Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Water gardening is a subject that I have very little knowledge of but thought many readers might enjoy learning about so I asked Mark Best of Garden Pond Advice to write a guest post on water plants. Water gardening is not a new subject but it is becoming increasingly popular in the everyday backyard garden. I hope you enjoying reading…

Please bear with me while I make a few cosmetic changes!  I’ve been wanting to find a new look for the blog that is more functional and I think I have found a template that works.  There will be some minor tweaks and repairs over the next few days.  All the content and comments should be intact.  Think of this…

This year’s wacky weather has given way to quite a lot of speculation about when the actual peak time for the leaves is. I’ve noticed that this year hasn’t really had a peak color moment. The normal sequential leaf change has been extremely erratic and some plants still haven’t begun to change while others no longer even have leaves. Fortunately…

Has this ever happened to you? You cut a tomato open only to find…it’s growing!Our tomato we sliced open for dinner on Wednesday was sprouting new plants inside of itself. It was ripe and was still in very good shape. I guess the seeds were just ready to grow!

This could be a tense question for all those opinionated gardeners out there but which should you pick, native or exotic plants? There are definitely advantages to choosing native plants with tolerance to the climate being first and foremost. Natives are better for the indigenous wildlife as it provides the food and sustenance they are used to eating.Exotic plants are…

Never say never right?  In my experience there are very few plants that are truly safe from deer.  This year I’ve had big time deer issues.  The extra tomato bed I planted was completely devoured by the two deer that are camping out in our backyard.  That isn’t shocking really.  I wasn’t able to put a good fence around any…

Anyone else ready for spring yet? Have a look at some dianthus, it may help to sustain you until spring! Or it might just make things worse…It’s supposed to be 29 here today for the high. I think I’m ready for spring!

Our bird bath garden will always be in my mind the bird bath garden, but it has also become something of a memorial garden to our recently deceased feline friend, Amber. I won’t go into detail about Amber in this post as I did that back in December but she was a good friend who we were lucky to have…

While this post might be more interesting to me (for record keeping purposes) than anyone else it contains the list of seed varieties I planted on Monday Feb. 15, 2010. They were planted in peat pots and seed starting medium and are currently under lights indoors in a roughly 70 degree environment. Warmer temperatures might hasten the germination process but…

Spring is in full swing and we all know that gardener’s everywhere are flocking to garden shows across the United States. This weekend is the Bloom ‘N’ Garden Expo in Williamson County presented by the Williamson County Master Gardeners. It’s hard for plant nuts to restrain themselves at these festivals and like everyone else I always bring home something –…

Self Sowing Garden Unfortunately I don’t have any new things to share with you like my title says.  The new things in the garden refers to what new things I would like to accomplish with my garden this year. I’ve been doing a lot of virtual gardening lately; looking at old photos of the garden and I glimpsed a few…

When transplanting plants it helps to have a great container that allows the seedlings to flourish. I’ve found over the years that coir pots are a great option. I used to use them as part of my farmer’s market plant sale business. Today I use them in my garden every year as I transplant tomato, pepper, and all sorts of…

Every now and then I’ll be writing a post about the common weeds that we find in our yard and garden.  I’ll save these posts for Wednesdays so we can have a bit of a creative alliterative effect by calling it “Weedy Wednesday”!  I won’t be writing about weeds every Wednesday but I feel that it’s an important aspect of…

In order to raise worms for worm composting (vermicomposting) you have to have a place to put the worms and the kitchen scraps. There are all kinds of composting bins that can be effective but they all work on the same idea. A box houses the worms, kitchen scraps, and bedding. As the worms eat they make their way through…

I’ve made no secret about it but maples are without a doubt my favorite shade tree. Maples offer shade in the summer, feed wildlife with their samaras, and are a feast for the eyes in the fall. Reds, yellows, and oranges tend to be the predominate colors and they set the fall landscape on fire! All the gold colored maple…

When you think of color in the winter garden you may think of evergreens first. You may imagine the dark green needle-like foliage of the pines, whose evergreen branches invoke images of winter scenes with snow covered trees. You may think of the glossy green leaves and the berries of the hollies that birds love to eat for winter time…

It’s amazing when you go back and think about time and how quickly it flies by. Earlier we were listening to the “90’s” station on the cable TV music station and I realized that even though the 90’s didn’t seem that long ago 1996 was actually 14 years ago! Yep time flies fast just like 3 years of writing this…

Since it doesn’t appear likely that we’ll experience much snow this year in Tennessee I’m importing some pictures of snow to look at. My brother in Flagstaff, Arizona took these pictures of their recent snowfall. They’ve had several significant snowfalls this year. It would be nice to have just one of them here!They had 6 inches of snow among the…