Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Since fall is approaching at breakneck speed it’s worth taking time to mention one of the most important aspects of fall – the leaves!  Or more specifically what to do with them! First here’s what not to do with your fall leaves: Don’t burn them – the most wasteful thing you can do.  Don’t bag them and put them by the…

For those of you who took a stab at the Name that Seed post they were seeds from a Common Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)! In the fall you can see these fruit trees laden with orange pulpy fruit. According to my Field Guide to Trees from the National Audubon Society persimmon trees grow up to 70 feet tall with and thrive…

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! …

Along the posts of the arbor project we added a little decoration. Welcome to Japanese Maple Leaf Decor 101: How to Stain an Arbor! First we put the initial coat of stain on the 4″x4″s then placed a leaf of a Japanese maple on the still slightly damp wood. Then we removed the leaf after a second coat of stain…

Here is a collection of vegetable gardening posts that I’ve written over the last few years. Some are gardening designs and others are more general but in either case hopefully they will be of some use to you! Garden Layouts and Designs The garden layouts and designs section contains a group of posts about designing a raised bed vegetable garden. …

As I’m writing this post I’m hearing the buzz of riding lawnmowers from various neighbors in our community and I thought why in the world are they mowing? It hasn’t rained and dust clouds are flying up everywhere which leads me to a second question why are they mowing the dirt? Things like this drive me nuts so I thought…

How Would You like to Win a Free Shed? If you live in the UK you just might be able to! Walton Garden Buildings, a company based in the United Kingdom, is sponsoring a design your own shed contest. The idea is for people to come up with an interesting shed design then send it in to them. They will…

Sometimes certain plants can be tricky to germinate from seed. When germinating Baptisia australis seeds you will find that the seeds have an extremely hard coat that will require some external actions to penetrate the hard outer shell that will allow the embryo to get water.  There are several methods for getting underneath that hard seed shell.  Scarification is one…

We’re home again! For the last week we’ve been on the road and away from home which means that not much gardening was happening. I was away teaching at a band camp and my family was staying at the grandparent’s house. It was a busy and tiring week at band camp and now that both it and the wedding is…

Self Sowing Garden Unfortunately I don’t have any new things to share with you like my title says.  The new things in the garden refers to what new things I would like to accomplish with my garden this year. I’ve been doing a lot of virtual gardening lately; looking at old photos of the garden and I glimpsed a few…

In this continuing series of edible landscaping we’re going to discuss more elements that should be in the sustainable edible landscape plan. In the last post we brought up the importance of good soil and water systems as well as having a good way to take care of pests.  If you’re new to this series of posts please check out…

It’s not often that I am so impressed by a nursery that I feel compelled to write about them.  So many nurseries just do things the same way, the established way.  I know it works well but when a nursery steps it up a notch it REALLY works. Growild Nursery in Fairview, Tennessee (7190 Hill Hughes Rd, Fairview, TN 37062) to…

One of the neatest perennials in our garden is ‘Husker’s Red’ penstemon (Penstemon digitalis).  ‘Husker’s Red’ has reddish foliage that adds color to the garden during the growing season but it also blooms prolifically for several weeks in the spring.  Ours are just now starting to fade so I thought I would take a picture to share with you.  The…

Propagating plants by cuttings is by far the most common way I propagate plants. When you take a cutting from a plant you are making an exact genetic duplicate of the original plant. Essentially it’s a clone. No you won’t see any George Lucas movies about plant propagation (I don’t even want to think about weeds using the Force. The…

Weeds are one of the most troubling elements of gardening that gardeners face.  A gardener’s definition of a a weed is simply a plant you don’t want in a place you don’t want it!  Which means that even desirable plants can become a weed pest in the wrong place.  Gardener’s want simple and easy ways to remove weeds from the…

While this post might be more interesting to me (for record keeping purposes) than anyone else it contains the list of seed varieties I planted on Monday Feb. 15, 2010. They were planted in peat pots and seed starting medium and are currently under lights indoors in a roughly 70 degree environment. Warmer temperatures might hasten the germination process but…

Today we had a light snow drop down over our gardens in Tennessee.  It isn’t the craziest thing to happen but it’s not something that gardeners enjoy.  We would much rather have the sunny and warm days that spring is known for!  Here’s our garden after a light dusting. Grape hyacinths.  Snow around the flower covered Bradford Pear tree.  …

For several years now I’ve written about the value of planting in raised beds.  One of the most viewed posts on Growing The Home Garden is my post Designing a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden: 11 Things to Think About.  It has 11 design tips that will help your vegetable garden layout achieve its maximum potential.  Hopefully you’ll find them useful! …