Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Since it’s been raining and not much can be done outside, I’ll share a few pictures I took a couple weeks ago at my in-laws house. If you remember I did some wildflower hunting (Yellow Corydalis, False Garlic, Sedum puchellum) while we were there. Today I’ll show you the more cultivated side of their yard.Here are a couple blossoms off…

Gladiola Flowers The beginning of June is quite capable of leaving us mesmerized by all the flowers that appear. There’s no shortage of blooms for pollinators or for the gardener to gawk at!  So today I’m going to share with you a bunch of blooms.  And I mean a bunch!  I probably took too many photos for this post but…

Salvia is one of my favorite perennials to propagate and spring and summer are the best times to do root cuttings of salvia from stem tip cuttings. Pretty soon our gardens will be filled with salvia blooms and you’ll see why I like them so much. I’ll post a picture at the bottom of this post if you’re curious! The…

Every gardener likes a hydrangea in the garden. Likewise every gardener likes having more hydrangeas in the garden! So why not propagate a few more hydrangeas for your garden? Of course you have to have a suitable spot for one but if you have a garden location with dappled morning sun and afternoon shade you have the perfect home to…

Imagine my surprise when I looked out of the back door and saw an accipter yesterday! That’s a member of the Acciptridae family which are birds of prey like hawks. Don’t worry I didn’t know that either until now. I looked into what kind of hawk-falcon this bird was and finally settled on a Sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) after comparing…

The legumes are one awesome vegetable family (Leguminosae).  Really, they are!  Legumes are essential to any crop rotation plan because of one major trait: legumes are nitrogen fixers!  What does that mean?  It means that legumes have an amazing ability to take nitrogen from the air and change it into a form usable by plants.  But it’s not really the…

Several years ago we began to create a garden along the fence at my parents home.  As you can see in the first two pictures there was very little there. A birch tree was planted along the fence to eventually create some shade. On the right are two apple trees that died and were removed since this picture was taken….

I’m waiting on my garden.  Everything is growing nicely (except for plants that got eaten by the deer but taht’s another story).  Tomatoes are hanging on the plants, peppers are growing profusely, eggplants are putting on flowers, but everything has been slow to ripen!  It’s frustrating but that is just part of the art of gardening. We have to wait….

Last year I built two new wooden raised beds for my vegetable garden. After building them I needed a way to fill them up with soil. Since I already had a pile of wood chips in the front yard from a tree trimmer I thought why not use them? As the wood chips break down they nourish the soil and…

Recently I was invited to the 48-Hour Challenge with Better Homes & Gardens. For my project I chose to build an arbor! I’ve highlighted a few aspects of it over the last several weeks but I haven’t put down a play by play of our challenge. Hopefully you can follow along and if you want to tackle this project you’ll…

Elizabeth over at Gardenrant, a well known writer and garden blogger, has posted some picturesque fall photos for the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project. What could epitomize fall more than cobblestone buildings and walls mixed with glorious maples in the rustic farmlands of Route 104 in New York. Farming implements and woodpiles appear in peaceful fall scenes. Just what we…

I hope you have had a fantastic week in the garden and Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms! I hope you have a wonderful day today! For this post I wanted to simply sum up what went on the garden this week. Most of the content this week was on my YouTube Channel which you can subscribe to here:…

This morning I while out in the garden I found a couple cucumbers ready to be picked,and mutant squash! Apparently we had a Siamese squash growing on the vine. Each side of this vegetable anomaly appears like it could have been it’s own fruit.They are almost exactly the same length and size but completely connected on one side.Here is the…

Everyone loves a good tomato but sometimes there are problems. Take cracking in tomatoes for instance. Cracking in tomatoes might seem concerning but the answer to why this happens is very simple: inconsistent moisture! Often tomato cracking can appear when there has been a dry spell followed by significant rainfall. The fix is also very simple, be more consistent with…

Here is Part Six of The Home Garden’s series of posts on how to garden on a budget.I began planning this post with the intention of talking about the importance of planning a garden. After typing and typing I realized that this is a subject so large that it really needed to be broken down into smaller sections. One of…

About 6 weeks ago I was out limbing up a couple Yoshino cherry trees (Prunus x yedoensis) . I couldn’t let the clippings just go to waste so I thought I would try my hand at rooting a Yoshino cherry from the greenwood cuttings. Previously I’ve only managed to root one Yoshino Cherry from a hardwood cutting and it didn’t…

An interesting problem has arisen lately. You see, over the last few months little saplings of our Tennessee state tree the tulip poplar have popped up all over the place. It must have been a great year for tulip poplars last season because I’ve found over 7 saplings that seem to be doing great all over the yard. They all…

It’s not often that I am so impressed by a nursery that I feel compelled to write about them.  So many nurseries just do things the same way, the established way.  I know it works well but when a nursery steps it up a notch it REALLY works. Growild Nursery in Fairview, Tennessee (7190 Hill Hughes Rd, Fairview, TN 37062) to…