Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

While I’m not officially wrapping up the Fall Color Project for this year the entries do seem to be slowing down! More and more leaves are finding their way to the ground, hopefully to become mulch or compost as nature intended! Today’s entry comes from the blog Garden Sense and shares with us the gorgeous colors that fall foliage brings…

Here is another sneak peek at the Arbor Project for the Better Homes and Gardens 48 Hour Blog Challenge. Today’s look is just one of the elements in my planting scheme.  I’ve had a fondness for Scotch Moss (Sagina subulata) for a while but never really had a place for it, until now! I managed to divide the four clumps…

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you and your family have a fantastic Thanksgiving filled with fun, family, and of course food!

Well it had to happen. More insects have attacked the plants in my garden. My second year hollyhocks are the lastest victims of an insect known as the cabbage looper. Eventhough their name is cabbage looper that doesn’t mean they will stop there. They like all sorts plants in the crucifer group like broccoli, collards, kale, and cauliflower as well…

This fall I took a scraggly looking branch off a little burning bush I had. The botanical name is Euonymous alata. These bushes are green during most of the growing season but turn fiery red in the fall before they lose their leaves. It is for this reason that people plant them. Yesterday I checked the cutting’s progress. I wasn’t…

While aphids are easy to deal with they are definitely a nuisance! I discovered these on our hostas the other day feasting on the flower stalks. Aphids are easy to find, just look for the ants. Ants are opportunistic little insects that love a sweet and easy meal that the aphids provide. When the aphids begin to feed on the…

Here is a collection of vegetable gardening posts that I’ve written over the last few years. Some are gardening designs and others are more general but in either case hopefully they will be of some use to you! Garden Layouts and Designs The garden layouts and designs section contains a group of posts about designing a raised bed vegetable garden. …

On Monday while all three of my children were napping at the same time (that is a major feat!) I spent some time preparing some cuttings. Until Monday I really haven’t had many opportunities to get outside and garden. The weather has been too cold and with my youngest, who doesn’t seem to like taking naps during the day, I…

Here is Part 9 of The Home Garden’s weekly series about gardening on a budget.Plant propagation, at last, my favorite subject! I was saving the plant propagation post for the last few segments of this series on gardening cheap. Plant propagation is one of the most inexpensive ways to make more plants and expand your gardens. There are several methods…

Last year I began to experiment with hybridizing.  I’m hoping that the plants I cross together result in something really nice but it takes a few years to get something from the crosses.  So far I’ve experimented with daylilies, echinacea, and irises.  Hostas are on my list but the deer keep getting to the flowers before they’ve had a chance…

This spring I bought this pineapple sage at a garden show fully expecting it to thrive and burst into colorful red blooms. Well I can say one thing, it is thriving!  For some reason the blooms are just now beginning to form despite it growing to a size of about three and a half feet round.  It has nearly overtaken…

For those of us who garden in the summertime almost exclusively for the purpose of tasting that juicy red perfect tomato from the vegetable garden there’s a pretty good resource for you. It’s an Ebook called How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes written by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford. Together the two tomato aficionados have assembled a handy resource for…

Creeping thyme or Thymus serpyllum makes a great ground cover that is very easy to grow.  Once started it quickly grows and spread to fill out areas. Creeping thyme is an extremely easy plant to propagate.  Why is propagating creeping thyme so easy?  Let’s take a look! I planted three small seedlings of creeping thyme a couple years ago and…

If you are like me you’ve been scanning the forecast trying to plan out every possible moment you can be outside in the garden! Around here Saturday is supposed to be pretty nice with scattered clouds and no rain coming in until late. And I can’t forget to mention the big 70 that has appeared in the temperature predictions! Since…

One of the more confusing aspects of gardening is when to prune hydrangeas. The confusion is because the best time of year to prune hydrangeas differs depending on the type of hydrangea you have. Some hydrangeas bloom on the old wood from the previous season while others will bloom on new wood. Determining which hydrangea is which will help make…

This summer has been a tricky one in which to garden in here in Tennessee.  June was the driest month I can remember and hotter than any June on record. July was strange too – extra moisture and cooler temperatures made up some of the lost ground caused by the spring drought. Having strange weather has mixed the gardening season…

To grow a healthy plant healthy growing conditions are important. Sometimes all a plant needs is watering at the appropriate times. Often, you have to give the plant more and that is where fertilizers can be useful. Fertilizers provide extra nutrients that may not be readily available in the soil. There are many types of fertilizers available for gardeners to…

I managed to plant all the plants for my new winter garden on what was a warm December day. With temperatures in the 50’s it was somewhat pleasant, which is about the best you can expected from December in Tennessee. You’re probably wondering which plan I decided to go with, the Symmetrical Plan or the Asymmetrical Plan. The answer was…