Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

While there may be no official contest going I’m entering a very special tomato for the ugliest tomato of 2009. I remember Carol last year challenged folks to find a tomato uglier than one she had.  If I had managed to grow this monstrosity last year I might have beaten hers for I have never seen one such as this!…

Fall is definitely at its peak here in Middle Tennessee! Rhonda at Adventures in My Garden has some great fall color in her own backyard. The view from her back porch is spectacular and would be envied by anyone who likes autumn leaves. Is there really anyone who doesn’t? And the quote she picked out by George Eliot to start…

Today was one of those days where you just don’t seem to be able to get much done! The weather was unseasonably warm (in the 70’s) and was just great day to be outside with the exception of the high wind. Because of the billowing gusts we didn’t go outside until my youngest daughter (3 months now) went to sleep….

There are many choice of trees to plant and reasons why you might want to plant them. In this post I want to highlight a few ornamental trees that might be worth planting in your landscape. Ornamental trees really could be any kind of tree but typically have great flowers or special and interesting foliage. They usually have more than…

Here are a couple pictures of the morning sky through the newly bare trees. The trees with leaves are either oak or eastern cedar depending on where you look.  The cedar of course is evergreen but the oaks tend to hang on to their leaves until much later. This old tree is marked for cutting but sometimes you can find…

A couple years ago I bought a fantastic native plant at a local native plant nursery. It was a red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) and is great for attracting everyone’s favorite tiny garden visitor, the hummingbird. The flower clusters are red (you probably expected that from the name: red buckeye), tubular, and bloom in early spring. Red buckeye trees grow best…

Last week I put together a daylily and iris bed to cultivate and divide more plants for my little plant nursery.  Daylilies and irises are great plants for any garden since they offer so much for so little.  They grow strong without too much attention, enjoy the sun, and are tolerant various soils – which is good since this area…

This time of year people are looking for answers to their gardening questions.  Perhaps the most common gardening questions start with the word when.  As gardeners we realize that time is a very important factor when planting plants because it can greatly effect how a plant grows in the garden. Here are a few gardening whens that people have been…

Sometimes we trap ourselves into thinking one notion and stereotype things accordingly. We tend to think of fall color as a time of changing leaves, which it is, but often we leave out the perennials and shrubbery that provide us with color throughout the fall. Asters, fall crocus, and eupatorium seed heads grant us readers a different perspective from the…

August isn’t a great month for planting plants here in Tennessee but it is a good time to get other projects done. That is if you can stand the heat! I have several things that I would like to get finished before the beginning of fall and I thought I would write a list to help keep myself organized.Here’s what…

From my window I can see my homemade compost bin, unfinished as it is, with our poor ole jack-o-lantern resting its big orange head on the grass clippings from my last mowing. That relic of a Halloween come and gone will come around again next year in some way. Either as broken down black gold or in the seeds that…

It’s time for a few herb cuttings!  Surely you didn’t think it would be too long before the plant propagation posts began again?  The warm weather is here – early – but the plants have responded and it’s time to take some stem tip cuttings.  My wife finds these posts boring and floats right by but hopefully you won’t. 😉…

Skeeter has brought us our latest Fall Color Project post!  Skeeter teams up with Tina at In the Garden and offers up her garden experiences from Georgia for readers to share.  Go visit Skeeter as she strolls the Augusta Canal with the beautiful Savannah River in view. You know how spectacular fall colors and water scenes can be so go…

As far as gardening chores go direct sowing squash and zucchini seeds is a very easy task for any home gardener to accomplish. In fact it’s a great one to do with young children who you want to encourage to get outdoors and in the garden. Squash and zucchini seeds are large seeds that are easy for kids to handle….

This past weekend was fantastic. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for getting outdoors and getting things done. I was looking forward to Saturday and the perfect weather a week in advance and knew exactly what I was going to tackle. My plan: to work around the garden shed! I managed to accomplish one major task that needed done…

One of the easiest ways to make a new plant is layering. Layering is where you allow the plant to create new roots on a branch while still connected to the mother plant. The advantage to layering is the connection to the mother plant. It continues to feed the offshoot branch allowing it to form the new roots to sustain…

To me grass clippings are one of the best resources a gardener can get! I see grass clippings from lawn as an amazing way to gather organic matter for other uses in the garden ranging from composting and garden beds to mulching! Here are some really great ways to utilize this free organic resources in your gardening if you are…

Spring is coming. Really.Signs of the coming gardening season are beginning to appear all over from the daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths beginning to emerge to the swelling buds on the trees. Very soon warmer weather will begin again and we will be fully emersed in the garden once again. In anticipation of the coming gardening season I thought I’d give…