Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

If you’re out in your vegetable garden and see big, honking caterpillars like this, you need to remove them from your tomato plants as quickly as possible. These are hornworms and they can be very devesatting to your tomato plants. There are two main hornworm that tend to show up on our tomato plants: the tomato hornworm and the tobacco…

Welcome to Iowa and Shady Gardener’s garden where she asks Does Everything Grows Better in My Neighbor’s Yard? (Which incidentally I don’t believe and you wouldn’t either if you’ve seen her pictures of the garden! 😉 ) SG’s fall color post takes us not only from her garden but beyond to other areas of her town for some drive by…

The weather this past weekend was perfect for outdoor gardening activities! Unfortunately we are still a good six weeks away from safe outdoor planting and many of the tasks on my long term spring agenda need to wait until the frosts are done, but there is always something that can be done! Garden preparation! By far the biggest job my…

How big is a moonflower bloom? Let me show you! If you use the lens cap of my camera as an indicator this moonflower bloom on our arbor is roughly 6-8 inches in diameter! Below the moonflower is a purple sweet potato vine. I think the dark foliage and bright white blooms look great together. Perhaps this year I’ll attempt…

Over the weekend we visited my in-laws for Easter. While there I always explore the edges of the woods and sometimes deeper but I really didn’t have to journey far to find this trillium. It was among a grouping of several other trilliums on the edge of a cedar glade woods in their backyard. All the trilliums were the sessile…

It’s bound to be an exciting year for the vegetable garden!  In fact every year I get excited by the potential new varieties of seeds to try.  The catalogs are full of amazing, mouthwatering, and delicious pictures and descriptions. (Don’t worry I’m not eating the catalog – although I’ll bet you thought about it too!) Whittling down the choices to…

Yesterday’s post had many of the colorful plants I planted around the garden shed today’s post may be less colorful but hopefully still interesting! First let’s start off with a small stepping stone pathway. I bought some cheap 12″x12″ stepping stones to lay down for this little pathway. To the left of the pathway is an area that still needs…

Today school was out, the roads were iced over, and the garden was draped in white. I always enjoy the one or two times each winter when our landscape is covered in snow. That’s the great thing about living in Tennessee – or one of the great things – the mild winters! It will snow a couple times each year…

When we first moved into our house back in 2007 and were discovering what our garden had in it we found very little.  A nandina, a couple cedars, some reblooming daylilies, and a teeny tiny spirea were all the plants that were there. Not much to start a garden with but I was excited about the challenge.  The spirea had…

I started the seed selection process the other day. I ordered seeds through the American Horticultural Society’s seed exchange. I wasn’t able to contribute seeds to the exchange this year but they do allow you donate $5 and pick ten different selections from this year’s list.Here is what I picked:Rudbeckia hirtaAgastache foeniculumAsclepia tuberosa (Butterfly weed)Dianthus deltoides ‘Arctic Fire’Echinacea purpereaEchinacea purperea…

Yesterday evening we had storms. Heavy winds and rain knocked down sunflowers and pretty much every perennial planting over 2 feet tall that wasn’t staked up. If it could catch the wind – it did. Unfortunately our Bradford pears remained in tact – I’ve been looking for an excuse to take them down, one of these days they will break……

Tomato planting season is almost here for Middle Tennessee so I thought now would be the perfect time to share some things you need to know about growing a great tomato!  Tomatoes have always been my favorite crop from the garden.  I like tomatoes fresh, cooked, preserved – it doesn’t matter how – I like a GREAT Tomato! There are…

You might think that peppers are one of those seed only grown plants.  For many gardeners they are, but what if you want an exact copy of a favorite pepper plant?  With peppers we typically sow the seeds in late winter and grow the seedlings on to plant out in the spring. Through cuttings we have another way to grow…

OK gardeners and garden bloggers I need your help. Years ago I bought our first video camera to help film the antics of our children.  I bought it just before our oldest was born and many things have changed over the years. Essentially technology has made my old mini tape video camera obsolete. I can’t even hook it up to…

I was outside on Tuesday afternoon walking around the yard while a thirty minute window in the clouds opened to allow the sun to shine down. It was a short respite from the rainy weather but this time of year any respite is a good respite. While walking about I was struck by how white the stalks of the Russian…

After the storms last night it feels like we dodged the proverbial bullet. Storms blasted through Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and several other states bringing rain, lightning, hail, and tornadoes. It was not a restful evening by any means but we prepared for it. We used our closet under the stairs for a safety spot and stocked it with a…

Even though it’s been a short week we have lots of fall color to share for the Thanksgiving edition of the Fall Color Project! I won’t be posting for the Fall Color Project on Friday due to the Thanksgiving holiday so I thought I would highlight these posts a little early! What could be more perfect than fancy foliage, a…