Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

This is the first video update from the garden shed. Hopefully I’ll be able to add more videos to The Home Garden over time include how-to’s and mini-garden tours! I hope you enjoy the look inside my messy construction and plant filled shed. Please be forgiving, as always it is a work in progress! http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZgrlCzP0-oQ

I couldn’t help but snap the picture below.  It’s white clover and it’s in my lawn. What lawn companies will tell you is that this little beautiful green plant that grows in patches is a weed.  Don’t believe them.  Clover is a useful little plant in many ways! First of all clover is a legume. It’s similar to beans and…

Around here in zone 7 (Tennessee) it’s still a little early to start getting very active in the garden but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t be working on some things in the garden. Here is a to-do list for January to help get you started on a great year in the garden! (Some of the links below are…

When selecting seeds for the vegetable garden it always pays to be early – in this case I was not. Several of the selections I had planned on making were in fact sold out when I finally got around to ordering from Baker Creek. The early bird gets the worm is the old saying but maybe it should be the…

A spiral vegetable garden planted with lettuce and greens is a very interesting way to grow vegetables or herbs. It has obvious design appeal with its circular form yet is fundamentally a raised bed. I can see where a spiral garden might make an interesting centerpiece for a parterre garden layout. We saw this spiral at the Nashville Lawn and…

While the winter is still in gear I thought it might be helpful to begin reviewing some of the toughest plants I have grown over the years. I’ve grown a lot of them (and killed a few of them along the way). In my garden it has to be a tough plant to survive over the years. Today I’m going…

May is always a great time for the garden. Plants and flowers generally look great this time of year. The weather is beginning to warm but the oncoming heat of summer hasn’t bleached out the beauty of the flowers and foliage. Many things are happening around the garden and here’s a few images from my Tennessee garden at the end…

Our garden sits precariously between zone 6b and 7.  We’re in a very borderline area with multiple micro-climates within the 1.3 acres of land we have around us.  We’re far enough into the warm season now that the frosts should not happen again until fall, but then we thought we were done with frosts over a month ago! This weekend…

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…

Yesterday we went on a scouting mission. Needham’s Nursery in Mount Juliet was the territory we explored. The game was scarce as the season has not officially begun, but as I said it was only a scouting mission. We wandered the paths of our quarry occasionally stopping to observe, admire, and record the potential acquisitions.Although it was early, what we…

It’s been a while since I’ve written about our vegetable garden so I thought the end of April would be a good time for an update!  There are a few disappointments but overall most of the garden is right on track.  We’ve used raised beds for several years now but most of them have disintegrated.  I’ve replaced some with concrete…

I’m always interested in trying to make new plants and recently I decided to give my Asclepias incarnata a try.  Asclepias or butterfly weed make great host plants for butterfly larvae.   I’ve always assumed that asclepias needed to be grown from seed or from root cuttings but as it turns out they will root easily from stem tip cuttings.  I…

I bet when you read the first three words “Bradford Pears breaking” you immediately though of another kind of breaking. One of the reasons they are on my least favorite ornamental tree list is because the trees frequently break in storms. These trees grow so fast that the wood suffers and they just can’t muster the strength to hold out…

Yep, the title says it all. I really have lettuce growing among the weeds in one of my garden beds. I planted it in the fall and despite a few nights of subzero temperatures and several cumulative inches of snow over the course of winter it’s still there! The lettuce is small, barely even 3 inches wide but it’s there!…

Yet again I could not resist the urge to look for discount plants, and I found some! I picked up three more ‘East Friesland’ salvias, three ‘Caradonna’ salvias, another viburnum, and two ‘Patriot’ hostas. My total for these nine forlorn plants was $8.74 after taxes. The salvias were all in great shape for being on a discount rack. The hosta…

Growing corn in the home garden is a little different from growing in the farm fields. Corn has a few traits that you need to understand before you plant so that you can get a successful crop of corn in the late summer and fall. Let’s talk about growing corn as it applies to a home gardener! Planting Corn in…

Today was the day of the Middle Tennessee Plant Swap at Henry Horton State Park. If you missed it I really can’t blame you. The weather was cold, wet, and pretty miserable. It reminded me of early December Christmas parades back when I was a band director, and I sure don’t miss standing around in that weather! My wife and…

I’ve seen many posts recently about gardening and seed catalogs. Some posts analyze the timing of the seed company’s publications. Most posts are simply people salivating in anticipation of what may come! I have to admit it I am doing the same. Ask my wife what my favorite bathroom reading material is and she’ll tell you that it’s the seed…