Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Early morning is the best time for so many things including plant propagation. Taking cuttings when it is cool prevents them from drying out and losing too much moisture before they get prepared. If a cutting dries out it very well could be the end of the road for your potentially propagated plant! This morning, as I always try to…

Even though the summer is upon us it’s still a good time to propagate plants. The key is to keep cuttings moist and at a steady temperature until roots have formed. Then they can be easily acclimated to outdoor temperatures. I do all of my cuttings inside our house on the windowsills or under a grow light to keep the…

It seems like I’ve blinked and it’s gone from May to September!  This summer has been a complete blur to me, but that’s how life is sometimes. Needless to say there are many garden chores that are coming up that will need done this month.  Here’s my September garden chore list! Finish pruning trees and shrubs. Here in Tennessee we…

The past weekend I set out to complete small project with a little help from my gardening assistant. The goal was to put together a small pathway made from cheap concrete stepping stones that would lead up to the front porch area of my garden shed. Prior to this the area was weedy. So weedy that regular mowings were necessary…

Every fall it happens, mums (Chrysanthemums) galore appear in the box stores and nurseries. It’s a tradition that rings in autumn like college football, corn mazes, and garden blogger fall color projects (OK maybe not the last one, at least not yet!). But what do you look for when you buy your mums in the store? A full bushy plant…

It’s that time of year where the daylilies are becoming the showoffs of the garden. Daylilies (Hemerocallis) area very common collectable perennial here in the south. They propagate very easily through division and are a prime starter plant for people interested in learning how to hybridize plants. Here’s a look at a little of what is blooming in our garden…

With all the edible choices of plants to add to your garden blueberries are at the top of most lists.  They taste good, come back every year, and highly nutritious, and aren’t hard to grow if you do the right things for them. What do you need to do to grow a bumper crop of blueberries every year? Here are…

Things are looking good for my butterfly bush cuttings. So far none have succumbed to damping off. Only one lost any leaves. One good sign of a cutting is when new growth starts to develop. As you can see on the closest cutting that new growth is starting to sprout. This usually means that roots have emerged! I’ll leave them…

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday this Thanksgiving! Visit well, eat well, and most of all give thanks for all the wonders of life that we take for granted each and every day. I would like to thank everyone who reads this gardening blog for adding something extra to the enjoyment of my favorite pastime! Without the…

Things are going well with the vegetable garden remodel even though the pictures may not fully illustrate it (see the layout to get an idea as to what it will look like). Right now it looks kind of like a war zone complete with with bunkers, foxholes, and fencing but soon it will come together.  You have to start somewhere! …

Yesterday brought in that first official day of spring but it sure seems that spring beat the calendar to the punch.  The warm weather has brought many of our plants and trees much further along at this time of year than they should be.  It has me concerned.  I love the warm weather and the sights of blooming flowers but…

This year one of the tomato varieties I decided to grow was the ‘Tasmanian Chocolate’ tomato. Overall it proved to be a tasty and easy to grow tomato. The ‘Tasmanian Chocolate’ tomato is a determinate variety that is well suited for growing in pots. It grows to about 3 feet tall, at least the plant I grew did in my…

I’ve mentioned several times about the value of companion planting so today for the Friday Fives I thought I’d go a little more into detail with some specific plants.  Companion planting is an integrated planting technique where the plants benefit each other through pest repulsion or through other beneficial qualities.  5 Companion Plants and How They Help Companion planting is…

The cobblestone patio is close to finished, very close, but not quite done yet. I had hoped to have the it done before my daughter’s third birthday (this past Wednesday) but Fay had other plans. The rains delayed my work for several days both while it was raining and afterward since I had to wait for the sun to dry…

My recent fascination with the snowy owl visiting our town isn’t something new, I’ve always been interested in birds and wildlife. Gardening and nature to me are so closely woven together in the tapestry of life that you don’t get one without the other, and if you do you’re doing something wrong. Nature in all it’s glory ultimately controls what…

Yesterday I did a fair amount of organizing in our garage. The primary goal was to fit my wife’s car in it but I also had an ulterior motive: organizing the garage would make it more usable for all the future projects I have planned. We have a bunch of boxes that are now stacked up as high as the…

Several years ago I used to watch a cartoon called Earthworm Jim. (Yes I’ll admit I watched cartoons in college!) It was based on a video game that I never played but I guess was somewhat popular at the time.  In the cartoon Earthworm Jim was a space traveling superhero worm valiantly ridding the universe of bad guys like Professor…