Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

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…

Mowed the lawn – check. Weeded the shed gardens – check. Weeded the sitting wall garden – check. Weeded and mulched the mailbox garden – check. Weeded the corner shade garden – check – kind of. Weeded the birdbath garden without a birdbath – check – kind of. Cut back a ‘Powis Castle’ artemisia that was long and leggy –…

If you’re reading this now you may be wondering why it’s been so long since my last post. Well, today I thought I’d use this post to give you an update on why my posting has diminished over the last year and where I see it going over the long term. For many years gardening has been my obsession, my…

I’ve been riding a gardening high since everything seemed to be going so well. The summer squash has been putting out squash prolifically and everyday there have been more cucumbers to pick. Things are changing. Now there are some pesky pests who are honing in on my vegetables. The squash vine borer and the cucumber beetle are the villains.These two…

I saw this story online at the Tennessean Newspaper’s website. Apparently a women was stealing decorations from grave sites and adding them to her landscape! How desperate must your landscape be to take fake flowers from the graves of the deceased then add them to your garden. The story also says that she took solar lights and benches. Maybe she…

Today I’m back to talking about the patio. I’ve been adding the finishing touches to the area just in time for cold weather! We’ll still be able to use it since cold weather in Tennessee tends to be tolerable weather. (I still use the grill even in the wintertime) Please ignore the overflowing trashcan in the background but do pay…

Homesteading has seen a resurgence over the last several years which is very cool.  More people are opting to build a strong connection with the land and are moving toward mini-farms and homesteads to raise their families.  Before beginning a homestead future farmers should do one thing: learn to garden!  The garden is one major component of a successful homestead…

Around Thanksgiving I took 6 small 4 node cuttings from a single viburnum at my in-law’s house. I don’t know what variety the viburnum but that doesn’t bother me, I can find out when the leaves begin to grow and the flowers start to bloom (which admittedly might be awhile). For now though I’ll just be happy to add six…

I love the spring time with its flush of new flowers and this spring’s flowers have one of the record books. Among those flowering plants one of the coolest is the Fothergilla major. Fothergilla is a small shrub in the Hamamelidaceae family that gets around 6 to 10 feet tall with a spread up to 5 to 9 ft. It’s…

I began the first part of cleaning up the vegetable garden and preparing it for winter today. The summer garden went much longer last year and we had tomatoes until the end of the October. Unfortunately that’s not the case this year. The few tomatoes that were left on the vines were not worth waiting for them to ripen. Besides…

This week we had our peak fall color.  Not to be confused with a peek at fall color which we will do also!.  Our fall color is loaded with maples, sassafras, and a few other trees along the way. We’re gifted to have our property situated on one side of a woods that gives us a great fall color view….

OK folks, I’m more than a little irritated at the moment. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s the case then several someones have really enjoyed what they have read here on The Home Garden. It’s not the idea of someone using my content to promote gardening, to teach someone something, or to display a…

We’re in full fledged spring garden mode here in Tennessee. What does that mean you ask? Everything is blooming or budding. While allergy sufferers dread this time of year it still remains my favorite. I love the bright green colored grass as it comes up fresh from the earth. I love the play of the colors in my yard. My…

While stuck indoors over the last several days because of the cold weather I thought perhaps designing a couple vegetable garden layouts might be a fun use of my time. This particular vegetable garden design fits into the classic parterre layout. A vegetable garden with the parterre garden design would easily lend itself to a good crop rotation plan with…

The tomatoes are coming along nicely in our garden which means it’s time to do a few important things for them to maximize their growth.  Here are a few quick tomato growing tips to help you grow your favorite home grown backyard vegetable! (It’s really a fruit though!) Stake and Trellis Your Tomato Plants Stake your tomato well.  Whatever method…

The Corner Shade Garden – April is when it all gets seriously growing. It’s not completely full of hosta foliage since the season has really just begun but as the days pass, the plants will grow, and the garden will fill in very nicely! Looking at the corner shade garden through the arbor you can see a Japanese maple that…

Red Spider Lily that is!  This Saturday I was mowing and passed by one of the garden beds on my riding mower when this bright red flower jumped out at me.  Did it really jump?  Nope but one day it wasn’t there and now here it is. Spider lilies (Lycoris radiata) are also called a variety of names like Naked…