Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

I know what this little seedling is, do you?See if you can guess what it is.This perennial does well in almost any setting and is sought after for its foliage, not necessarily its flowers. Although I find the flowers very interesting in a light and airy way. This particular seedling was collected from one of our gardens. If you need…

If you plan to sell plants you have to have plants to sell. So how does one go about getting a supply of plants for a nursery business? As plant retailers we really have only two options: produce the plants on our own or buy them from someone else and resell the plants. Both options have some very good advantages…

By now you may have received your first seed catalog(s) in the mail. It’s a fun time of the year for gardeners. We get to sift through the pages, read the descriptions designed to entice us, and dream of what we will plant next year. When the weather is cold and dreary the catalogs give us something bright and hopeful…

One of the areas that I would like to improve upon in our garden is the lack of winter interest. I can look outside our windows and see lots of stark naked deciduous trees waving in the wind. If they were covered in snow we would have plenty of winter interest but here in Tennessee snowfalls of that magnitude are…

Sometimes you just never grow up. When I was a kid one of my favorite toys was Legos. My brother and I would build all kinds of contraptions from buildings to vehicles. Even today I still play with toy building blocks with my kids but there is a different sort of block that I like to use in the garden:…

In the south it’s a necessity to get up early to get outside for gardening. Any delay into the mid-morning will result in unnecessary suffering due to the heat and humidity! This morning was already very humid before 8 AM. In the summer it is much worse and this morning’s humidity is just a sign of rain on it’s way….

I’ve always thought that in order to have a garden with year round interest some plants need to be planted in every season. The plants you see in the nurseries are typically presented in their prime season (unless you are talking vegetables in which case they could be out several weeks before you should plant them!) and if you plant…

Before you really get into producing plants for sale it is very important to come up with a way to get the plants to the customers.  I don’t have a place where costumers could just come by and browse the plants since I do all my production from my own garden.  One day perhaps, but I needed to come up…

OK I’ll have to admit when I was sent Sustainable Landscaping For Dummies for a review I had some mixed thoughts with the title. I’m a fan of sustainability, I think it’s of the utmost importance as we remodel our landscapes and improve our homes, but something about the dummy part of the title got me. I mean, I don’t…

Time to gather your seeds! Get a good paper or clean plastic bag and head out to the garden. If you have more than one type of plant to gather seeds from you should grab some extra bags. After your perennials or annuals have finished for the fall, collect the dead heads on them to use next spring. Just cut…

Through my YouTube channel I’ve been doing an end of the month tour of our garden each month. This July was a rough month for us personally and resulted in less time in the garden. Overall I’m happy with the garden this year and the produce we are getting. The tomatoes and peppers are the prime crop right now and…

I’m a huge fan of mustard.  There are few snacks I enjoy more than pretzels dipped in a delicious honey mustard.  I love it on sandwiches and as an ingredient in all sorts of things from chicken dishes to potato salad. Mustard is simply awesome.  That’s my opinion anyway.  It’s also extremely easy to grow mustard in the garden. How…

Every year I write down my ideas for gardening projects.  It helps me to put down some thoughts and map out where my garden needs to go throughout the season.  I won’t be able to accomplish every project on the list but it does give me some direction.  At the end of the year I’ll go back and see how…

Surely one of the greatest mysteries to appear in the history of the state of Tennessee. Recently strange shapes have appeared across the landscape. Covered with a cold and white mysterious substance these shapes reportedly have been erected by the mysterious “snowpeople” (the exact gender cannot be known except by manner of dress. Top hats and pipes tend to indicate…

Here is a small diagram of my intended raised bed vegetable garden layout. It will have 4 larger beds. Two of them will be 6 feet long and the other two will be 8 feet long. Each of these will connect to each other through the middle bed that is 4′ x 4′ square. Having several beds should allow me…

This time of year it isn’t unusual to see the garden in a crystallized form.  Wet winter weather insures that enough moisture is around to turn the landscape into a frosted garden.  The unique appearance of the frosted garden gives the gardener a great opportunity to play around with some photography.  Here are a few photos from this morning at…

Today we worked a little more on the greenhouse project and managed to get another milestone accomplished: the bracing. Unfortunately due to the end of daylight savings time darkness descended too quickly for me to snap some good photos. Besides braces aren’t very interesting, just functional. We put braces on the joists that connect them to the rafters, braces on…

Mid July finds my garden a little bit rough around the edges. The need for more garden time is always present with gardens needing weeded, the lawn needing mowed and cleaned up, tomatoes that need re-staked, and many other garden chores. It’s not just the lack of garden time though, the weather has played a significant role. No rain for…