Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

It may seem like I’m jumping ahead a bit but here is a picture of our first raised bed. I’ll be putting together a step by step post on it later. There is still one more bed to build and both of them need to be prepared for planting. As you can see the small bed is actually a little…

You may have noticed a few changes here at The Home Garden lately. The changes are not completely set into how I want them to be yet but they are well on their way!  You may be wondering why did I change things?  To start off there were some major issues going on with something in the html code.  I’m…

For several years now I’ve written about the value of planting in raised beds.  One of the most viewed posts on Growing The Home Garden is my post Designing a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden: 11 Things to Think About.  It has 11 design tips that will help your vegetable garden layout achieve its maximum potential.  Hopefully you’ll find them useful! …

Great garden books are an awesome resource for any gardener. They become a reference that gardeners can go back to over and a over again to fill in the blanks or come up with new ideas. The New Southern Living Garden Book is just that, a great resource book for southern gardeners. I was sent a copy for review recently…

Let’s try this a little differently this week. If you can identify the plant of the week post what you think it is in the comment area of this post!

Recently I started some heuchera seeds while we were suffering through the record setting deep cold of the last several weeks. I had to do something garden related to lighten my spirits that were quickly being squashed by the weather’s entrapments and starting some seeds seemed to be a good choice.  It’s easy to start a small container to bring…

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…

Here is the beginning of a running tally of vegetables we collect from the garden. I’ve noticed that several other garden bloggers are doing similar vegetable counts and it’s just too cool of an idea to pass up! Hopefully I can keep it updated on a daily basis. Keeping track of the total vegetable crop should be a good way…

It’s time for another edition of Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day brought to you by Carol of May Dreams Gardens! August is one of those times of the year before the fall flowers really start to get going where plants are kind of in transition but there are still many things in bloom. Today we’ll step back a bit and look…

Yesterday I watched and shared this video from Quiet Creek Farms and the Penn State Extension Service on the Growing The Home Garden Facebook page.  The video has some great techniques for seed starting including a recipe for their seed starting soil.  It has a business slant geared toward developing a CSA but the techniques described are very usable in…

The weather has turn hot and humid, of course this is normal for summers in Tennessee.  We are blessed with a very long growing season but our summers can be extremely warm.  Last year on a record setting June day we reached over 110 degrees.  Which also happened to be the day our air conditioner decided to quit!  We spent…

For several years before we bought our house we lived in an apartment.  I still had the gardening bug and couldn’t resist planting a vegetable garden in pots on the porch.  While today I have ground to plant in I still utilize the porch and deck on our house to grow a few plants.  Here’s a look at a few…

I’m a big fan of foliage! There is no better time of the year than autumn for those who love foliage, and naturally fall is one of my favorite times of the year. I thought I would share with you some photos I have taken over the last month of the foliage from my garden. Tennessee often has amazing fall…

One of the best things about feeding the birds is seeing a new bird you have never seen before. We’ve seen grosbeaks like blue grosbeaks and cardinals (which are a type of grosbeak) but this is the first rose breasted grosbeak we have seen. It’s not a surprise that we haven’t seen them before since they are migrating north to…

I really didn’t expect to get flowers from the cuttings of Persian Shield I made in the fall. It’s been an added bonus but I was only trying to keep the cuttings alive long enough to plant them in the ground this spring. I’ve kept them in jars of water so far even though I should have long ago planted…

Today was a fantastic day to be outdoors, and of course for most of the time being outdoors means I’m planting something! Today I planted three azaleas into one of my gardens courtesy of Monrovia. Monrovia gave me an opportunity to try out these ‘Savannah Sunset’ azaleas in my garden. ‘Savannah Sunset’ is a part of Monrovia’s Bloom N’ Again…

You can feel fall in the air here in Tennessee. It’s in the wind and the air. The temperatures are cooler, the nights are coming sooner, and the shadows are longer. Fall is here. The days still are warm, in the 80’s, but the nights are getting cold. My early mornings are not necessarily spent in the garden, anytime during…

Have you ever wondered why some plants are considered invasive? It’s usually because if the growing conditions are even slightly favorable they take over. Invasiveness can be due to a number of traits like rapid growth, prolific reseeding, and rooting vine habits. Euonymous fortunei is one such plant in which I have observed to have at least two of these…