Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

It’s a horticultural crime.  A serious crime.  One with lasting repercussions on the garden and your landscape. What is crape murder? It is the unnatural and unsightly mass pruning of wonderful crape myrtle trees.  These garden trees are hacked down in the prime of life destroying what could potentially be an amazing tree.  Why do people desecrate such a noble…

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…

They call it winter blooming jasmine, and last year it really was. I suppose that technically this year it still is but with spring fast approaching it’s almost too late to call it winter, almost. The first bloom happened several days ago but more and more blooms are rapidly opening. Its lateness in flowering is probably due to the extremely…

I’m sure you’ve heard about Pinterest by now.  If you’re like me you may have thought “that’s just another online time waster.” Or if you’re a guy maybe you thought “that’s just for women!” Well I’ll admit it, those were my first thoughts.  Then I began to see people using it and sharing things from it on Facebook or Twitter….

To say that deer have been a challenge over the years is somewhat of an understatement. Deer love to graze around my garden. In fact over the last couple months we’ve watched as a family of deer has grown. Several fawns appeared in the garden and have been growing like the weeds. Gardeners and deer can coexist but as a…

This year I’m really excited about our watermelons. I picked out the ‘Moon and Stars’ variety which not only is reported to be an excellent tasting variety but looks really neat too. ‘Moon and Stars’ are an heirloom variety that acquire a mottled coloring on the rind surfaces that resemble the night time sky! The nighttime sky also appears on…

Yesterday I brought home two more daylilies to add to our daylily collection.  Please welcome ‘Serena Sunrise’ and ‘Custard Candy’ to the garden! ‘Serena Sunrise’ Daylily Both of these daylilies have already been crossed with each other (yesterday) and with my favorite daylily ‘Primal Scream’ (today)!  I can’t wait to see the results, but wait I must! ‘Candy Custard’ Daylily…

This week my family spent a few hours gathering and hauling rock from our home construction site. When we bought the property we knew that were were “gifted” with lots of rock on the site but the amount of rock is really much more than we imagined. Surface rock was visible in many areas of the property. Rock can be…

While earlier in the week brought progress to the outside of the greenhouse garden shed this weekend brought some progress to the inside. I had already insulated parts of the shed where there is no glass but I needed to cover the insulation. Fortunately there is plenty of scrap plywood laying around the shed from doing the outside sheathing plus…

Schip laurels (pronounced Skip) are a very easy evergreen that you can propagate at home. I mentioned propagating cherry laurels a couple years ago but since it’s a good time of the year to take cuttings I thought I would revisit it. It will take a couple years before a cutting turns into a plant large enough for a foundation…

It’s not the greenhouse, at least not today or tomorrow. Over the last couple years (yes I said years) my father and I have been working on a project in his backyard. It began as a patio in the middle of their yard where they could enjoy their backyard spaces and gradually grew into a patio covered with a pavilion…

Want to do something nice for the birds?  Feed them!  Here’s an easy way to do it! Get a grapefruit (any suitable citrus will work). Cut it in half. Eat the grapefruit. (Important step) Fill grapefruit halves with bird seed. Set grapefruit halves on a deck rail Enjoy watching the birds! Piece of cake – or rather a piece of fruit!

I finally started my fall vegetable garden. I planted it in one of my 4’x3′ raised beds by planting lettuce, radishes, onions, broccoli and more summer squash. I know summer squash isn’t a fall vegetable crop but I’m hoping to get one more batch of yellow crookneck squash before the first frost. This raised bed is the first of  4…

There are few things a gardener appreciates more than see the positive results of his hard work payoff. Over the years I’ve moved plants, added plants, trimmed plants, propagated plants in various areas and in some places I’m just now beginning to see the results. One such location is my front sidewalk garden. It’s the garden between the house and…

Yet again I found myself taking more cuttings of a Japanese dappled willow (Salix integra). Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Or maybe I do help myself? Whatever the case I brought home with us a bunch of willow branches for propagating. They came off of the sides of the mother plant because it had begun impeding the pathway to…

One of our favorite herbs is cilantro and I’m pleased to announce that it is reappearing in our garden as one of our fall crops. Cilantro grows great in the cooler weather.  Here in Tennessee it will last until late spring when the temperatures get warm. I usually let our cilantro bolt and it reseeds readily. I know many people…

Every year I put out a list of my intended gardening projects that I personally want to accomplish this year.  Then back at the end of the year I review them to see how I’ve done.  This year is a little tricky.  I have quite a few projects leftover from last year that I still want to accomplish in my…

Recently I happened to by driving by our property and noticed a huge change, one that I hadn’t planned. Suddenly a good portion of the front of the land was cleared. It was something we were going to have to pay for eventually when installing the water line for our future home but we didn’t hire anyone to do the…