Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

If you haven’t already looked you should. The work is done, the pictures have been taken, and the post is up at BHG.com.  The voting won’t begin until next Friday but now you can see the results of the project! Head on over and take a look at the 48 hour Blog Challenge and see my new Arbor! I’ll post…

…One looks to the sky.

What looks great with coreopsis in the garden? The answer is coreopsis looks great with just about everything! Over the last two years I’ve acquired several types of coreopsis (also called tickseed) and experimented with it in different combinations and found it plays well by itself and with others. Here are few coreopsis companions from my garden. “Moonbeam” Coreopsis Here…

While there may be no official contest going I’m entering a very special tomato for the ugliest tomato of 2009. I remember Carol last year challenged folks to find a tomato uglier than one she had.  If I had managed to grow this monstrosity last year I might have beaten hers for I have never seen one such as this!…

Rhododendron calendulaceumThis week’s Plant of the Week was the Flame Azalea. Most people answered it pretty close. This is actually a native plant to the Smokey Mountains. It grows from four to eight feet tall and spreads out somewhere between ten to fifteen feet. My wife and I found this particular plant in 2003 along the Abram’s Falls trail. We…

Here is a list of 10 plants that are very easy to propagate for your garden that I have found to be extremely easy to root. There are many plants that could be on this list but I decided to stick with some that I have done and know for a fact that their root development is very reliable. I’ve…

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…

I’ll simply title this next picture the off-season. If you garden, you know exactly what I mean! The leftovers of an Echinacea purpurea (Purple coneflower) seed head after the birds have visited.

They finally came! My experiment with Arbor Day has begun. Earlier in the year I ordered several trees from the National Arbor Day Society. I also got a few free trees with my order. I know many people have had mixed results when ordering from Arbor Day. They either have trees that don’t make it through the winter, receive dead…

Here’s a quick look at the front of the greenhouse. My idea is to have the front side or the view from the house appear to be a small cottage in the backyard. The windows on the front were originally from one sliding window that I separated into 2 approximately 20 inch wide windows.  I say approximately because one is…

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek at one of my favorite perennials that I decided to try and grow from seed this year, the heuchera! The seeds came from our corner shade garden which contains a small variety of heucheras like ‘Palace Purple’, ‘Mocha’, ‘Melting Fire’, ‘Fireworks’, and a heucherella named ‘Stoplight.’ Even in the winter they keep great…

Many gardeners take the winter season off from gardening. They work hard from early spring through late far then take a little break but you don’t have to stop growing vegetables in your garden just because the weather has changed. One way to continue growing vegetables in cold weather is to construct a hoop house. A hoop house is simply…

Ornamental grasses are some of the easiest plants to propagate and they look so good in the garden. Today I potted up seven rooted sections of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). Four of them were ‘Shenandoah’ which gains a reddish coloring in the leaves in late summer and fall and three were ‘Northwind’ which has a taller and more upright shape. Switchgrasses…

I spent a good deal of time this weekend getting out into the garden to get some long past due chores done. Summertime is one of those stretches where the garden seems to find itself a but neglected.  It makes sense. The kids are going back to school, the weather is hot and humid, and this year the mosquitoes are…

Of all the fall colors I’ve seen this year the Japanese maples seem to have topped all other trees.  This Japanese maple at my mom’s house was figuratively on fire with red foliage lighting up the scenery.  I didn’t have my camera with me when it was at its peak but even past peak it’s beauty can still be seen….

There are very few gardens in Middle Tennessee that go without Chrysanthemums (Mums for short) or Asters for fall colors. With such a variety of colors there is one that can fit in nearly any garden. Both asters and chrysanthemums belong to the same family, Asteraceae, along with many other popular plants. In our garden we a have a few…

It’s been a difficult year for many of use to get the optimum fall color shots since rains seem to be perpetual but Garden Lily has managed some very cool shots of her Canadian landscape! Cascading Japanese maples, beautyberry bushes, and burning bushes all provide some unique fall color in different ways. Go check out Garden Lily’s Flowers and Weeds…

As I mentioned in my previous post the folks at EcoSMART sent me four of their insect products to me for testing. Generally I am loathe to apply chemicals in any form on the garden but since EcoSMART products do not leave toxic residues and use natural chemicals and oils I figured it would be worth trying. Please keep in…