this first one won't actually be out until 2013. But I am so in love with it that I can't wait to tell you about it! This gorgeous coleus can grow in sun or shade...and even as a houseplant. The…

• Carrot Seedlings: A Tiny Sign of Spring

  Jean Ann Van Krevelen

  14 Mar 2012 | 11:57 am

  About a month ago, I started to notice signs of life amongst the brown and decayed leaves of last fall. And one of the first things I saw was this tiny, tiny carrot seedling that had taken root in a succulent container on my patio. This tiny ferny thing, poking its head above the rim of a blue ceramic pot that had taken up residence on my patio last summer.             Volunteer Carrot in Succulents I don't know why I felt so hopeful seeing this volunteer carrot, but I did. I don't actually know how I came to notice it. I am nearly 6 feet tall and the container maybe 8 inches…

• Have I Mentioned I Love Beets? My New Beet Tattoo!

  Jean Ann Van Krevelen

  11 Feb 2012 | 9:19 am

  My love affair with beets is well documented. One of my first posts to this blog (waaaay back in 2008) was "A Beet by Any Other Name Would Taste as Sweet". In 2009, I followed up with "Planting Beets, Lettuce and Organic Fertilzer" (retrospectively, that's a strange title). And in that same year, wrote a book (Growing Food: A Guide for Beginners) with a chapter devoted to beets (you can now buy just the beet chapter in digital format on Amazon). And don't even get me started on the recipes I've posted that involve beets... But nothing displays my commitment to beets more than my new tattoo: I…

• 

  Flowergardengirl™

• Shocking blue hydrangea with Nantucket Blue

  flowergardengirl

  15 May 2012 | 11:09 pm

  Meet the shocking blue hydrangea called Nantucket Blue. New petals look lemony yellow and then mature to this deep blue which is shockingly gorgeous. It’s ok with me if you drool and gawk at these photos. There are also shades of lavender on the same plant. Loving the lemon lime new buds. This hydrangea will bloom till frost cause it blooms on new wood. I used Espoma Holly Tone in the spring and will apply again two more times before frost. I live in zone 7 North Carolina and these grow in morning sun and afternoon shade. And so cool it has some lavender blooms—which may be the…

• Book Giveaway, In the Garden with Billy by Renea Winchester

  flowergardengirl

  5 May 2012 | 11:39 am

  In the Garden with Billy: Lessons about Life, Love, and Tomatoes by Renea Winchester is a true story and one that I enjoy sharing with my online friends. I’m giving away this book for the 3rd time. The message is a sweet one and shows the true heart of a gardener. Renea opened up her heart and reached out to Billy, the older gentleman farmer, who loves farming, Fords, and fried bologna sandwiches. Billy and Renea became friends and garden buddies. Billy is as independent as they come for his 80+ years but Renea has enriched his life by lending a helping hand with planting and…

• Haint Blue Porch Ceiling at Freeman Pottery with Flea Market Style Gardening

  flowergardengirl

  4 May 2012 | 7:53 pm

  Judy Freeman Foushee went to college to take a painting class and ended up in a pottery class. Judy works the clay in a family farmhouse that goes back 5 generations. You first notice the haint blue porch ceiling at Freeman Pottery. Judy says it’s been that color since as far back as she can remember. Judy is the first person in her family to choose being a potter as the other 4 generations chose farming. The farmhouse with it’s one main chimney serving 3 fireplaces is just one of the charming features she tells me about. The 1800′s 4 porch structure is framed by its 12/12…

• A View From Raffaldini Vineyards in North Carolina

  flowergardengirl

  30 Apr 2012 | 11:16 am

  Even on this cold blustery day in April, you can still see the beauty in the view from Raffaldini Vineyards in North Carolina. On any other day, the view would be clear for at least 50 miles. Our seasons seemed t have been reversed. Winter was warm and spring is cool which the roses love.  The driveway is lined with millions of yellow rose blooms and here you can see the purple irises making their splash. Grapes grow just as they would on the hillsides of Italy. You can see that the Yadkin River Valley consists of rolling hills and larger mountains in the background. This valley is in the…

• Menopause Gardening is not for wimps

  flowergardengirl

  17 Apr 2012 | 11:34 pm

  Not a subject many women want to talk about so of course I approach it freely. Menopause gardening is not for wimps. If you are already on fire, going out to sweat most assuredly is a less than pleasant thought. Women who experience hot flashes, emotional chaos, bouts of fits, and frequent jaunts of nakedness…are challenged by hot weather and bugs. The other day I was cooking on the stove when it occurred to me that my grand dog might like a treat. Soon as I turned around to get one…I forgot what I was doing. When I turned back around to the stove, I forgot what I was cooking, and…

• 

  Plants & Bulbs

• Nothoscordum gracile - Growers, Be Warned!

  29 Apr 2012 | 10:26 am

  Nothoscordum gracile is reviled and persecuted by gardeners around the world. What is the truth about this attractive plant, and should we be growing it?

• Autumn Olive: an Invasive Species, but not Devoid of Virtue

  18 Apr 2012 | 12:53 pm

  Over the years, the autumn olive as been praised and vilified. The truth about this East Asian import probably lies somewhere between both extremes.

• Edible Plants - Greenbriar

  4 Apr 2012 | 2:49 pm

  Greenbriar is a thorny, viney, hard-to-kill plant that plagues many homesteaders and woodsmen. However, the foe can be turned into a friend.

• Scilla peruviana - A Grower`s Guide

  24 Mar 2012 | 4:33 am

  In spite of its exceedingly misleading name, this lovely bulbous plant comes from Spain and Portugal and makes a wonderful subject for a sunny location.

• The Spicebush: Native American Shrub for All Seasons

  23 Mar 2012 | 6:05 pm

  The hardy spicebush can't be beat for early spring pizzazz in the understory woodlands of eastern North America.

• 

  Bananas.org

• Registered Finally - from 613 Ottawa

  fifty5ive

  16 May 2012 | 1:24 pm

  Hello, I've been lurking for a while now and thought I should finally take the plunge. I am from Ottawa Ontario and have too many hobbies it seems. I live in a downtown apartment and have been growing many varieties of fruit trees and plants using my large west facing floor to ceiling windows and "urban garden"/balcony space. Currently (2012) on roster: 3 Baobab trees (seed) 2 Apricot trees (seed) 1 Avocado Tree (seed) 4 Lemon Trees - Mayer (seed and 1 trans bearing fruit) 1 Pineapple (yes, from a grocery store bought fruit) 2 Dwarf Cavendish Musa (my pride) There are also many other plants…

• How about banana fruit ripening time?

  banana-monkey-banana

  16 May 2012 | 9:56 am

  Hi, I am struggling for days on the web trying to find what kind of banana plant fruits ripen in a variety of hardiness zones such as zone 7B, 8A, 8B, 9A etc. and most important - WHEN do the fruits ripen? Aren't bananas mostly about their fruit (some decorative)? But no info WHEN the fruits ripen? For example: MUSA DWARF NAMWAH - I find info that these are zone 8-11 plants, then another website lists them as zone 9-11 plants...hmmm, but no info whatsoever when the fruits ripen in each half-zone? Does anyone know when Musah Dwarf Namwah fruits ripen approximately in zone 8A and 8B? Is it in…

• Mystery Banana In Oz

  NSW Bananas

  16 May 2012 | 7:56 am

  Please help Identify These Please :waving::bananas_b

• Ice cream and Manzano Banana difference?

  RandyGHO

  16 May 2012 | 7:51 am

  As I watch my Ice cream and Manzano banana plants grow now nearly two months old, they look identical at least to this untrained eye. Are there differences in the plants that I should be able to see? I have done image searches but it is difficult to tell the difference. Manazano Ice Cream

• Totaly Uknown Edible

  NSW Bananas

  15 May 2012 | 10:53 pm

  Hi Please help me identify this banana plant it is an edible it grows to about 5 meters high or 15 foot plus pics below. Thanks in advance. :2738::waving:

• 

  WordPress.com News

• Stay In The Conversation

  Beau Lebens

  15 May 2012 | 6:01 pm

  It’s now much easier for you and your commenters to keep track of the conversations you’re involved in across WordPress.com. Some recent tests have shown that by subscribing commenters to new comments by default, they are more likely to stay engaged and come back and comment more on your blog. With that knowledge, we’ve changed the default comment following behavior to help you get more conversations going on your blog. We made the initial changes last week and after great feedback from you we just launched an update. Here’s how it works: By default, posting a comment…

• Look at These Gorgeous Blogs

  Sheri

  15 May 2012 | 1:05 pm

  We’ve added a user showcase where you can view stunning customizations made by people just like you. From complete redesigns with CSS to adding pizzazz with Custom Fonts to clever use of options like background and header, this showcase will spark your imagination and inspire creativity. Discover details about what each showcase blog is doing with WordPress.com themes and customizations by clicking a thumbnail to see a colophon-style list of credits on the left. We’ve also updated footer links so blog owners can show off the types of customizations they’ve made and visitors can…

• Photo Blogging 101, Part 1

  Erica V.

  14 May 2012 | 10:00 am

  Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right over here. Getting started Photo blogs, sometimes called phlogs, use pictures instead of words. While many photo bloggers choose a type of photo that they want to focus on, such as portraits, others use their photo blog to document their life’s events. Photo blogs come in a variety of styles, including…

• New Themes: Just Desserts and Oxygen

  Michelle Langston

  10 May 2012 | 8:11 am

  Happy Thursday! We’ve added some exciting new themes to our ever-growing collection, and we’re happy to tell you all about them. First out of the oven is…Just Desserts. Yep, that’s a theme! Designed by Andy Rutledge, Just Desserts is a deliciously stylish premium theme that’s perfect for blogs centered on food. With its responsive, single-column layout and unique presentation of images and posts on the front page, Just Desserts gives you a delectable canvas on which your mouthwatering photos and text can really shine — even when viewed on smaller mobile devices…

• Find Friends Who Use WordPress

  Nick Momrik

  1 May 2012 | 2:32 pm

  Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites! After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — none of this account information is saved!) you’ll see a list of people you know who have WordPress sites. Click Follow and each time your friend publishes a new post it will show up in your Reader under Blogs I Follow. If you have multiple blogs, make sure to set the…

• 

  Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel

• Purple Milkweed Blooms Create a Buzz

  14 May 2012 | 8:10 am

  Purple milkweed (asclepias purpurascens) attracts bees and other pollinators. A Monarch Butterfly host plant. May 2012 The first milkweed to bloom in my garden is ascelpias purpurascens, a native wildflower. Blooming and returning reliably this purple milkweed was purchased and planted four years ago. To date, there are only two seedlings that have volunteered nearby. Unlike common milkweed (ascelpias syriaca), this one isn't an agressive self-sowing perennial and I'd actually like to see more of this asclepias variety. Being deer and rabbit resistant, the only issue I've had has…

• Frilly Bloomers

  10 May 2012 | 7:42 pm

  Peony poppy Frilly blossoms weren't intentional, but reading the May Dreams: Finished with the Frilly Flower Phase post prompted me to take a look around my own garden. Yes, there are some fru-fru flowers tucked here and there that are blooming right now. I don't grow peonies, but I grow peony poppies and that was my criteria when selecting this poppy. The full flowers fit the frilly flower formula. Peony poppies self-sow if you allow the seeds to ripen. Just shake the pods around and wait until next year.  I'm still hoping my pale pink and nearly black (purple) ones will…

• Cottage Garden Goes to the Gold

  6 May 2012 | 5:17 pm

  Coreopsis is surrounded by ground covers withnear-twin blooms of light purple verbena 'Imagination' and heliotropium amplexicaule. Shades of pink, purple and blue have dominated my cottage garden over the years. I shook things up a bit this year with addition of bold gold in the form of a native wildflower, coreopsis. Yet, I'm not quite sure of the circumstances. The seed packet (I took a photo) said "coreopsis palmata" (prairie coreopsis), but the flowers look like coreopsis lanceolota to me. What do you think? Sown from seeds last year, the success rate has been almost…

• Cinco de Mayo: Aztec Chocolate Chile Cookies

  4 May 2012 | 9:02 pm

  Sweet, spicy and chocolate—Aztec Chocolate Chile Cookies are perfect for Cinco de Mayo. I learned to make these cookies during the winter and served them with chocolate chile espresso pot de creme. My husband and I decided that these are among the best cookies in the world! In other words, these cookies will disappear rather quickly. The recipe that I used came from the blog, Savour Fare. I altered the recipe by using powdered ancho chile instead of chipotle. My photos were taken with an iPhone and therefore don't really show the darker color of the chocolate cookies as the photos on the…

• Sages Spring in the Garden

  26 Apr 2012 | 8:38 am

  A mix of salvia greggii and salvia nemorosa  in the cottage garden, viewed across the blooms, but there are many companions surrounding these sages. I'm not a collector of plants, but one look across my garden in spring, a visitor might think that I have a sage in every color. My favorite variety is salvia greggii and there are many reasons why I love this plant. When I began my research into deer resistant plants, salvia topped the list. The first salvia greggii planted in my garden is the beautiful 'Navajo Bright Red' (difficult to find). A grouping of five is still flourishing and…

• 

  North Coast Gardening

• Giveaway! The Triolife Triangular Planter (Kitty Not Included)

  Genevieve

  16 May 2012 | 2:30 am

  ***Giveaway! Comment below to win a Triolife planter from Eartheasy.*** I’ll admit it: I’m bad with containers. I love planting them, placing them and admiring them. What I’m not so great at is watering them. So when Eartheasy offered to send me one of these stylish triangular Triolife planters to test out, I wasn’t feeling too confident that I’d be able to create an effect worthy of its awesomeness. I mean, look at the thing – it’s all modern and fresh and thrilling-looking. But when I looked further at the design, it’s actually got an open…

• P. Allen Smith’s Garden2Blog Event: Sunshine, Southern Punch and Plant Geekery

  Genevieve

  11 May 2012 | 11:00 am

  I’m a humble landscaper in a small college town, so when I got the email inviting me on an all-expenses-paid trip to Little Rock, Arkansas to meet P. Allen Smith and hang with some garden writer peeps at the 2012 Garden2Blog event, I was thrilled to say the least. I’ve never been anywhere besides the West coast, and getting to meet Allen, who’s a big celebrity in the gardening world, sounded amazing. Where do I even begin to share with you all I saw? Allen’s two properties have amazing gardens, and they are so totally different from anything I do for myself or for…

• The Sunset Edible Garden Cookbook

  Genevieve

  9 May 2012 | 4:11 pm

  A month ago when I visited San Francisco, Sunset Publishing invited me (and a number of other garden writers) over to breakfast. Never one to turn down either free food or a garden tour, I accepted with glee, and ate as much of their fresh, delicious food as I could fit in. (The plate shown at top, I hasten to add, was not my own. Mine contained a heaping slice of zucchini chocolate walnut cake with rum sauce which dwarfed all of the non-cake items on my plate. Hey, it had zucchini and walnuts in it! And rum! All healthy breakfast foods in my book.) While my caffeine hadn’t yet sunk in…

• New 2013 Proven Winners Varieties

  Genevieve

  9 May 2012 | 12:29 pm

  One of the things I love best about being a garden writer, besides all of the gardening and the writing, is the loot. Getting to try free plants before they’re even out in the nurseries? Yes please! My idea of heaven. So last week, when my box full of 2013 Proven Winners plants arrived, I was all excited to dig in and start planting. (A tip to my fellow garden writers: if you haven’t yet started making hanging moss baskets, the Proven Winners loot box is a great reason to start!) While I’m not usually a fan of the warmer colors, one of my favorites in the box was their new…

• Gen X and Y Gardeners – Can We Quit Worrying About This, Please?

  Genevieve

  7 May 2012 | 10:08 pm

  Every year or two, some horticultural marketing team gets a buzzing insect in its collective shorts about Gen X and Y and how we aren’t gardening enough. The subtext is that gardening is a boomer activity and that at some scary date in the future, we will be left with no gardeners at all because all my generation likes to do is play video games and text with people who are sitting in the same room. While the world has certainly changed, it hasn’t changed so much that gardening isn’t still an attractive activity. In fact, my generation’s reliance on technology has given…

• 

  High Altitude Gardening

• Wordless Wednesday ~ The Wildflower Ride

  9 May 2012 | 10:23 pm

  *It's not this summery in Utah. Not yet, anyway. :) These pics taken at Acacia Riding Adventures, in San Acacia, New Mexico.For more Wordless Wednesday participants click here!Follow @Kate_HAGardens

• Search and Rescue

  3 May 2012 | 10:16 am

  I don't do windows. Obviously! But, looking at this picture has prompted me to find someone who does.Enough about my lousy housekeeping ~ meet my $5 bargain. Do you recognize what's taking over my sunny window? It's a Clematis. I've got 8 of them growing in my living room and may I just say? It's a jungle in here!I was picking up supplies, over at Walmart a couple months ago, when I spotted a rack of little green bags. Nearly dead Clematis roots inside. One enterprising little plant had wiggled her way through a hole in the green bag and was sprouting. So, naturally, I had to rescue her. And,…

• Wordless Wednesdays: A May Day Walk in the Garden

  1 May 2012 | 9:35 pm

  Heirloom DaffodilsSoon to be Lilac BlossomFlowering Plum TreeOne extra early Tulip ~ jumpin' the gun.Don't forget to pet the pony!For more Wordless Wednesday participants click here!Follow @Kate_HAGardens

• 10 Hard Working Perennials for Mountain Gardens

  29 Apr 2012 | 12:54 pm

  Primrose is a very early bloomer, loving cold temperatures.Bright sunshine inspired a whole lotta work in the gardens yesterday ~ in spite of the fact that it was blustery and cold... Sitting here, this morning, tired, and sore, happy as all get out. Having dedicated an entire day to playing in the mud.What's your favorite time in the garden? Mine is right now. When tiny green shoots are poking up all over the place, promising pretty things to come.Sad to say, it's too early to plant. And, of course, that makes me itchy. Trying desperately to avoid the local nurseries, tempting me with new…

• A Brief Interruption

  28 Apr 2012 | 8:46 am

  After a deep, drenching, rain I woke to a temporary drift of snow. And, while these stops and starts to the garden season can be annoying, I'm not terribly unhappy about it.  Glory of the Snow (early spring blooming, naturalizing bulb)This high up in the mountains, things are different. When it's raining on your garden, it's often snowing on mine.I don't mind and neither do my flower bulbs. To me, snow is just a happier form of much-needed moisture.People run when it's raining. They slow down when it snows. They linger, perhaps even to the point of admiring the artistic beauty of a…

• 

  Ewa in the Garden

• 10 Beautiful Ideas for Herb Garden

  2 May 2012 | 1:06 pm

  Shall I say that herb garden is a must in any garden whether it’s a modern villa or urban balcony. You benefit from your own herb garden more than just pleasing eyes with the beauty, but you nourish your body with herbs that are: fresh - opposite to dried, organic  - opposite to treated with pesticides and fertilized artificially, cheap - grown by yourself and in constant supply.

• 12 most inspiring fruit trees espaliers

  24 Feb 2012 | 2:34 pm

  While changing your lanscape into edible garden think about formed fruit trees that are hand formed and shaped to fit even small gardens. Have a look at these 14 inspiring  photos hand pick by myself. Let me know if you enjoy it...   Photo by Sillydog Photo by Dr Bjorn Photo by Steeljam Photo by Susan Reimer   Photo by JylCat Photo by Damian Dude Photo by

• Vegetable market images - Stockholm

  15 Feb 2012 | 2:34 pm

  Vegetable market images taken in Stockholm at night - beautiful, colorful view while gray, black, dark around. Open to the chaos of darkness within to invoke the mistery of life to begin....

• Low maintenance succulent vertical garden

  8 Feb 2012 | 3:59 pm

  For those seeking illusive no maintenance garden, low maintenance is the solution. While seeking ideas for current project I am working on, which is designing green in the office, I found those adorable photos. Idea of vertical garden is great, but doing it yourself needs additional skills for installing all those watering and fertilizing pipes etc. Non thorn succulents are beautiful and safe,

• Green design solutions - moss carpets

  2 Feb 2012 | 6:23 am

  Living green design solutions are fresh and inspiring. More and more architects and designers show their extraordinary imagination in designing green interiors. I love especially the below one, designed by Makoto Azuma, Japan-based flower artist, who has created a moss carpet system that can flow through your home in any design you wish, creating a living, breathing textile The carpet is

• 

  The Manic Gardener

• A Farmer’s Story – podcast #33

  The Manic Gardener

  7 May 2012 | 3:57 pm

  Overview source: http://atinadiffley.com/bio/ This is a conversation with Atina Diffley about the loss of one organic farm to development and the fight to protect its replacement from an oil pipeline. She talks about the ecological damage and spiritual wounds she, her children, their father, and his family farm suffered when The Gardens of Eagen went piecemeal under the bulldozer. Then she describes how she took on the Koch brothers and won. Her memoir Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works came out this spring. The back story I owe this interview to one of my oldest friends, who works…

• The (Nearly) Weed-Free Garden – Podcast #30

  The Manic Gardener

  15 Apr 2012 | 6:27 pm

  Here’s a picture of Lee Reich’s garden: from leereich.com Either he knows a lot about gardening, or he’s a whiz at Photoshop. I’m betting on the first, which is why I interviewed him for this week’s podcast, The Weed-Free Garden. Lee has a four-part system for beating the weeds:    – Don’t disturb the soil. (prevents buried weed seeds from surfacing and germinating.)    – Set up permanent beds and paths. (so you won’t have to till to aerate the soil.)    – Keep the soil covered at all times. (so weeds can’t get established.)   …

• More Space Than You Thought – Podcast 29

  The Manic Gardener

  9 Apr 2012 | 3:37 pm

  Fern Richardson grows “tons of herbs,” “tons of succulents,” lots of vegetables, and at least six trees—on a balcony. I’m not quite sure of the tree count, because after I counted to six, I’m afraid my hearing did the auditory equivalent of glazing over—I just wasn’t entirely functional for a moment there. When she was listing them—the kumquat, the apricot, the fig, the two apple trees—I squawked “TWO?” so loudly that I had to lower the volume of that one word in the recording, to preserve my listeners’ hearing. There are two, Fern quite reasonably replied, because…

• Be kind to your knees. And don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

  The Manic Gardener

  29 Mar 2012 | 1:25 am

  Be kind to your knees. And don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It has been a wild and wooly week in the world of research here at the Manic. Since I’m researching for my WWII book as well as my podcasts, I go careening from nitrous oxide emissions from manure to a history of blood transfusions. (Did you know that the first successful transfusions to humans occurred in 1667 and involved blood from sheep? Neither did I.) Of course, since my only source for that fact is a single internet document, I shouldn’t call it a fact at all. Yet. I used to give freshmen students an…

• Polyculture all the Way – Podcast 27

  The Manic Gardener

  26 Mar 2012 | 1:06 pm

  The old kitchen garden, with its neat, straight rows of vegetables, has faced any number of challenges in recent years—raised beds, intensive gardening, square foot gardening, succession planting—all turn their backs on the conventional layout of neat rows of carrots, peas, or potatoes. Enter polyculture, which turns its back not only on rows, but on the whole idea of a vegetable garden at all. Not that you shouldn’t grow vegetables, but in a polyculture, they’ll be mixed up together, and there may well be herbs and flowers in the mix as well. David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth…

• 

  Your Small Kitchen Garden

• Small Kitchen Garden Bloom Day—May 2012

  Daniel Gasteiger

  16 May 2012 | 2:23 am

  The forget-me-nots are getting old, and the light was weird today. All told, my photo makes them look pale. But pale or deep baby blue, forget-me-nots are among my favorite flowers. This is about the twelfth season we’ve had forget-me-nots from when I first planted seeds. Garden Bloggers Bloom Day celebrates flowers the world over. Learn more about Bloom Day at Carol’s blog: May Dreams Gardens. My small kitchen garden is still getting started (though peas may be in bloom within ten days), and there was quite a bit of rain today. So, I toured my yard and found several plants in bloom that…

• Kitchen Gardener; Photographer

  Daniel Gasteiger

  11 May 2012 | 1:30 pm

  An unremarkable country road became remarkable in the light of the post-thunderstorm sun. With such incredible lighting, I want to be in the mountains or a forest meadow or a seaside village. Capturing the photo of a lifetime may be more about planning than any other factor. I got hooked on photography about when I realized that I love to write. The obsession makes it impossible for me to work in my small kitchen garden without a camera at the ready. In fact, leaving the house always involves a mental argument about whether to leave the camera home. It ends with the observation: If the camera…

• The Kitchen Gardener Plants Potatoes Weirdly

  Daniel Gasteiger

  25 Apr 2012 | 12:29 am

  Food grade barrels probably held vinegar, syrup, ketchup, or some other components that went into canned foods at a nearby packaging plant. The plastic should be inert and durable and the barrels will find many uses in my small kitchen garden. At least two 60 gallon containers will become rain barrels, and many of the others will become planters. I may simply cut the tops out of three or four and use them to carry manure in the minivan. My mom’s vegetable garden would have made my small kitchen garden look pretty lame. Her garden was so large that the neighbor stopped by each spring to plow…

• April 2012 Post Produce: Cilantro!

  Daniel Gasteiger

  22 Apr 2012 | 3:43 am

  My Post Produce post this month celebrates cilantro! I’ve used quite a bit of fresh cilantro from my small kitchen garden this spring, most of it in guacamole. Cilantro is a very hardy annual. The plant has a short lifecycle, dying out two-to-three months after it sprouts. However, if it sprouts late and fails to mature before winter, cilantro is one of the first food plants to get moving during the spring thaw. The seasons are a mess this year… but in kind of a good way for a kitchen gardener. Last year, I still hadn’t planted cool weather crops by late April because my garden was mud.

• Sad About Rhubarb Plants

  Daniel Gasteiger

  19 Apr 2012 | 12:13 am

  Pin It Despite the nearly nonstop rain in March, By April 4 of 2011, my newest rhubarb patch was leading the way for my kitchen garden perennials. Young leaves were popping on every plant I’d set in the previous season and there was a lot of promise for a fine harvest. My rhubarb plants are dead. All of them. Rhubarb plants in my small kitchen garden are a sixteen-year story if you count only the years since I planted my first ones. Those failed to thrive and eventually drowned during a wet season. I learned from my drowned rhubarb and abandoned the low ground that tends to collect water…

• 

  Jennah's Garden

• 5 Minute Refashion – Too-small Onesie into Ruffled Tee

  Jennah

  13 May 2012 | 7:24 pm

  I was given a bag of baby clothes by a friend’s coworker’s friend. Yeah…I only know the friend and not the other two, which is kinda weird. But hey – baby clothes! I’ll take them. And they even should be size/season appropriate for Miss A. There was one onesie that was a bit small, though at “up to 3 months” size (she is still wearing some 3 month onesies at 4 months, but some are getting snug). It was a cute onesie, though, especially since it said “I

• More Saturday Sixing

  Jennah

  24 Apr 2012 | 7:10 pm

  …don’t be disgusting. It’s not that. It’s a garden blogger thing! Last year I was chosen to be a part of Troy-Bilt’s Saturday Six program, and this year they decided to keep the same group together! Which is pretty cool since I’m all internet friendly with the group now, since we actually got to meet in person (can we say “out of Jennah’s comfort zone but ended up fun”?). The whole group with Farmer Lee So yet again, I’ll be putting together some tip videos (maybe one that features Ainsley OUT of my belly!…though she’s…

• Garden Tour: Colonial Revival Gardens at Sotterley Plantation

  Jennah

  17 Apr 2012 | 7:54 pm

  First, start here (yeah, I’m now a columnist at Southern Maryland NewsNet! w00t) to read about the very interesting history of Sotterley‘s gardens and Garden Guild (the gardens had to be saved from the brink, and there are some very old plants there). And now, a somewhat rambling post about a bunch of stuff I couldn’t fit into that article… I’ve lived near the gardens for a while now, and there were lots of questions I had. When did it start? Why are those plants there? What’s with the sun dial? Garden Guilder Daphne McGuire was kind enough to show me…

• DIY Foodstuffs: Dry Mushrooms in Your Fridge

  Jennah

  15 Apr 2012 | 12:42 pm

  We use a lot of mushrooms. Partly because I mostly don’t eat meat, they’re a good filler to put in foods to make them go farther (further? Don’t feel like looking it up) for me. So we almost always have some in the fridge. Problem is, they tended go to weird fast, all wrapped up in their little containers. And Mushrooms are already a fungus, so I’m certainly not eating a questionably-spoiled fungus. And then, totally on accident many years ago, I realized that if you just took the plastic wrapping OFF and maybe mixed them up every now and then (so the bottoms ones…

• Just My Face

  Jennah

  11 Apr 2012 | 5:12 pm

  I ran across this post from Pamela Price of Red White and Grew this morning on Facebook. And then I ran across this one. And it reminded me of some things I’ve been thinking about lately. There are things about my face I hate. My #1 thing I could change about my entire body, if I could, is to get rid of the dark circles around my eyes. They’re not because I’m tired or sick or allergic…they’re just there. They always have been. The first makeup that I wore wasn’t lipstick or eyeliner, it was concealer that I sneakily stole from my mom’s stash. I hate…

• 

  Outdoor Decor Blog. Find the patio ideas you are looking for.

• Modular Outdoor Kitchen - Outdoor Kitchen Design - Outdoor Kitchen Construction

  29 Apr 2012 | 2:48 pm

  Modular Outdoor Kitchen costs 40 percent less than their built-ins and install 60 percent quicker

• Easy Outdoor Decor, Fabulous Gazebos, Shopping, Outdoor Living Patio Ideas, Patio Accessories, Lawn and Garden Decor

  20 Apr 2012 | 7:39 pm

  Trendy not spendy outdoor decor, gazebos and patio accessories. Smart outdoor living patio ideas.

• Outdoor Kitchen Design - The Big Picture

  2 Apr 2012 | 5:49 pm

  The core of your outdoor kitchen design is the outdoor kitchen grill and outdoor kitchen island.

• Get Your Pergola Plans Here! Need to know how to build a pergola? Pergola designs help with the do it yourself pergola. Need to know know how to make a pergola?

  21 Mar 2012 | 6:46 pm

  Use these Pergola plans when you need to know how to build a pergola. Pergola designs are the easiest way for the do it yourself pergola when you need to know how to make a pergola.

• Gazebo Roofs - Gazebo Roof - Gazebo Hardware

  21 Mar 2012 | 6:42 pm

  Gazebo Roofs And Roof Ornaments -- What You Need To Know!

• 

  Dirt Du Jour Daily Blog

• Dr. Huey strikes again

  cindymcnatt@gmail.com

  16 May 2012 | 11:09 am

  You know when your buttery-yellow rose or pale pink favorite sports a bright red single-petaled bloom that Dr. Huey has arrived. More what, than he, Dr. Huey is the name of the root stock your rose is grafted on to. And when the root sends up a cane directly from the ground, it blooms with this heirloom standby. Best to remove as much cane as you can by digging below the soil and getting to the “root” of problem. whatever LiveScience - Humanity outstripping the Earth’s resources by 50 percent

• Groovy new petunia

  cindymcnatt@gmail.com

  15 May 2012 | 7:54 am

  If you’re plugging the pots with color this summer you can’t get more abundant than the petunia Pretty Much Picasso and sweet potato vine. Pretty much need just one of each as both are quick fillers. whatever AP - Man cared for 200 year-old elm tree for 50 years. It died. He died at 103. Both buried together.

• Free book Friday!

  cindymcnatt@gmail.com

  11 May 2012 | 8:20 am

  I am reluctant to give up this book because it’s so much fun to read: The Anxious Gardener’s Book of Answers by Teri Dunn Chace (Timber Press). You remember your blunderous gardening days when you didn’t know which way was up when it came time to plant bulbs? The days when we didn’t water enough, watered too much or tried to prune an oak tree with hedge shears? Chase is that deep breath you need when panic strikes in the petunia patch. Maybe you still need her pat on the shoulder or know someone who does. To win the book, leave a note in comments about your wackiest garden blunder. A…

• Quick craft

  cindymcnatt@gmail.com

  10 May 2012 | 8:31 am

  For you, the kids, the grandkids to spend an afternoon - or rush something for Mother’s Day. Your call. No-bake clay pots with a complete tutorial at Say Yes to Hoboken. whatever Mother Nature Network: New species of sneaky trapdoor spider discovered in the Amazon Alabama.

• In case there’s a pool in your future

  cindymcnatt@gmail.com

  9 May 2012 | 9:12 am

  This beauty featured in Elle Decor is what I call a refreshing plunge in the heat of summer. whatever TheTelegraph—Olympic preparations? What to do about the millions of poisonous caterpillar problem

• 

  Native Sons - Plant of the Week

• Erigeron glaucus 'Cape Sebastian'

  Jimmy Alcantar

  11 May 2012 | 12:52 pm

  Seaside daisy. 'Cape Sebastian' is a compact selection of the ever popular seaside forming a dense mound of foliage 6 to 8 inches tall.  The plants in our garden have spread slowly to 3 feet wide.  Lavender flowers with yellow centers cover the foliage from early spring to summer.  In our opinion 'Cape Sebastian' is the most durable and long-lived selection available and we consider it one of the best North American native plants we grow for coastal gardens.  It is useful in perennial borders, meadows, or as a small scale ground cover. Erigeron glauca 'Cape Sebastian' is available this…

• Penstemon 'Sweet Joanne'

  Jimmy Alcantar

  4 May 2012 | 4:11 pm

  Penstemon 'Sweet Joanne' is an impressive perennial, boasting lavender-pink flowers clustered on sturdy upright stalks to 24 inches high. Glossy green foliage spreads to 24 inches wide and provides an excellent foil for plantings of shorter perennials such as Violas or Festuca 'Elijah Blue'. Tolerates heat and blooms spring through summer. Hardy to 0F. Penstemon 'Sweet Joanne' is available this week in #1 and #5 gallon containers.

• Achillea tomentosa 'Maynard's Gold'

  Jimmy Alcantar

  27 Apr 2012 | 4:05 pm

  Achillea tomentosa 'Maynard's Gold'. This low, creeping selection of 6 to 8 inches tall and 18 to 24 inches wide becomes covered with brilliant gold flower heads from Spring till Summer. A perfect choice for rock gardens or the spaces between stepping stones. Hardy to 0F. Achillea tomentosa 'Maynard's Gold' is available this week in #1 containers.

• Gaillardia aristata 'Gallo Red'

  Jimmy Alcantar

  20 Apr 2012 | 4:31 pm

  'Gallo Red' is a robust selection of blanket flower forming a low mound of gray-green leaves to 12 inches tall.  Bright red flowers form on upright stems from summer-fall. 'Gallo Red' is a good choice for perennial borders, container plantings, or mixed in meadows.  The long flowering season also makes it a good choice for attracting bees and butterflies.  Best in full sun and well drained soil. Hardy to 0F.  Gaillardia aristata 'Gallo Red' is available this week in #1 containers.

• Genista lydia

  Jimmy Alcantar

  13 Apr 2012 | 3:25 pm

  Broom. Unusual deciduous shrub to 12” bearing tiny, linear green leaves on woody green branches. Golden-yellow flowers blanket the stems through spring and summer, making this a valuable groundcover for dry banks. Plant in full sun in well-drained soils and provide moderate to occasional water. Mature plants do not tolerate heavy pruning. Hardy to 0F. Genista lydia is available this week in #1 containers.

• 

  Water Fountains and Relaxation

• Decorating with Wind Chimes and Wind Spinners

  Kristina

  16 May 2012 | 12:33 pm

  If you have outdoor space, chances are it is filled with trees, bushes, and lots of other natural beauty.  If you think sometime is missing, or if you have been looking to add something, why not explore decorating your yard or outdoor space with wind chimes and wind spinners.  We have many decorative pieces that [...]

• Garden Accents and Decorating Ideas

  Kristina

  14 May 2012 | 12:08 pm

  Spring is my favorite time of the year. The nature is starting to show of its beauty and everything around us is flourishing. This is when I get to do one of my favorite housework – decorating my garden, making it even more beautiful than it already is, so that me and my family can [...]

• Solar Power: Upgrade AND Save

  Kristina

  3 May 2012 | 3:13 pm

  We can’t fight nature. Many of us have learned that the hard way as we beg and plead with the weather gods to give us sun on our wedding days, clear skies for your soccer playoffs, and zero fog when you’re climbing a mountain. So, why fight it? Why can’t we utilize its power for [...]

• Why a Bird Bath Fountain is Good on Your Backyard

  Kristina

  1 May 2012 | 3:12 pm

  A bird bath fountain is an extraordinary approach to have fun with your home backyard and the visiting birds in your yard. It adds an even more beautiful ambiance to your garden and entices several varieties of birds in your place.  Birds find the trickling water of your bird bath fountain irresistible, so expect more [...]

• Indoor Water Fountains Becoming Common in Offices And Hospitals

  Kristina

  29 Apr 2012 | 5:17 pm

  Let me tell you how a custom fountain changed my life. Anyone who has ever worked in a fast-paced office building knows the meaning of the words “state of confusion.” Elevators are always packed to capacity and there are too many people running about in a chaotic yet controlled frenzy as they try to cope [...]

• 

  Bay Area Tendrils

• Paradise in Mill Valley: Garden Conservancy Open Days

  Bay Area Tendrils

  15 May 2012 | 1:53 pm

  Sneak Peek! The Garden Conservancy 'Open Days' Program takes place on Saturday, June 16th in  Marin County. The magical Mill Valley paradise created by artist/photographer Don Worth will be one of the gardens opening to the public, allowing for a rare opportunity to visit a unique West Coast landscape. In the days ahead, I'll be writing an in-depth feature on Alice's Garden Travel Buzz:  Drop by to see a photo portfolio of the garden and learn more about Worth's exceptional vision. You'll not want to miss the chance to wander this lush landscape if you are anywhere in…

• Queen of the Bog Garden .. Lovely Lobelia

  Bay Area Tendrils

  5 May 2012 | 10:01 pm

  Magnificent dark-leaved Lobelia 'Queen Victoria' ... photographed at Portland's South Waterfront Park. Without a doubt, Portland is one of my favorite U.S. destinations for summertime garden splendor!

• Wild Lupines .. Catalina State Park

  Bay Area Tendrils

  25 Apr 2012 | 11:28 am

  Truly Blue... Arizona Lupine: Lupinus sparsiflorus  Catalina State Park Tucson

• Gamble Garden Tour: Mark Your Calendars!

  Bay Area Tendrils

  17 Apr 2012 | 11:58 am

  The blue watering can invites you to take a stroll down the garden path..... Photo Copyright Nadine Priestly Photography The 27th Annual Elizabeth F. Gamble Spring Tour  takes place this year on April 27 & 28 / 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The featured gardens all incorporate edibles in the designs, so you're certain to be inspired. Spanning Crescent Park to Old Palo Alto and circling back to the Gamble Garden at 1431 Waverley Street, Palo Alto, the tour is one of the most popular in the Bay Area.  If for some reason you can't attend the tour, you can plan on enjoying a host…

• Gardens of Tohono Chul Park, Tucson

  Bay Area Tendrils

  10 Apr 2012 | 5:07 pm

  My Tucson sojourn took in terrific meals at restaurants like Cafe Poca Cosa and Feast. There were wonderful hikes in sublime desert settings,  and gardens, of course! My timing was perfect to catch full bloom on the ornamental, evergreen trees, Sophora (aka Calia) secundiflora, at Tohono Chul Park located on the city's Northwest side on Paseo del Norte. Common names for the showy beauty in the photo include Mescal bean, not to be confused with the Agave used to make mezcal.  Another moniker you might be familiar with: Mountain laurel. But I like the…

• 

  Thai Garden Design - The Thai Landscaping Experts

• Ninth Floor Terrace Garden in Bangkok

  Pornchai Gardens

  14 May 2012 | 9:55 am

  Thai Garden Design recently designed and installed this new garden on a ninth floor terrace in Central Bangkok. The owners had begun renting the suite, but were unhappy with the garden, which was not suitable for the family. Over a period the team communicated with the customer to refine the design until the time was right and they were happy to go ahead. The design included new decked areas, covering some previously built raised beds around a sala, which was generally unusable space. The wooden deck meant that the kids could play around the sala, on the nice flat deck, adjacent to a newly…

• Wooden Sala, Pergola and Koi Pond at Bangkok Home

  Pornchai Gardens

  9 May 2012 | 6:25 am

  The Thai Garden Design Team recently installed this complete package for a client in Bangkok. The package included a new koi pond with bespoke koi pond filter system, large Thai style wooden sala, treated hardwood decking, and shade pergola at one side of the sala. The area involved was a patch of grass, measuring around 15m (length) by 7m (width) at the widest point. The team designed the sala and pergola to include various trees and planting beds that were already present within the garden. The owner had several requirements that the team needed to adhere to, one of them being that the…

• Expanding your Home - Building an 'Outdoor Room' in your Thai Garden

  Pornchai Gardens

  30 Apr 2012 | 1:49 am

  A customer located in Bangkok contacted the team at Thai Garden Design and inquired about building a raised deck and lean-to pergola, to cover the vast expanse of his garden space at the side of his house. The garden was used frequently, but due to the expanding family, the owner wanted more shaded, usable space, effectively an expansion of his lounge, but without bricks and mortar. The structure consists of a raised deck, matching the level of the interior of the house, a shade pergola with poly carbon roofing material, guttering and pipes, transporting rainwater into the garden drains, and…

• 

  A Gardener in Progress

• I'm still in the garden!

  Catherine@AGardenerinProgress

  15 May 2012 | 6:02 pm

   I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted!  It has been so busy around here, I've barely had time to go on the computer let alone take pictures or blog.  Our weather has been just gorgeous, very summer like and it's hard not to be outdoors when it's like that.  After two awful springs in a row we are all celebrating all this sun and warm weather.  The Littlest Gardener has already been out playing in the sprinkler.  Last year I think it was July before that happened.  I tried not to go overboard on the pictures, but it was hard not to. …

• Hillside Farm - an adventure in rust and treasures!

  Catherine@AGardenerinProgress

  29 Apr 2012 | 10:11 pm

   Often on the weekend my family and I get in the car and set out with no plan in mind.  Usually either my husband or I have an idea of an area that we want to see and then we just get in the car and go.  It's amazing how many really great places we end up finding that even if we tried to find we wouldn't.  Today's adventure started with my husband's craving for Dim Sum.  This lead us to try Top Gun in Bellevue.  It was a lot of fun and very good.  Then he thought heading out east sounded like a good place to drive.  We saw lots of pretty areas, and…

• Late April flowers.

  Catherine@AGardenerinProgress

  27 Apr 2012 | 7:38 pm

   We've been pretty lucky as far as the weather goes the last few weeks.   Sunny weekends followed by some rain during the week.  It looks like this weekend will follow the same pattern.  This means that the plants are really taking off growing (as are the weeds).  After living in this house exactly 13 years this month I've really started to notice patterns in some of the trees and plants in the garden (although there are few that have been here since we moved in).  This seems to be looking like a great year for roses, Clematis, Lilacs and Pear trees so…

• The coop is done!

  Catherine@AGardenerinProgress

  23 Apr 2012 | 9:28 pm

  Our original plan was to build our own chicken coop from scratch.  We had gotten plans and started making lists of supplies, it was adding up to be a lot of time and money.  My sister, who also had bought chicks the same day we did, found an ad on Craig's List for coops.  After both of us talking to the man that builds them we decided it was worth it to just buy one that he built, and bring it home to put together. My husband and I rented a truck to drive the hour plus drive down south to the town where we would pick the coops up.  The small town of Orting is on a river…

• Spring flowers.

  Catherine@AGardenerinProgress

  16 Apr 2012 | 8:59 pm

  We have enjoying some nice mild weather here.  The sun has been out and even when the clouds cover it, it still definitely feels like spring is in the air.  How nice to have some windows open and feel some fresh air inside!  The girls are out on spring break this week and we're off to a nice start to it.  Tulips around the yard are beginning to bloom.  The fish are swimming around quite a bit.  I got the pond cleaned out after this picture, it usually requires a few minor cleanings in the spring.  An unusual Frittilaria.  Deutzia 'Chardonnay Pearls'…

• 

  BLOG.CHICAGOLANDGARDENING.COM

• All Those Seeds I Meant to Sow

  Chicagoland Gardening Blog

  24 Apr 2012 | 10:38 am

  When it comes to thinking "outside the pot," Joliet garden designer Patti Kirkpatrick is the ultimate recycler who is always looking at ways to turn ordinary objects into something delightful. "We all have seed packets and seed catalogs," she says. Here, she's transformed them into a lovely centerpiece that she calls "All Those Seeds I Meant to Sow."Photos: Patti Kirkpatrick What she used:A round piece of cardboard or poster board for the baseAny straight sided containerSeed packetsSeed catalogues, double stick tape or hot glueDoilies, dried flowers for that vintage look, roses, peonies,…

• Weather Woes

  Chicagoland Gardening Blog

  12 Apr 2012 | 3:11 pm

  If only weather forecasters were gardeners. They’d begin each broadcast bemoaning the plight of their petunias -- too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. Just like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They’d take a look at those fresh immature leaves on a Japanese maple, hanging down like delicate butterfly wings in their burgundy spring splendor. And, then, if they were real gardeners, they’d realize that if that tree could talk, it would say, “Help, I’m dying of thirst!” Weather statistics show that last month was the 31st driest March on record for Illinois. And, on April 8, the…

• Creating a Woodland Wonderland

  Chicagoland Gardening Blog

  3 Apr 2012 | 1:54 pm

  The Victorians had the right idea. On hot summer days, they retreated to chairs and benches under a leafy canopy of spreading trees, surrounded by cooling ferns, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers.Come high summer, when sweltering heat and humidity are enough to wilt most gardeners, the shade garden continues to offer a welcome respite. With its dappled sunlight and morning dew, the shaded nook is a delightful place where gardeners can focus on plants that thrive on limited amounts of light. Shady gardens are often a fact of life for those who dwell in old houses, from residents of urban row…

• Snowballs in Summer

  Chicagoland Gardening Blog

  14 Mar 2012 | 8:53 am

  Tossing its blossoms in the midsummer air, the pure white snowball was one of the most spectacular shrubs in the tasteful Victorian landscape. Although about two dozen species of "snowball" bush are hydrangeas, many more are of the genus Viburnum. The two aren't related, but at first glance, they have similar flowers. Learn more about snowball bushes and how they were used along with specimen plants, carpet bedding and more in a two-part class, "American Home Garden Design: 1830 to the Present," Wednesdays, March 21 and 29 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle. Draw…

• High Style

  Chicagoland Gardening Blog

  12 Mar 2012 | 8:53 am

  I went down to Navy Pier on the opening day of this year’s Chicago Flower & Garden Show, and I am happy to report that it’s a hit. Stylish, you might say. Which is what you want from a show whose theme is “Hort Couture.” There are lots of pretty things to see, and some are downright dazzling. There’s a great series of water gardens in the large, centrally located Aquascape exhibit, for example. And the giant agapanthus sculpture brought over from the Chelsea Flower Show in England makes a stunning centerpiece for the entry garden. It’s flanked by a pair of large vertical wall…

• 

  Veggie Gardener: Organic Vegetable Gardening Tips

• Succession Planting for the Home Gardener

  Brenda

  8 May 2012 | 7:30 am

   What is succession planting, and how can it help the home gardener? An example serves as the best explanation. Peas are a cool weather crop and can be planted as soon as the garden soil can be worked. Cucumbers can’t handle frost, and should be planted in the summer when the temperatures are much higher. [...]

• Grow Your Own Salad Greens

  Brenda

  30 Apr 2012 | 2:48 pm

  Many of us grew up in a time when a salad consisted of iceberg lettuce and assorted vegetables. Some restaurants still stick with the standard salad fare, but home gardeners have an amazing amount of options when it comes to growing salad greens. Space doesn’t have to be an issue because spring greens can be [...]

• How To Rotate Vegetables in the Garden

  Brenda

  17 Apr 2012 | 7:30 am

  Rotating vegetables to a new location each year gives gardeners a one up on pest control, soil health and avoiding diseases. I personally experienced this in my 4 foot by 8 foot raised garden bed, when I switched the location of the  tomatoes and cucumbers one year. The season before, the cucumbers had developed a [...]

• Vegetable Gardening With Disabilities

  Tee

  26 Feb 2012 | 12:01 pm

  As we get older it doesn’t take long to realize we just can’t do the things in the vegetable garden like we used to. After a few hours of bending over and working on your knees, you’re sure to have a few aches and pains the next day. We also begin to realize that safety [...]

• How to Check Seed Viability

  Tee

  11 Feb 2012 | 9:02 am

  Most of the time when ordering seeds for a new growing season you will receive way more than you really need. This can cause you to sometimes have hundreds of seeds left over after planting. If you have some vegetable seeds left over from previous seasons, you may be wondering if those old ones are [...]

• 

  Life on the Balcony

• Last DIY Saturday Event This Weekend!

  Fern

  4 May 2012 | 12:53 am

  Come to CB2 West Hollywood this Saturday to learn about herb gardening in the shade and how to make kick ass floral arrangements! I’ll be there from 2-4, I hope you’ll stop by, this is the last one! CB2 West Hollywood 8000 W Sunset Blvd. Saturday, April 28 / 2–4pm (free 2hr parking with validation)

• CB2 DIY Saturday #2 This Weekend!

  Fern

  24 Apr 2012 | 12:24 pm

  I had so much fun at CB2 last weekend, we’re doing it again! OK, so that’s a partial truth. I did have a lot of fun, but the second and third dates were pre-planned. This week we’re going to be playing around with the Shore Polyterrazzo Planters and the Galvanized Square Planters. CB2 West Hollywood 8000 W Sunset Blvd. Saturday, April 28 / 2–4pm (free 2hr parking with validation) I love the modern shape and practical style of both of these planters. The Galvanized Square Planters are made out of galvanized iron. They’re coated in a clear laquer finish to keep them…

• Garden Designers Round Table: The Huntington Gardens in San Marino, CA

  Fern

  23 Apr 2012 | 2:01 am

  If you have never been to The Huntington Gardens in San Marino (near Pasadena), you must add it to your bucket list. It is one of the most beautiful public gardens I have ever seen. The gardens are HUGE, there are several different themed gardens, a Chinese garden, a Japanese garden, a famous rose garden, and quite a few other gardens that are slipping my mind at the moment. My favorite part of The Huntington–as anyone who has read Small-Space Container Gardens knows–is the Desert Garden. You may be thinking to yourself, “what in the world does a public garden featuring…

• Small is the new black

  Fern

  19 Apr 2012 | 8:00 am

  Isn’t this the cutest little window box? I was looking for just the tiny pot to plant some tiny succulents in… What do you think? Any miniature gardeners out there? If you’re new to the world of microscopic gardens, Two Green Thumbs is a great resource!

• Quick Tomato Tip

  Fern

  18 Apr 2012 | 8:00 am

  See that sucker there? Suckers are secondary branches that grow in the joints of existing branches. Pinch ‘em off. Suckers take energy away from growing tomatoes. No tomatoes will form on sucker branches.

• 

  Miss Rumphius' Rules

• Side Conversations

  Susan aka Miss. R

  14 May 2012 | 5:16 am

  A few years ago I started wanting to meet people in real life who I had I met through Twitter, Facebook and email exchanges.  I have met people in New York for dinner, in Chicago for a visit to the botanical gardens, in Buffalo and Seattle for Garden Bloggers Fling, in Brimfield for the antiques market, in Portland, Oregon, in Berkeley, Napa and San Francisco,  in Philadelphia and Cleveland and most recently in Little Rock as a guest of P. Allen Smith.  Some of those face to face meetings have turned into lasting friendships. I don’t usually take pictures of people, so there…

• The New Southern Romantic – P. Allen Smith

  Susan aka Miss. R

  7 May 2012 | 5:49 am

  I had the pleasure of being invited to visit P. Allen Smith in Little Rock last week.  I was included in an event designed to not only promote Smith’s ideas, but also those companies who sponsor and support Smith’s lifestyle brand.  As his book, Garden Home suggests, Smith’s brand isn’t about inside or out, today or yesterday, it is about the seamless transition from one to the other and back again. A view from the sleeping porch at Moss Mountain Farm The patina of a past that included legions of free (use your imagination–they weren’t interns) help…

• Departures and Debuts

  Susan aka Miss. R

  30 Apr 2012 | 5:14 am

  May is (as they say) busting out all over and it’s not even really here yet. Today I’m travelling to Little Rock to visit P. Allen Smith’s real Garden Home. Garden designed by P. Allen Smith Photograph via  The New York Times Smith invited 20 bloggers to visit and see the farm, participate in workshops and generally be guests for what I expect will be genuine southern hospitality, great gardens and some cool product pitches.  It will also be great to see people that I don’t get to see often! While I’m away, The Mansion in May opens and we’re…

• Garden Designers Roundtable: Garden Visits and Lessons

  Susan aka Miss. R

  24 Apr 2012 | 5:23 am

  I find that the best way to understand a space is to be in it, to move through it in three dimensions, so I visit gardens every year–sometimes as many as twenty or thirty in a given season.  I have visited great country gardens, pocket gardens, newly planted gardens, abandoned gardens, personal gardens, and public gardens.  Each one that I have spent time in has taught me something about space. Even a narrow patio can seat 16 The patio (in private garden in Bucks County, PA) above was just an expansive ‘hallway’, but with careful planning and a custom built table it became…

• Sprung!

  Susan aka Miss. R

  18 Apr 2012 | 8:04 am

  I haven’t been here very much in the past few weeks…this April has been unusual in more ways than just the weather.   It’s been busy…way beyond what is usual.  March was warm so  my super active design season started early…so actually April is more like May–which is always my busiest month. Here’s what’s been doing… We moved a big tree.  This sugar maple was 18,000 lbs. and moved about 40′ to its new home. The tree, just dug, on the move I’ve been working on a designer show house space…that will open on May 1 with…

• 

  Journal

• Rhododendron "Rosy Lights" Formerly Known as an Azalea

  Allan

  11 May 2012 | 3:19 pm

  I am a plant growing in Allan’s garden and I am not certain of my identity. My given name is Rosy Lights but my family name is puzzling. I used to belong to the Azalea family until botanists tested my DNA. From the results, they concluded that I am a Rhododendron. Why did they have to go and do that? Did they not realize how long it took me to learn how to spell azalea? I find it hard to believe that I am actually a rhodo because I am not a broad-leafed evergreen. My foliage, which is smaller than theirs is, turns brown and drops off in autumn. Rhododendrons maintain their green foliage…

• Room with a View of Lilacs.

  Allan

  9 May 2012 | 4:59 pm

  Above is a partial view of my test garden filtering through the webbing of a window screen. It's fascinating that only my camera lens would pick up the visual barrier because my brain doesn't see the screen at all. This idyllic image is the first thing that my wife sees each morning when she opens the bedroom window shades. At this time of the year, here in USDA Zone 4, perennials are still emerging and therefore, not very noticeable from far. What I like best about the above view is the fact it is framed in the foreground by the newly opened lilacs. As the early species tulips are just about…

• Pink is a Man’s Color?

  Allan

  6 May 2012 | 10:12 am

  Fosteriana tulip Albert Heyn when the temperature is cool.Meet Albert Heyn. He is a pink Fosteriana species tulip growing in my garden. The bulb could have been named either The Heyn Tulip, or Albertina, or even Alberta. Nope! Someone decided that an attractive pink tulip - flowering in a color that used to be reserved for girls - needed a courageously masculine name. It is fascinating that my generation [yes, we are older] will consider this a cultural contradiction, while thankfully, such nonsense will go unnoticed by younger people.  Albert Heyn drenched in hot sunI deliberately chose…

• Flowerbeds that Sing in the Spring.

  Allan

  29 Apr 2012 | 3:02 pm

  My walkway garden in unusually cold weather.Did you plant enough spring flowering bulbs? Do you suppose that there was room in the beds for more, even though there was no room in your budget to buy them? I deal with the issue of cost by adding more spring-flowering bulbs to the beds every autumn, according to the amount of disposable gardening funds remaining. On a warm day, it looked like this.For that reason, my display of spring flowering bulbs tends to be far more relaxed and unplanned than are my perennial plant compositions. I don’t mind the resulting haphazard design because it…

• Does Your Garden's Design Make You Feel Good?

  Allan

  26 Apr 2012 | 8:23 pm

  The Pattern Garden: The Essential Elements of Garden Making, Valerie Easton, Timber Press What makes a garden successful? Is it the accolades heaped upon it by one’s colleagues? Is it the fame it garners for it originality? Is a garden successful because it makes the homeowner and visitor feel good? American garden writer, Valerie Easton, has chosen the latter and has made it the theme of her book. There is a delightful abstract quality to this publication. In it, the author takes good garden design to a higher, more spiritual level. Instead of discussing the aesthetic and scientific…

• 

  Blisstree » LIVE

• Mattresses Might Improve Your Sleep; They’ll Probably Ruin Your Sex Life

  Deborah Dunham

  16 May 2012 | 11:20 am

  Which would you rather have: good sleep or good sex? This is the dilemma that many couples are facing when it comes time to buy a new mattress. It seems that sales of those super-plush mattresses are on the rise, and with good reason–we sleep better on them. But, according to a recent Barron’s report, they also have a serious downside–bad sex. New York sex therapist Sari Eckler explained it best to Barron’s: There’s a lack of resistance for the knees and feet. And whoever is on the bottom is sinking into the bed. Or, as an owner of one of these plush mattresses…

• Weight Watchers’ Weigh-Ins Need To Stop

  Deborah Dunham

  16 May 2012 | 9:04 am

  I recently attended a local Weight Watchers meeting to speak about an upcoming charity walk/bike ride. Much to my surprise, when I walked in, the receptionist at the front table asked if I “needed to be weighed.” No, I don’t “need” to be weighed, I told her. No one “needs” to be weighed. To me, weighing people in public is just offensive and humiliating. And it goes against everything I believe in about how to get people healthy. I get that Weight Watchers is all about helping people lose weight. Really, I do. But I don’t believe in scales. As a…

• Afternoon Links: 50 Awesome Pre- And Post-Workout Snacks

  Blisstree Staff

  15 May 2012 | 3:30 pm

  • Fuel your body with these yummy snacks for both before and after your workout (Greatist) • Achieve the perfect lunge with this tutorial (HuffPost Healthy Living) • What’s the favorite clothing line for athletic celebs? Hint: it’s not lululemon (Well & Good) • True or false: the best facial cleansers really sold on drugstore shelves (Vital Juice) • Yes, it’s true–you really do eat more junk food in the wee hours (Grist) • These common running ailments can sideline your workouts–learn more about them to keep yourself healthy (FitSugar) Post from:…

• FDA Pushes Back New Sunscreen Guidelines (So Consumers Will Be Protected…Next Winter)

  Briana Rognlin

  15 May 2012 | 2:59 pm

  Last summer, the FDA gave sunscreen manufacturers a new set of sunscreen label guidelines—which included updates to better protect consumers—but last week, they announced that they’d pushed back the deadline another six months. So labels should be more accurate by…next winter. The new label requirements would require a standardized test for products labelled “broad spectrum,” to indicate that they protect against both UVA and UVB rays. They would also bar companies from using the terms “sweat-proof” and “waterproof” (to dispell…

• Afternoon Links: Stop Side-Stitches Once And For All

  Blisstree Staff

  14 May 2012 | 3:00 pm

  • Plenty of runners are plagued by side-stitches–here’s how to banish them forever (Runner’s World) • Looking to cut back on your carb intake? Here are 15 fresh ideas for how to go bread-free (FitSugar) • Being eaten up by allergies might mean more than sneezing and wheezing–seasonal allergies could lead to weight gain (Women’s Health) • We know you’re busy, so here are four 4-minute workouts to squeeze in (FitBottomed Girls) • Do vitamins and supplements actually work? HuffPo is on the case (HuffPost Healthy Living) • Prepare food like…

• 

  garden therapy

• How to Make a Grapevine Wreath + 15 Design Ideas

  Stevie

  11 May 2012 | 7:58 pm

  Store bought grapevine wreaths are not that expensive but if you have vines growing in your garden they are a family-friendly start to a weekend project. Of course grapevine (Vitis spp.) is the most popular wood for making vine wreaths.  For this project I used cuttings from a Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) that trails along a shady fence.  It is a bit of a softer vine so adding an unwound coat hanger would stiffen up the frame.  As I have mine on a trellis, it holds its shape just fine. American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) and Honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.) would also…

• Gardener’s Herbal Foot Soak Recipe

  Stevie

  9 May 2012 | 7:23 pm

  If you come in from the garden with dirty, achy feet then this herbal soak is for you.  It stores well in a pretty jar but packs a powerful punch of soothing herbs in a foot bath.  And why should feet have all the fun?  You could surely use it in the tub too.  Ahhhh. Ingredients: 2 cups Epsom salts 8 drop pure lavender essential oil 6 drops mine essential oil 2 drops eucalyptus essential oil 2 drops rosemary essential oil 1 tsp dried comfrey root powder 1 tsp dried lavender 1 tsp dried mint leaves ¼ tsp dried bergamot petals Directions:  1. Fill a pretty jar about halfway full…

• Growing Strawberries in Hanging Containers / Grow Bags

  Stevie

  4 May 2012 | 5:19 pm

  Even if space is a problem, you can certainly find a corner of your world to hang a strawberry planter.  The sun-warmed, sweet berries are far superior to the store bought ones that ripen in plastic domes. Once established you have plenty more plants year after year. … It’s around this time each year that I start salivating for sweet, fresh berries as I see my hanging strawberry planter growing in and the flowers forming.  Establishing a fruit-bearing crop in a growing bag is not difficult, but there are a few key steps that will certainly help. Site Selection…

• 21 Handmade Mother’s Day Gift Ideas for Garden-Loving Moms

  Stevie

  3 May 2012 | 10:11 pm

  Moms love to get handmade presents from their children. The time and love that goes into creating the present exudes priceless thought and consideration. Whether you’re 2 or 42, here are 21 handmade gift ideas sure to brighten her day. For moms who love the garden you can surprise her with garden-inspired creations like 1. Block Printed Tea Towels, 2. a Hanging Globe Terrarium 3. Lavender Sachets 4. Serenity Now! DIY Lavender Eye Pillows, or 5. a Salad Bowl Terrarium. Some moms need a little pampering. Whip up some of these recipes from the Natural Skincare Series and present it in…

• Grow Light Shelving for Seed Starting Indoors

  Stevie

  27 Apr 2012 | 7:03 pm

  If you have been following along on the Seed Starting Series, your seeds will have been planted in homemade starters or store bought containers and germinated.  Those baby plants may not be ready to hit the harsh outdoors yet but they do need to have enough light.  This weekend project will help you fashion your very own indoor grow op with an inexpensive Ikea shelving unit and some utility lighting. In past years I have used a 4-tier wire shelf which allows me to grow 8 trays of seedlings into large plants as I can continuously move the shelves to make more room for taller plants.  Plus…

• 

  Urban Organic Gardener

• Which Posts Have You Found Most and Least Useful?

  Mike Lieberman

  20 Apr 2012 | 3:47 am

  In 2012, the content focus has change… …and I would like to get your thoughts. As the header image of the site says, this site is about “Practical container gardening tips to grow your own food.” Which is why I want to make sure that that is what is provided for you – practical tips. It’s easy for me to know which ones are the most popular. I really want to know which ones are the most useful to you, so more of those can be created for you. This is going to be my last post for a few weeks. As you are watching this I’m back in NYC and going to be…

• How To Make a Chalkboard Paint Pot

  Mike Lieberman

  18 Apr 2012 | 3:15 am

  This is guest post by Becky Striepe from Glue and Glitter Growing food is sort of a non-stop adventure, isn’t it? Just when everything’s planted and flourishing… …the change in seasons means it’s time to start your garden over with a new round of seeds and seedlings. Like Mike has mentioned before, you might think you’ll remember what you planted where, but unless you label your pots, chances are you’ll end up with at least one or two mysteries sprouting up. A container garden is no different. Rather than having to keep track of a bunch of plant…

• What’s Your Thoughts on Contests?

  Mike Lieberman

  16 Apr 2012 | 3:42 am

  Everyone loves contests… …mostly because you get the chance to win free stuff. But what else would you like to see in a contest? Last week, I ran the contest with Safer Brand for a chance to win a gift pack from them. The winner has been notified, so if you haven’t been notified…take a hint. This was the third contest that I have run this year. The others were for the All-In-One Seed Bank from SeedsNow.com and the other was for the Smart Float Seed Tray from The Greenhouse Catalog. I’d love to get your feedback on the contests so far. What have you liked or…

• 5 Signs That Cabbage Worms are Attacking Your Garden

  Mike Lieberman

  13 Apr 2012 | 3:10 am

  By Justin Emig Associate Brand Manager, Safer Brand For most of the country, Spring has DEFINITELY sprung… …and with the onset of Spring, comes the onset of our unwelcome garden pests. The garden pest that has caused the most concern for organic gardeners in recent years has been the cabbage worm. There are several ‘types’ of cabbage worm which include the Imported Cabbage Worm, Cabbage Looper, Cabbage Webworm, and the Leaf Miner. Regardless of the type, us interested in keeping an organic garden just want them gone!! Here are 5 signs that you might be infested with our green…

• White Powdery Coating on Leaves? Yup, That’s Powdery Mildew

  Mike Lieberman

  11 Apr 2012 | 3:09 am

  There is a white chalky substance on the leaves of your plants. Your container garden looks like Pablo Escobar and his boys had a party in it… …What happened? Don’t worry that white powder is not cocaine, it’s powdery mildew. You’ll notice that the powdery coating is on both sides of the leaves and will eventually start to spread. Those leaves will eventually turn yellow and die. It can also cause the leaves to twist and turn. Your container garden looks like Pablo Escobar and his boys had a party in it. What happened? — Tweet This Vegetables commonly…

• 

  The Garden Plot

• A town wraps its arms around edibles

  Garden Media Group

  16 May 2012 | 9:53 am

  Once upon a time, not so long ago, a small Victorian mill town in England united over gardening, and hasn't looked back. Todmorden, in West Yorkshire, has experienced a food renaissance of sorts. Um, not the kind that attracts foodies and gourmands, but the type that is a quiet revolution of trust, sharing, and uniting around a common goal... food sharing. Over coffee, Mary Clear, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, and Pam Warhurst, the former owner of the town's Bear Cafe decided to help educate the residents (and the world) about growing food - with a twist - and…

• Blogger Fling Here We Come!!

  Garden Media Group

  15 May 2012 | 8:06 am

  Martin Webster of Burnsville, NC Suzi and I leave for our east coast road trip tomorrow with the end destination being Asheville, NC for the 2012 Garden Blogger Fling. Asheville 2011 Now, while this isn't our first mother-daughter trip to Asheville, it IS my first blogger fling, and I am stoked to meet new people and participate in lively garden and blogging discussions. Besides all the new people Im excited to meet, there are those I am SO excited to see again -  Kylee of Our Little Acre and her lovely mamma, Louise,  Barbara Wise, author of Container Gardening for All Seasons and…

• GMG Monday Expresso: Top 10 Tips for Writing a Great PRess Release

  Garden Media Group

  14 May 2012 | 8:21 am

  We say here at the Garden Media Group that anyone can write a press release. The difference is writing a great press release . . . and getting it placed. There are some tricks I learned while teaching public relations 101 at the University of South Carolina. Here they are: 1. KISS: Keep it simple stupid. That's your rule for the title of a news release. State quite simply what the release is about. Try and use a catchy headline to grab the reader’s attention, it should make the journalist want to read on. 2. Focus: Keep the release focused on a single topic. If it's too general or tries to…

• GMG's Friday Find: One potato, Two potato...

  Garden Media Group

  11 May 2012 | 9:18 am

  Today I found a VERY simple way to grow potatoes! In something we all already own...a trash bag. Check out this very easy 5-step process (which includes harvesting) to great home grown goodness. Step 1: Prepare the Seed Potatoes About a week before planting, place seed potatoes in a warm spot. When the sprouts that form are about 1/4" to 1/2" long, the potatoes are almost ready to plant. Cut large seed potatoes into chunks about 2" wide. Each piece should have at least two sprouts. After cutting the seed potatoes, let them sit at room temperature for two or three days. Step 2: Prepare the Bag…

• Growers Exchange Selected to Grow the 2013 Notable Native Herb of the Year

  Garden Media Group

  10 May 2012 | 8:54 am

  We are so excited to announce that The Herb Society of America has chosen Monardaulosa, commonly known as “bee balm”, as the 2013 Notable Native Herb of the Year, and has selected The Growers Exchange as the official grower and distributor of the herb.  Continuing with the ‘Made in America’ trend sweeping the U.S., The Notable Native Herb of 2013, bee balm Monarda Fistulosa, will be grown and distributed by The Growers Exchange, a family run Virginia farm that specializes in unusual and hard to find herbs “The Growers Exchange has been a member of the Herb Society of…

• 

  Thanks for today.

• Native Trees & Shrubs for Arbor Day (& MORE for Wildflower Wednesday!)

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  27 Apr 2012 | 11:10 am

  Over the last three years, I've been adding native plants, shrubs, groundcovers and seedlings to my yard. Recently, the local chapter of the Audubon society had a native seedling sale and I took advantage of it. I'm still trying to decide the best 'spots' to plant each of the various seedlings, depending on their needs for sun or shade, dry or moist conditions, etc. in my zone 7-A yard. Since they are all native to my area, almost any area will suffice, but with young seedlings, I still need to take into consideration whether the soil is in its 'natural' state or whether at some point in…

• Wildflower Wednesday: Native Ginger

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  25 Apr 2012 | 10:30 pm

  I have two varieties of native ginger.  Asarum arifolium and Asarum canadense.  Both are low growing herbs with kidney or heart-shaped leaves, spreading by rhizomes. They are planted in fairly shady, moist areas near my stream. *Wild ginger is not related to common ginger. It is in the 'Birthwort' family. Variety #1: Asarum arifolium (Arrowleaf Ginger, Heartleaf Wild Ginger) has anise-scented leaves and produces tan/gray flowers in the shape of jugs, thus the nickname 'little jug'. The leaves can be variegated, although the leaves on my plant look pretty much the same…

• Mid-March Blooms Are Way Ahead of Schedule

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  19 Mar 2012 | 6:22 pm

  As others in various parts of the country have been noticing, this was the winter that wasn't. At least where I live it wasn't was;~}  Many of my plants are at least 2 weeks ahead this year. Others seem more like months ahead... Dicentra, Brunnera and Pulmonaria did not bloom until April last year...but not this year!  Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart) Dicentra spectabilis 'alba' Brunnera macrophylla (Siberian Buglose) Pulmonaria 'Raspberry Splash' (Lungwort) I have barely been able to keep up with the blooms that pop daily out of the ground and begin to show off their…

• What's Blooming Now

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  8 Mar 2012 | 8:39 pm

  It's March 8th and I've decided to show 'what's blooming right now' in my garden. The last time I blogged was in January and I had 'vowed' to blog at least twice a month. Somehow, February completely slipped away without a single post. Did anyone notice?! Probably not! Crocus 'Romance' (Just planted bulbs in January!) Hyacinth I took photos daily, or at least several times a week, throughout the month of February, so it's all 'on record' if I want to share anything. I'm not sure what the reason for lack of blogging was, but it could have been the fact that most of my blooming plants were…

• Backyard Birds--We've Got 'Em Here!

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  22 Jan 2012 | 11:12 pm

  Every year we look forward to an influx of colorful birds in our yard. The numbers generally pick up in January, and usually coincide with colder temperatures. While birds are here at any given time throughout the year, there is more obvious activity at the feeders during the winter months: Finches and a Bluebird at one of the feeding stations What do we do to attract the birds?  One thing we do is provide a variety of seeds, nuts and berries in several different bird feeders.  Black oil sunflower seed, hulled sunflower nuts, peanut pieces, safflower seed, nijer seed, and suet is…

• 

  My Garden

• My Garden Flora and Fauna

  16 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  My Garden Flora and Fauna

• uk garden supplies

  16 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  uk garden supplies

• Gardening Tips

  16 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  Gardening Tips

• Best Sellers

  16 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  Best Sellers

• My Gardening Heroes

  16 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  My Gardening Heroes

• 

  Personal Garden Coach

• Focal Point Trees

  personalgardencoach

  29 Apr 2012 | 9:44 am

  My tiny back yard has recently undergone a massive makeover this spring. I’m still finishing up a few details before I share it with all of you. But, I wanted to make a point about Focal Points and Focal Point Trees in particular. A small or large-scale tree placed strategically in the landscape for its shape, texture, color can add an immeasurable amount of artistic flair and drama with very little effort. This brand new Larix pendula, ‘Weeping Larch’ does just that here at the end of my path as it opens into the main yard. In fall when the needles turn a warm gold and…

• Celebrating One Season at a Time

  personalgardencoach

  20 Apr 2012 | 1:49 pm

  Each spring I find that my wonder and exaltation of natures capacity to renew me after a long winter seems greater and greater. Once I’m able to be outside for any length of time without getting either soaked or numb is a wonderful day to be outside enjoying the garden. In the Northwest we live with a constant paradox, our winter seems longer than a truly cold climate season due to our gray skies that seems to last for 6 months. Well, now that I actually think about it, it really is almost a 6 month winter. So, when we do get let out of the house we get a little nutty and want to plant…

• Steel, Rock and Sedum Focal Point

  personalgardencoach

  2 Apr 2012 | 10:18 pm

  This little vignette at a client’s home pleased me to no end on this lovely spring day and I just wanted to share this with you. I thought it illustrated a couple of cool things. 1) My client bought this steel pot because she simply fell in love with it and HAD to have it. I can totally understand this, I would too! It’s common in my line of work that I’m the one that has to figure out where and how to fit this new thing of passion into a particular garden design. My homework assignment to the client was to find a great rock to pair with the container and help balance the…

• Devotedly Hoarding and Dividing Spring Perennials

  personalgardencoach

  27 Mar 2012 | 8:39 pm

  It has turned out that I have a great passion for collecting Heuchera, Heucherella and now some Tiarella too.  Especially in part due to the eye candy of plants at the Terra Nova website. Dan Heims of Terra Nova Nurseries has built an empire of Heuchera and MANY other tempting delights. I never thought of myself as one of those gardener’s who would have a fixation for assembling great numbers of any one genre of plant, but these seem to be my thing. All right, you got me. That’s not ENTIRELY true I must have Euphorbia too! My current favorite 'Berry Smoothie' I did have quite a…

• AM Snow and PM Spring in the Garden Today

  personalgardencoach

  22 Mar 2012 | 10:09 pm

  Other than the sounds of snow thawing and water draining out of the unbelievably soggy lawn, you would never know that I woke up to snow this morning at 7:30am. It was a winter wonderland. Not an altogether happy one on my part, having just come back from a month away, where it was 70 in Philadelphia for 2 weeks and then 80 in Houston for almost another week. But, considering it is March in my beloved Seattle ‘Burbs, I know better than to whine. Much. Here are some pics from the garden today. Clearly, my Euphorbia’s of ALL flavors are glorious in their Pre-Easter nodding fashion.

• 

  Gardeners Journal

• Introducing Snip-n-Drip

  Gardener's Supply

  4 May 2012 | 9:49 am

  Water is the key to a healthy, productive garden. With our new Snip-n-Drip Soaker System, you can get water directly to the plants, without wasting a single drop. Watch the video to see how it works. <!-- —NAME Gardener's Supply --> <!-- See all blog posts-->

• The Springtime Moment

  Gardener's Supply

  1 May 2012 | 8:08 am

  It's the time of year when Gardener's Supply employees come to work wearing a glow from a sunny weekend outdoors.On our Who We Are page, several employees share their stories, and today I think of one from Joe McHugh, who works in the marketing department: "On the first weekend in the spring when it's finally warm enough to work in the garden, my wife and I rake all the debris from the winter

• 1 Million People Want to Know

  Gardener's Supply

  30 Apr 2012 | 6:29 am

  <!--One Million of Us Want to Know What We are Eating. --> I grow my own fruits and vegetables for all sorts of reasons. Growing food is fun, rewarding, saves money, and adds amazing taste and beauty into my life. And, for health concerns, I know exactly where my food came from and what went into producing it. So how come I can't have the right to know what's in the food I buy in the store?

• Marigolds Keep Aphids Away

  Gardener's Supply

  24 Apr 2012 | 8:26 am

  For more information, read the article Controlling Aphids. Recently, I was growing some basil in our testing lab. When I came in after the weekend, I noticed that the plants in several of our containers were infested with aphids, but the basil that I had planted in a windowbox with marigolds were aphid-free. I had always heard that marigolds repel aphids, but now I know it first-hand

• Four Makeovers for Your Porch

  Gardener's Supply

  23 Apr 2012 | 9:41 am

  #blog-main .image-center p .kicker { font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; color: #776658; } Before: A great porch makes a canvas for furniture, comfortable cushions and accessories. Looking to breathe new life into your porch or patio? We've created four makeovers that show you how to expand your outdoor living space, create a welcoming setting for summer entertaining and add curb appeal —

• 

  About.com Organic Gardening

• Ten Easy Vegetables To Direct Sow in Your Garden

  15 May 2012 | 12:45 pm

  Following up on my recent post about the joys of direct-sowing garden seeds, I thought I'd offer a few suggestions today for easy veggies to direct-sow. Here are my top ten favorite easy veggies:...Read Full Post

• Tricks for Successful Direct Sowing

  14 May 2012 | 4:45 am

  As much as I love playing with all of my gardening gadgets, such as soil block makers, seedling heat mats, and grow lights, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from direct sowing seeds in my garden. I love planting pumpkin seeds with my children, and seeing those fat cotyledons seem to magically appear days later, then flourish into wild, rambling vines. And when planting corn, a good rule of thumb is to plant two for the crows, and one for the gardener. We also direct-sow many annuals, including zinnias, marigolds, calendulas, and sunflowers, every year....Read Full Post

• Bee Mimics in Your Garden

  10 May 2012 | 5:31 am

  I snapped a quick photo of what I thought was a bee on my 'Cranberry' viburnum the other day. When I looked more closely at the photo later, I said to myself, "that's not a bee!"...Read Full Post

• Starting a New Garden? Here are Some Articles to Get You Started!

  9 May 2012 | 6:09 am

  If you've been bitten by the gardening bug, and have decided to try your hand at growing an organic garden, congratulations! If you're new to gardening, one thing is for sure: you have plenty of questions. I've pulled together some of my favorite resources to answer your gardening questions. I hope this helps get your first garden off to a great start!...Read Full Post

• Reader Question: How Long Does it Take to Get Compost from Bokashi?

  30 Apr 2012 | 10:05 am

  I get quite a few questions about Bokashi composting, and this is one of the most common (courtesy of a reader who asked via email): "Hi! I'm just getting informed about composting and your blogs are really helpful! I was wondering how long it takes to actually harvest your first batch of compost with Bokashi composting? Thanks."...Read Full Post

• 

  This Grandmother's Garden

• May Day Walk in the Gardens

  Carolyn ♥

  1 May 2012 | 2:10 pm

  "I love Spring anywhere,  but if I could choose...  I would always greet it in a garden."- Ruth Stout  My early morning walk in my gardens revealed some beautiful blooms,  the first of our Spring. Sensation Lilac New in my gardens and planted last Spring, this lilac has captured my heart. White trimmed dainty blossoms with a true lilac aroma... full growth will be 10 ft. tall and 6 ft. wide.   Blossoming Flame Maple Tree These trees delight me in every season  and the bees are crazy about them!   Red Twig Dogwood Another every season favorite. In Winter,…

• More Wier(d) Stuff and Setting the Stones... Completing Our Waterfall Part 6

  Carolyn ♥

  6 Apr 2012 | 11:17 am

  This post reflects the final steps in building our waterfall.  It's almost time for the water to flow... can you sense my excitement? (Actually the project was completed a year ago,  but it's been great fun to experience it all again through this series of posts.) The exact placement of the wier at the head of the stream is not critical,  nor is the level of the wier from front to back.  However, side-to-side leveling of the wier is extremely important. If you want the water to cascade evenly along the lip of the wier, you'll want to spend some time stabilizing the wier on…

• Laying the Liner... Building our Waterfall Part 5

  Carolyn ♥

  27 Mar 2012 | 11:30 pm

  Finally... it's time for our waterfall and stream  to take shape. All of our research and planning was actually beginning to pay off. Before placing the felt underlay, it's important to remove any stones in the soil along the stream bed. The underlay will provide a cushion between any sharp rocks left in the soil and will protect and extend the life of the rubber liner. Be sure to lay down a wider path than you intend the stream to be. You can piece the underlay if need be to get your desired result.  Don't worry too much about buying just enough, as this material is fairly…

• Oh Spring... where art thou?

  Carolyn ♥

  19 Mar 2012 | 11:31 am

  Our Waterfall in Winter...  oops... I mean Spring. Early morning in my gardens... 22° F... brrrr! There is fresh snow on my Waterfall! The sound of running water rippling over the rocks...  heavenly... even in snow! Lovin' my Waterfall...through every season. And it will all be melted by tomorrow. For those of you following my How to Build A Waterfall Series, sorry for the diversion.  We woke up to fresh snow and I couldn't wait to go out and take pics! (Imagine me in pj's and slippers... in the snow.) Stay tuned for the series to continue in our next post, I promise.

• What in the World is a WEIR? (Building Our Waterfall Part 4)

  Carolyn ♥

  16 Mar 2012 | 9:10 am

  The waterfall and stream actually begins  at the waterfall WEIR.  There's a WEIR under there A weir is just a box which diffuses the water  to create a natural appearing waterfall. Weirs can be expensive  and since we're always on the lookout to save money,  we discovered a much less expensive alternative  that has worked very well. Our local hardware store sells a plastic storage bin  that looks very much like a weir,  needing only a round hole cut in the side  to which a PVC plumbing fitting can be attached. This video provides a complete…

• 

  Annie's Gardening Corner

• ‘What’s In Bloom’ Wordless Wednesday

  16 May 2012 | 8:56 am

  Despite the endless rain showers, the blossoms of this R. calendulaceum, Flame Azalea extol warmth and beauty. And as Gerald De Nerval reminds us, "Each flower is a soul opening out to nature." P.S. If you’re a pinner, check out the new board http://pinterest.com/bilowzassoc/ ‘What’s in Bloom’. Send your comments and questions or I might have to go wordless more than just Wednesday! Images of R. calendulaceum, Flame Azalea in our garden by Ann BilowzIf you like this blog, hope you check in daily. You can like our fan page at http://www.facebook.com/abilowz or follow on twitter…

• Why Create a Garden if You Don’t …

  15 May 2012 | 8:33 am

  …take in the spring blossoms. Spring is such a lovely season especially when so much transformation occurs in a short span of time. The unfortunate thing – if your eyes are closed to it all. Yep, you bet. You just missed it. So in all the spring excitement, let’s revert back to last Tuesday’s post, http://blog.bilowzassociates.com/2012/05/time-for-flower-break.html where I shared my love for a spectacular Yak Rhododendron variety called ‘Mardi Gras.’ One of the dynamite features mentioned about this shrub was its “bright pink flowers that fade to white; perfect as a…

• Pure and Simple

  14 May 2012 | 8:19 am

  When spring days get a bit warmer like this past weekend, we may seek refuge in the shade. So if you’re developing a woodland garden or a shaded border, here is a perennial favorite with a heart-shaped white flower, so pure and simple it becomes a ‘must-have’ for the garden enthusiast. Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba' is a white-colored form of the common rose-colored bleeding heart. Perfect as a springtime accompaniment for Hostas and Ferns (there are many other woodland combinations that work nicely) this mid-height perennial goes dormant in the heat of the summer. This is one of those…

• ‘Lipstick’ for Mom

  11 May 2012 | 7:42 am

  Looking for a last minute gift idea for Mom? With loads of choices, why not shoot for something bold and colorful? I’m not talking lipstick in a tube. I’m talking plants of course. This groundcover’s bold magenta color can make any border, container planting or rock garden dazzle. Fragaria x 'Lipstick', an original descendant of our edible strawberry plants and a hybrid of Fragaria chiloensis has so many great features, take a peek below and decide yourself.* ‘Lipstick’ is a great companion plant to grow under the canopy of flowering trees. It’s always a plus to find a plant that…

• Annie's Thursday Garden Notes

  10 May 2012 | 8:52 am

  Looking for another purple flowering fragrant herb for your garden? The Herb Society of America (HSA) has announced the Notable Native Herb of 2013 as Monarda fistulosa. Bergamot, also known as Bee Balm or Horse Mint is an aromatic herb. According to Katrinka Morgan, executive director of HSA, this herb met the criteria for the Notable Native award with its “usefulness, including its value for culinary, medicinal, ornamental, economic, industrial, or cosmetic purposes. It also performs well in most gardens throughout the US.”  This herb likes its soil moist but…

• 

  Serenity in the Garden

• Labyrinths - Idea for Your Circular Garden

  Jan Johnsen

  15 May 2012 | 9:47 pm

  Circles intrigue us and the most compelling form of circular garden is a labyrinth. The term "labyrinth" conjures up something convoluted or maze-like but these circular walkways are relatively easy to navigate and are thought to hold great spiritual potential. These outdoor features have been in existence for over 3,500 years and were used as solar and lunar calendars, meditative walkways and symbolic religious elements.   The labyrinth tradition has been revived in recent years and labyrinths can be seen nearly everywhere. Their presence offers us the chance to rediscover…

• Learning from Gardens - outdoor science

  Jan Johnsen

  13 May 2012 | 9:50 pm

  "Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe... As we penetrate into matter, nature ...appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole.” ~ Fritjof Capra,  The Tao of Physics Such musings on the nature of the universe sound like what an ecological minded gardener might say. All you have to do is look at a backyard garden and see the microcosm of the interdependent web of animals, plants and microbes that has evolved over eons. Just as Capra was describing. So it makes sense then, as we gear up for commercial space travel and life,…

• The Great Tao in a Garden

  Jan Johnsen

  11 May 2012 | 7:43 am

  The idea that we are living within a world swirling with unseen energies is not a new one...  The Chinese idea of Tao comes closest to what mystics, tribal peoples and modern day physicists explain as the basis of all life. (white plumeria, Kauai )  The Tao, as Alan Watts writes, is not God “in the sense of ruler, monarch, commander, architect and maker of the universe,” but an “intelligent rhythm” (Watts, “Tao: the Watercourse Way” P 40): (from The Living Centre) “The great Tao flows [also “floats” and “drifts”] everywhere to the left and to the…

• The Sublime Color of Hazelnut

  Jan Johnsen

  9 May 2012 | 5:52 am

  Yesterday I was on a job and the tree pollen, which normally does not affect me, was intense...coughing, sneezing, etc. I began to think about tree pollen and what good things we could create from something so bothersome... I believe that everything in Nature has some use if only we can determine what it is. You know, like penicillin being developed from bread mold or something like that...(I am not sure about that example..) So in the interest of learning to love tree pollen I found this unusual and interesting item in 'In Living Color' . It was written by Kate Smith and details the…

• Willow Palaces, Cathedrals and Domes - Sanfte Strukturen

  Jan Johnsen

  6 May 2012 | 3:30 pm

  (from sanfte strukturen website) Sanfte Strukturen builds willow palaces, cathedrals and domes. Marcel Kalberer, the head of the group, says he does this because he believes in developing socially-sustainable building processes and encouraging human co-existence with the natural world..... and what a magnificent co-existence it is!   The building techniques he uses are based on the ancient Sumerian reed houses of Mesopotamia and the traditional European small outbuildings constructed of woven plants and trees. Yet while both these were built of tightly bound reeds and green…

• 

  MySecretGarden

• Part 2. Breathtaking Charm: Lakewold Gardens, WA

  15 May 2012 | 7:08 am

  This is a great time to visit spectacular spring display in historic Lakewold Gardens.The Brick Walk with Mt. Fuji cherry trees.This is a fine cherry species native to China, Japan and Korea. Cold hardiness zone 5-7.As other garden's features, the Quatrefoil Pool was designed by renowned landscape architect, Thomas Church.   Boxwood parterre beds are filled with flowering plants. Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttalli) frame the Teahouse: The Teahouse's lattice structure supports two old fashioned climbing roses: Cecile Brunner and Kathleen. Two other species of dogwood are also…

• Breathtaking Charm: Lakewold Gardens, WA

  12 May 2012 | 1:12 pm

  To be continued.Information about Lakewold Gardens.My other posts about this beautiful place:Holiday Tables. Part 2...,Holiday Tables,Lakewold Gardens Garden ShopI join Scenic Sunday , Saturday Show-off  and Weekly Top Shot***Copyright 2012 TatyanaS

• Spring Blooms In My Garden

  8 May 2012 | 11:38 pm

  These are some of the spring blooms in my garden, zone 7b, state of Washington.From left to right: Oxalis (pink), Vinka minor, Solomon Seal, Euphorbia 'Ruby Glow', Corydalis 'Berry Exciting', Tulips 'Cassini', Trillium kurabayashii 'Giant Red', Bluebells, Labrador Violet, Forget-Me-Not, Native Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa),  Primula kisoana, Lewisia hybrid, Trillium grandiflorum 'Eastern White', Native Plant (Unknown to me), Anemone, Pansies Mix, Pansie.I am especially glad to see the second blooms on my trilliums. Both of them are relatively new additions to the little shade garden…

• Looking at My Pampas Grass

  4 May 2012 | 1:18 pm

  This is a little update to my previous post Pampas Grass - Little Observation (February 19, 2011). In that post, I tried to figure out if the blooming power of pampas grass depends upon whether I cut it down or not. I also compared my pampas grass with the pampas grasses from our neighborhood. In previous years, I cut my dwarf pampas grass two ways:  severe, all the way to the ground, and less severe. This is what I call severe cutting -all the way down:This is what I call less severe cut (on the right):I didn't notice any connection between the type of…

• Lakewold Gardens Garden Shop

  2 May 2012 | 11:55 am

  On my list of garden visits in May, number one is Lakewold Gardens in Lakewood, WA. If you want, you can see some of the Gardens pictures in my posts about beautiful holiday tables in Lakewold Gardens Part 1 and  Part 2.While visiting Lakewold Gardens, don't miss its one of a kind The Garden Shop. The general information about it is HERE.  The shop's uniqueness begins from the building itself. Not every garden shop is located in such a special structure as the original 1918 Carriage House. The shop is filled with hundreds of…

• 

  Veg Plotting

• GBBD: Lady in the Bath

  VP

  15 May 2012 | 5:00 am

  One of my favourite plants for May is Dicentra spectabilis* because it always gives such good value in the shaded part of my garden. From the first sinister looking unfurling fronds in February/March - which look like dragon's claws - until it flowers in May/June, Dicentra adds a lot of interest and also helps to disguise the dying foliage of the daffodils. Until this morning I hadn't realised I'd placed it to catch the sun so nicely. Gardening serendipity is a Very Good Thing. One of the common names for this plant is lady in the bath, which always makes me chuckle. Garden chuckles are…

• I Have a New Pet - Called Sourdough

  VP

  14 May 2012 | 2:30 am

  One of the surprises after the Yeo Valley cookery demonstration I mentioned last week was the departing gift of my very own sourdough starter. I'd always wanted to have a go at making bread using this method, so here was just the encouragement I needed. However, on getting it safely home, I was faced with the fundamental question of what on earth do I do next? I looked through all my breadmaking books but they only referred to a more solid sounding starter, rather than the liquid form I had in front of me. Thanks to the 52 Week Salad Challenge, I'd already become a regular Twitter and blog…

• High Tech Salad

  VP

  13 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  One of our local supermarkets is trialling lots of new ways of increasing and displaying the fresh produce it has on offer (introduced to you recently in my How Advertising Works series). The most high tech of these is the misting unit which sprays water over the produce, thus helping to keep it cool and fresh. Here you can see the herbs area which has delicious samphire on offer as well as the usual suspects. Another of these units is used for some salads and quite a few supplements such as beetroot and carrots.  Another unit has the leafier salads displayed on a bed of ice. Of course…

• Rhubarb Cheesecake: Seasonal Recipe

  VP

  10 May 2012 | 5:25 am

  My last visit to Holt Farm was as a guest of Yeo Valley and the day included a fab cookery demonstration courtesy of Jaime, their head chef who conjures up the wonderful food at the garden's cafe. We were shown how to make sourdough bread, tea smoked trout, and rhubarb cheesecake. We also got to eat the results, so I can vouch for their scrumminess. Each item on the menu included a technique I hadn't come across before, or one which I'd been wanting to try. For the rhubarb cheesecake Jaime showed us how to make curd cheese from yoghurt. I had no idea how simple it is to do and with a glut of…

• How Advertising Works in Chippenham #32

  VP

  9 May 2012 | 2:30 am

  Start a local farm shop which stocks plenty of fresh, seasonal vegAdd a very popular cafe to your business offeringSeeing it's raining and unseasonably cold, tweet what a treat a hot chocolate would beWait for a tempted blogger with a camera to spot there's a new type of veg on the blockEt voila!If you're not reading this on vegplotting.blogspot.com, Blotanical or your own web reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader, then the website you're using is a blogpost feed scraper. Why not go straight to the source instead? That's vegplotting.blogspot.com

• 

  Restoring The Landscape With Native Plants

• Orange Sulphur Butterfly Seeking Native Host Plants

  15 May 2012 | 10:07 am

  Orange Sulphur Butterfly ~ Colias eurytheme A first sighting of the Orange Sulphur butterfly was in our yard last week. Another tattered female gliding over the prairie plants looking for host plants to lay her eggs upon. Laying eggs on White Wild Indigo I watched with curiosity what she would choose as these butterflies are host plant generalists - liking most plants falling in the Legume or Pea family (Fabaceae). Wild White Indigo The female laid eggs on two native perennials in our yard, the first - tiny seedlings of White Wild Indigo (Baptisia alba). Wild White Indigo has an open…

• Native Plant of the Week: Woodland Phlox ~ Phlox divaricata

  11 May 2012 | 10:07 am

  Woodland Phlox ~ Phlox divaricata If you're looking for a showy, spring flowering woodland native to add color to your shady landscape, then Woodland Phlox is an excellent candidate. The five parted light blue, white or pale purple colored flowers are extremely fragrant, rivalling the fragrance of lilacs. This perennial has a spreading habit forming a nice cluster or mass. When in flower, it can reach heights of around 20" in rich mesic soils, but shorter in drier sites. The Woodland Phlox in my own landscape does extremely well in the sandy, well drained soils in partial shade. It works well…

• American Lady Butterfly Seeking Native Host Plants

  8 May 2012 | 11:10 am

  American Lady Butterfly ~ Vanessa virginiensis Don't you love it when a plan comes together? Adding butterfly host plants to your landscape sometimes doesn't yield instant outcomes. But this week, planning and patience paid off. A very tattered American Lady butterfly was flying around the yard checking out the plants in our prairie area. Migrating from the south she arrived on last legs ready to start the next generation. She found two host plants, Field Pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta) and Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) and laid several eggs on each. I'll be watching for signs…

• Native Plant of the Week: Prairie Smoke ~ Geum triflorum

  4 May 2012 | 10:06 am

  Prairie Smoke ~ Geum triflorum The nodding pink flowers are maturing on the prairie smoke right now and attracting many native bees. Prairie Smoke is more widely recognized for its fruiting stage when the dried, long pinkish styles blow in the wind. A native of dry to mesic prairies, this is a great plant for well drained soils and sunny locations. The attractive bright green basal foliage is fern-like and divided into many leaflets. An old prairie with prairie smoke seedheads in South Dakota The five-parted flowerheads nod downwards and tip upwards as the flowers are setting seed. Prairie…

• Large Flowered Bellwort Insect Visitors

  2 May 2012 | 11:03 am

  Large Flowered Bellwort ~ Uvularia grandiflora The Large Flowered Bellwort is one of my favorite spring flowering natives. Bright yellow flowers twist and dangle downwards from 12" high stems. The insects like this perennial woodland native too, it's offering a nectar reward unlike the Bloodroot and Rue Anemone flowering around the same time. One interesting feature about this plant is that the stem looks as though it pierces through the leaf like an earring because the base of the leaf surrounds the stem. Large Flowered Bellwort is found in mesic to dry woodlands. Deer do like to browse on…

• 

  Eat Your Landscape

• Finding Edible Landscape Plants and Seeds

  Beuna Tomalino

  15 May 2012 | 9:41 am

  Sources  I like for plants and seeds: Check local nurseries and garden centers Logee's Richters Raintree Hartmanns One Green World Seed Catalogs - open pollinated, non-hybrid, no GMO

• Cool Weather Plants

  Beuna Tomalino

  14 Apr 2012 | 10:12 am

  Cool spring weather is a great time to plant peas, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, cabbage, onions, radishes, carrots, beets, arugula, and potatoes.  Most leafy vegetables or root vegetables can be planted 8 weeks or more before your last average frost date.  Early spring is also a great time to plant fruit trees, berry bushes, strawberries and most other fruiting plants.  Even if you get some snow all these plants should come through it just fine.  Below: Arugula, cabbage, and onions in my portable 2' x 2' Square Foot Garden.  I take this garden with me to Square Foot…

• Edible Landscaping In The News

  Beuna Tomalino

  9 Apr 2012 | 10:49 am

  Edible landscaping is becoming better known and in the news more frequently.  Below are some recent news reports.  It isn't that edible landscaping is new but due to concern about the economy, the environment, food safety, and the desire to become more self sufficient the idea of using edible plants in the landscape is gaining popularity.  Edible landscaping once was the usual way of creating a landscape. Plymouth Daily News Seattle Times Farm Carolina Fox News U-TSan Diego

• Produce In Season

  Beuna Tomalino

  26 Mar 2012 | 6:03 pm

  Use this interactive map to find when specific fruits and vegetables are in season in your area. What Fruits and Veggies Are In Season? Courtesy of WEBstaurant Restaurant Supplies

• Unusual Edibles

  Beuna Tomalino

  3 Mar 2012 | 12:27 pm

  One purpose of this blog is to introduce you to some of the more unusual edible vegetables, fruits, and herbs.  Although the vegetables mentioned in this article are ones you have likely heard of you may not have grown or eaten them. Explore some of the less common edibles - first buy purchasing a few at a farmer's market, grocery store, or health food store or see if you can get some from a friend or neighbor. Keep in mind that your home grown version will probably taste even better.   For those edibles which are easier to grow or harder to find grow just a few to try. …

• 

  Groceries, Garden and Dinner

• Out of room

  11 May 2012 | 1:06 pm

  I always start too many plants.  Many of these will end up in our community garden plot this year or given to friends. 

• Kiwi trellis

  6 May 2012 | 12:48 pm

  Here is the hardy kiwi trellis we built a few weekends ago.  I need to get one more piece of trellis for the south side.  I have one female planted and another female and one male ready to be put in.  We are pretty happy with how it turned out...it is even almost straight.

• Potato set up

  5 May 2012 | 12:45 pm

  Here is D's potato setup this year.  There is cardboard underneath to stop the weeds that overwhelmed us last year.  We also have some planted up at our community garden site.

• Prairie

  4 May 2012 | 12:40 pm

  We are getting ready to plant our tall grass and short grass prairie mixes from Ion Xchange.  We are going to do one more pass with the flame weeder, rough up the surface a bit, plant the mixes and cover lightly with soil.  Stay tuned and wish us luck!

• Oregano somatic mutation?

  3 May 2012 | 5:15 pm

  I found some white leaves on my oregano.  It has been a while since I took genetics, but I think this is a type of somatic mutation...anyone have any input on that?

• 

  GrowBlog

• Growing Kale – a Great Alternative to Cabbage

  11 May 2012 | 10:57 am

  Kale has had a bad press for a long time. Goodness knows why, although it’s reputation as a poor man’s vegetable hasn’t helped. It’s also fed to cattle, which never does much for a veggie’s image. I’m delighted that it’s undergoing a renaissance. It started a few years ago when the dark, dramatic Cavolo Nero appeared in seed catalogues, and since then more and more varieties have been released. This is particularly good for potagers, where the enormous variety of colours and leaf shapes offered by kale add character to the mixed borders.

• How to Make Great Salads with Garden Lettuce

  11 May 2012 | 2:44 am

  Lettuce is wonderfully easy to grow and there are a wealth of varieties available so why not try some delicious new combinations in this guide to creating great salads.

• Growing in Module Trays

  27 Apr 2012 | 4:14 am

  If you’re growing vegetables in any quantity it pays to be well organised, both on and off the veg plot. Maintaining records of what is sown, where and when is a must and will help you to get the most from your patch but organising the raising of seedlings is vital too and that's where module trays can be a godsend...

• Growing Carrots with Character

  20 Apr 2012 | 9:49 am

  Home-grown carrots have a freshness and flavor that's hard to beat and by following these simple tips you'll find them easy to grow too.

• Growing Potatoes the No-Dig Way

  13 Apr 2012 | 1:36 am

  Growing potatoes can be hard work but it doesn't have to be that way. Using the no-dig (lasagne) method and following some simple steps can yield a wonderful harvest and remove the need to weed them.

• 

  The Enduring Gardener

• Garden Africa

  The Enduring Gardener

  16 May 2012 | 1:38 am

  Garden Africa is a wonderful charity that works with people in South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe training smallholders to grow crops to organic standards to improve their income and protect the environment. Whatever support you can give will be appreciated.

• World Vision Garden Planting

  The Enduring Gardener

  15 May 2012 | 2:54 am

  Update from #rhsChelsea – Alongside the meaningful Lupinus mutabilis two colourful flowers in The World Vision Garden at RHS Chelsea are Geum borissi and Iris sibirica. The bright Geum (Avens), matches the orange in the World Vision logo and according to designer John Warland, “looks like a winner!” However, the cold weather means the purple Iris (Ruffled Velvet) have been taken back under cover to encourage them to flower. It’s an opposite problem to previous Chelsea’s where growers have had to keep flowers in fridge-like conditions to stop them blooming too soon. In the forced…

• NGS Garden Tours

  The Enduring Gardener

  14 May 2012 | 1:30 am

  The National Gardens Scheme  raises millions for charity through its open gardens throughout the country and also has a programme of unusual and interesting guided day tours in the south-east, details of which are also on the website.

• Prim(ula) Perfection

  The Enduring Gardener

  13 May 2012 | 2:48 am

  It always amazes me the way the goldlace primula plants transform from scruffy winter survivors to flowery perfection in a few weeks. Each year I think they won’t manage to resurrect themselves and they always do.

• Life Beyond Gardener’s World

  The Enduring Gardener

  11 May 2012 | 1:43 am

  Toby Buckland is opening a plant centre at Powderham Castle in Devon, following the launch of his online nursery last autumn. Like the online nursery, the plant centre will sell perennials, climbers, roses, herbs and vegetables.

• 

  Gardening with Cheryl

• Greenwood’s Favorite Ground Cover Plants

  Cheryl Jones

  11 May 2012 | 12:01 am

  Greenwood’s favorite Ground Cover Plants: Jeepers Creepers Tiarella - Great non-invasive substitute for English Ivy Vinca Major - Perfect for covering difficult hillsides and ravines Hen and Chicks - Good choice for planting between path stones Creeping Raspberry - Has a prickly feel Wooly Thyme - Lovely draping over containers, steps or ledges Purple Wintercreeper - Great all round evergreen controllable [...]

• Attract Hummingbirds with These Must Have Plants

  Cheryl Jones

  28 Apr 2012 | 6:17 pm

  Attract Hummingbirds with These Plant Magnets: Double Red Kockout Roses Hibiscus Lucy Shrub Achillea Strawberry Seduction Monarda Fire Ball Pineapple Sage Russian Sage ‘Little Spire’ Good Vibrations Juniper Salvia May Night Hidcote Blue Lavender Choose plants that produce summer blossoms in the colors of red, purple and bright pink.  Related articles Hummingbirds: A Route of [...]

• Greenwood’s Favorite Sun Garden Plants

  Cheryl Jones

  20 Apr 2012 | 12:11 am

  Our Favorite Sun Garden Plants: Yucca Color Guard Elijah Blue Fescue Hen and Chicks The Fairy Rose Miss Ruby Buddleia Apricot Drift Rose Adagio Ornamental Grass Blue Scent Lavender This selection of sun garden plants is our choices for beginning a colorful long blooming sun garden in most zones. Check out more plant selections for sun garden [...]

• Our Favorite Drought Tolerant Plants

  Cheryl Jones

  13 Apr 2012 | 9:20 pm

  Greenwood’s Favorite 8 Drought Tolerant Plants Strawberry Seduction Yarrow Barbeque Rosemary Provence Lavender Golden Japanese Ogon Sedum Juniper Skyrocket Sedum Autumn Fire Rosa Rugosa Red Dragon’s Blood Red Sedum Plants that are drought tolerant still require regular supplemental watering to fully establish a strong root system. Once established, they can grow and flourish with little [...]

• Attract Butterflies and Hummingbirds with Garden Plants

  Cheryl Jones

  13 Apr 2012 | 6:46 pm

  Attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden with our selection of flowering shrub bushes. Brightly colored blooms of red, yellow, pink and purple will bring them in for your enjoyment.   Related articles Plant Shrub Roses to Complete Your Spring Garden Planting (gardeningwithcheryl.com) Black Knight Butterfly Bush (myheartsmission.com) The 13 Best Summer-Blooming Shrubs (reallyhome.wordpress.com)

• 

  Urban Gardens » Urban Gardens | Unlimited Thinking For Limited Spaces

• Help Sustain New York City Landmark Gardens: Enter Our Partners in Preservation Contest for Chance to Win $50!

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  15 May 2012 | 11:40 am

  If awarded  funds from the Partners in Preservation grant, The New York Botanical Garden hopes to conduct a comprehensive restoration of the Rock Garden Cascade. Urban Gardens wants to give you a $50 American Express gift card for entering this … Read More...

• Preserving an Historic Manhattan Bento Box With Garden

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  14 May 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Tall bamboo extends to the second floor from the lobby below. Photo: Robin Plaskoff Horton, Urban Gardens. The five-story Japan Society building in Manhattan stands apart from its granite and limestone neighbors, a flat black modern reinforced concrete “bento box” … Read More...

• From Twig to Trook to Garden Pot Hook

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  12 May 2012 | 1:36 pm

  A while back Urban Gardens debuted the Trook, UK designer Geoffrey Fisher’s bespoke carved hooks made from found wood. We are now pleased to announce the arrival of the Trook’s as yet un-named sibling, a hook that holds a … Read More...

• Too Chicken to Raise Chickens?

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  11 May 2012 | 12:27 pm

  Chickens at P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home Retreat. Photo: Urban Gardens. I got to talk chicken with award-winning designer, gardening and lifestyle expert, P Allen Smith, when I was a guest recently for the second annual Garden2Blog at his … Read More...

• Pothole Gardener Commits Illicit Acts of Gardening

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  10 May 2012 | 12:16 pm

  UK pothole gardener extraordinaire, Steve Wheen, recently touched ground in Milan to plant 14 of his ubiquitous small-scale gardens during Milan Design Week. Italian auto manufacturer Lancia, who recently launched a new range of eco cars and was … Read More...

• 

  Busch Gardens in Virginia Blog

• Verbolten to open ... softly. So what is a soft opening?

  Leanna Caplan

  11 May 2012 | 9:26 am

  As many of you know, we are in the process of opening our newest roller coaster, Verbolten. You may have seen videos of the construction and footage of ride testing in recent weeks. To update you, the ride testing phase is now finished, and we’re set to officially open Verbolten May 18. Between now and then, you may see us letting guests ride Verbolten in preview mode. We call that “a soft opening” and it’s really something we do to give our ride operators experience with riders on the trains. If we offer the opportunity of a soft opening on Verbolten, you can be rest…

• Animal trainers presenting in California

  Leanna Caplan

  10 May 2012 | 2:03 pm

  Myself, along with one of the other trainers at Wolf Haven, Lauren, are in sunny San Francisco! We are extremely fortunate to have been selected to present a paper at The Animal Behavior Management Alliance (ABMA) conference. The ABMA is a group of animal professionals dedicated to using positive reinforcement to improve the lives of animals in human care. Many professional animal trainers are members of ABMA, and at the yearly conference we all get together to share ideas. This year, the theme of the conference is Eureka! Striking Behavioral Management Gold. Lauren and I wrote a…

• Verbolten: Ride Testing [Official Video]

  Leanna Caplan

  10 May 2012 | 9:51 am

  Embedded Video:  Sorry, you need to install flash to see this content.

• Backstage and coaster riding with newsboys

  Leanna Caplan

  8 May 2012 | 10:10 am

  This past Sunday we kicked off our 2012 Glory at the Gardens concerts with a bang as newsboys rocked the Royal Palace Theatre with a concert that I will never forget. Busch Gardens was the last stop on the 61 city ‘God’s Not Dead’ tour, which also included opening performances by Abandon and Anthem Lights. The theater was packed with those eager to worship along with some of their favorite Christian artists.  For those of you that might not know, Michael Tait (lead singer for newsboys) is a huge roller coaster enthusiast.  Early in the afternoon, I had the…

• Welcoming our new golden eagle

  Leanna Caplan

  7 May 2012 | 3:39 pm

  Besides the adorable lambs at the Highland Stables, there is another new addition to our animal collection at Busch Gardens. We acquire our animals in many different ways. In the case of many of our parrots, they were once someone’s pet that could no longer care for them. Our bald eagles are rescued after being injured but cannot be returned to the wild. Other animals, we get from Busch Gardens Tampa. This is the case for Aquila, our new golden eagle. A few of my coworkers and I had the opportunity to visit Busch Gardens Tampa and shadow a few animal trainers and educators. We brought…

• 

  Urban Gardens » Urban Gardens | Unlimited Thinking For Limited Spaces

• Help Sustain New York City Landmark Gardens: Enter Our Partners in Preservation Contest for Chance to Win $50!

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  15 May 2012 | 11:40 am

  If awarded  funds from the Partners in Preservation grant, The New York Botanical Garden hopes to conduct a comprehensive restoration of the Rock Garden Cascade. Urban Gardens wants to give you a $50 American Express gift card for entering this … Read More...

• Preserving an Historic Manhattan Bento Box With Garden

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  14 May 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Tall bamboo extends to the second floor from the lobby below. Photo: Robin Plaskoff Horton, Urban Gardens. The five-story Japan Society building in Manhattan stands apart from its granite and limestone neighbors, a flat black modern reinforced concrete “bento box” … Read More...

• From Twig to Trook to Garden Pot Hook

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  12 May 2012 | 1:36 pm

  A while back Urban Gardens debuted the Trook, UK designer Geoffrey Fisher’s bespoke carved hooks made from found wood. We are now pleased to announce the arrival of the Trook’s as yet un-named sibling, a hook that holds a … Read More...

• Too Chicken to Raise Chickens?

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  11 May 2012 | 12:27 pm

  Chickens at P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home Retreat. Photo: Urban Gardens. I got to talk chicken with award-winning designer, gardening and lifestyle expert, P Allen Smith, when I was a guest recently for the second annual Garden2Blog at his … Read More...

• Pothole Gardener Commits Illicit Acts of Gardening

  Robin Plaskoff Horton

  10 May 2012 | 12:16 pm

  UK pothole gardener extraordinaire, Steve Wheen, recently touched ground in Milan to plant 14 of his ubiquitous small-scale gardens during Milan Design Week. Italian auto manufacturer Lancia, who recently launched a new range of eco cars and was … Read More...

• 

  My Tool Blog

• How a power drill works

  MTS Team

  30 Apr 2012 | 9:41 am

  Power drills are common place these days in homes and on the building site. They generally come in one of two varieties, corded and cordless. It used to be a fact that a corded power drill was much better than the cordless types, but with the invention of better batteries that need less charging and provide higher amounts of voltage, the cordless drills can now deliver just as much torque and won’t be out of power in ten minutes. The standard power drill consists of an electric motor, which is attached to the drilling mechanism, or chuck. The concept is simple, the electric motor is driven…

• Richard Walbyoff wins DIY dad of the Year

  MTS Team

  30 Apr 2012 | 9:31 am

  While attending the Ideal Home Show with his family, Richard Walbyoff spontaneously decided to join the DIY Dad of the Year competition, and took home first place.  His wife encouraged him to attend the Home Show because one of the guest speakers was George Clark, and they were both big fans of his.  They enjoyed the show, but when Richard saw there would be a competition for DIY dads, he thought he might have fun joining it. Richard Walbyoff - image courtesy of Oxford Times Richard runs his own business maintaining and restoring historic cars and performs all of the maintenance on his own…

• Insurance company study claims Brits are DIY disasters

  MTS Team

  19 Apr 2012 | 5:56 am

  A study by Allianz Your Cover Insurance found that DIY disasters are actually costing Brits 4.4 billion pounds per year! Knowing how to handle power tools and take care of simply fixes at home are useful skills.  Most would agree that if you know how to get the job done yourself, you can save a lot of money by not hiring someone else. Unfortunately for Brits, this might not be the situation.  Although 56% of them believe their DIY skills range from good to excellent, about 10% of those are only causing more problems. That’s not stopping them from trying though.  With the economy still…

• Women gaining in DIY on their male counterparts

  MTS Team

  13 Apr 2012 | 8:02 am

  Although that DIY to-do list used to be the responsibility of the man of the house, that seems to be changing in these modern times. Studies are showing that women are gaining on, if not exceeding, men at being able to perform simple DIY tasks around their homes. In fact, women between the ages of 18 and 24 have actually passed young men their age when it comes to assembling furniture and patching walls.  They are close to passing them in other areas too. 79% of men over 50 could carry out most DIY tasks, but this drops to 52% of men in their 20s.  This shows the drastic decline in the…

• A brief history of DeWalt tools

  MTS Team

  30 Mar 2012 | 3:47 am

  From a visual aspect, the trademark of DeWalt tools is its vivid yellow and black colour scheme visible on all its tools and machinery. DeWalt’s real trademark however is its ability to design and build rugged and tough tools that can withstand the highest degree of abuse on the jobsite, but yet still continue to work flawlessly. The company was originally founded in 1936 by Raymond D. DeWalt. He managed to grow his company based on the invention of the radial saw arm. After many years of success, DeWalt sold the business to the American Machine & Foundry Company in 1949, who then in…

• 

  a charlotte garden

• Carolina Chickadee Baby

  Daricia, A Charlotte Garden

  9 May 2012 | 6:59 pm

  On the way to the mailbox, I see movement in an azalea and look what I see!  He's tiny, about - oh - three inches long?  Really small. He looks at me but doesn't fly away. I grab the mail and go back inside for the camera.  I come back, without my dog this time, and kneel down to see him. I wonder if he's hurt, really hoping he isn't, and see that he doesn't appear to be.  We regard each other for what seems like a very long time. Then, maybe he's tired of the camera-clicking stranger, or just hungry, but he calls for assistance. I walk away to give him some space. Soon, a…

• In Front of the Library in Southport, NC

  Daricia, A Charlotte Garden

  2 May 2012 | 8:18 am

  Hydrangea macrophylla Wordless Wednesday

• Visit a Garden!

  Daricia, A Charlotte Garden

  1 May 2012 | 9:37 pm

  There is no better month to visit gardens in Charlotte than the warm and lovely month of May!  From tiny plots filled with herbs to acres full of perennials, there's sure to be a planted space you'll adore.  (If you're like me, you'll adore all of them!) Wander through the blooming greenery, take pictures, make some notes for your garden, maybe enjoy a picnic while you're there -- just don't forget to smell the roses! PUBLIC GARDENS Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden is just outside Charlotte in Belmont, NC.  It is a large garden with a huge collection of labeled plants,…

• A Pink Garden

  Daricia, A Charlotte Garden

  26 Apr 2012 | 5:20 pm

  Why grow pinks (Dianthus)?  Because you can!   They:  are easy to grow. make neat mounds of attractive evergreen foliage. are good edging plants. are good rock garden plants. will grow well in pots. can tolerate some shade (in the South). attract hummingbirds and butterflies. do not attract deer or rabbits. are pretty...and pink! smell sweet. are edible.  (Check out the recipe at the bottom of this post!) you can make all sorts of things with them, perfumed floral waters and baby powder are just a couple. I have been a collector of pinks without even realizing…

• mulchrooms

  Daricia, A Charlotte Garden

  18 Apr 2012 | 8:20 am

  ~  wordless wednesday

• 

  How to Grow Great Potatoes

• 21st Century Infectious Potato Disease

  Annette Welsford

  15 May 2012 | 6:23 pm

  A really nasty seed-borne bacterial blackleg disease, Dickeya solani is causing concern to potato farmers. First identified in Holland in 2005, Dickeya solani is an aggressive form of another type of blackleg disease, Dickeya dianthicola that has established itself in several countries in Europe, including Spain, France and Belgium, as well as in Finland and Poland. It has also spread to the United Kingdom (specifically England and Wales) and other parts of the world. Prior to this, as early as 1970, the less aggressive form of blackleg, Dickeya dianthicola had been reported in…

• Storing Processed Potatoes

  Annette Welsford

  22 Apr 2012 | 7:12 am

    Growing potatoes can be incredibly rewarding, particularly if you have the space to plant a fair number of them. Better still, if you get a particularly good crop, you can process some of them and store them for times when there aren’t any fresh tubers to harvest from your garden. The Best Ways to Process Your Spuds When you “process” potatoes, all you are really doing is semi-preparing them for cooking. So you can peel them, halve them peeled or unpeeled, quarter or slice them, peel and dice them, or you can even cut them ready for frying as chips. If you…

• Wild Potatoes are being used to Develop Commercial Potatoes that will Resist Disease

  Annette Welsford

  11 Mar 2012 | 11:19 am

  With potatoes being the number one veggie crop in the USA, it's not surprising that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has dedicated a lot of time and money to doing all it can to develop potatoes that will resist the typical diseases that attack potatoes.   It's not just the damage from potato diseases that costs the US economy a lot of money, it is also post-harvest losses that the USDA maintains are as high as 30%. And if it happens there, chances are the international potato industry is suffering similar losses as well. What Geneticists are Doing In Madison,…

• Development of Disease- and Pest-Resistant Potatoes

  Annette Welsford

  20 Feb 2012 | 4:54 am

  All living organisms are prone to certain diseases, not least of which is the humble potato which, by the way, is the fourth largest crop in the world after wheat, rice and corn! In fact the potato is prone to so many different diseases, and is attacked by so many lethal pests, that horticulturists have made it their business to develop many varieties of disease-resistant potato. Defender, a blight-resistant variety of potato, thrives in a bed where all the other varieties have been killed by late blight. Photograph credit: USDA. Potatoes have been attacked by various pests and diseases for…

• A Tater Story

  Annette Welsford

  4 Feb 2012 | 8:16 pm

  And now for a bit of light hearted fun! A Girl Potato and  Boy Potato had eyes for each other,and finally they got married, and  had a little sweet potato, which they called 'Yam'. Of course,  they wanted the best for Yam. When it was time, they told her  about the facts of life. They warned her about going out  and getting half-baked, so she  wouldn't get accidentally mashed, and get a bad name for herself like 'Hot  Potato'. Yam said not to worry, no Spud would get  her  into the sack  and make a rotten potato out…

• 

  Growing Veggies

• Jerusalem Artichokes

  Annette

  16 May 2012 | 7:20 am

  Nina Dixon liked this postJerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) are tubers, like potatoes, but they have a totally different flavour, and are a lot less popular than potatoes. In spite of the fact that they are called “artichokes”, they are not related to Chinese artichokes (which are also knobbly tubers) or globe artichokes (which are essentially edible flowers). A Jerusalem artichoke flower Jerusalem artichokes are a part of the sunflower family, and some say that the common name (Jerusalem) comes from an Italian word girasole – meaning ‘turning to the sun’. The plant has…

• Growing Okra at Home

  Annette

  20 Apr 2012 | 7:42 am

  Nardea Manib, Greg Reynolds, Darren Hello, Margaret Smith liked this postAn okra pod. Okra (Hibiscus esculentus), an unusual vegetable that originated in Central America, is easy to grow and delicious to eat. But it is under-estimated and consequently grown by relatively few home gardeners. This is a great pity because not only are the green pods edible, but so too are the flowers and leaves. Ironically it is not always easy to find in supermarkets either. Also known as lady’s finger and gumbo, okra is a summer annual that will thrive if planted in a fairly light, well-dressed soil. It…

• Grow Delicious Patty Pan Squash

  Annette

  11 Mar 2012 | 8:09 am

  Timothy Hodgkinson Sr, Margaret Smith liked this postGrowing patty pan squash is as easy as it is to cook it, and as long as you follow a few basic guidelines, you’ll be rewarded with a feast of a harvest throughout the summer season. Yellow patty pans grown from hermetically sealed and chemically treated seed (which explains their colour).   Patty pan squash, which is a member of the common Cucurbita species, is known by many different names, including custard squash, sunburst squash, white squash (if it is the white variety), button squash, cibleme (in French), and of course…

• The Best Spinach Quiche Ever

  Annette

  19 Feb 2012 | 9:19 am

  Margaret Smith, Nardea Manib, Pappy Moore, Amanda Lynn Lee, Larry G. Jones liked this postCommon spinach, or more correctly Swiss chard, is one of the most rewarding home grown vegetables in terms of yield. But to make it a worthwhile crop, you need to find delicious ways to serve it at the table. While you can certainly use very young spinach and/or Swiss chard in salads, when the plants get  a bit older, it is better to either blanch them briefly in boiling water, or braise with onions and/or other vegetables. This mix can then be combined with additional ingredients and used to fill pies…

• Different Ways to Cook Spinach

  Annette

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:10 am

  Larry G. Jones, Laura Conlin, Russ Reid, Naomi 'Ma Larkin' Lever liked this postHomegrown spinach casserole Spinach is an incredibly easy vegetable to grow, particularly Swiss chard or silver beet. But what do you do when you are faced with kilo after kilo of fresh spinach? Different types of Spinach True spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is not grown as widely as high yielding Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) which is, to many non-horticultural people all over the world, the only spinach there is. The most likely reason for this is that true spinach has a much shorter picking season, it…

• 

  Thanks for today.

• Native Trees & Shrubs for Arbor Day (& MORE for Wildflower Wednesday!)

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  27 Apr 2012 | 11:10 am

  Over the last three years, I've been adding native plants, shrubs, groundcovers and seedlings to my yard. Recently, the local chapter of the Audubon society had a native seedling sale and I took advantage of it. I'm still trying to decide the best 'spots' to plant each of the various seedlings, depending on their needs for sun or shade, dry or moist conditions, etc. in my zone 7-A yard. Since they are all native to my area, almost any area will suffice, but with young seedlings, I still need to take into consideration whether the soil is in its 'natural' state or whether at some point in…

• Wildflower Wednesday: Native Ginger

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  25 Apr 2012 | 10:30 pm

  I have two varieties of native ginger.  Asarum arifolium and Asarum canadense.  Both are low growing herbs with kidney or heart-shaped leaves, spreading by rhizomes. They are planted in fairly shady, moist areas near my stream. *Wild ginger is not related to common ginger. It is in the 'Birthwort' family. Variety #1: Asarum arifolium (Arrowleaf Ginger, Heartleaf Wild Ginger) has anise-scented leaves and produces tan/gray flowers in the shape of jugs, thus the nickname 'little jug'. The leaves can be variegated, although the leaves on my plant look pretty much the same…

• Mid-March Blooms Are Way Ahead of Schedule

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  19 Mar 2012 | 6:22 pm

  As others in various parts of the country have been noticing, this was the winter that wasn't. At least where I live it wasn't was;~}  Many of my plants are at least 2 weeks ahead this year. Others seem more like months ahead... Dicentra, Brunnera and Pulmonaria did not bloom until April last year...but not this year!  Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart) Dicentra spectabilis 'alba' Brunnera macrophylla (Siberian Buglose) Pulmonaria 'Raspberry Splash' (Lungwort) I have barely been able to keep up with the blooms that pop daily out of the ground and begin to show off their…

• What's Blooming Now

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  8 Mar 2012 | 8:39 pm

  It's March 8th and I've decided to show 'what's blooming right now' in my garden. The last time I blogged was in January and I had 'vowed' to blog at least twice a month. Somehow, February completely slipped away without a single post. Did anyone notice?! Probably not! Crocus 'Romance' (Just planted bulbs in January!) Hyacinth I took photos daily, or at least several times a week, throughout the month of February, so it's all 'on record' if I want to share anything. I'm not sure what the reason for lack of blogging was, but it could have been the fact that most of my blooming plants were…

• Backyard Birds--We've Got 'Em Here!

  Jan@Thanks for today.

  22 Jan 2012 | 11:12 pm

  Every year we look forward to an influx of colorful birds in our yard. The numbers generally pick up in January, and usually coincide with colder temperatures. While birds are here at any given time throughout the year, there is more obvious activity at the feeders during the winter months: Finches and a Bluebird at one of the feeding stations What do we do to attract the birds?  One thing we do is provide a variety of seeds, nuts and berries in several different bird feeders.  Black oil sunflower seed, hulled sunflower nuts, peanut pieces, safflower seed, nijer seed, and suet is…

• 

  Appalachian Feet

• How to Go on the 2012 Greenville Urban Farm Tour

  Sustainahillbilly

  8 May 2012 | 1:47 pm

  It’s time for the Greenville Urban Farm Tour again! When? This coming Saturday, May 12th, from 9am – 5pm. Tickets are $8 per adult (children under 12 free) and there is a group rate available on the UFT website. This year there are 31 sites to visit, 16 free workshops at the UFT’s headquarters (Crescent Studios), and bicycle tours offered by Bikeville of Greenville. There’s also a pre-event gala & concert on Thursday, 5/10 at Zen if you’d like to meet some site owners (including us) in advance. You can buy tickets in advance on the UFT website or purchase…

• How to Read My Daughter’s Post on Broody Chickens

  Sustainahillbilly

  27 Apr 2012 | 3:38 pm

  My daughter just wrote a detailed blog post about our broody cuckoo maran hen. If you’d like to read her description of Ol’ LaZertron’s exploits, here’s the link! Photo Caption: My husband named this chicken "LaZertron Eggonator" and insists we refer to her as "Ol' LaZertron." She's broody right now so my daughter wrote a blog post about her.

• How to Watch My Urban Farm Pecha Kucha Talk

  Sustainahillbilly

  20 Apr 2012 | 10:15 am

  What’s Pecha Kucha, anyway? You could describe it as TED Talks for people with short attention spans or a good way to get presenters to keep it short. Every Pecha Kucha is 20 slides long, 20 seconds each slide. Pecha Kucha Greenville adds to the 20×20 theme by also scheduling their events at 20:20 (8:20pm). They have around 6 presenters and the audience gets to question them after the talks. Greenville’s is located at the wonderful Warehouse Theatre, with drinks available. It’s a perfect restaurant and a show evening. Here’s my talk from the March 27th Pecha…

• How to Grow Sweet Salad Turnips (with Recipes)

  Sustainahillbilly

  18 Apr 2012 | 11:12 am

  If you’ve never eaten a salad turnip, and you probably haven’t, it’s unlikely you think they sound very exciting. Back when the Organic Growers School was Saturday only, they did an experimental Sunday session in Burnsville, NC. Among skills like how to build hoop houses and grow through the winter, I mostly remember taste-testing the ‘Hakurei’ turnips that Patryk Battle brought to share. Photo Caption: 'Hakurei' is fast, delicious, and pretty. The entire plant is tender and sweet enough to be used raw in salads! Since then I haven’t spent a season…

• How to Identify a Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi)

  Sustainahillbilly

  4 Apr 2012 | 7:45 am

  Today’s blog post was inspired by the karma-themed TV show My Name Is Earl. I know some people would rather pay their taxes twice than be nice to snakes, but I owe this mundanely-named brown snake family some good publicity on account of I killed their brother. Or sister. Or both. Specifically, a couple little specimens of Storeria dekayi. It happened in two separate garden accidents, many years ago, but I still regret it. Maybe I will feel better if I convince a snake-hater that these little guys are as useful in the garden as earthworms. Since the adults max out at only 12″…

• 

  Lead up the Garden Path

• Wall to wall sunshine!

  Pauline

  14 May 2012 | 1:30 am

  We were told that Saturday and Sunday were going to be sunny and yes, the forecasters got it right, it was wall to wall sunshine, even though it was blowing a very cold wind from the north on Saturday! So what did we do, rush out into the garden and start trying to do all the work that we hadn’t been able to for weeks because of the torrential rain? No, we went out for the day because it was my husbands birthday during the week. Off we went to Dartmouth on the south coast of Devon, travelling by steam train and ferry. We drove to Paignton where Hercules was waiting for us, just being…

• Braving the Rain in May.

  Pauline

  11 May 2012 | 12:34 am

  Having almost non stop rain for a month, with a gale or two thrown in, the flowers are still managing to put on a colourful display. The garden is absolutely sodden so there isn’t much that can be done at the moment, trying to garden when you are paddling causes more damage to the structure of the soil so best to retreat into the green house and prick out all the primula seedlings that are ready. Have still managed to take some photos each time  the rain stopped, the first is of one of our Pulsatillas, which I think is a lot later than last year, probably due to the cold weather. The…

• May is Meconopsis time.

  Pauline

  7 May 2012 | 1:12 am

  May might be Meconopsis time this year, but last year they were flowering at the beginning of April, definitely a month late this year due to our cold, wet spring. Excitement starts as soon as we can see the new growth that has survived the winter. This is nothing compared to the excitement when we see the first buds forming! All the Meconopsis in this post are the variety Lingholm which are reliably perennial. It doesn’t take very long before we are shown a hint of that beautiful turquoise colour, daily visits are essential ! Almost there, the petals are crumpled  still, like tissue…

• Golden Peony of the Caucasus.

  Pauline

  3 May 2012 | 4:34 am

  The golden peony that I am talking about is of course Paeonia mlokosewitschii, which is a native of the Caucasus mountains in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Dagestan. It grows  there on rocky slopes in oak, hornbeam or beech forests, which makes me wonder why it is so happy in my bee and butterfly border in full sun?!  It was discovered in 1897 by polish botanist, Ludwik Mlokosiewicz and named by Aleksandr Lomakin. Over time it has aquired the name of Molly the Witch, by which it is now commonly known, although how a witch could be so beautiful is beyond me!   Even when it is just the foliage…

• It’s all my fault!

  Pauline

  28 Apr 2012 | 4:03 am

  OK, I will hold my hands up, I should have realised that I was tempting fate when I wrote a post called April flowers need April showers !! Since then we have had almost non stop rain, Wednesday was when Exeter was declared the wettest place in the country with a month’s rain in just one day. Each night we are treated to views of reporters standing knee deep in water, but they aren’t in a river, just standing on the flooded roads. The rivers have all burst their banks in places, these are the rivers that were so low, that a drought order was placed on the south west and apparently…

• 

  leavesnbloom

• What's in bloom in May?

  Rosie Leavesnbloom

  14 May 2012 | 6:02 pm

  May is the month of maybes and you just never know what to expect to be in bloom at this time of the year.  It's a month of rituals when weather forecasts are faithfully watched and frost sensitive plants move from indoors to outdoors and back again if there's the slightest risk of a cold night.  Heavy rainfall and hail in April and then into May along with temperatures on most days

• What captivates you the most in nature?

  Rosie Leavesnbloom

  9 May 2012 | 1:18 pm

  What captivates you the most?  Let me take you on a walk on the wild side so that you can immerse yourself in nature! Let the worries of the day be forgotten and let nature grasp your full attention and feed your senses.   Slowly walking amongst the bluebells is captivating and not only does it stimulate the mind but also the heart.  It makes you think back to childhood days of fairytales and

• Doronicum pardalianches The Giant Leopards Bane

  Rosie Leavesnbloom

  25 Apr 2012 | 1:45 pm

  Be prepared is the Perthshire motto just now as we equip ourselves with waterproofs, wellingtons and umbrellas to protect from the worst of April's daily deluges.  Gone is the suncream, the smell of barbeques  in the air, the blue skies and sunshine from March...........sigh.  Though if you're brave enough to venture out on a walk you might see some rays of sunshine along the roadside verges. 

• 

  The Sage Butterfly

• The Seven Faces of My Garden - GBBD May

  The Sage Butterfly

  14 May 2012 | 11:09 pm

  Carpenter Bee on Chive BlossomIn my garden, there are seven faces that nature provides to maintain my interest. And although many of these same faces emerge each year, they grow different and more interesting from season to season and year to year. They are the faces that make me gasp, lure me closer, and inspire me to continue gardening. These faces add beauty, texture, color, and life to my garden with gentle suggestion and bold insistence.BudsAs each season begins, there are buds that form before the bursting bloom. The fist that holds that energy can be just as beautiful as the flower…

• All the Books from The Earth Day Reading Project 2012

  The Sage Butterfly

  9 May 2012 | 5:24 pm

  When I shared my selection, The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, I did not know it would become a theme for the project. Many of the books selected were children's books. From Beatrice Potter to Lewis Carroll, there were books that inspire, entertain, and offer a subtle message. And there were other books as well. Books that I have put on my reading list. Great books that offer new perspectives and new lessons in sustainable living and appreciating nature.Congratulations to the winners of the seed giveaway:Karin of Southern Meadows - cypress vine seedsSharon of Sprouts and Wildings, A…

• My Garden Notebook - May 2012

  The Sage Butterfly

  1 May 2012 | 6:14 am

  It is May 1, and I am documenting my garden on the first of every month.Each year is different than another just as each month is different than another. April seemed to fluctuate in temperature and weather conditions just as much as most of the months in 2012 thus far. We did have a few weeks without rain which slowed growth a bit, and I used up all of the water in the rain barrels. Finally, last week we got some much needed rain. And rain has been coming every few days since. All the plants and trees are bursting with growth as a result. statsGardening Zone: 7aApril High Temperature: 93…

• Inspiration

  The Sage Butterfly

  25 Apr 2012 | 7:29 am

  Inspiration comes in many forms. Sometimes it is a very small element of a bloom, such as the gentle curl of this iris.or the intertwining leaves of a tuft of Solomon's Seal...or the funneling of the hosta leaf toward center...or the way light reflects off of this sundial...or the way the rain puddles into droplets on these lily leaves...Rain adds an entirely new dimension to plants in the garden--bringing sheen and sparkle. Sometimes the light  seems to create jewel tones.RubyCitrineDiamondDonna at Garden Walk Garden Talk offers the word, inspiration, for Word For Wednesday. Stop…

• Happy Earth Day!

  The Sage Butterfly

  22 Apr 2012 | 6:33 am

  Many are celebrating Earth Day today. Our earth feeds and provides for us each day, and I am very grateful. For more information on Earth Day:The Earth Day NetworkHistory of Earth DayIrisSome things you can do:Broken Clay Pot ReduxAll About Companion PlantingBrush Piles are for the BirdsLucinda from Whispering Earth has compiled a list of noteworthy Earth Day posts.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I am hosting the Earth Day Reading Project blog meme again this year to celebrate Earth Day. The Earth Day Reading Project is a month long blog meme where bloggers are asked to share in a post what…

• 

  Garden Walk, Garden Talk

• GBBD – North – May 2012

  Garden Walk Garden Talk

  14 May 2012 | 8:04 pm

  Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day from afar... Continue reading →

• Where I am From

  Garden Walk Garden Talk

  11 May 2012 | 9:29 pm

  See where I am from, it is a beautiful place in Pennsylvania. Continue reading →

• A Quacking Good Time

  Garden Walk Garden Talk

  9 May 2012 | 7:10 pm

  Ducks at the Botanical gardens. Continue reading →

• Ant Capades

  Garden Walk Garden Talk

  6 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Ants in dire straits. A funny look at ant predicaments. Got ants on your Peonies? Continue reading →

• Landscaping with Trees and Shrubs

  Garden Walk Garden Talk

  3 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Trees and shrubs in landscape design. Continue reading →

• 

  PlanterTomato Vegetable Gardening

• How to Add A Home Office, Studio, Gym or Other Structure To Your Garden

  H. Mark Delman

  28 Apr 2012 | 12:29 pm

  Renovating a home is a major expense and it can really disrupt your life. Depending on where you live, getting the proper building permit can also be a major headache.  If you would like a little extra space to create a home office, artists studio, hobby room, wood shop, honey house, kid play house or home gym, there are a number of companies that sell kits that allow you to build these structure relatively inexpensively compared to traditional renovation and without many of the hassles. In many urban and suburban areas, traditional construction requires local government review of plans,…

• Top 5 Ideas For Earth Day That Save You Money While Saving The Planet

  H. Mark Delman

  22 Apr 2012 | 9:59 am

  Here are five things that you can do that will help you save the planet while also improving your garden and putting some cash back in your pocket. Five Ideas For  Earth Day: Create a Compost Pile & Improve the Yield of Your Garden - Instead of throwing vegetable scraps and yard waste into the garbage, turn these materials into compost. Gardeners benefit from composting because it creates nutrient rich humus that can be used in the to improve the yield of their gardens. Gardeners also save money because they don't need to buy packaged compost or other fertilizers. Composing is good for…

• QR Codes Let's You Adopt A Tree

  H. Mark Delman

  20 Apr 2012 | 8:08 am

  According to Springwise.com, the Department of Transportation in the District of Columbia is now allowing citizens to adopt a tree.  The program is called Canopy Keepers and uses a novel high-tech approach to sign up gardeners.  As the city plants new trees, it tags them with a QR code. Passersby scan the code with their smart phone and this takes them to a web site where they can sign up to adopt that particular tree.  Canopy Keepers receive a free watering bucket in return for their help watering the tree.

• How to Choose The Right Tomato Stakes For Your Garden

  H. Mark Delman

  14 Apr 2012 | 7:00 pm

  In this posting, I cover the pros and cons of various tomato staking systems so you can choose what's best for you. Wooden or Bamboo Stakes  These are made of a single piece of bamboo or wood that the gardener drives into the ground with a mallet or sledge hammer.  They can be purchased in 6 to 8 foot lengths. Gardeners also have the option to make their own stakes from aluminum electrical conduit that can be cut to the appropriate height.  As the tomato vine grows, it is attached to the stake using nursery tape, clips or other binding materials. Pros -  Cheap (About $1 each for a 7 foot…

• Cherry Blossom Viewing & Tips for Growing Cherry Trees

  H. Mark Delman

  7 Apr 2012 | 2:31 pm

  Cherry Blossom Festivals In Japan Cherry blossoms reach their peak in Tokyo and Kyoto this week.  The traditional Japanese practice of viewing flowers, or Hanami, dates back to the Nala period in Japan (approximately 700 AD) when the members of the imperial court would gather to view the flowers, write poetry and feast in the shade of trees in full bloom.  Pretty refined stuff. "Under the Cherry Trees" by Kunisada 1852 In recent times, Hanami has taken on more of a party hearty character with plenty of sake and beer to aid in the enjoyment of the flowers.  Family and friends stake out…

• 

  Gardenerd

• Ask Gardenerd: Spots on My Herbs

  Christy Wilhelmi

  16 May 2012 | 9:05 am

  A question came in this week to Ask Gardenerd that I have been asking myself for awhile, but never felt compelled to research the answer. Now I have no excuse: "Hello!   The leaves of many of my herbs have white speckles on them lately. (It almost looks like they're variegated). It's definitely not on the leaves, but more so 'in' the leaves and is appearing on many of the varieties, such as thyme, basil, and cilantro.  Any ...

• Mother's Day Brunch from the Garden

  Christy Wilhelmi

  15 May 2012 | 10:00 am

  In her delightful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver wrote about planning an entire season ahead for a party that would feature a meal prepared from the garden. She worried that there wouldn't be enough food, or that the plants wouldn't be mature enough in time. This Mother's Day, we took a lesson from Barbara and planned a brunch that not only took place in the garden, but was ...

• Venice Garden Tour 2012 Review

  Christy Wilhelmi

  9 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

  It's that time of year when gardens are looking their best and neighborhood garden tours abound. Here in Los Angeles, we finished up our own participation in the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase and last weekend we set out on foot to explore the homes on the Venice Garden Tour. Here is our quick photo review: Ever since the Venice Garden Tour combined with the Venice Home Tour, the ...

• Taste of Pace

  Christy Wilhelmi

  8 May 2012 | 11:44 am

  This week Gardenerd got a mention on a local L.A. chef's website. Find out a little bit more about her adventures with seed bombs (a guerrilla gardening staple) and while you're there check out Pace's monthly supper club. Flower Bombs in the City P.S. don't forget to water those seed bombs regularly, or they'll just bomb. ...

• Urban Green Reaches Out

  Christy Wilhelmi

  7 May 2012 | 10:59 am

  The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is live and in action at Patch.com. Learn all about Urban Green, an amazing program that educates and provides fresh produce in food deserts: Urban Green Grows Great Grub ...

• 

  DIY Small Garden Landscape Design

• 5 Eco-Friendly Seed Starting Pots

  Jacky

  11 May 2012 | 7:30 am

  I'm not sure what I like most about this project. The actual project itself or the amazing photos. They actually make toilet paper rolls look really good. Spring is in the air and now's the time to start planting those seeds. Instead of using conventional pots why not make your own eco-friendly seed starting pots? They are easy to make, won't cost you a thing and best of all you'll be helping out the environment. Continue reading...5 Eco-Friendly Seed Starting Pots

• Garden Finds From Dirt Couture

  Jacky

  7 May 2012 | 8:00 am

  I just love Dirt Couture, they have so many pretty and unique things for the garden. If you haven't heard of it, it's like an Etsy but strickly for handcrafted gardening proucts. They have everything form organic seeds, garden decor to garden inspired jewelry. Continue reading...Garden Finds From Dirt Couture

• DIY Hummingbird Feeder

  Jacky

  4 May 2012 | 7:00 am

  You see this hummingbird feeder, want to know where to buy it? Well you can't, it's actually homemade. It was made as an earth day project by Nicole over at Shabby Beach Nest. Continue reading...DIY Hummingbird Feeder

• Funky DIY Herb Gardens

  Jacky

  30 Apr 2012 | 7:00 am

  I found these two herb garden projects and just had to share. First up is this really pretty wall mounted mason jar herb garden by Claire over at Camille Styles. Continue reading...Funky DIY Herb Gardens

• DIY Hanging Herb Garden

  Jacky

  27 Apr 2012 | 7:23 am

  For Earth Day this year I wanted to create something that was useful and involved recycling. So I decided on a hanging herb garden. I needed a new batch of herbs, the only survivor from the last time I planted herbs was a couple of types of basil. Everything else either died with the heat or got eaten alive by bugs. Continue reading...DIY Hanging Herb Garden

• 

  A Verdant Life

• Backyard Solutions

  3 May 2012 | 1:15 am

  I'm pretty excited to have my work featured on the current cover of Backyard Solutions! Several more of my gardens are featured inside this issue as well. It's nice recognition, and nice confirmation that some other folks think my "babies" are beautiful, too.

• The Garden in May

  1 May 2012 | 12:40 pm

  Spring in the Palo Alto garden It's been an interesting Spring, filled with April showers and mini-heat waves. We should be past the coldest nights here in Palo Alto, though, so I finally felt safe pruning my grapes and hydrangeas. (Although I was a bit late cutting down the grasses, so I won't be expecting great things from them this year.) Those late rains gave us a nice extension on

• Water is Money. So is Time.

  6 Apr 2012 | 11:51 am

  If you're considering updating your landscaping in Palo Alto, Los Altos, or for that matter any other town down through San José, you should know about the water conservation rebates available (up to $3,000!) from the Santa Clara Valley Water District. I won't go into all the details here, except to note two extremely important qualifiers: Applicants must attain pre-approval by participating in

• Birth of a Landscape Designer

  14 Feb 2012 | 2:22 am

  Over the weekend I stumbled across what I'm pretty sure is my earliest landscape design. This actually was a plan for my model railroad and dates back 30 years or so, long before I knew what a landscape architect was; and while it's not quite the rendering quality I strive for today, I'm pleased to see it includes several fundamentals: a drawing scale, dimensions, and a symbol legend. Why do

• Gardening in the New Year

  3 Jan 2012 | 1:34 pm

  I recently caught up with a friend from Maine, where the ground regularly freezes to 6' deep and footings for walls need to be poured 8' deep to get below the frost line. Makes our winters here in Palo Alto seem positively tropical, and even though the recent frosts are sending lots of things rushing into dormancy, there's still plenty to do in the garden. Your roses may still look like they're

• 

  PassAlong Plants

• Potted Semps

  27 Apr 2012 | 8:23 pm

  I love sempervivums and sedums and have been growing a lot of them and trying out different combinations in pots for fun.  Here are a couple I really like.  See what you think...

• Be Gone You Pesky Fruit Flies!

  23 Nov 2011 | 9:59 am

  Are you tired of those pesky fruit flies that buzz around your kitchen - or any other part of your house?  Have you tried smooshing them with your hand or, swatting them with a fly swatter with no success?  And, they just keep on coming back!  Ugghhh! - I hate it when that happens! I don't want to use any of those chemical pesticides - that should be labelled humanicides (I'm not sure if that's

• Are You Getting Your Daily Allowance of Pesticides?

  15 Sep 2011 | 8:38 pm

  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) publishes an annual shopper's guide detailing the fruits and vegetables that contain the most and least amounts of pesticides.  How sad is it that we even need a guide like this???  Anyway, they call it the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen.  The Dirty Dozen are the twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables that you need to avoid if possible - buy

• Duck's Day Out

  5 Sep 2011 | 7:15 pm

  The ducks got a vacation in the back yard today! We got the ducks when they were a day old.  Some of the nice people I work with found them without a mother and pitched in for food while I built them a duck house for the winter.  I've heard contrasting viewpoints as to whether or not they will fly south for the winter - better safe than sorry! We put in a small pool and, as I said, built them a

• Planting the Pineapple

  7 May 2011 | 12:08 pm

  The roots grew to a length that I thought was adequate so I planted the pineapple in a pot.  I maybe should have let the roots get a little longer, but I think as long as I keep it watered it will be ok.  I will follow up with future posts to let you know!

• 

  Colorado Garden Club

• New fruit trees for Arbor Day

  help@andreakalil.com (Andrea Kalli - Colorado Garden Club)

  29 Apr 2012 | 9:55 pm

  Arbor Day was Friday, and we would have bought our new fruit trees that day, but we weren’t pleased with the selection at the one garden center that was open past 6 p.m. On Saturday, we found our trees at Timberline Gardens. (Timberline is a lovely garden center. We were really impressed at how well-organized and well-tended it was. I wish I had thought to take a photo of the two miniature ponies and the goat that greeted us out front.) We came home with a Reliance Peach tree, a North Star Cherry tree and a Pioneer Chinese Apricot tree. The apricot and the cherry trees are rated to…

• April is GREAT month to lay down sod in the Colorado Front Range!

  help@andreakalil.com (Andrea Kalli - Colorado Garden Club)

  15 Apr 2012 | 7:12 am

  Even though my backyard is small, it’s still the place we all hang out. And that means our dogs, too. After dealing with a failing backyard lawn for the last few years, we finally bit the bullet and replaced everything with a brand spanking new carpet of green. This time, I opted for a Shade/Sun mix. With a mini-rototill, compost, and a PH treatment for dog urine, we prepared the backyard soil for 700 square feet of new sod ordered from www.scienturficsod.com. A week ago on April 7th, the temperatures were perfect for such a labor-intensive job. We rolled up our sleeves, grabbed our…

• Spring garden fever

  help@andreakalil.com (Andrea Kalli - Colorado Garden Club)

  14 Apr 2012 | 4:50 pm

  Spring fever and garden fever are synonymous at our house. We have spent the past couple of months busily prepping for our year two veggie garden, new flower borders, fruit bushes and trees. I began by attending a day-long gardening symposium in February presented by the CSU master gardeners (an excellent way to spend a winter day for a garden geek), which prompted a new plan for this year’s garden: three plantings rather than one. My husband also read “The Four-season Harvest” over the winter and he was inspired by that book to consider raised beds and cold boxes (for the…

• Harvest time and canning

  help@andreakalil.com (Andrea Kalli - Colorado Garden Club)

  11 Sep 2011 | 5:34 pm

  After the initial bumper crop of lettuce, zucchini and yellow squash, we are finally reaching the point of harvesting our other veggies (and sugar baby watermelons). We have been really pleased with the tomatoes. Three of the plants have really taken off, and we’re expecting at least 100 tomatoes before the season ends. We planted Celebrity Hybrids from seed and the fruits are deep red, firm and solid almost all the way through (I am not a fan of the watery goosh in tomatoes, so I am especially pleased about that last part). We made homemade salsa with the tomatoes yesterday and it was…

• August garden

  help@andreakalil.com (Andrea Kalli - Colorado Garden Club)

  6 Aug 2011 | 11:16 am

  The garden is thriving (for the most part) and we are anticipating a good harvest. We have already started eating the squash blossoms, zucchini and yellow squash. The rogue giant zucchini that always seem to hide under the leaves will be turned into bread, and the small, sweet ones have been excellent sauteed with a bit of olive oil and herbs. I have been happy to see so many welcome bugs in the garden: lady bugs, daddy long legs and honey bees. We have been fortunate that the unwelcome bugs seem to have stayed away for the most part. The carrots seem to be growing above ground, but I wonder…

• 

  Tangled Branches: Cultivated

• A Change Will Do You Good

  entangled

  16 May 2012 | 6:53 am

  I’m bored. With this blog I mean. It was fun when I started it in 2003 (over nine years ago!), and even more fun when I found out that people were actually reading it. But now, and forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but I find that I’m struggling to come up with something original to say about gardening. Especially in this year of the downsized vegetable garden. I looked over my last year’s posts for the Garden-to-Table-Challenge at GreenishThumb.net and see that I made exactly the same food this year in exactly the same week last year. Should I write about it again?

• Venomous Caterpillars

  entangled

  11 May 2012 | 7:39 am

  …a public service announcement… Buck Moth Caterpillar Venomous caterpillars? Yes. If you see one of these things, don’t touch it. Even if it’s dead. If you want the graphic version of the warning, click here. I suspected this might be one of the several types of venomous caterpillars, even though I didn’t know what it was when I took these photos. Those spines just look ominous. Buck Moth Spines Click the photo above to enlarge it. You’ll see that each spine looks like a micro hypodermic needle and that is essentially what it is. These critters were…

• Herb of the Year

  entangled

  4 May 2012 | 6:55 am

  Herb of the Year? Says who? The International Herb Association will have you know that the 2012 Herb of the Year™ is the Rose. They’re a trade organization so I suppose that little trademark symbol is inevitable, but it still made me squirm. And this upcoming week is National Herb Week—as declared by the International Herb Association. Or if you don’t want to spend a whole week on it, there’s HerbDay—May 5 this year—brought to you by a consortium of various herb organizations. Isn’t there some kind of official proclamation for these things? I couldn’t…

• Hardy Lemongrass

  entangled

  26 Apr 2012 | 12:12 pm

  At the risk of repeating myself again, today I’m going to write about lemongrass. For the last couple years, I’ve started lemongrass plants from grocery store stalks. You can read my previous posts ¹ ²to see how I did it, but the basic idea is to buy lemongrass at the grocery store, root it, plant it, watch it grow, eat it, and repeat the whole process next year because lemongrass is a tropical plant and won’t survive a central Virginia  winter. Or will it? Cleaning up the garden, I was surprised to find fresh green shoots at the base of last year’s lemongrass…

• Preservation

  entangled

  18 Apr 2012 | 9:04 am

  Having only just written that I plan to shrink the garden to where it  provides fresh food in season for two people and that’s all, I’m now going to write about the satisfaction of food preservation. If I hadn’t put last year’s surplus into the freezer, fridge and dehydrator I wouldn’t have much to contribute to this week’s Garden-to-Table-Challenge. And as we cycle through our seasonal favorites I’m afraid of repeating myself too often, but here goes. Herb Vinegar. A few drops of vinegar or citrus juice almost always improves whatever you’re…

• 

  Fine Gardening - Gallery category posts

• Massive shrub?

  15 May 2012 | 6:48 pm

  Posted by Danigeli I live in Toronto, Ontario and have three of these giant mystery plants in my yard; all three are about 30 meters tall, so I was surprised when informed they are actually shrubs. Of course, I dont...

• What kind of Campanula is this? There's also pics of leaves here.

  14 May 2012 | 5:04 pm

  Posted by ThoughtfulGardener Pink Campanula of unknown species received as Mother's Day gift from Home Depot. Never taken care of plants before and want to learn more. In addition to identifying the plant, there are two problems...

• What is this flower please?

  14 May 2012 | 2:09 pm

  Posted by BettyKorn What is this  flower please?

• what is this plant? I love it!

  13 May 2012 | 11:59 am

  Posted by KPhil Saw this in the Mid-Atlantic Region in May.  Absolutely love this plant but cannot figure out what it is!

• Any Idea????

  12 May 2012 | 12:58 pm

  Posted by hamiltonhome Would anybody be able to tell what plant this is??  The pink/red one? Any help would be great

• 

  Veggie Gardening Tips

• 25th Annual Herb and Garden Faire

  Kenny Point

  10 May 2012 | 6:43 am

  This weekend marks the 25th Annual Herb and Garden Faire at the Landis Valley Museum near Lancaster, PA. After a week filled with rain and clouds it looks like we will have perfect weather to enjoy the faire and spend time outside in the garden. Here in the Zone 6 region of Pennsylvania, the middle of May and Mother’s Day are both recognized as a safe time to start planting out frost tender plants into the garden beds. That means that the Herb and Garden Faire couldn’t come along at a better time! Charting Mother’s Day, Garden Fairs, and Frost Free Planting Dates The fair is always…

• The Portland Homestead Supply Company

  Kenny Point

  9 May 2012 | 6:38 am

  I stumbled unto the Portland Homestead Supply Company earlier this spring during a visit to Portland, Oregon. What first caught my attention was a rack of vegetable and herb plants that were on display right out in front on the sidewalk. From there I noticed crates containing small livestock like chickens and ducks, and knew that I would have to take a peek inside to find out just what was in store with this unusual business that was surrounded by more typical small town shops, restaurants, and even a small micro-brewery. Exactly What is a Homestead Anyway Once inside I had to rub my eyes to…

• Potted Ginger Plant Yields an Unexpected Surprise

  Kenny Point

  24 Apr 2012 | 9:01 am

  Last fall I wrote an article detailing my first attempts at growing baby ginger in the home garden. It was a big surprise to see how well the crop did in spite of the fact that I didn’t faithfully follow all of the cultural instructions as outlined by East Branch Ginger. Well I was in for another surprise from a few potted ginger plants that were raised outdoors in containers during the summer and moved indoors for the winter. They seemed to do fine for a while and then suddenly went into a rapid decline. I’ll admit that I don’t do well with house plants and seldom offer them the…

• Bee Thinking: Specialty Hives and Supplies

  Kenny Point

  20 Apr 2012 | 7:08 am

  The second stop during my trip to Portland, Oregon was to visit the Bee Thinking retail store located just a short drive outside of the city. I was familiar with their operation since that is the source that I used to purchase the top bars that went into my homemade beehives. Matt Reed and his wife Jill, who own Bee Thinking had always been helpful with any questions that came up, and I have been impressed by their selection of products. So when Pennington Seed invited me to visit the area I also made plans to stop by and check out the Bee Thinking outlet and meet with Matt. Bee Thinking, a…

• A Visit with Pennington: The Grass Seed People

  Kenny Point

  17 Apr 2012 | 10:38 am

  A few weeks ago I wrote about my trip northwest to visit Pennington Seed and to check out the green scene in the Portland Oregon area. I had a great time and this week I’ll share more details; beginning with the first stop at Pennington’s grass seed research, testing, and packaging facilities. Pennington is primarily a grass seed company devoted to continuously improving on the quality of grasses that are available to all growers. Their research programs have extended into the development of grasses with finer blades, deeper root systems, and darker color. Those qualities may not…

• 

  Perennial Meadows

• Floriade 2012 Fantastic

  Michael

  6 May 2012 | 6:55 am

  Floriade is the international horticultural exhibition held every ten years in the Netherlands. I am fortunate to have been able to visit the past three. In 1992 at Zoetermeer I recall being impressed and still remember some of the garden designs and planting schemes there. Unfortunately, ten years later at Haarlemmermeer, near to my home in Amsterdam, the exhibition was a huge failure. The overall design was poor, the planting throughout the exhibition was weak and ineffective and the site became abandoned after the show finished. It was with trepidation, therefore, that I paid my first…

• Keukenhof 2012 discovers tulip – bulb mixtures

  Michael

  22 Apr 2012 | 6:24 am

  There are two good reasons to mix together different varieties of tulips at planting time. Firstly, by selecting early, mid-season and late flowering varieties you can create a splash of colour lasting maybe six or more weeks long, rather than the two to three weeks that a single variety would offer. Secondly, I always see tulip flowers as blobs of colour ready to paint a garden landscape. The pointillist school of artists mixed their dots of colour  to create magical shimmering scenes and we as gardeners can do the same thing by bringing together harmonious and contrasting tulip flowers.

• Using Tulips in the Garden

  Michael

  17 Apr 2012 | 6:48 am

  Below is an extract from a post I made last year around this time about blue tulips. The new video shows how I like to use these tulips in the garden. I use tulips to flood my perennial meadow schemes with colour early in the year. The bed  of purple flowered tulips featured in the video contains a meadow comprising deschampsia grasses, sedums, astrantias and nepetas. Two weeks ago it was dotted with daffodils, now tulips bring colour in waves which last some 4 or 5 weeks to be followed in May by ornamental onions (Alliums); thereafter the perennial take centre stage. Blue Tulips Blue is a…

• Garden Photography

  Michael

  13 Apr 2012 | 5:23 am

  In the last ten years digital cameras have improved to the point where technical aspects of photography such as exposure, depth of field, focus and sharpness are no longer problems. What has not become any easier is composition and the ability to communicate; in other words, the art of photography. Generally I am disappointed by the quality of photography presented on gardening blogs and web sites. Too often snaps of flowers and gardens are put up that whilst in focus say very little about their subject. Surly, the appreciation of gardens and plants is foremost a visual experience and for…

• Amsterdam Tulip Museum

  Michael

  10 Apr 2012 | 7:22 am

  The spring of 2012 is the time that many gardeners are planning a visit to Holland. Not only is the Keukenhof open and likely to be reaching its peak within the next couple of weeks. There is a new national perennial plant garden to check out which will be looking good in this its second year after planting, and last but not least the Floriade; the Netherlands’ international garden show, which takes place every ten years and lasts all summer. All of these will be featured here as and when I visit them myself, but in addition I think it is worth making everyone aware of some other…

• 

  Beautiful Wildlife Garden

• The Wildlife Pond at Mount Cuba Center

  Carole Sevilla Brown

  16 May 2012 | 10:55 am

  Turtles in the Pond at Mount Cuba Center I was thrilled to be invited to visit Mount Cuba Center last week, to interview some of the staff, and spend several delightful hours wandering around with my camera collecting images of this beautiful place, which is devoted to preserving the native plants of the Piedmont region. Mount Cuba Center is a 600 acre preserve located in the beautiful rolling hills of Hockessin, DE, not too far south of the Pennsylvania border. I’ve attended several workshops here in the past, including a delightful Bluebird Workshop led by my friend Katherine…

• My Garden’s Carbon Footprint

  Donna Donabella

  15 May 2012 | 4:15 am

  mature native trees in spring “It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example.” ~Seneca   With spring we turn our attention in earnest to our gardens.  And this year as Earth Day loomed, I also turned my attention to what I was doing to be more environmentally conscious and earth friendly especially where my garden was concerned.   Recently I wrote a book review of the, The Climate Conscious Gardener.  One of the essays from the book talked about reducing your garden’s climate footprint.  This carbon footprint has not been easy…

• Build-A-Wetland

  Ursula Vernon

  14 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  So I had my driveway re-done a few weeks ago, as I believe I mentioned, and as I was planting in the newly cleared space, it chanced to rain. And I discovered that while most of the area was pretty much exactly as it had been, there was a large section that now, as soon as it poured rain, became a water park. Exciting, huh? What you see there may not look like much, but that’s actually four days after a hard rain. It doesn’t drain at all. The clay is compacted from the trucks, the trees that sucked up water are gone, and the ground level is substantially lower (which is actually…

• A Tale of Quail

  Loret T. Setters

  11 May 2012 | 7:39 am

  Northern Bobwhite like grassy areas Just when I think I’ve run out of critters that will come to visit, someone new shows up. Wednesday we had some much-needed rain and the storm was ending. I glanced out the window that overlooks the backyard and I spotted a bird taking shelter under a wax myrtle. At first glance I thought it was one of the mourning doves but I realized it was a little too big. As it started to move, I noticed it was rather ROUND. I thought wow, it must be one of the quail. I’ve seen quail once or twice in the yard but they never stay long enough to get a photo. I dug…

• Orioles in the Wildlife Garden

  Guest Author

  10 May 2012 | 10:54 am

  Oriole at Hummingbird Feeder © John Tinelli [Guest post by John Tinelli] It’s been an exciting Spring here in Rochester, NY! A week ago, we had our first Ruby hummer! Folks think that a bunch of migratory birds got caught up in that really warm weather that blew up from the Gulf the previous week. We rushed to get the feeder out and the next evening there he was! But the real surprise is that a week later my wife and I were out for a walk. She said she heard a Oriole call. And sure enough, way up in the very top of this maple there was this bright orange bird. As we walked I thought…

• 

  Vegetable Gardener - All featured posts

• California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening Book Review

  12 May 2012 | 9:58 am

  Posted by WesternGardener If you want to grow a beautiful and bountiful edible garden in California, Claire Splan’s new book is your guide to success. California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening addresses the challenges gardeners face in the Golden State.

• How to Keep Cilantro Fresh

  4 May 2012 | 1:17 pm

  Posted by WesternGardener I hated wasting cilantro that had turned mushy, so I experimented with three different ways to keep this herb garden fresh for weeks. Here’s what I found works best.

• QUESTION: Differentiating cherry tomato varieties by leaves

  3 May 2012 | 3:45 pm

  Posted by leakitty I pulled a lot of volunteer tomatoes from my yard from last year's harvest and want to replant only the large cherry tomato plants.  Is there any way to determine which ones they are based on...

• Front Yard Vegetable Gardening

  28 Apr 2012 | 12:37 pm

  Posted by WesternGardener If you’re tired of spending time and energy growing a green, but inedible front yard, there’s a delicious alternative waiting for you.

• Prolific Pole Beans

  28 Apr 2012 | 12:46 am

  Posted by ChrisMcLaughlin Pole bean varieties are tender, flavorful, prolific, and easy to grow. They're the perfect vegetable crop for the home garden.

• 

  Fine Gardening - Blogs category featured posts

• READER PHOTOS! Nancy's tree peonies in New York

  16 May 2012 | 1:00 am

  Posted by mgervais I've always been intrigued, and at the same time wary of, tree peonies. They are no doubt drop-dead gorgeous, and I want one in my garden so badly, but they're super expensive, and have a reputation...

• READER PHOTOS! Irvin & Pauline's garden in California, revisited

  15 May 2012 | 1:00 am

  Posted by mgervais Today's photos are from Irvin and Pauline Faria in Carmichael, California. We've been featuring their garden on the GPoD for months now, every few weeks, and I've loved having a glimpse of each...

• READER PHOTOS! Cande's garden in Iowa

  14 May 2012 | 1:00 am

  Posted by mgervais Today's photos are from Cande Cerniglia in West Des Moines, Iowa. Cande says, "We’ve had a mild winter and early spring, so the spring bloomers here in central Iowa are 3-4 weeks ahead of...

• READER PHOTOS! Dan's garden in California

  11 May 2012 | 1:00 am

  Posted by mgervais Today's photos are from Dan Koellen in Roseville, California. Dan says, " " So cool, Dan! I especially love, love, love the Loch Ness topiary in the last photo! And we need to know more about the...

• Regularly Trimming A Rose During The Season

  10 May 2012 | 2:58 pm

  Posted by PFZimmerman Sometimes roses get out of control during the growing season. Do you have to wait until "pruning time" to trim it?

• 

  Tsubo-en Zen-garden diary

• Midoritsumi or ‘green picking’ the pine-trees: Continued

  Karesansui

  8 May 2012 | 5:26 am

  In Midoritsumi or ‘green picking’ the pine-trees I first wrote about this annual mandatory “bud pinching” activity. This year, with our first Frost damage due to minimum temperatures as low as -22,9 °C (-9.2F), growth of most plants, including the Pinus densiflora, Japanese Red Pine started a few weeks late. The photo to the left shows the [...]

• Shumi-sen or Mount Sumeru, in historical perspective

  Karesansui

  1 Apr 2012 | 7:51 am

  In the garden book Sakuteiki 5 “Creating a garden” is expressed as “setting stones”, ishi wo taten koto; literally, the “act of setting stones upright.” At the time the Sakuteiki was written, the placement of stones was perceived as the primary act of gardening. Similar expressions are also used in the text, however, to [...]

• Frost damage, to survive or to die ?

  Karesansui

  13 Mar 2012 | 4:20 pm

  As mentioned in my earlier post Tracks in the snow we had an unusual winter with extreme frost. This is the first time ever that we have substantial frost damage. Although we have previously had these low temperatures and minor damages, the combination of factors this year was very different and fatal to some [...]

• Tracks in the snow

  Karesansui

  8 Feb 2012 | 5:54 am

  After an extreme delay the winter has now commenced.  Last week we got about 20 cm (8 inch) snow. We also had the pleasure to be the coldest spot in the country with -22,9 °C (-9.2F). It’s exciting to find trails in the snow of “wild creature”. While we have no clue what wildlife [...]

• Late winter or no winter 2011/2012

  Karesansui

  22 Jan 2012 | 7:09 am

  So far we have not seen any real winter weather. It is more like an extremely long autum. Last week we had the very first frost of this season on Monday 16th and Tuesday 17nd of January 2012. This is exceptionally late! And it actually lasted only 2 nights, and only just below 0°C. What [...]

• 

  About.com Trees and Shrubs

• Mystery Monday - Name That Tree!

  14 May 2012 | 6:57 pm

  Welcome to Mystery Monday! I've been battling a bit of powdery mildew and aphids on my patio fruit trees. I guess it's just that time of year. Last week's vine was the star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides). Congrats to Jomo, Anand and Bria Designs (Facebook) for guessing correctly....Read Full Post

• Mystery Monday - Name That Vine!

  7 May 2012 | 6:18 pm

  Happy Mystery Monday! The last shrub was the Hawaiian snow bush (Breynia nivosa). Congrats to Pat and Anand! Your clues for this week: This vine is a member of the Apocynaceae (dogbane) Family. While the common names for this suggest it's a certain type of beautiful fragrant flower, it's not in the same family. It originally comes from China. ...Read Full Post

• April Tree and Shrub Roundup

  30 Apr 2012 | 6:55 pm

  How is your garden growing right now? I just bought a coconut palm tree as an indoor plant. My patio is now home to 3 dwarf fruit trees. I am planting the seeds for my vegetable garden. Finally, I keep buying plants to decorate my new place. I love this time of year!...Read Full Post

• Tree of the Week - Parrotia Persica

  26 Apr 2012 | 6:00 am

  I have decided that someday I need to grow the Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica) someday. In addition to interesting red flowers that pop out before the leaves and gorgeous fall color, there's a variety named 'Vanessa'. If you come across a plant variety with your name, I think it's a great idea to have fun by growing it and telling people it was named after you....Read Full Post

• Mystery Monday - Name That Shrub!

  23 Apr 2012 | 6:31 pm

  Happy Mystery Monday! Last week's fruit tree disease was peach leaf curl. Our correct guesses from Twitter were Lisa F and Tree_Monkey. Anand got it right in comments. A special shout out goes to my friends' 6 year old daughter. Without any help she looked at the picture and named it as a peach tree. It's a little gardener in training!...Read Full Post

• 

  Miss Rumphius' Rules

• Side Conversations

  Susan aka Miss. R

  14 May 2012 | 5:16 am

  A few years ago I started wanting to meet people in real life who I had I met through Twitter, Facebook and email exchanges.  I have met people in New York for dinner, in Chicago for a visit to the botanical gardens, in Buffalo and Seattle for Garden Bloggers Fling, in Brimfield for the antiques market, in Portland, Oregon, in Berkeley, Napa and San Francisco,  in Philadelphia and Cleveland and most recently in Little Rock as a guest of P. Allen Smith.  Some of those face to face meetings have turned into lasting friendships. I don’t usually take pictures of people, so there…

• The New Southern Romantic – P. Allen Smith

  Susan aka Miss. R

  7 May 2012 | 5:49 am

  I had the pleasure of being invited to visit P. Allen Smith in Little Rock last week.  I was included in an event designed to not only promote Smith’s ideas, but also those companies who sponsor and support Smith’s lifestyle brand.  As his book, Garden Home suggests, Smith’s brand isn’t about inside or out, today or yesterday, it is about the seamless transition from one to the other and back again. A view from the sleeping porch at Moss Mountain Farm The patina of a past that included legions of free (use your imagination–they weren’t interns) help…

• Departures and Debuts

  Susan aka Miss. R

  30 Apr 2012 | 5:14 am

  May is (as they say) busting out all over and it’s not even really here yet. Today I’m travelling to Little Rock to visit P. Allen Smith’s real Garden Home. Garden designed by P. Allen Smith Photograph via  The New York Times Smith invited 20 bloggers to visit and see the farm, participate in workshops and generally be guests for what I expect will be genuine southern hospitality, great gardens and some cool product pitches.  It will also be great to see people that I don’t get to see often! While I’m away, The Mansion in May opens and we’re…

• Garden Designers Roundtable: Garden Visits and Lessons

  Susan aka Miss. R

  24 Apr 2012 | 5:23 am

  I find that the best way to understand a space is to be in it, to move through it in three dimensions, so I visit gardens every year–sometimes as many as twenty or thirty in a given season.  I have visited great country gardens, pocket gardens, newly planted gardens, abandoned gardens, personal gardens, and public gardens.  Each one that I have spent time in has taught me something about space. Even a narrow patio can seat 16 The patio (in private garden in Bucks County, PA) above was just an expansive ‘hallway’, but with careful planning and a custom built table it became…

• Sprung!

  Susan aka Miss. R

  18 Apr 2012 | 8:04 am

  I haven’t been here very much in the past few weeks…this April has been unusual in more ways than just the weather.   It’s been busy…way beyond what is usual.  March was warm so  my super active design season started early…so actually April is more like May–which is always my busiest month. Here’s what’s been doing… We moved a big tree.  This sugar maple was 18,000 lbs. and moved about 40′ to its new home. The tree, just dug, on the move I’ve been working on a designer show house space…that will open on May 1 with…

• 

  The Gardening Blog

• Foliage Follow-up – What happened?

  Christine

  16 May 2012 | 4:00 am

  It’s the 16th day of the month which means its time to join Pam at Diggings for Foliage Follow Up, the monthly gardening meme where garden bloggers showcase the beauty of foliage in their gardens. This month I’m looking for advice … “Variegation is the appearance of differently coloured zones in the leaves, and sometimes the stems, of plants. This may be due to a number of causes. Some variegation is attractive [...]

• It’s almost Winter in Two Gardens for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

  Christine

  14 May 2012 | 3:12 pm

  Brrr … Winter is officially two weeks away but it’s feeling decidedly cold and ‘wintry’ already. There’s not really much blooming in our gardens right now but a little planning means we have a few pretty blooms so that we can still take part in Garden Bloggers Bloom Day – this being our 15th time! Thank you for joining us for our late Autumn show of whats flowering in our South African [...]

• Seed collection development

  Barbara

  13 May 2012 | 6:42 pm

  The plan for this month of May is to get all my seeds planted for the winter garden. I have an array of seeds that I have collected, swopped, and bought. Slowly I will be only sowing my very own seeds, but for now I am still researching and experimenting with various supplies. I started off with store bough commercial seeds from a well-known supplier. The only problem I have is that [...]

• Camellia bed update

  Christine

  13 May 2012 | 2:00 am

  I don’t really know why I call this ‘The Camellia Bed”, I have far more Camellias in the back garden than in this small corner, but that’s its name … the Camellia Bed. It started out as a very dark corner with overgrown trees casting deep shade onto the swimming pool – as a result we hardly used the pool). We slowly transformed the area as detailed in this post and then [...]

• Meadow brief

  Barbara

  12 May 2012 | 6:09 pm

  The Flowering Meadow is coming on nicely and all I have done in the last two weeks has been ….. nothing! We have had consistent rains and this has done wonders for my garden. The chickens have been a bit too happy scratching around here, so I have to keep an eagle eye on them. But here, you can see the development. I bought a Winter Mix of meadow flower seeds and [...]

• 

  Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens

• A Simple Bouquet

  Loret T. Setters

  13 May 2012 | 8:43 am

  For Mother’s Day….. Central Florida, May 12, 2012.  Twelve of the many native wildflowers that grace my property. I wish all the moms, daughters and sons of moms, a very happy Mother’s Day. May all your native plant gardens grow. © 2012, Loret T. Setters. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us

• Reader Appreciation: Damon Morris, Mount Cuba Center

  Carole Sevilla Brown

  12 May 2012 | 7:06 am

  I want to thank Damon Morris, a docent at Mount Cuba Center, for not only inviting me to attend the National Public Garden Day event at Mount Cuba, but also for arranging an interview for me with Julia Ehrhardt, Director of Visitor Experience, who took time out of her busy schedule to show me around the gardens. Damon Morris, Mount Cuba Center docent My interview with Julia will be coming soon, as will some more of the over 500 photos I took of this magnificent place, but my focus today is to thank Damon for her support of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens, Beautiful Wildlife Garden, and…

• A Bestiary: Part Six – Weasel

  Carol Duke

  11 May 2012 | 9:55 am

  Looking out on the view just outside from where I am writing, I recall many encounters with wildlife that share this land I call Flower Hill Farm. These chance meetings recorded in photographs continue to morph into my Bestiary . . . tales from a wildlife habitat. Down below a serpentine Black Cherry canopy, dramas unfold daily within the shrubberies, hummocks, fields and forest and I am certain to miss most of them. I am extremely fortunate when stepping into the right place at the exact moment another beast is moving about its day. Deceased vole in the middle of the path. One day in early…

• Hope Is Riddled With Holes

  Benjamin Vogt

  9 May 2012 | 1:18 am

  After 500 folks came through my garden on an Audubon tour last Father’s Day, I was prodded to start a native plant garden coaching business. This spring, I had a table at Earth Day and at one of the largest plant sales in the Midwest called Spring Affair—thousands came through each day. At both events I was startled by those who knew little about native plants, and specifically native plants for butterflies—the latter which soon became my hook in a conversation. Everyone wants more butterflies. “I have butterfly bush, and that gets lots of butterflies.” Yes, it does. It also gets…

• A Rose By Any Other Name Is Still an Ecosystem

  Mike Bezner

  8 May 2012 | 6:35 am

  Above is a sight that most gardeners never wish to see.  My rose bush had an aphid infestation. Every inch of new growth on the bush looked like this.  I know there are a lot of ways to handle aphids, and I’m not just talking about chemicals (which I won’t use).  A quick blast from a water hose usually does the trick.  But this time I decided to wait and see what would happen if I left them alone.  Would the roses still grow?  Would another animal swoop in and come to my rescue?  Could my little rose bush have its own mini-ecosystem? This Western Blood Red Ladybird Beetle…

• 

  Big Blog Of Gardening

• Is my rabbit fence useless?

  Todd Heft

  9 May 2012 | 1:41 pm

  Last year my garden of salad greens was decimated in one night by a gang of rabbits. This year I was determined to not let a rabbit attack happen again.

• How to remove a Yew shrub

  Todd Heft

  7 May 2012 | 8:00 am

  Topping out at 5-25 feet, removing a Yew is notoriously difficult, due to its deep root structure. Whose bright idea was it to plant six of them around my home?

• Mycorrhizal fungi: what it is and why your plants need it

  Todd Heft

  24 Apr 2012 | 8:48 am

  Mycorrhizal fungi are microscopic cells that help your plants, trees and lawn thrive.

• How to grow perfect potatoes in your garden

  Guest Author

  10 Apr 2012 | 8:18 am

  When you grow your own potatoes you can have varieties that you wont find elsewhere, potatoes with better flavor that you know are safe to eat.

• Controlling pests and disease in organic gardens with biologically intensive methods

  Todd Heft

  7 Apr 2012 | 9:22 am

  Biologically Intensive gardening relies on methods which are renewable, non-polluting, and mutually beneficial to both gardeners and society.

• 

  The Pond Blog

• Who’s Hunting In My Water Garden?

  Gwen

  14 May 2012 | 9:05 am

  Every area of the country has their own group of potential predators, lurking and waiting to snatch your favorite fish. The list of these sly hunters can include: Raccoons Muskrats Opossums Foxes Beavers Otters Bears Bullfrogs Turtles Birds Some of these are deceptively harmless seeming and there are one or two that may make you decide they can just have your fish.  There are, however, a few things that can be done to help your little swimming friends. The easiest, and many say the most effective, is to give your fish a hiding place.  If predators can’t catch them, they can’t eat them.

• Spring is Coming – Making Your Pond Ready! [VIDEO]

  Gwen

  16 Mar 2012 | 8:37 am

  This is an exciting time of year – when your garden seems to be “waking up.”   Early spring clean-up will give your water garden a good start for the up-coming active season. This is a case where putting a little extra effort into starting the season right will save you lots of work later on. If your pump has been off for the winter, check to make sure it is running properly and the pre-filter or intake is clean and free from debris. Check the PH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels.  If any of the levels are too high- you should do a partial water change.  (Don’t forget that when…

• Dragonfly!

  Gwen

  2 Mar 2012 | 10:17 am

  I have learned that one of the easiest creatures to have in and around your pond is also one of the most interesting.  The Dragonfly! The dragonfly symbolizes the same thing in most parts of the world – Change.  Everything from the change in your “perspective of self” to the mental and emotional change that maturity brings.  Some believe that the Dragonfly’s flight over water symbolizes looking deeper – beyond the surface of things. I can’t begin to explain all of the things that the Dragonfly symbolize, but I can tell you some of the facts that I find interesting.

• Guide to Choosing a Camera

  Bill

  6 Jan 2012 | 4:07 pm

  I get asked fairly often for advice on buying a camera. Gardening is a great way to get into photography, and water gardening is especially conducive to learning to take great pictures. Helping someone find the right camera for them, though, is not advice that’s easy to give, as there can be so many factors involved. Over at The Verge this week they put together a pretty good introductory guide to a lot of these factors. It’s broad and easy to understand, and I think that it covers a lot of what most camera shoppers need to know. I don’t, of course, agree across the board…

• Opening Green Smoke Lily Wallpaper

  Bill

  16 Dec 2011 | 6:23 am

    Today’s wallpaper is a beautiful tropical lily that I photographed during my recent trip to our partner nursery. It’s a Green Smoke lily, with pale blue tips to the petals that I absolutely fell in love with. This photo is a great example of how using narrow depth of field while taking a garden photo can lead to unexpected results. My goal with this picture was to keep the heart of the lily in focus with narrow depth, allowing a tiny amount of bokeh on the petals and much more on the pads behind the bloom. I didn’t realize until I was editing the photos later that the…

• 

  Nigel Gnome grows a vegetable

• Apogee moon!

  Nigel Gnome

  6 May 2012 | 4:50 am

  What can it mean?Must be time to sacrifice something!Here's my photo of the moon getting close, though it looks remarkably like the moon usually looks. just bigger and brighter, 14% bigger, 30% brighter. That was a double shot through the lace bark tree.Hopefully the pull of the moon will encourage rampant growth.Sowed some nice globe beetroot seeds and pricked out the broccoli seeds. Removed the last two aubergine plants to allow more light on the peas. They are doing well, happily growing up the chicken wire.Cut more fat broccoli heads and shoots as well as a good harvest of large…

• Autumn colours

  Nigel Gnome

  29 Apr 2012 | 12:50 am

  The forest pansy tree on the back lawn is a delight at this time of the year. Actually it's a delight at any time of year, even as a bare stick thing it has a nice zig zag going on the branches.I've emptied out the old compost bin and spread goodness amongst the peas and leeks and onions, even spared a bit for the two new zucchini plants (which have nice new chinis on them!  :)Going to make new compost bins away from the ivy wall, it gets most of the goodness at the moment, will have to score some more pallets...Cat and forest pansy detail of decayDew drops    

• YES we have garlic!

  Nigel Gnome

  27 Apr 2012 | 10:08 pm

  Finally have a confirmed garlic sighting!One lone nub is poking it's bit up and out so the rest must surely be close behind.Whew!

• Still no garlic up

  Nigel Gnome

  25 Apr 2012 | 12:09 am

  I've had sleepless nights worrying about the garlic, today I couldn't take it any more and so I dug up a clove to see what was going on. Much to my relief there were several thin rootlets coming from the bottom and so all is well, just slow. Not surprising really as the days a re certainly getting shorter and cooler.Planted 14 florence fennel seedlings in the old patch and about 15 new white onions along the front of the current spring onion plants.Put in two rows of carrot seeds and generally fertilised and composted things like the peas and silverbeet.Have new seed trays of rainbow beet and…

• Garlic planting on April Fool's Day!

  Nigel Gnome

  1 Apr 2012 | 3:35 am

  April Fool's Day yet!Cousies in law's birthday even! End of daylight saving!Yes indeed, two months earlier than previous years for planting garlic. Apparently the garlic grows for a couple of months, then goes dormant during the deepest darkest winter months, but is then already established with a good root network and the bulb size is much larger when it comes to the longest day. I planted two beds of twenty eight each using the fattest cloves from last year's harvest. Once the eggplants are done I shall plant another thirty or so to have enough to last through the next year as well as…

• 

  Flowerona

• Wedding Flowers course at the Judith Blacklock Flower School

  Rona

  15 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Last month, I was delighted to be invited to attend a one day Wedding Flowers course at the Judith Blacklock Flower School in Knightsbridge in London. And what a wonderful day it was…a perfect antidote to this grey, wet and windy weather that we’ve been having lately here in the UK. Amongst the attendees were florists and mothers of brides-to-be who wished to learn how to plan and create wedding flowers. I was so impressed by the amount of detailed advice that Judith covered in the morning session.  Everything from wedding flower trends to the different types of arrangements…

• Introducing photographer, Clive Nichols…

  Rona

  14 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  You may remember that I attended a Garden Photography course the other weekend run by world-renowned garden and flower photographer Clive Nichols? Here’s the blog post about the day. Well, I’m absolutely delighted to feature an interview with Clive today, together with a selection of his stunning images. Could you tell us how you became interested in garden and flower photography? After leaving Reading University with a degree in Human Geography, I became a chef in an Italian restaurant called Nino’s in Reading. After three years, I’d worked my way up to head chef but I…

• Garden Shop Launch Event at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond

  Rona

  13 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  I hope you had a lovely weekend.  Here in the UK, we were very fortunate to have some sunshine and I was able to spend time in the garden. You may remember that last spring I wrote a blog post about my visit to Petersham Nurseries in Richmond?  Well, last Wednesday, I was delighted to attend the launch event for their new Garden Shop. It’s housed in a recently restored glasshouse and is dedicated to the gardener, with everything you’ll need to nurture, protect and care for your plants and garden. They’re now growing a range of more unusual, less readily available…

• Flowerona reflects: roses & royalty

  Rona

  11 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Another week of showers, but this time with a little bit of sunshine here in the UK. I’ve been enjoying following garden designer Jo Thompson‘s build of her show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show via Twitter. I’m very glad to hear that the weather will be much kinder to Jo and all the garden designers and contractors on site this weekend. If you’re on Twitter, the hashtag for the show is #rhschelsea and for Jo’s garden, it’s #dorisatchelsea. Out & about Last weekend Last Saturday, my friend Lisa Cox and I attended a fantastic Garden Photography…

• Interview with Sharon Boon of Flowerbug Designs

  Rona

  10 May 2012 | 7:00 pm

  Today, I’m delighted to feature an interview with florist Sharon Boon of Flowerbug Designs. Could you tell us what prompted you to become a florist? It’s funny when I look back.  I always remember as a small child that my parents allowed me to have a small piece of garden to keep as my own. My mum would help me grow sweet peas, and my dad – dahlias.  They would laugh that I would virtually comb the small section of grass, which I would also constantly water to keep it as green as possible. I was very lucky as a child as we had a large garden and my parents would spend a lot of…

• 

  Sprinkler Juice

• Landscaping on a Budget

  16 May 2012 | 10:43 am

  We all know landscaping can get expensive. From irrigation to sod to plants you're looking at a hefty bill. If you're wanting to dive head first into a landscaping project, make sure you weigh all of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• POLL: Favorite Seed Company

  10 May 2012 | 12:40 pm

  A popular topic within the online garden community is seed companies. So I thought I'd take a poll. I'm hoping for a lot of participation on this. This poll will close in one month from now so cast... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Garden Types PowerPoint

  10 May 2012 | 11:13 am

  This is a PowerPoint I made that goes along with my Types of Gardens post. The font got all screwy when I uploaded it to SlideShare, but it's a little more legible on the site. You can view it, share... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Landscaping Your Garden - The First Steps

  9 May 2012 | 11:12 am

  This article was provided by Ryan Hirst who writes helpful guides and tips for Eurofit Direct on their blog. Ryan is a good friend of mine and I appreciate his willingness to contribute to Sprinkler... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Landscaping With Mulch

  8 May 2012 | 11:19 am

  This is a Guest Post by a friend of mine, Aaron Smith who runs S & D Landscapes. I read a post of his on his blog about Spring clean-up and mulching and asked him to share a few thoughts on... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  Herb Gardening

• Finding Herb Plants and Seeds

  Garden Inspire

  15 May 2012 | 9:44 am

  Sources for herb plants and seeds: Check local nurseries and garden centers Richters Logee’s Seed Catalogs – open pollinated, non-hybrid, no GMO Tagged: finding herb plants, finding herb seeds, herb plants, herb seeds, sources for herb plants, sources for herb seeds

• Herbs You May Already Be Growing

  Garden Inspire

  27 Apr 2012 | 10:43 am

  Some herbs growing in your yard you may think of as weeds.   Many of these plants are high in essential fatty acids, minerals, and vitamins and the growing and harvesting are free. Be sure these plants are correctly identified and not growing in a contaminated location (near roads or where there is pesticide or other [...]

• Cilantro or Coriander

  Garden Inspire

  29 Mar 2012 | 9:32 am

  Did you know that cilantro and coriander are from the same plant (Coriandrum sativum)? Cilantro is typically the name given to the leaves while coriander is the name used for the seeds. The flavors, scents, and uses are very different. Cilantro is an annual herb of the parsley family best known as an ingredient in [...]

• Updated Plant Hardiness Zone Map

  Garden Inspire

  9 Mar 2012 | 10:53 pm

  As you may have heard, the USDA has updated the Plant Hardiness Zone map.  This map helps when choosing which plants would be appropriate for your yard.   The new map allows you to search for your zone by entering your zipcode. Once you know your zone, you will know that in most cases plants which [...]

• Dessert Pesto

  Garden Inspire

  31 Jan 2012 | 4:17 pm

  I have been experimenting with recipes for my herb cookbook. Today I made three dessert pestos. Dessert pesto is made in a similar way to traditional pesto and can be served as a dip for fruit, cake, breads, or mixed with fruit for a fruit salad, mixed with pastas such as chocolate pasta (yes, there [...]

• 

  Backyard 2 Eden Blog

• Pesticides/Insecticides & Hummingbirds

  Cassidy Frost

  16 May 2012 | 12:10 am

  by anniesalbum2c Be sure to remove faded flowers.  Otherwise the hummingbirds will see the dried up flowers that have no more nectar, and will move on to a better feeding location.  By dead heading and removing spent flowers, not only keeps the birds happy, it  will also encourage new blooms to grow.   Be very careful about pesticides or insecticides on the flowers used to attract the hummers.  They not only kill bugs, but are harmful to birds, causing them to become sick and could kill them.  The small bugs are also a food source for hummingbirds, providing them with the protein they…

• Flowers That Attract Hummingbirds

  Cassidy Frost

  12 May 2012 | 12:09 am

  By Colonelhall As more flowers begin to bloom you will find that the hummingbirds will visit your feeder less.  Not to worry, they are still around, but they would rather drink real nectar from flowers than the nectar in your Feeder.  Even if they aren’t sipping from your feeders you can keep these adorable creatures in your yard by planting flowers that hummingbirds like.  True it seems hummingbirds favorite color is red, but you don’t have to plant all red flowers in your garden.  They will drink from any flower that is rich in nectar.  Hummingbirds have virtually no sense…

• How Do I Attract Hummingbirds To My Yard

  Cassidy Frost

  10 May 2012 | 3:30 pm

  by Sweet_Mysterium Create a hummingbird haven in your very own backyard!  Hummers are delight to watch and are not too hard to attract.   The first order of business would be to place a hummingbird feeder in your garden.   Most Hummingbird Feeders are red, as red is notorious for attracting hummers.  But if your feeder is not red  you can tie a red ribbon at the top.  You can also place your feeder near a hanging basket, or flower patch with red or brightly colored flowers nearby.   You will find that hummingbirds are very territorial, and like to sit and defend their feeder and…

• How Do Hummingbirds Drink?

  Cassidy Frost

  10 May 2012 | 1:19 am

  By Mauxanhtroi Hummingbirds tongues have small grooves on the sides that collect nectar.  Allowing them to lap up the nectar.  They will then store the food in their crop.  The crop is like their stomach, releasing small amounts of food at a time into be released into the intestines.  Once the nectar enters the intestines, the sugar is then absorbed into the blood stream and used for energy.  After filling their crop, they will often rest while the crop empties into the digestive system.

• How Much Do Hummingbirds Weigh

  Cassidy Frost

  2 May 2012 | 11:26 pm

  By Marshall Album Photos Since hummingbirds wings beat faster than any other bird, (about 80 beats per second, and up to 200 beats per second in a courtship dive) they use a lot of energy.  Causing them to require to eat continuously throughout their waking hours.  Due to their very quick metabolism they will feed as often as every ten to fifteen minutes.  Hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism out of all the animals on earth.  Their heart beats up to 1,260 beats per minute.  And due to their high energy requirements they will eat more than their weight every day.  So  how much do…

• 

  Your Easy Garden

• My key to sustainable gardening: small steps

  Lisa

  4 May 2012 | 3:07 pm

  OK, I get it. I should be gardening in a more sustainable, eco-friendly way. But to be honest, I'm in survival mode so often that it seems too lofty a goal.  "I'll do that when I'm retired," I say to myself. Well, no. I should be doing something now. But how to squeeze it into my Gen X-working mom-trying-to-do-everything-life? Small steps. Kinda the same way I get home improvement projects done. Or try to lose weight. Or get anything done beyond my usual, frenzied approach to life. So I created a to-do list: "Sustainable Gardening in 2012 -…

• Health-care gardens heal, preserve feeling of 'home'

  Lisa

  23 Apr 2012 | 3:18 pm

  For years, my grandfather has meticulously manicured his pachysandra, faithfully planted his gladiolus bulbs and dutifully cleaned up every leaf that has ever dropped from every tree around his house. I'd have to guess it's been a source of pride - and artistic expression for a man who only found time to dabble in watercolors after retiring from a seven-day-a-week job as a father of six and and owner of a small family grocery. But now the time has come when he and my grandmother (who has a form of dementia), have to make that decision whether or not to move to an assisted…

• Strawberries and Cream gift hydrangeas make tasty return for Mother's Day 2012

  Lisa

  16 Apr 2012 | 2:50 pm

  Shopping with my daughter and hubby just before Easter at Lowe's, I finally got a chance to see Strawberries and Cream™ gift hydrangeas on the shelves! These yummy-looking-enough-to-eat lacecap hydrangeas featured clusters of dark, rosy-red blooms surrounding milky-white centers. Specially bred for long-lasting indoor blooms, Strawberries and Cream (previously available in limited quantities) is more widely available this year through Lowe’s and independent garden centers, primarily in the Northeastern U.S.  A new “flavor” – Blueberries and…

• Sustainability & style shine at 2012 Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show

  Lisa

  3 Apr 2012 | 2:55 pm

  Today's guest post comes from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants:   Sustainability & Style Shine at 2012 Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show By Phillip Townshend     Once again, I'm reminded of why we live in Melbourne, Australia (voted one of the world's most liveable cities on multiple occasions). It's autumn here, and I'm enjoying sunny days and mild temperatures along with the inspiring atmosphere of the world-renowned Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. (Regarded as the largest…

• Forcing branches into bloom extends uncertain spring

  Lisa

  26 Mar 2012 | 5:03 pm

  As I write this, I'm looking at tonight's overnight forecast for my Zone 6b garden in Rochester, NY … 25 degrees! 25 degrees?!! After two weeks of near-record-breaking warmth for the month of March spurred our forsythias, magnolias, tree peonies, lilacs and cherry trees to all bloom about three weeks early? And a frost is going to take that away from me? Good thing I got my spring on early, by forcing branches into flower early indoors. Little did I know, this would extend the time I could enjoy some of my favorite spring-flowering trees and shrubs – before…

• 

  Gardening Tips

• Free gardening gloves

  Garden Tips

  14 May 2012 | 4:07 pm

  "Like" on Facebook and print voucher. Click here.

• How I catch my Slugs

  Garden Tips

  9 May 2012 | 7:51 am

  I hate slugs. Slimly little cabbage munchers. However I've not been defeated. I've recently been using a neat little slug trap. I cut the top and bottom off of a coke bottle and glue them together. Fill it about a quarter of the way with cheap beer (the expensive stuff's for me) and bury it up to halfway near my precious plants and wait. Using a bottle instead of a jar means it's less likely to fill up when it rains.  I keep the top too because 10 to 15 drunk, dead slugs don't smell too sweet. I screw on the top and throw 'em in the trash.

• FREE Vegetable Garden Guide

  Garden Tips

  6 May 2012 | 11:02 am

  Click here to grab your free Vegetable Garden Guide from Burpee Home Gardens.

• More Tomatoes?

  Garden Tips

  20 Apr 2012 | 11:26 am

  When pinching out side-shoots from your cordon Toms pop the little off-shoot into some gritty compost and water well. In a week or so you'll have a new plant completely free. Bargain!

• Free seeds!

  Garden Tips

  17 Apr 2012 | 1:43 pm

  Sign up to the Hozelock club and receive free seeds. Click here!

• 

  The Mini Garden Guru

• New Miniature Garden Plants & Accessories for the New Hobby

  Janit Calvo

  3 May 2012 | 5:07 pm

  Mini Garden News: New Plants, New Accessories for the New Hobby Whew! There is nothing like a book deal to throw a wrench in your work week. I really hate when that happens! Lol! Yeah, ya caught me – I didn’t have time to blog for weeks now and I do feel bad about it. [...]

• Miniature Garden Guru's Ode to a Forest - Earth Day 2010

  Janit Calvo

  22 Apr 2012 | 2:16 pm

  Reblogged from The Mini Garden Guru: Mini Garden with a 10" tall Dwarf Canada Hemlock. Ode to a Forest – Earth Day 2010 Janit Calvo, April 22, 2010 “I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.” - Joyce Kilmer It was a tiny cartoon in the daily paper that I [...]

• Garden Taxes

  Janit Calvo

  14 Apr 2012 | 1:06 pm

  Reblogged from The Mini Garden Guru: Gardeners pay their own taxes in their own way. Pictured above is a miniature version one of the tax collectors. He is 1/2" tall. NOTE – THIS WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN APRIL, 2009 WHEN I WAS WRITING A “GARDEN FOR ALL” COLUMN FOR THE WEST SEATTLE HERALD. TAX SEASON [...]

• 

  Garden Lawnmower

• Zero Turn Mower Rating

  Mr.Green

  16 May 2012 | 6:17 pm

  Zero Turn Mower Rating Choosing the Best Riding Lawn Mowers Are you all zonked out of your routine of pushing your old mower to workc Do you want to remove Saturday in every calendar so you could pass on doing mowing taskc If these apply to you then getting the best riding lawn mowers for your personal need [...]Garden Lawnmower

• Bed Edger

  Mr.Green

  16 May 2012 | 4:26 pm

  Bed Edger Brown Bededger Verus Turfco Kiscutter - Which Should You Choosec One of the biggest questions with regards to sod removal is what is the best tool to usec My answer has been the same for years: The Brown Bededger (Bededger) walks backwards and handles contours wonderfully while sculpting the perfect trench. The Turfco Kiscutter [...]Garden Lawnmower

• Inexpensive Patio Furniture

  Mr.Green

  16 May 2012 | 1:30 pm

  Inexpensive Patio Furniture Quality Patio Furniture Florida Residents Can Appreciate Are you looking for inexpensive patio furniture that is better than the typical big box store offerc I know of a furniture superstore called Paradise Home and Patio that is the perfect place to find outdoor patio furniture that is both high quality and has incredible value [...]Garden Lawnmower

• Gazebos Garden

  Mr.Green

  16 May 2012 | 7:12 am

  Gazebos Garden Canvas Gazebo A gazebo is an outdoor structure that can be used for dining or to just leisurely relax and enjoy nature. A gazebo can be built from wood, metal, plastic, netting, or you can have a canvas gazebo. They can be had in different forms such as: round, square, rectangular, hexagon or octagonal. [...]Garden Lawnmower

• Gazebo Pavillion

  Mr.Green

  16 May 2012 | 6:01 am

  Gazebo Pavillion Building an Outdoor Gazebo With Plans Making your own garden gazebo seems to add an aesthetically pleasing addition to every garden or backyard. Thanks to the net, creating your individual custom-made garden gazebo plans are a simple undertaking. First of all, it is essential to understand what precisely is involved in making a garden [...]Garden Lawnmower

• 

  Lunar Home and Garden

• Lunar Home and Garden Tips for May 14-20, 2012

  cj wright

  13 May 2012 | 8:27 am

  Times noted are EDT. In the garden this week: Best planting times for biennials are during Pisces and Taurus. Save annuals for after the New Moon. Best Days for pest control and general maintenance are during Aries. All days are good for pruning.   Moon in PISCES on Monday and most of Tuesday is the best time this week to fertilize your garden. Don’t forget your house and patio plants! It’s a good habit to change up your fertilizers once in a while. Keep a bottle of fish emulsion on hand for fertilizing during Pisces. Just makes sense, right? And easy to remember. If you’re already in…

• The Easy Zodiac Formulary for Bath and Shower

  cj wright

  7 May 2012 | 5:53 pm

  Formulary is such a magic word. It conjures up images of potions, elixirs, and all kinds of odd aromas drifting through the air. But “odd” can also be “unique,” as in your one of a kind signature scent. It’s so easy to keep a zodiac formulary right near your bath or in your shower with only a few ingredients on hand: An unscented liquid pure castile soap. A few pure essential oils. Some 3 oz. plastic bottles, like the ones made for airline travel. I highly recommend Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap as the base for creating your signature scents. I keep a large bottle of it on…

• Lunar Gardening Tips for May 5-13, 2012

  cj wright

  5 May 2012 | 7:22 am

  Times noted are EDT. I’m making a slight adjustment to the weekly calendar, starting it on Monday now. That gives weekend gardeners all the lunar info you need in one post. I’m playing a little catch-up with this post by including the weekend of May 5-6th. We awake to the Moon in Scorpio on Saturday where it stays until very late Sunday. Here’s a little something to keep in mind ~ the Moon in Scorpio is waxing on Saturday before it’s full, but waning on Sunday. If you’re setting out annuals, do that on Saturday. Sunday the Moon changes to the waxing phase, so turn your attention to…

• Home and Self-Care Tips for Virgo ~ Color

  cj wright

  30 Apr 2012 | 1:43 pm

  The effects of color on our psyche and mood is well documented. Perhaps there’s a clue or two about how using these colors in your home or clothing can help integrate the qualities of each sign.  The main colors associated with Virgo are classic navy blue (indigo) and gray. These colors are mature and conservative, seeking respect, responsibility, and organization. Navy blue is an intellectual color representing self-reliance and responsibility. The color of wise counsel, wearing or surrounding yourself with navy blue can motivate you to resolve problems and become more efficient. If you…

• Lunar Gardening Tips for April 29 – May 5, 2012

  cj wright

  27 Apr 2012 | 6:13 pm

  The waxing phase continues through the Full Moon on Saturday, but with only a few really good planting days. Best days are May 3-5. Exclude the 5th if you don’t like planting on the Full Moon. Leo and Virgo are barren signs, best for general cleanup, weeding, pest riddance, and the like, though I prefer to get rid of things when the Moon is in the waning phase. The waning phase signifies release, so it just makes sense. Last week I mentioned focusing on the star of your garden and adding garden decorations while the Moon is in the royal sign of Leo. I picked up a fantastic garden ornament…

• 

  My Butterfly Garden

• PHPDug - Attracting butterflies to your garden

  24 Apr 2012 | 4:40 pm

• The Butterfly Garden

  24 Apr 2012 | 4:40 pm

  When we visited the Butterfly House at the Detroit Zoo, we got some amazing photos of the&nbsp;butterflies&nbsp;and the foliage they live in. I wanted ...

• Attracting butterflies to your garden | url details | folkd.com

  24 Apr 2012 | 4:40 pm

  If you're a nature lover like me, you want to see more butterflies in your garden. So, the big question here is how do you go about attracting butterflies to your garden? I provide you with steps and tips on how to invite them to visit your garden. To attract butterflies, you should know the things that can draw their attention

• Minivmac.com - Attracting butterflies to your garden

  24 Apr 2012 | 4:40 pm

• Attracting butterflies to your garden | Gaddiposh.com

  24 Apr 2012 | 12:41 pm

  ...

• 

  Organic Gardening Tips - Smiling Gardener

• Plant Sickness - Why Do Pests Eat The Sick Plants In Your Garden?

  4 May 2012 | 9:56 pm

  Message to my subscribers - sorry about the new popup form. It just comes up once, so you won't see it again. I do find these things mildly annoying, but it really helps to get people into the 15 free lessons. Studying plant sickness is fascinating because we know pests only dine on sick plants. What I have for you today is some info on why those plants invite pests when they're sick, and how to avoid that.

• Is 10-10-10 Fertilizer Really The Best Choice For Your Garden?

  27 Apr 2012 | 10:55 pm

  10-10-10 fertilizer is certainly one of the most popular fertilizers. This week, I received a great question about the nutritional difference between it and compost: Most bags of compost and manure say they have about .1-.1-.1 of the big 3. I have tested my own compost and it is somewhat higher but still not in the 10-10-10 range recommended for most plants. So, how do you get enough without using fertilizers? Is 10-10-10 the same as .1-.1-.1? Am I missing something? I'm really glad you asked. There are 3 things I'd like to address...

• Garden Fertilizer Tips - How And When To Fertilize

  20 Apr 2012 | 10:14 pm

  Today I continue with the garden fertilizer tips. Last week, I outlined a basic fertilizer schedule and received a couple of comments from people who disagreed with my suggestions, so I thought I'd address their concerns here in more detail. I always appreciate any feedback people have to give, even when it runs counter to my advice. Some great learning opportunities come when we have these discussions.

• Fertilizer Schedule - When To Fertilize For Optimal Soil/Plant Health

  13 Apr 2012 | 11:26 pm

  If you've ever wanted a fertilizer schedule to follow, I have some tips for you. Fertilizer companies often create a schedule for you that outlines exactly when to fertilize, but that's often done to maximize their revenue, not the health of your garden.

• Growing Nutrient Dense Food - 3 Tips For Organic Gardeners

  30 Mar 2012 | 10:54 pm

  For this article, I'm going to go beyond the basic soil management stuff, such as watering and mulching, to briefly cover what comes after that on the journey to nutrient dense food. Here are 3 steps you might look into after having already become comfortable with the basics:

• 

  Sow and So

• Recipe: Spring Rhubarb Relish

  Laila Noort

  16 May 2012 | 10:39 am

  Rhubarb Last year I planted a Rhubarb plant. Big deal, you may say. But really, it was. According to all the gardening books, Rhubarb is a must have in the garden. It is one of the first fruits (or vegetables, to be precise) to emerge in the Spring and it is so versatile. Jams, chutneys, cordials …you name it and you can probably make it with Rhubarb. Apple sauce In Holland (where I am from, in case you didn’t know already) we use Rhubarb mostly as sort of an apple sauce to go with your regular potato, vegetable or meat dish. Most of the time when you buy this sauce it is…

• Email chat: Rhubarb and Cucumber

  Laila Noort

  14 May 2012 | 12:40 pm

  Laila “Hi Bridget, How’s your gardening life going? Here we’ve had a few days of sunshine followed again by lots and lots of rain. All our rain butts are full, including the 5,000 litre tank that we use to purify our drinking water.  This weekend we should be getting more rain so not ideal for gardening, I’m afraid. My rhubarb is BIG! I read somewhere that you should leave rhubarb alone for at least a year after planting. As it was one of the first things I planted here, this year I can start to harvest it – just a few stalks. The photo here is from last year. I…

• Pinterest for Garden Ideas

  Laila Noort

  10 May 2012 | 8:30 am

  Have you heard of Pinterest? It is like an online scrapbook where you can put all kinds of photos and videos of things you like, love, want or dream of. You can create boards on different subjects, from cooking and gardening to DIY, favorite places and even dream kitchens – ANYTHING! You can then share these photos (pins) with other people. You can follow the people as individuals or just one or more of their boards… whatever you’re interested in. Inspiration For me, the great thing about Pinterest is that its inspirational. I have seen lots of good ideas this way that I…

• A DIY Bird Bath At the Villas

  Bridget Elahcene

  8 May 2012 | 8:30 am

  Recycling I’ve just made a bird bath out of an old, galvanised steel incinerator lid (the incinerator itself was retired from active service several years ago when the bottom dropped out following a severe case of rust …no doubt we’ll find a use for that too, one day). DIY All I did was line it with some heavy duty plastic sheeting which I cut into a circle a few inches bigger that the lid. I then gently encouraged the plastic downwards to fit the concave shape and anchored it with some stones. I pushed  the chimney part  gently into the recently dug earth to make it level and…

• Wormery – make your own worm compost!

  Laila Noort

  7 May 2012 | 8:40 am

  A few weeks ago I wrote that I had ordered new worms for my wormery and I promised to tell you more about it in due course. So here goes… Wormery I bought my wormery a few years ago but the first time I used it I totally messed up and all the worms died. I know now what I did wrong and I am determined to do it right this time. The wormery I have is a base with a tap, three trays with holes in and a lid. So how does it work? Well, you place one tray on top of the base and put newspaper on top of it. With the worms come some worm bedding that you need to wet a little and place on top of…