Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Each year I’ve posted about the projects I hope to accomplish in the New Year. They aren’t resolutions, just goals or ideas. I may not even get half of the projects accomplished but I find that if I get some ideas before the garden season starts in earnest I can be pretty motivated to get it worked on before the…

It’s been a while since my last garden shed update and I’ve done a few more things. Not directly on the shed itself but around the shed. You’ll see in the pictures below that there are two distinct garden areas near the shed. One directly in front of the shed and the other to the left (eastern) side. In between…

Rather than talk about useless resolutions for 2009 I thought I would discuss my project plans for the garden. I do have one goal that encompasses all things gardening and in my life that could be considered a resolution: to do all things better than I did the last time. That one statement covers pretty much any potential resolution in…

Early last year I put together a rain garden in our yard to absorb some of the driveway drainage. Here are a few pictures of how it looks now! Inside the garden we have a variety of perennials that are generally carefree and tolerate a wide range of growing conditions. Plants like coneflowers. Echinacea purpurea is having a perfect year…

Garden mulch can be an essential part of your garden. Mulch has a number of benefits including keeping the moisture in the soil and adds beneficial organic matter. Mulch can be valuable in reducing weed pressure as well. How much mulch do you need? Below is a simple mulch calculator to help you determine how much mulch you need for…

This post is about two of my favorite vegetable garden plants: tomatoes and sugar snap peas! Both are delicious right from the garden and I have both growing in my home and garden! The snap peas are about 6 inches tall at this point. The pea growth has been slowed some by the cool temperatures.  Even though sugar snap peas…

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…

Today school was out, the roads were iced over, and the garden was draped in white. I always enjoy the one or two times each winter when our landscape is covered in snow. That’s the great thing about living in Tennessee – or one of the great things – the mild winters! It will snow a couple times each year…

Today I started another segment of my Front Garden remodel. If you recall from my previous posts on this particular garden I wasn’t pleased with the builder’s special hollies and the crabapple I had there. The crabapple was free tree from Arbor Day that I planted in a completely wrong spot. I do that sometimes I get a plant going…

A plant holding bed is a luxury that anyone who propagates plants might find very useful. (I know I will!) A plant holding bed can function as a coldframe or just as an out of the way spot set aside for plants to rest in while they grow. For me I just have too many propagated plants to continue storing…

It’s time for the Fall Color Project to officially begin with our first participant! When the fall colors peak in your area consider it your blogging duty to share the view!Joco was concerned a couple weeks ago that there would be very little fall color in the UK due to the unusual weather but thankfully for us and our leaf…

It’s amazing to see how plants grow. You look back at pictures taken in previous years and see a drastic difference between then and now. Take my sedum garden for instance. When it started there were only a few plants in the area between our driveway and the front sidewalk. A ‘Blue Spruce’ sedum that we had in a pot…

My last post about the brick floor only had a small portion of the garden shed covered with bricks. I’ve made a little progress since then and have complete exhausted my supply of free bricks. I’ve been looking for more but so far I’ve come up empty handed. I’m pleased with how it’s turning out at this point but really…

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…

There are few structures in the garden more prominent than a gate. A good garden gate can invite a person into the garden, protect the garden from intruders, and becomes a feature to draw the eye. This weekend I put together a gate for my vegetable garden fence (which is still under construction). I managed to complete the majority of…

Today’s post is going to be a bit geeky.  I hope you can get past that because I think one of the most important parts of running a successful nursery business (or any business) is good financial management.  No matter how much you enjoy gardening you don’t want your business to lose money.  Planning on the front end for the…

Herb Garden Layout I’ve been debating on exactly what kind of herb garden to implement and after making up some rough sketches of various ideas on paper I decided to throw this basic design together. It has a somewhat formal look yet should be relatively easy to maintain. I was considering trying to do a knot herb garden but that…

I began the first part of cleaning up the vegetable garden and preparing it for winter today. The summer garden went much longer last year and we had tomatoes until the end of the October. Unfortunately that’s not the case this year. The few tomatoes that were left on the vines were not worth waiting for them to ripen. Besides…