Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

“If I had a million dollars…”This is the main chorus line in a very humorous song by the Bare Naked Ladies but doesn’t everyone think this every now and then?So with a gardening slant…If I had a million dollars I’d build a modest house of four bedrooms and put it on as much acreage as I could afford and still…

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…

The complete and total elimination of garden weeds is every gardener’s dream!  And to do so organically or naturally just makes it all the more thrilling! While I’ll share with you some methods for eliminating weeds naturally for The Friday Fives, please keep in mind that the battle with weeds is perpetual struggle between gardener and nature.  Weed seeds can…

I did several little things in the garden this week that weren’t worthy of individual posts but when grouped together give me a little something to talk about.  Planted seeds for rudbeckia ‘Cappuccino’, gaillardia ‘Arizona Sun’, Verbena bonariensis, mixed heucheras, Panicum virgatum. Constructed a suspended staking system out of fallen poplar branches for our sugar snap peas.  I’ll go into…

My daughter and I recently did a little project. We took materials that were lying around the house and put together a mini-seed starting greenhouse. It was a simple and easy project to work on with my 3 and a half year old daughter. Read on to see what we did.Materials: Paper roll tubes, a rectangular tin foil pan, a…

Garden projects and chores are like kudzu, they grow fast and long and sometimes seem insurmountable. They develop a life of their own. Here is part two of my to-do list. This is where I plan and plot over what is next. As I write I can think of quite a few things to add to the list. Like buying…

Ornamental grasses are some of the easiest plants to propagate and they look so good in the garden. Today I potted up seven rooted sections of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). Four of them were ‘Shenandoah’ which gains a reddish coloring in the leaves in late summer and fall and three were ‘Northwind’ which has a taller and more upright shape. Switchgrasses…

I love a nice Japanese maple! Who doesn’t? There are Japanese maples  with variegated leaves, ones with deep burgundy colors, others with interesting shaped leaves that are highly dissected and many other kinds. The fall color on a Japanese is almost always guaranteed to be something special.  Their highly ornamental nature makes them very popular trees in the landscape. Last summer I gathered…

This was definitely the year for trying new melons, at least here at The Home Garden. Yesterday I showed you the ‘Tigger’ melon we grew and tasted, today let’s welcome ‘Old Time Tennessee’ to the blog! Where the ‘Tigger’ melon is small, compact, and tasty ‘Old Time Tennessee’ is large, football shaped (perfect for football season), and tasty.  You will…

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you and your family have a fantastic Thanksgiving filled with fun, family, and of course food!

Here’s just a quick update on the greenhouse-shed project. More work will ensue later in the week but several time consuming things have been done. The roof windows on the south-western side are somewhat framed, the plywood is attached and the shingles are up. The roof is one of the more shed-like aspects of this project. Since the south western…

When building raised beds I usually screw deck screws through each of the boards to attach the corners of my raised beds but using brackets to hold raised beds together does work better. With the screw in method I find after a while that the corners begin to rot, the screws begin to loosen, and the corner doesn’t hold together….

As you know I’m a huge fan of plant propagation.  I would bet that many of you reading this are too, or if you not a huge fan you are at least interested!  It’s a fascinating area and can be an amazing benefit for growing your garden.  Just think of all the free plants you can make from cuttings, or…

I wrote about caryopteris last year so I won’t go deep into the details again but I thought you might like to see how I’m using it in the garden. First a bit of explanation. I once saw a picture of a row of caryopteris at Longwood Gardens and I thought “why not try that here?” The picture had caryopteris…

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…

I managed to plant all the plants for my new winter garden on what was a warm December day. With temperatures in the 50’s it was somewhat pleasant, which is about the best you can expected from December in Tennessee. You’re probably wondering which plan I decided to go with, the Symmetrical Plan or the Asymmetrical Plan. The answer was…

Mowing season is in full swing here in Tennessee! It’s that time of year when lawn and garden enthusiasts venture back into their grassy backyards to begin the weekly ritual of giving the lawn a perfect trim. There are lots of options to consider when thinking about that perfect lawn. One of those questions you may be wondering about is…