Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Last year I told you about the Japanese maples that grew naturally from underneath a tree at my parent’s house. I over wintered young trees in my garden shed (see the April Video update) and have been taking care of them here in our garden. The other day I transferred the Japanese maple seedlings from the shed because it was…

I did several little things in the garden this week that weren’t worthy of individual posts but when grouped together give me a little something to talk about.  Planted seeds for rudbeckia ‘Cappuccino’, gaillardia ‘Arizona Sun’, Verbena bonariensis, mixed heucheras, Panicum virgatum. Constructed a suspended staking system out of fallen poplar branches for our sugar snap peas.  I’ll go into…

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…

Welcome to Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day at the Home Garden. Be sure to go visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens to tour some of the other blooms and blogs!I will never advocate planting a Bradford pearbut in the right lightit just might look alright!Buds beginning to break from their winter slumber.(this is one of my better pictures!)The tree will soon…

If you are tired of hauling your old newspapers to the dump or recycling there are a couple good uses of it for around the house. First its important to note that newspaper is biodegradable and most of the inks are soy based so there will be no harm to the environment. In fact the newspaper should add to the…

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…

Sometimes you don’t really know where your garden is going to go.  Impulse plants or bargain plants can shape the type plants you put in, the kind of plant can determine where it goes, or you may even move plants to place them in better locations, but this notion of outside forces shaping your garden doesn’t just pertain to plants. …

For years now I have complained about our Bradford Pear Trees. In my mind they are one of the most problematic trees ever planted in the landscape. I despise Bradford Pear trees. There are so many reasons why Bradford pear trees are terrible for planting that I constantly wonder WHY were these things ever released to the public for purchase….

Here are some pictures that we have taken of 2008!Here is a snowfall on a very cold evening. I like how the white snowflakes are captured, frozen in time, by the reflected light of the flash. A visitor to our new bird feeder! This white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinesis) is cracking open the shell of a sunflower seed for his feast….

We’re still in the middle of winter and the weather outside is bitter cold as I’m writing this post but that doesn’t mean gardening should be out of your mind. Now is the perfect time to get your garden plan together for 2016 so that you can maximize your yields and minimize your workload! Today I’ll walk you through my…

Today I had an odd thing happen. I was working in the garage when all of a sudden something slammed into the wall above the garage door. How a bird could mistake a wall for open air I don’t really know. Of course many birds aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. After all where else would the expression…

Here is your dose of plant propagation for the day! Eight cuttings with roots (more or less) potted up and ready to go. I was very happy to find roots on the stem of my snowball viburnum cutting.I added three more ‘Purple Homestead’ verbenas to the collection.Here’s that new snowball viburnum. This variety is sterile so vegetative propagation is the…

A week ago we found ourselves at the doctors office for one of my children.  Nothing major (this time), just a regular check up and physical so she could run cross country (Very cool that a 7 year old wants to run cross country!).  After her appointment we left the doctor’s office and found a dogwood tree, Cornus kousa, that…

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…

As you can see from the picture to the left that this tree has taken a beating. Last fall when the deer were out in force a buck decided to rut against several of my favorite trees. Coincidentally all the deer damaged trees were young trees that I had planted in the yard including two maples, a dogwood and one…

Every now and then it’s fun to go back and look up the statistics from The Home Garden to see what people are looking for and eventually wind up here. Sometimes the search terms are funny but hopefully the results lead the searcher to great info. So here are ten search terms that showed up that all began with the…

Last weekend I put together a small front porch for my garden shed. You can take a closer look at it at the Greenhouse Shed page if you have a minute!