Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Over Christmas we traveled a little.  Not much, we never go very far.  We just visited with family.  One evening a family member asked me if I knew of some attractive, easy to grow, low maintenance plants she could put in the front of her house.  She wanted something she could plant that wouldn’t require a whole lot of time…

…meal in my garden this year. Blood meal is one of those organic additives that contribute to the quality of your soil. It has a very important nutrient: Nitrogen. Nitrogen is responsible for growing the green leafy growth on your plants. Since blood meal is made form the dried blood of livestock it is an organic product and releases the…

One of the more interesting materials to use in the garden is stone. It comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and forms from small landscape gravel to river stones and large stone pavers. Its uses in the garden are nearly endless. Gravel can be used for patios, pathways, and for mulch. Medium and larger stones can be used for…

Last week was the first Seed Sowing Saturday on The Home Garden! Starting Seed Sowing Saturday has  definitely motivated my planning, thinking, and preparations for the seed starting this year. I failed this week in one element of my seed plans – the planning! I had intended to put together a list of the seeds I was going to purchase…

Achillea millifolium is one of the easiest perennials to grow. Almost no care, very little maintenance, and bright punches of color make it a very good plant for low-maintenance gardens. In our garden we have 4-5 varieties which unfortunately are mostly unnamed but their colors include red, yellow, white, and pink. The only thing I do to maintain achillea is…

Next week I’ll be starting my seed sowing and I wanted to invite all other bloggers to join in to share their experiences. Each Saturday we’ll post about what we’ve done with our seeds, what we’ve selected, what we’ve planted, and how it’s doing. From sowing to growing it’s all fair-game! What can we talk about? seed selection how you…

Last year I set up a small greenhouse in my garage.  It was a gift from my parents and has come in quite handy.  I keep it in the garage next to one of the windows and have an old aquarium light set up for the top shelf.  This little greenhouse is the perfect place to harden off my seedlings…

Thanks for guessing at my post the other day called Digging a Hole. Creative title right? Nan of Gardening Gone Wild, Tina of In the Garden and Gloria of Pollinators-Welcome all guessed right, it’s a rain garden. Our driveway is a slope and at the bottom of it is an area that collects and pools water after each rain. Rain…

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…

When you’re taking cuttings from a plant, one of the most important steps is choosing the right material. The type of cutting you select plays a huge role in whether or not it will root successfully. In this post, I’ll walk you through what I look for when taking cuttings from shrubs and perennials and share some practical tips to…

The vegetable garden is finally taking off! Even though it feels like things have been moving slowly, we’re already seeing exciting progress — tomato plants are starting to flower, and our pepper plants are showing off their first baby peppers. This year, I planted around 36–38 tomato plants of various types and a generous amount of both sweet and hot…

Do you want an easy to grow shrub that has very few pest problems, isn’t munched on by deer or rabbits, and looks great at the end of summer? No it’s not impossible, think caryopteris! Caryopteris (Caryopteris x clandonensis also called blue mist shrub, bluebeard, or blue mist spirea) is deer and rabbit resistant if not proof, blooms in the…

This year is going to be a challenge.  I can tell already judging from the weather we’re having.  A delayed start combined with high moisture and strange weather is creating a tricky situation for gardeners.  All this moisture may sound like a good thing but I’m very concerned about the potential for fungal diseases on our tomatoes and peppers.  Powdery…

The Plant of the Month for December over at Gardening Gone Wild is all about sedums!  Sedums (also called stonecrop) are a type of succulent and are capable of storing water in their leaves which makes them very drought tolerant here in Tennessee.  We have several kinds of sedum in our garden with one of my favorites being the Dragon’s…

You can never have enough arbors can you?  Arbors are a design element for a garden that add vertical structure and can provide definition to garden areas.  Today I put together a very simple gateway arbor as an entrance to the shade garden I’ve built for Lowe’s Creative Ideas.  The last I built used gutters to create planters but this…

While the snow has just started here in Spring Hill, TN I’m thinking about the nice warm days of our growing season and all the neat stuff we get to experience as gardeners growing in the south.  I’ll add to this list every few days with a new thing that I miss about the growing season.  Please share in the…

This weekend found me still digging the greenhouse foundation out. Digging out a 10’x16′ area by yourself takes some time, especially when it rains more often than not. But in gardening, as in life, you take what comes and do the best you can with what you have. In three digging sessions I excavated three 4’x8′ areas to eventually remove…