Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Once all your prep work has been thoroughly completed gather up all your lists and get ready to design the plan for your edible landscape. When making an edible landscape plan it is important to keep all of your end goals in mind along with the time it will take to reach those goals. Purple Podded Pole Beans Time as…

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…

October is always a fun time of the year.  Fall festivals are in full swing, the leaves are changing, the weather is more cooperative for gardening, and of course there’s Halloween.  We don’t typically decorate much around here for Halloween.  Part of it is the difficulty of managing a whole lot of decorating with four kids running around and all…

Contrary to popular belief California does have fall color, and it’s pretty good too! Birches, maples, and crape myrtles all are displaying their fall show in Rebecca Sweet’s garden. The view of her ‘Forest Pansy’ Redbud really makes me wish the fall webworms hadn’t munched on mine. Take a trip to the Bay area of California to see what color…

The garden is coming alive now that February is in full swing.  The extra warm winter is supposed to become much more normal over the next week but that won’t stop our spring growth.  Yesterday I saw the ‘Okame’ cherries beginning to bloom.  Unfortunately I don’t have any here in our garden to show you but it won’t be long…

I’ll simply title this next picture the off-season. If you garden, you know exactly what I mean! The leftovers of an Echinacea purpurea (Purple coneflower) seed head after the birds have visited.

Green onions are a delicious topping to many soups and salads but they will go bad fast when stored in the refrigerator crisper drawer. However there is a way to keep green onions fresh for several weeks or more, and it’s so simple! To keep your green onions fresh put them with the bulb end down in a jar or…

Last year I began to experiment with hybridizing.  I’m hoping that the plants I cross together result in something really nice but it takes a few years to get something from the crosses.  So far I’ve experimented with daylilies, echinacea, and irises.  Hostas are on my list but the deer keep getting to the flowers before they’ve had a chance…

The Gardening Gone Wild photo contest for February is all about Winter Light. The picture below is my entry which I took from our upstairs window out across the yard. I’m calling it Shadow Play, you can probably figure out why! The shadows of the ice covered trees are dancing across the backyard and the children’s playset creating an unusual…

It’s a good thing I took several pictures toward the end of last week since the rain and dreary weather has dampened much of the garden. Sunny days are ahead but until then all we have are a few photos of flowers from the gardens. That will just have to do! Up first we have some achillea. Also called yarrow…

Over the years the side garden area of our yard has gradually grown into a small forest area. My kids call the area “the thicket.” They play in the pathways I’ve cut through. Over time the sassafras trees have grown tall changing the hillside from just a grassy field to a small forest. Among the plants naturally growing in “the…

“Blame it on the rain, yeah yeah.” OK I apologize for bringing up old Milli Vanilli lyrics, but those words have been going through my head for days and I figured I would share the pain. I’m in a state of depression about my vegetable garden right now and it’s all because of precipitation. This was July and is now…

Here are just a few of the gardening events happening in Tennessee. If you have one that you know of and would like to submit for me to add to this list please send me an email.Bloom N’ Garden ExpoThe Williamson County Ag Expo CenterApril 11-12, 2008: 10 AM to 8 PMApril 13, 2008: 12 AM to 5 PMTickets: Adults…

Among the many chores I mentioned in my last post was the toppling of several large trees. There were three trees in that were dead and needed removal. At some point recently one of the branches of the trees fell and speared the ground below to a depth of 6-8 inches. To keep the trees in such a state in…

May your Christmas be a time fill with friends, family, hope, and joy!

 Hi there!  I’m taking over dad’s blog today and giving you a bit of a tour of the garden. Or at least of the things I like about the garden! I’m not quite sure what he’s trying to do out there.  He digs a lot, sticks funny plants in the ground, and dumps water out everywhere.  But I get to…

Caryopteris cuttings root very easily from internodal cuttings with greenwood or semi-ripe wood. The best time to take cuttings is the the late spring to early summer to allow time for roots to form and the plant to get established before fall. Caryopteris was one of the new perennials I added to my garden last year. It did very well…

Recently I received an email asking me to review a video all about backyard food production systems. I was curious so I said sure. I grow a large vegetable garden in the backyard every year and if there were ideas inside this DVD that I could use and incorporate into my garden it might be worthwhile for others who read…