Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

It’s taken a long time for our moonflower vine (Ipomoea alba) to finally become mature enough to produce a flower. I planted two moonflower vines from seed at the base of the arbor I built for Better Homes and Gardens soon after its construction. The first couple weeks of their life was difficult due to the rabbits and their taste…

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…

The other day I wrote about the value of using echinacea in the garden. As it turns out that it’s not only valuable to us as an ornamental or as a pollen plant for beneficial insects but it also can be a host plant for the Silvery Checkerspot butterfly (Chlosyne nycteis)! This weekend I discovered this mass of tiny black…

Welcome to completely random gardening. For this post I had a hodgepodge of things to update you on that really can’t be grouped into any kind of category for one single post to talk about. So we’ll just have to talk a little bit about everything!The Greenhouse ProjectI managed to do a little digging on the greenhouse foundation yesterday. I…

One of the fun side events caused by the gardening habit is the witnessing of nature’s amazing works. Lately I’ve been seeing quite a bit of the fritillary butterfly in its various stages of growth.  It’s probably the gulf fritillary butterfly but there are several different kinds in our area and even though I’m a plant person I’m not necessarily…

I found this plant on a limestone outcropping near the Yellow Corydalis and the False Garlic. It appears to be a type of succulent. The stems and larger leaves have a red tint around the edges while the smaller leaves are more narrow and green. I suspect it is a wild stonecrop of some sort but I don’t know for…

Peppers aren’t as massively planted as the tomato plant in the vegetable garden but those who do plant peppers have a passion that rivals any other fruit or vegetable from the garden.  Some gardeners love the heat and grow the spiciest peppers they can find, while others love the flavor of a sweet red bell pepper.  I find myself somewhere…

I picked up this sassafras leaf in our backyard. I was struck by its interesting coloration, red on the outside edges and orange around the main veins of the leaf. We have sassafras trees everywhere around in our yard so their leaves are easily found. They have a very strong lemon scent that can be smelled when you crush the…

Trees are the anchors of our landscapes. They enrich the soil, provide oxygen, offer shelter and food for wildlife, and deliver incredible seasonal beauty. My goal is to diversify our property by replacing invasive plants with a variety of beautiful, beneficial trees and shrubs. In two of my more recent videos, I discussed planting over ten different types of tree…

Beans are simply the best vegetable in the garden. I know, all you people out there who hate eating your greens disagree, but really when you compare factors like the ease of growing, pests, and diseases beans really win out.  In many cases beans will just continue to grow when other plants halt in the tracks due to dry weather…

Yet again I found myself taking more cuttings of a Japanese dappled willow (Salix integra). Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Or maybe I do help myself? Whatever the case I brought home with us a bunch of willow branches for propagating. They came off of the sides of the mother plant because it had begun impeding the pathway to…

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Sometimes there comes along a plant that is just a gardener’s dream. Beautiful during the growing season, native, great for pollinators, great for birds, useful in the landscape, and overall easy to care for. I’ve got you hooked already don’t I? This plant would be a member of one of my favorite groups of plants: the viburnums. Viburnum dentatum aka…

I find Garden Tours fun to put together. It’s an opportunity incessantly talk about plants, plans, and ideas and that is one of my favorite things to do! I put together a garden tour of our current garden on YouTube which you can watch down below. To summarize the year so far we moved in November of 2023 to our…

A springtime flowering favorite of mine is the Yoshino cherry tree (Prunus x yedoensis).  I’ve written about these trees several times in the past and I know I’ll write about it again as it is such a valuable tree in the landscape for it’s ornamental beauty. I’ve never been able to root this tree…until now!  A couple months ago I…

The seeds are sprouting pretty good so far. I need to get some pictures taken of them but haven’t had the time this week to do much. I have inspected them daily waiting eagerly for the next little green baby plant to say “hello!” I was getting a little bit of damping off but I took care of it with…

Broken branch of a crape myrtle Sometimes in gardening, as in life, we experience bad breaks. We don’t intend for these to happen, they just do. Whether caused by too much stress, mistakes, or happenstance the only power we have over these breaks is to clean up and hope for the best. Such is the case with one of my…

In my last post on the garden shed page I mentioned that I would show you in two parts the plantings. Well…I’m afraid I may have to expand that to three, we’ll see! After taking some pictures today and on previous days I’m happily astounded by the neat stuff I’m seeing. Please don’t take that as bragging since most of…