Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Now before you go looking at my hand drawn art please note that I do not claim to be an artist, just a gardener. The paint I am used to is usually accompanied by foliage, flowers, and fruit. The “artistic rendering” below is intended to illustrate the image inside my head for one of the two concepts for the winter…

To say that I’m excited about the completion of our Arbor project is an understatement. In many ways it turned out better than I had hoped. From the plants we used to the materials and the design nearly everything went according to plan. Of course I spent a good deal of time before the project began planning this arbor. I…

Another month has begun and the list of chores keeps mounting. September’s To-Do List didn’t get completed and those items may need attention in my garden this month too. The weather is nothing short of stunning in October with warm sunshine and cool days, and as long as time is available gardening is a top priority! Here’s what I need…

Last year we designed, built, and grew our first vegetable garden in our new home. The garden was made of two large beds that were subdivided into 3 smaller conjoined beds in an “L” shape. Unfortunately the vegetable garden layout we designed was built more around aesthetics than around function. Since then I’ve realized something: When designing vegetable gardens think…

These giant mosquito like creatures called crane flies are all over the Middle Tennessee area right now. They are flies that may look like mosquitoes but aside from their unfortunate appearance have no other similar attributes. Crane flies are perfectly harmless in their adult form but can be very annoying. In their larval form they burrow through the ground until…

While the winter is still in gear I thought it might be helpful to begin reviewing some of the toughest plants I have grown over the years. I’ve grown a lot of them (and killed a few of them along the way). In my garden it has to be a tough plant to survive over the years. Today I’m going…

Who would have thought? A daffodil (Narcissus) blooming in mid-February! The little sprouts are coming up all over but this one and a couple others like it have decided they like the weather. It could be that they are in a slightly warmer micro-climate near concrete but mostly it’s because of the extremely unseasonably warm weather we’ve been enjoying. It’s…

Plant a tree. It’s a simple enough sentiment. They give us shelter, they give us shade and fruit, and they give us life. There are so many reasons why you should plant a tree that the opposing list of why not to plant a tree is very short. In fact some of those reasons are way out there.”I don’t have…

Maybe you’ve heard of this already or maybe you’ve seen it in the stores yourself but Triscuit is promoting the “home farming” movement. It’s an interesting idea that backyard gardeners have been doing for many many years. Simply put home farming is growing your own food in the home garden. While gardening may be an all inclusive term to describe…

I enjoy periodically just walking around the yard and seeing what there is to see in my landscape. Today was a bit of an overcast day probably in the lower to mid 60’s F. Its always a good idea to walk around your yard so you know what’s happening. Today I took a camera and shot a few pictures. The…

Yesterday I commented on a post on Gardening Gone Wild written by Nan for the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project and said how some people consider the Sassafras to be a junk tree. Inadvertently I may have given the impression that I believe it is. The truth is that while it may not make my top ten tree list I…

Coneflowers are a work horse in many gardens including mine, but they aren’t completely issue free. Recently one of my coneflower plants began showing deformed flowers with a complete loss of color in the petals. The petals appeared stunted and pale. In some cases the deformed flowers mimic some new interesting variety of coneflower but it’s not, these are the…

This is a hard topic for one so organized as I (which would be not). Organization is something I have gotten better about over the years but I still fall woefully short of any real system. I’m probably like most people, I intend to start getting organized. Then I actually start doing a few things to get organized. Then a…

Daylilies are one of the easiest plants to learn how to hybridize. The large flowers with easy to get to pollen make it a simple matter to transfer pollen from one flower to another.  There are a couple simple things you need to know before you start hybridizing daylilies. The first is where the pollen is and the second is…

Among many garden chores that come in spring perhaps the biggest is the trimming of the ornamental grasses. Trimming back perennials can be time consuming but the ornamental grasses can be a bear. It’s not the tiny little hair-like strands of the Nassella tenuissima (Ponytail grass), or the tall and narrow ‘Karl Foerster’ Feather Reed Grasses. The panicums aren’t a…

We’re in full fledged spring garden mode here in Tennessee. What does that mean you ask? Everything is blooming or budding. While allergy sufferers dread this time of year it still remains my favorite. I love the bright green colored grass as it comes up fresh from the earth. I love the play of the colors in my yard. My…

It’s time to show you a few pictures of the plants around my garden!  The gardens themselves are in need of weeding, mulch, and assorted other chores I haven’t had time to get to yet but that doesn’t stop the plants from looking impressive.  Our weather lately has been wetter than normal for August and July.  That’s a blessing since…

Than a delicious, dark red, juicy sliced tomato? My turkey wrap sandwich was very happy this afternoon with the addition of this red fruit of the garden. Not too juicy and not too meaty, just perfect – the perfect tomato experience. The scent of the tomato after cutting it open was like taking in the fragrance of a honeysuckle flower….