Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Very little progress has been made on my greenhouse shed project yet. The persistent rain combined with a much needed family vacation postponed construction, excavation and pretty much everything except for planning. But the planning is probably the most important part in any big project.  This is easily the biggest project I’ve attempted so far and I’m making sure to spend…

There are very few gardens I know of that don’t have some sort of wind chime.  Wind chimes add an extra audio element to the garden as well as a touch of whimsy.  There is quite a variety of wind chimes to choose from out there and it all depends on what you like.  Recently Windchimesonline.net sent me three bamboo…

Aggravations are sure to enter into everyone’s lives at some time or another and when we think of aggravations as a part gardening a whole lot of subjects arise! In fact this list of 5 gardening aggravations that I’m about to share with you could extend well beyond the necessary 5 items for a Friday Fives post.  It could even…

The people at EcoSMART have offered to give away a bundle package containing an eco friendly pesticide and several other of their environmentally friendly products. Included in the bundle is an organic weed killer, a fungicide, garden insect killer and an insect repellent. All you need to do to enter the drawing for the is to post in the comments…

This time of the year it seems like there are a million and one choices for seeds.  The catalogs have been rolling in at record paces enticing us with beautiful pictures of what we could have in our gardens but how do you figure out what you need to buy especially if your trying to save money?  The first step…

You can’t have a greenhouse garden shed without having a place to put the plants can you? I’ve finally gotten far enough along that I can assemble a long plant bench. Since I’ve collected scrap lumber from a variety of projects and people I decided to use that for this first plant bench. As money allows I may upgrade or…

This week I’ve been posting about a backyard project that involves vertical gardening!  It was a fun one that actually went 100% according to plan! (That can’t be said for all of my projects!)  Often I end up improvising somewhere along the way. The project involved putting up an arbor and running spray painted gutters between them to serve as…

Here’s just a quick post to show you the light post made from a front porch post that I put together for Lowe’s Creative Ideas.  Finches, wrens and cardinals have all been sighted visiting the bird feeder.  As an added bonus the birds get to land on the two hanging baskets to hang out and visit.  It’s almost like an…

Want to do something nice for the birds?  Feed them!  Here’s an easy way to do it! Get a grapefruit (any suitable citrus will work). Cut it in half. Eat the grapefruit. (Important step) Fill grapefruit halves with bird seed. Set grapefruit halves on a deck rail Enjoy watching the birds! Piece of cake – or rather a piece of fruit!

The last frost date is one of the most important dates for gardeners.  The last frost date determines when to plant the vegetables and ornamentals at the best possible time for maximum growth over the season.  Some plants like being planted before the frost date while others have to be planted afterward. Last year Spring and warm weather came early…

With a slight fog in the air the sun’s rays illuminated those morning mists.The dew glistened on the Silver mound artemisia in the front sidewalk garden.A purple Mother’s Day rose with its leaves frosted by the morning dew.If you look close enough you can see the spider web waving in the air.Morning is a great time to be in the…

This past weekend I mentioned that we were working on cutting down some dead trees. The trees came down without a hitch and then the real work began. We chipped and cut our way through the limbs and logs. After a quick count of the rings on one of the trees we discovered that it was around 50 years old….

One of the many things to consider when starting your own nursery business is the workload.  You probably really enjoy gardening (or else you wouldn’t even consider a nursery business!) but do you realize how much work goes into producing a plant for sale?  We aren’t just talking about one plant either.  We’re talking about lots of plants to make…

May is a great time in the garden. The plants are full of growth, flowers are coming alive, the weather is good (except when it’s not 😉 ) and the irises are blooming! Lots of other things are blooming too but the irises are the standouts of the moment. The iris flowers even withstood the harsh rains of last weekend…

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….

Here are a few garden layouts, plans, and designs that I have put together for my garden. Some are landscape plans while others are diagrams of my vegetable garden. The herb garden layouts were never actually implemented in my garden as I went with the interplanting approach. Eventually I may incorporate a formal herb garden in our landscape. You are…

There are some plants that are tricky to propagate but stevia isn’t one of them! In fact stevia is very easy to root from cuttings. Read on to learn more about propagating stevia from cuttings! Why Would You Want to Propagate Steve from Cuttings? Stevia rebaudiana is an herb often used as a substitute sweetener for sugar.  It isn’t reliably…

This weekend I picked up some cuttings of a red flowering crape myrtle to propagate. I took 6 inch hardwood cuttings that were just beginning to leaf out. Since I didn’t have time to treat them right away I left them in a jar of water overnight to stay moist and treated them with rooting hormone the next day. For…