Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Everything has it’s own time, even seeds. They just don’t last forever! Fortunately though many seeds do last a long period of time and you can use seed from previous years to grow your garden. I’ve had tomato seeds germinate that were over 10 years old. Best of all they produced healthy tasty tomatoes! I’ve had echinacea seed as well…

If you enjoy gardening and consider yourself a garden chances are you walk around with the same perspective that I have. Everywhere I go I find myself observing, mentally recording, and analyzing how plantings work in various gardens. It might the house down the street, a business, a park, or any other place with some semblance of a garden that…

Recently I put together a little project from some wood I had stored in the garage. It was an idea I had to help me with a presentation I’ll be giving at a local garden show. Essentially I needed a way to demonstrate how a few plants could be planted in combination with each other. I didn’t have access to…

Recently I took a single cutting from an Oak Leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia). Oak leaf hydrangeas are beautiful native plants with tall flower panicles. They are a planting choice that I highly recommend. They are more difficult to propagate than a Hydrangea macrophylla but they are definitely plant that a gardener can root from a cutting to make more plants!…

We’re home again! For the last week we’ve been on the road and away from home which means that not much gardening was happening. I was away teaching at a band camp and my family was staying at the grandparent’s house. It was a busy and tiring week at band camp and now that both it and the wedding is…

There are many choice of trees to plant and reasons why you might want to plant them. In this post I want to highlight a few ornamental trees that might be worth planting in your landscape. Ornamental trees really could be any kind of tree but typically have great flowers or special and interesting foliage. They usually have more than…

Today we worked a little more on the greenhouse project and managed to get another milestone accomplished: the bracing. Unfortunately due to the end of daylight savings time darkness descended too quickly for me to snap some good photos. Besides braces aren’t very interesting, just functional. We put braces on the joists that connect them to the rafters, braces on…

Here are just a few of the gardening events happening in Tennessee. If you have one that you know of and would like to submit for me to add to this list please send me an email.Bloom N’ Garden ExpoThe Williamson County Ag Expo CenterApril 11-12, 2008: 10 AM to 8 PMApril 13, 2008: 12 AM to 5 PMTickets: Adults…

Rocks are a great landscape feature to add to your yard and garden. They come in all sizes and don’t need any real maintenance. You can put moss on the rocks or let them rest as silent monoliths watching over your garden. You can use them for edging, for paving stones, stepping stones, and retaining walls. There are just so…

Things are really starting to show their colors here in our Tennessee gardens. The spring flowering plants have displayed their petals and are preparing for next season. The daffodils and tulips are long gone. The salvia has given its first performance and is ready for dead-heading to prepare for the next show. Many of the plants in our gardens flower…

I officially nominate the pumpkin for vegetable of the month! Do I hear a second?I realize that the selection of a pumpkin may be predictable but it’s such a seasonally appropriate vegetable for October. After all could you have even think of fall harvests and Halloween without pumpkins? Whether they are turned into pies or Jack-o-lanterns these orange globes of…

Irises! when you think of springtime, do you think of irises? Of course I’m sure you think of all kinds of flowering plants, bulbs, and trees but irises are distinct. They offer a variety of colors, of shapes, and sizes to decorate the spring garden. The irises in my garden have recently begun to color our gardens with their displays…

This summer there will be another wedding in the family. My wife’s brother will be getting married to his longtime girlfriend on July 12th. What does this have to do with gardening? The ceremony is going to be help at my in-laws house in their backyard and I will need to help plan the landscaping for the area surrounding the…

I don’t make many New Year’s resolutions.  I make goals instead.  I put together ideas of things I would like to accomplish and set out to do them.  I usually don’t get through every goal I set but by setting a few goals that are attainable I accomplish more than I would have otherwise! I’ll post my garden goals for…

Heavy rains are coming through Tennessee today and tomorrow so not much work will get done out in the garden. Yesterday I picked up some bagged dirt to add a little more soil to the vegetable garden to make up for what the rains had settled down. While getting the dirt at the big blue box store I noticed that…

A few years ago I wrote post about propagating rosemary from cuttings placed in water. That method for propagating rosemary is a viable method for sure but you probably will have more success if you take your rosemary cuttings and stick them in soil instead. Recently I posted a video on the YouTube channel that explains both propagation methods for…

I invited native plant expert and advocate Benjamin Vogt to write a guest post on attracting bees to the garden with native plants. I hope you enjoy it! -Dave This morning, once the sun hit the main garden, I took my video camera outside. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do, recording the most active part of the day in…