Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Sometimes plants just want to fall open in the center. There’s an easy fix for this but it requires some spring stem tip pruning! Check out the video below for this very simple garden tip! How to Keep Plants from Falling Open in the Center

Coneflowers (Echinacea), with their vibrant blooms and pollinator appeal, are a staple in many home gardens. In this post, I’ll share my approach to pruning coneflowers to encourage healthy blooms, support pollinators, and provide food for birds later in the season. I’ll also cover a serious plant disease—aster yellows—that can affect coneflowers and other members of the aster family, and…

This morning we awoke to what is our first hard freeze of the season. Here are a few photos of the frost for your chilly enjoyment! Frost on Grass Frost near the garden shed. Frost on the ‘Shasta’ Viburnum. While you can’t see the frost on the Sweet Autumn Clematis I thought the seed heads were worth a look!

When sowing grass seed timing is everything. The right grass planted at the right time works wonders for a lawn, but the reverse can be true as well. Here in Tennessee we live in an a rather ambiguous area for growing grasses. The cool season grasses do great – that is until it gets hot and they turn all brown….

Today I sat down during a massive deluge of precipitation and came to a realization, I’m a seed collecting addict. It wasn’t a conscious choice to collect all these seeds, it kind of just happened over time. I counted 53 varieties of vegetables and 16 varieties of herbs. I didn’t even attempt to count the ornamental and flower seeds that…

As gardeners we deal with all kinds of issue that can make gardening frustrating and difficult.  One of those issues is pests.  Pests come in many forms from thousands of kinds of insects to birds and animals.  No method of pest control is 100% effective all the time so gardeners need be creative problem solvers in the garden.  The best…

This morning I while out in the garden I found a couple cucumbers ready to be picked,and mutant squash! Apparently we had a Siamese squash growing on the vine. Each side of this vegetable anomaly appears like it could have been it’s own fruit.They are almost exactly the same length and size but completely connected on one side.Here is the…

One of my favorite tools that I use in my garden is the scuffle hoe. That’s what I call it at least but it goes by other names like the stirrup hoe or hula hoe and even action hoe. The scuffle hoe is something you absolutely will love having and using in the garden. I use it almost daily and…

Since I have very little to show for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day in December I’ll display a review of each Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post over 2008 that I’ve done. Inside this post you will see one or two pictures from each post that in my view are the best of the blooms. Unfortunately I missed a few months like…

I officially nominate the pumpkin for vegetable of the month! Do I hear a second?I realize that the selection of a pumpkin may be predictable but it’s such a seasonally appropriate vegetable for October. After all could you have even think of fall harvests and Halloween without pumpkins? Whether they are turned into pies or Jack-o-lanterns these orange globes of…

Along one side of our property there is a narrow strip of land between the house and our neighbors’ properties.  There isn’t much room to do a whole lot of gardening (or so I originally thought) and this side of the house felt exposed when we bought our home in 2007.  This is how it looked a couple years ago…

It’s time for October’s Garden Questions of the month! These are questions people have asked the search engines and found The Home Garden and hopefully they have also found the answers.  Q. Can you prune silver mound in the fall? A. It’s better to wait until spring. The foliage that remains above the plant will help protect it over the…

So many of us gardeners tend to think of one thing when it comes to the vegetable garden – tomatoes! I know I do, although in recent years I’ve become very partial to peppers. The garden doesn’t have to just be about those summer vegetables. In many areas you can continue to garden well into the winter months. Here in…

This weekend I found myself in the shed working on some shelving and countertops for the reclaimed cabinets I picked up from the dump (yes I’m that cheap!)   I’ll talk more on the garden shed later in the week but for now I thought I’d show you a little of what is going on in the garden. Things are winding…

How cold was it this morning? The wireless thermometer said 15.5 Degrees Fahrenheit at 8:00 AM. That’s pretty cold! The low last night in our little nook on the hillside was somewhere around 3-4 degrees! But really, how cold is that? Cold enough that the bird’s won’t receive any enjoyment out of the birdbath in the birdbath garden for a…

What do you do when cute little furry bunnies that eat your strawberries? Good question! I’m not sure I have the best answer and maybe you have some suggestions for this issue but over the weekend I found a solution that so far seems to have worked.  First let me share with you how I found bunnies in my garden….

This time of year when the weather is inhospitable I take a look back through the pictures I’ve taken and informally review the previous year. That’s one great advantage when you blog, you have a record of most things and photographs of almost everything else! Here’s a picture from September just outside our vegetable garden. In the fuzzy foreground is…

Growing corn in the home garden is a little different from growing in the farm fields. Corn has a few traits that you need to understand before you plant so that you can get a successful crop of corn in the late summer and fall. Let’s talk about growing corn as it applies to a home gardener! Planting Corn in…