Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Last Friday I mentioned 5 Vegetable Garden Design Tips for the Friday Fives post.  Today we’ll look at some more vegetable garden design tips that relate to organization of a garden’s layout!  I’ll have to own up and admit it that the organization part of gardening is a skill where I am somewhat deficient though I am striving to do…

Today we have three more submissions for the Garden Blogger Fall Color Project! Nancy in Canada, TC in Pennsylvania and Liisa in Vermont.Take a road north to visit the wonderful fall colors in Nova Scotia with Nancy of Soliloquy. Canada is where the fall colors start their colorful journey to the south and we are lucky to have Nancy to…

This Saturday is the Middle Tennessee Plant Swap at Henry Horton Park. This is a fantastic opportunity to talk to other gardeners and exchange those extra plants you don’t need for some you do! If you haven’t already gotten your plants ready you should do that ASAP to give them time to recover from any potential plant shock. Exchanges aren’t…

This week I put together a container planting as a present for my mother on Mother’s Day. I couldn’t talk about it here as a post until after today since she checks my site regularly. This was my first real attempt at arranging a decorative container. I’ve gardened in pots for a long time but it was usually vegetables with…

Yes you read the title right. My greenhouse shed project is mostly screwed. Rather than use nails to hold everything together we’re using coated deck screws as they tend to hold things much better and if you mess something up it’s easier to fix!  The three disadvantages of this is it takes longer, the drill eventually runs out of power…

Today is the last day of 2008 but unless you’ve never seen a calander you probably knew that already.  As one year ends and new one begins.  It’s time for a short look back at 2008 and a glance into the future.2008 was the first full growing year that we really had in the garden.  Our first year in our…

This weekend I found myself in the shed working on some shelving and countertops for the reclaimed cabinets I picked up from the dump (yes I’m that cheap!)   I’ll talk more on the garden shed later in the week but for now I thought I’d show you a little of what is going on in the garden. Things are winding…

It is inevitable. You will find a weed somewhere in your lawn or in your garden.  As things begin to grow this spring you’ll notice weeds coming up where you don’t want them.  In fact that is the general definition of a weedy plant – a plant that grows where you don’t want it!  Any plant can become weedy but some have…

Recently while upsizing my tomato seedlings into larger pots I needed some plant labels. Normally I will use the cut up slats of mini-blinds. I have a few sets I’ve collected over the years just for this purpose but I actually didn’t have them here at our current house. They were back over at the old house waiting to be…

Last week I attended the Bloom N’ Garden Expo in Williamson County, TN.  It’s a neat event held each year that offers garden speakers, display gardens, and (of course) plant vendors!  I’ve been getting pickier in my plant selections over the past year or so because I want unique plants for my garden.  I’m not trying to fill it up…

It is full fledged spring around our Middle Tennessee garden.  There is no shortage of work that needs to be done in the form of weeding and mulching on top of a myriad of miscellaneous projects.  For now though let’s just take a few pictures of the garden and we’ll think of that monster spring to-do list a little later….

Even though Zinnias begin with the letter “Z” they shouldn’t be your last thought for your garden. I’ve found that zinnias rival any other flower for attractive hummingbirds and butterflies. Hummingbirds love them, so much so that feeders are unnecessary. They are easy to grow, just sprinkle some seed where you want them and keep them watered to make them…

This formerly beautiful coreopsis that I raised from seed last year was nearly completely devoured by leaf beetle larvae.  I don’t know enough about insects to identify which species of leaf beetle it is but I am positive it is a Calligrapha. The damage is pretty devastating. The leaves are spotted with holes and very few leaves have escaped untouched….

When building raised beds I usually screw deck screws through each of the boards to attach the corners of my raised beds but using brackets to hold raised beds together does work better. With the screw in method I find after a while that the corners begin to rot, the screws begin to loosen, and the corner doesn’t hold together….

Each year I’ve posted about the projects I hope to accomplish in the New Year. They aren’t resolutions, just goals or ideas. I may not even get half of the projects accomplished but I find that if I get some ideas before the garden season starts in earnest I can be pretty motivated to get it worked on before the…

Over the holidays we went to the West Tennessee town of Trenton to visit my wife’s grandmother. Her home rests in the middle of several acres of rich Tennessee farmland where they typically grow either soybeans, corn, or winter wheat depending upon the whim of the farmer. The crop is most likely determined through a system of crop rotation. Soybeans…

The holidays are an extremely busy time of the year. We go from Halloween with spooky decorations, to Thanksgiving with autumn harvest styles, then to finally to Christmas. For those who enjoy decorating (and have the storage space for all that stuff) it can be a great deal of fun, but for others who may enjoy the holidays much more…

I’ve always been one to enjoy experimenting with plant propagation in the garden. This past weekend, since the weather was so pleasant, I went on  hardwood cutting spree.  Hardwood cuttings are very easy to do. The success rate varies quite a lot depending on the type of plants you are trying to propagate. I took around 40-50 cuttings of 4…