Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

It’s time for a few herb cuttings!  Surely you didn’t think it would be too long before the plant propagation posts began again?  The warm weather is here – early – but the plants have responded and it’s time to take some stem tip cuttings.  My wife finds these posts boring and floats right by but hopefully you won’t. 😉…

Last year I wrote a post called What is Your Gardening Niche? It was a little post about how every gardener has their one area either of expertise or interest (most likely both) that he or she just can’t get enough of.  I remember several people decided to write their own posts based on it like Anna (Flowergardengirl) who wrote…

Dogwood leaves turning a deep red for fall in Tennessee! Last year when we bought our land I knew there would be challenges. There always are when building a home. I’ve helped a number of people over the last several years get homes built and I’ve seen all sorts of issues from the construction side of…

I really have to admit that despite the cold temperatures, snowfall, and generally crummy weather I’ve had a good week in the garden. Not my real garden, my virtual one. The garden that sits inside this black box next to my desk. Gail mentioned it too in her recent post. Times like these garden bloggers resort to old photos of…

For many years now I have really enjoyed the beauty of our Japanese dappled willows (Salix integra). Japanese dappled willows (or tri-colored willows) are gorgeous shrubby willows that grow up to around 10ft tall. These willows are known for their variegated foliage that emerges initially as pink before gradually turning to green and white on the leaves. Here is a…

Nandina domestica is not one of those plants that I like to propagate. It’s a nice enough plant but I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s overplanted in way too many landscapes. Every commercial business around has at least one and when a plant is that common I tend to cringe when I see it. Most of those are…

This week finally found me getting into some real seed starting action. The first of my seed orders came in within three days of ordering (here is my seed order for 2011) and today I started my tomatoes! Tomatoes are always the main crop in our garden and without them our garden is incomplete. Fresh from the garden tomatoes are…

When gift giving holidays are upon us (and happen during the growing season) I like to find gifts that can be planted in the ground and will give back the pleasure of the first gift many times over. I did that again this year with Valentine’s Day. My usual gift to my wife is the sweetly scented hyacinth.  The flowers…

As autumn’s colors have wrapped us in a cloth of color we have peeked into the foliage around the gardening blogosphere. Participants from Canada to Florida and Illinois to England have offered up wonderful illustrations of fall’s foremost feature. It’s time to take a look back and see where all that fall color came from and where it went! I’ve…

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…

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…

Saturday was one of those days that you had to be outside.  Sunny and in the 70’s the weather was nothing less than pure perfection. It was truely a spring weather day.  The kind of day that you take in from dawn until dusk without ever wanting to come back inside.  All days end but this one was a good…

Earlier this week we had a light frost which meant it was time to collect the basil leaves! Without any real hope of the basil leaves surviving the sub 32 degree temperatures I gathered as much as I could. I brought the leaves inside and made pesto. The 6 cups of loosely packed basil I gathered ended up making only…

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…

Many gardeners take the winter season off from gardening. They work hard from early spring through late far then take a little break but you don’t have to stop growing vegetables in your garden just because the weather has changed. One way to continue growing vegetables in cold weather is to construct a hoop house. A hoop house is simply…

Spring means it’s time to take some cuttings!  Today I took a few cuttings of a birch tree I’m eventually going to have to remove.  I planted it way too close to our house and it has gotten too large.  I didn’t want to lose the tree so I thought I would get a few to root and maybe plant…

I don’t think there is any question that parents want safe products to use in their yards, gardens, and around the home. That’s why when the people at EcoSMART contacted me about testing their ecologically safe and family friendly products I was more than happy to give them a try. For this post I interviewed Vijay Das the director of…

Maybe you’ve seen the picture that is floating around the internet.  In the picture there are two peppers. One has three lobes and the other four with captions that claim one is female and the other is male.  It also claims that the male produces fewer seeds than the female.  This completely incorrect information. In other word the pepper gender…