Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

The herb garden will be a new experience for me. In the past I have used pots for the herbs, this year I’ll see what I can do with the in-ground Herb Garden I have planned (Herb Garden Layout). Most of the plants will be from seed but not all! Here is what we decided on for the herb garden:Basil…

Here’s a few pictures to start your day. There is something magical about being in the forest at sunrise as things come awake among the trees.If you have planted a tree for Arbor Day this year please let me know by Thursday evening (here) and I can add a link to your post for Arbor Day on Friday! You don’t…

“There has been an awakening, have you felt it?” – Supreme Leader Snoke Yes, indeed we have. While Star Wars and Gardening are not necessarily tied together I felt that this quote is so appropriate for describing the spring garden. It is an awakening. The warmer weather and longer days combine to encourage plants to come alive again from dormancy….

Earlier this week I spent an afternoon outside with my oldest daughter who had a half day off from kindergarten. She was running around outside and playing on the swingset while her brother (our youngest) was napping in the stroller nearby. Since he rarely ever naps I was not even remotely tempted to tempt fate by moving him indoors and…

Yesterday I posted an enhanced photo of a flower from my garden and asked readers to try to identify it. I disguised it a little by removing the color and cropping and zooming the picture. I though it was a neat way to look at one of my favorite plants in the garden, the coneflower! This particular one was Echinacea…

A couple months ago we finally found and purchased land to build a new home and (of course) new gardens. No matter what property you have there will always be imperfections that need to be addressed in some way. One of the biggest problems with our property is the driveway. It’s a LONG driveway that is approximately 1000′ before you…

But there’s a such thing as too hot! This weekend has been miserably hot. The temperatures have raced each morning to break above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Three days now in a row of triple digit temperatures are doing their best to put an early end to the garden. To make things worse the last rain we had was about a…

This Saturday Morning I walked around the yard doing some little garden chores. I stopped by a mum and clipped it back (and took the cuttings inside for propagating). I watered a few things around the gardens, mostly cuttings that have been potted up. I limbed up our ‘Sunset’ maple (Acer rubrum) to prevent some lower branches from getting too…

The organic weedkiller winner is… as selected by the random number generator at Random.org… which came up with the number… (I’m drawing this out a little)… (just for fun)… (are we having fun yet?)….   3… which means that…. Meemsnyc from the blog: Gardening in the Boroughs of NYC is the winner! Congrats and email me your mailing address ASAP…

It’s a little hard to see the changes that have happened over the last two years but I was looking through the pictures back in 2008 and was amazed on how much has changed. A maple tree in the back is twice as large now, the vegetable garden has been redesigned and now has plants around the outside of it,…

Yesterday the weather was great so I went outside to tinker and putter around. Tinkering and puttering is just when you look for little things to do that don’t take a lot of time but you need or want to get done. Here’s what I did:I trimmed the ornamental grasses down. They were looking pretty ragged and since they never…

Behind the location of our future arbor lies the Corner Shade Garden. I planted this garden last year with hostas, heucheras, and assorted other plants after the removal of a sinister privet bush. Privet has become an invasive problem here in Tennessee and I just didn’t like it in this corner next to our house. In its place went an…

One of the lesser shown areas of my yard this year has been the sideyard and corner shade garden. In the past I’ve featured it quite a bit but to be honest I’ve been disappointed with it this year. After I removed a cedar tree in the spring the morning sun began to cook the hostas in the garden. They…

One of my goals this year is to add more herbs to the gardens (not just the vegetable garden). Herbs have many different characteristics that can make the attractive as well as useful.Basil (Ocimum basilicum)Last year I became painfully aware that after making a delicious batch of pesto that we were out of fresh basil and it was the end…

This week has been eventful. I haven’t been able to post much about the garden due to the happenings here but I did want to catch everyone up on how things are growing.  Here’s a quick update on the garden. The beans are climbing the bamboo trellis I put together.  I gathered it up from a roadside where someone had…

You may not believe me but snakes really can be a garden’s (and gardener’s) best friend!  Many people carry a fear of these creatures.  I can understand being afraid of poisonous snakes but the others are quite beneficial.  Yesterday while I was outside near my vegetable garden putting in some outdoor plant shelves (made from old wooden pallets) I moved…

The garden is gearing up for growth are you ready?  Have you prepared the garden and gotten everything set to grow?  I haven’t but the warm weather is going to be here this weekend and I’ll be making some headway into my garden’s preparation.  When to prepare the garden varies depending on where you live but several of these tasks…

If you remember a couple months ago I spent some time working on a garden remodel for my parents. I had purchased a few plants as gifts for Mother’s Day for my mom and decided that I would redo the garden along their backyard fence. The remodel mostly involved moving plants around, installing a stone block border, and mulching, lots…