Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

This weekend I partially accomplished one of the major garden chores of the fall The Fall Vegetable Garden Cleanup! There’s a second section of the vegetable garden that needs cleaned up still but I really wanted to leave the tomatoes alone for now so that maybe, just maybe they could ripen up a few more before the end of the…

Green onions are a delicious topping to many soups and salads but they will go bad fast when stored in the refrigerator crisper drawer. However there is a way to keep green onions fresh for several weeks or more, and it’s so simple! To keep your green onions fresh put them with the bulb end down in a jar or…

The vegetable garden is finally taking off! Even though it feels like things have been moving slowly, we’re already seeing exciting progress — tomato plants are starting to flower, and our pepper plants are showing off their first baby peppers. This year, I planted around 36–38 tomato plants of various types and a generous amount of both sweet and hot…

There is a kind of magic in making cuttings. Watching something as simple and unremarkable as a little twig come to life with roots and branches all of its own can only be fascinating to the gardener. Several weeks ago I planted my Winter Garden with various plants which included three red twig dogwoods (Cornus stolonifera). These little dogwoods were…

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to Gloria Ballard, the garden columnist at The Tennessean newspaper for including me in her latest article! It has some great information on Fall Planting of Vegetable Crops. Please stop over and read her article online at The Tennessean: Second Season Springs to Life in the Garden or visit Gloria’s personal…

I have to admit it, I really do like my lawn. The “in” thing right now is eliminating lawns by replacing them with gardens. That’s great idea that I fully support but it just isn’t feasible when you have a large yard. The other option is letting areas become meadows which I think is pretty cool too (and for one…

If you’ve been wondering about what I will be using for my greenhouse flooring go see my latest post about the greenhouse! If not, go see it anyway. 😉

Fall is the perfect time to start preparing tree and shrub seeds that need a period of cold weather before they’ll sprout. When seed starting tree and shrub seeds I use two techniques that help to trigger better germination rates. The first technique is simply soaking the seeds. The second process is called stratification and mimics the natural cycle seeds…

It’s time for another backyard greenhouse shed update and I’m excited about this one!  You might ask why am I so excited…the doors have been set! This is when I can see that everything is starting to look like I originally intended. The front doors are on after a little bit of repair work. We shaved off an inch of…

Talk about a great use of an old factory space. These two green roof gardeners took the roof of a bagel factory and turned it into a vegetable garden. It’s a very cool idea! Go take a look at the Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn!

While the girls were at their grandparent’s house today I was able to get quite a bit done in the yard. Here’s the list of accomplishments in no particular order: Picked a handful of beans (this morning.) Mowed the yard with the riding mower, the trim mower and trimmed with the weedeater. Mowed a new pathway into our slope area…

Back in the fall I decided to take some arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) cuttings and test to see how well they would root over the winter. Propagating plants over the winter as hardwood cuttings has some big advantages so it was definitely worth trying. How I Took the Arborvitae Cuttings I used the same method for taking cuttings that I wrote…

We had a short reprieve from the cold winter temperatures we’ve been having.  It reached nearly 70 degrees  and we actually saw the sun for the first time in days. It felt good to be outside this afternoon tending to some minor garden chores. My first task was to pot up some more Purple leaf plums (Prunus cerasifera) that had…

Sometimes days in the garden can expose you to elements of nature that are a little more on the unpleasant side, kind of weird, or just plain gross. After our recent deluge of rain (does anyone even remember the word drought?) I made of pair of gross discoveries in my garden. All natural of course, but gross none the less….

This afternoon the temperatures dropped enough for work outside to become “feasible.” Not ideal in any sense of the word simply feasible. Add to that this cough, sinus drainage, and a mild case of pink eye and you would think I would just stay indoors and rest. Not so for this dedicated (or dumb) gardener! My oldest daughter accompanied me…

There are some plants that are tricky to propagate but stevia isn’t one of them! In fact stevia is very easy to root from cuttings. Read on to learn more about propagating stevia from cuttings! Why Would You Want to Propagate Steve from Cuttings? Stevia rebaudiana is an herb often used as a substitute sweetener for sugar.  It isn’t reliably…

October is usually one of those months here where you can take great photographs of the garden. The skies are usually clear since it is our driest month and the light is usually perfect for the garden blogger to take great shots of the last of the blooms. That’s not the case this year. Gray skies and rain have doused…

We’ve all done it before, put something off to do later. We justify it as we don’t have time or come up with other reasons that may cover our laziness. Sometimes it’s not laziness but life that interrupts things we want to get done. Really who could blame someone for not doing a gardening task in the middle of the…