Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

If you are like me, you may have never given your wheelbarrow much thought. It really is a gardener’s best friend. This garden companion is with you in all seasons and through all manner of tasks. The poor little guy is taken for granted yet never complains and always does the job. Often it isn’t until the morning after that…

The cold temps are keeping you indoors and you are going stir crazy.  You need to do something in the garden, with the garden, or for the garden and the seed catalogs showing up in your mailbox just aren’t good enough to get your gardening fix.  Then do this – plant an indoor garden!  Recently I put together a small…

One of the projects I’ve been cultivating this year is my self-sowing garden. Part of the motivation for this garden is due to its location. Nearby is a gas utility line and I didn’t want to plant anything here that I would feel bad about removing should the need arise, but I still wanted plants that looked great. Nearly every…

You can see it in the tree line in the backyard. Tinges of red coloring in the foliage of the trees, the sassafras never fails for fall color. We’re not at peak yet, at least I don’t think so but I’m afraid this year will be hard to tell. The dryness of the last two months has stressed the trees…

This post is a little late in coming, especially since I actually received my Father’s Day present from my wife and children a couple weeks early. They gave me a Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum). I always like unique plants in the garden and a Japanese maple adds some foliar interest with its delicately shaped and burgundy colored leaves. I have…

The redbuds are in bloom! Cercis canadensis is a beautiful native plant here in Tennessee and in other areas of the country. Redbuds are an understory tree that do best on the outskirts of forest areas or with partial shade locations. They don’t grow very tall, somewhere around 20-30 feet or so. Redbud flowers are very interesting because they appear…

At the request of a reader (xRay) on the original creatively pruned Japanese dappled willow post I thought I would show you how it looks now. It needs some touching up, especially around the base and a few more branches need to be thinned around the canopy but the overall form is in tact and filling in nicely above the…

Christmas is just about here and our minds are all focused on celebrating the season with family and friends but soon after Christmas our gardens will be need attention.  In gardening the correct timing can mean the difference between a great harvest, OK harvest, or even no harvest. Let’s take a quick look at some upcoming things that you should…

It’s raining. Again. No one can control the weather and even though sometimes it can’t be predicted accurately, today they got it right. The rain is good, don’t get me wrong but I really want to plant some vegetable plants and seeds in the raised bed garden.  I’m not late in planting at all, just not as early as I…

Today is December 1st, 2011.  The first day of the last month of the year, do you know what that means? Mockingbird on a Frosty Morning Only 137 days left until our last frost date here in Middle Tennessee!!!  WOOHOO! OK,I sound completely ridiculous here but think about all the stuff thathas to get done before that planting date over…

Several months ago now my youngest daughter and I journeyed up to Clay and Limestone to visit Gail. While there Gail gifted us with a bounty of planting presents like a group of junipers, her famously practically perfect pink phlox, several St. John’s Worts, golden ragworts, and a couple other plants that have now found a place in our garden….

Each year I expand my vegetable garden just a little. I use raised beds which just can’t be beat for productivity in the backyard vegetable garden and so this year I’m planning on adding four more raised beds. These four raised beds may just be the last of the raised beds in the vegetable garden for the foreseeable future so…

I’m always excited to see Nancy Ondra’s garden through her blog Hayefield and now the fall color in her Pennsylvania Garden is ready for our annual tour!  Nan has been participating in the Fall Color Project for several years now and we’ve all been able to enjoy the fantastic varieties of plants, shrubs, and trees she has in her garden….

This weekend after all the garden related chores were done for the day, and just before sunset came, I took a few photographs of how our gardens look this April.  I still have mulching, pruning, weeding, and many other things to do but I thought it would be a good time to share some of our garden with you.  These…

As you can tell I love gardening.  There’s nothing more satisfying than going out on a nice day to dig in the dirt, transplant plants, pick tomatoes, or propagate plants.  That’s why when our local garden club took on a new project I was excited to offer my help.  I was tempted to volunteer as the coordinator for this effort…

The garden is gearing up for growth are you ready?  Have you prepared the garden and gotten everything set to grow?  I haven’t but the warm weather is going to be here this weekend and I’ll be making some headway into my garden’s preparation.  When to prepare the garden varies depending on where you live but several of these tasks…

Recently my brother and I purchased a gift for my mom for her birthday. Her old potting bench was rusting out at the feet and in several other locations and it was time for a new one. As so many of us do these days I went to Amazon and searched through the potting benches that were available. I found…

This post is a post I’ve been dreading.  Mainly because this year has been tough, probably the toughest I’ve ever had to live through.  My garden projects fell by the wayside.  My projects and ambitions just didn’t matter when compared to the situations that the course of life brought us through.  But we’re getting through things, day by day.  I…