Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

A little more guessing fun on this first day of winter! Do you know this evergreen tree with the black berries? I’ll give you a hint – I’ve written about it before! No links – that would be too easy! No rhymes either – that would be too cheesy! Oops… Yesterday’s post “What Seeds are We?” were the  seeds of the…

In yesterday’s post on propagating switchgrasses I left out the picture of the ‘Northwind’ Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). Also I didn’t post any details about the two switchgrasses that I mentioned. So here’s a little more about switchgrasses! Switchgrasses are native to the United States and flourish during the warm season. In my observations they are later to emerge from winter…

After my post yesterday about the Snowy Owl Visit to Spring Hill, TN, Pete sent me a few of his pictures of the owl. He was able to get much closer to the bird than I could and his pictures are fantastic! He prefaced the pictures with a story that I’ll share with you in this post. I am a…

First of all let me apologize for the delay. I had hoped to announce this this morning but Blogger (the blogging platform I use for The Home Garden) has been down since Thursday evening. I was unable to write anything about the drawing for the Dupont Weed Fabric and Lowe’s Gift Card until now. I mentioned the delay on The…

This week I began testing a new (to me at least) gardening technique! Using black plastic tarps in the garden to kill off the weed growth underneath. The concept is a simple way to prepare a garden bed for planting. The use of garden tarps is something that I discovered when I read The Market Gardener by Jean Martin Fortier…

A while back (a real long while) I setup a rain garden to take care of a drainage issue on one part of our driveway. Rainwater was pooling in one area of our driveway because it had no where else to go. The grass and soil was higher than the driveway on the side the water should have been draining….

Over the years I’ve planted quite a few heucheras for my garden.  Heucheras or coral bells are becoming more and more popular as a wide array of unique cultivars continue to come on the market.  You might even think that heucheras are relatively new to the horticultural world when in fact they’ve been tinkered with by horticulturalists since the late…

I have to ask do deer use pruners? I was walking in my yard transplanting a willow and went over to one of the free maples I planted.And to what did my wondering eyes appear?A slice off the tip of my maple by a deer!Perfectly sheered as if the deer carried a set of bypass pruners in its pockets! I…

While aphids are easy to deal with they are definitely a nuisance! I discovered these on our hostas the other day feasting on the flower stalks. Aphids are easy to find, just look for the ants. Ants are opportunistic little insects that love a sweet and easy meal that the aphids provide. When the aphids begin to feed on the…

This week marked the return of warm temperatures to Tennessee. Last Sunday was beautiful, the kind of day you can wear short sleeve shirts and start thinking about grilling out. Monday was even better then the rains came but the warmth was still there. This weekend brings us to a little cold front that tagged along with the rains or…

This Saturday Morning I walked around the yard doing some little garden chores. I stopped by a mum and clipped it back (and took the cuttings inside for propagating). I watered a few things around the gardens, mostly cuttings that have been potted up. I limbed up our ‘Sunset’ maple (Acer rubrum) to prevent some lower branches from getting too…

Over the past month quite a few people have hit this blog searching for information on various topics. Sometimes their searches are in the form of a question and I thought it would be fun to go back and answer the questions. Most people looked for information with the word “how” but a few used “what”even fewer used “where” and…

How big is a moonflower bloom? Let me show you! If you use the lens cap of my camera as an indicator this moonflower bloom on our arbor is roughly 6-8 inches in diameter! Below the moonflower is a purple sweet potato vine. I think the dark foliage and bright white blooms look great together. Perhaps this year I’ll attempt…

Fall has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The fall color was especially nice this year all over Middle TN. For a while I really wondered how great it would be due to the dry conditions we had in the summer and early fall. The rains eventually came and our fall color was spectacular! Today I…

Tonight Middle Tennessee is resting peacefully beneath a blanket of snow. Bitter cold set in here as it has in much of the eastern United States.  With the cold came swirling winds and all this white stuff.  So far this winter cold we’ve been experiencing is about 20 degrees below the normal averages for our region. December has been extremely…

Here are two more updates for the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project! I want to take a second to thank everyone who has submitted a post so far. I’ve seen so many interesting places with fantastic colors and scenery that I never would have been able to see in one season! If you haven’t submitted anything yet don’t worry about…

I wanted to share a few more pictures from my visit to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens the other day but also wanted to give you a Friday 5 post so I thought why not put the two together?  For today I’ll give you 5 Great reasons to visit Cheekwood and show you some of the great features I saw during my…

The heat of summer is coming soon and the rains are going to be stingy at best though the season. Many municipalities give residents watering restrictions in an effort to keep costs down and to maintain a good water supply.  While this may seem to make watering your plants a daunting task there are several things you can do to…