Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Spring is a great time for what? PERENNIAL PLANT PROPAGATION! OK, I get excited about making new plants and I wanted to share a little of what I’ve been working on in the garden. Spring really is a great time to take cuttings of your perennials, in fact it might be the best time. If you have never tried propagating…

If you haven’t already looked you should. The work is done, the pictures have been taken, and the post is up at BHG.com.  The voting won’t begin until next Friday but now you can see the results of the project! Head on over and take a look at the 48 hour Blog Challenge and see my new Arbor! I’ll post…

I hope you have had a fantastic week in the garden and Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms! I hope you have a wonderful day today! For this post I wanted to simply sum up what went on the garden this week. Most of the content this week was on my YouTube Channel which you can subscribe to here:…

Maybe your garden didn’t turn out so well this year.  Maybe your tomatoes may died out due to disease or other vegetables might not have produced as well as they have in the past.  It happens.  Sometimes it’s the weather that causes it and sometimes insects bring in diseases, but those factors are hard to control.  One factor you can…

By now you’ve probably heard about the study that says organically grown vegetables are not any healthier than their “conventionally” grown counterparts.  If you haven’t I’ll sum it up in a nutshell. The study examined the nutrients and vitamins present in organic produce and compared it to conventionally grown vegetables and didn’t find a significant difference between the two. This might…

This past weekend I jumped headlong into the patio paving construction process. I mentioned this project in my August project post and here’s how it all begins. My first step was laying out the edging stones to figure out the layout of the patio. Now you might ask “wouldn’t it be better to draw a layout of the patio first?”…

When I made the decision to begin my micro-nursery (Blue Shed Gardens/HomeGardenBox) I had to figure out first what kind of plants I wanted to produce.  This was a very difficult decision since I like pretty much anything there is to do with the garden. Selecting one type of plants or one area seemed just wrong because I was leaving out all…

Everybody has a spot in their yard that needs definition. Whether it is a shared boundary line with the neighbors or just a border between garden rooms, people like to define their spaces. Another major project I tackled last weekend was the side border garden. As it’s creative name describes, it is on our side border, and it’s purpose is…

The other day I posted about the next evolution of my garden on its way to becoming a more formalized vegetable garden. Today I’ll show you the layout of what I hope the vegetable garden will eventually become. There are some distinct advantages to the layout changes that I am planning on making that I’ll share with you below the…

In 2003 we didn’t have a house or a garden that we owned but we treated the Great Smoky Mountains as our garden. We traveled frequently to the park and took pictures of anything that caught our interest. As part of the Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop: Color in the Garden at Gardening Gone Wild I thought I’d contribute some photos…

At my parent’s house there is a small garden location where the contemplative gardener can go to relax. Nestled between the cherry trees the garden bench that my dad and I built for my mom several years ago. What I thought made this scene so special was the fallen cherry blossom petals from the nearby Kwanzan cherry tree. Statue of…

It may not seem to be the right time to be thinking about fall but it is! Temperatures are still in the 90’s here in Middle Tennessee but we have to get those fall seeds started and now is the time. Growing plants from seeds requires enough time to maturity to make sure you can have an abundant crop. Below…

Ornamental grasses are definitely something special to add to the landscape. They add texture, height, and a much needed contrast to flowering plants and wide leaved foliage plants. Ponytail grass (Nassella tenuissima) is a great ornamental grass to choose for many gardens. It goes by several common names like Mexican Feather Grass, Silky Thread Grass, and the aforementioned pony tail…

I did some collecting yesterday in the cold drizzling rain. Some friends of my parents wanted to get rid of a pile of wood that used to be their deck. They remodeled their house a while back and hard-scaped around the pool so they didn’t need the deck. The lumber was sitting near their garden just waiting to be used…

I was inspecting the Birdbath Garden the other day when a persistent buzzing sound became noticeable. I looked around a little closer and found this little bee happily buzzing among the stalks of the salvia. No wonder I like these plants! They are magnets for these happy little pollinators. This bee buzzed from stalk to stalk sampling all it had…

Since summer has now officially come and gone and I only started this site a week ago (give or take a day or two), I thought I would share an easy project that I did this summer from another old wooden palette. Originally I was going to turn it into a compost bin, but after using the palette laying on…

Recently a representative of Hartley Botanic asked if I would be interested in hosting a guest post. Since I knew of the beautiful designs for the Hartley collection of greenhouses I suggested she put together a post about how to choose a greenhouse. And here it is! Choosing the right greenhouse You would think that a greenhouse is an easy…

There are many ways to grow tomatoes. In the past I generally used tomato cages to hold up my plants. One method I’ve been trying lately in my garden is trellising. When you trellis a tomato plant you create a structure that allows the tomato to get good sunlight and airflow around the plant. This get help out immensely if…