Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

This morning we awoke to what is our first hard freeze of the season. Here are a few photos of the frost for your chilly enjoyment! Frost on Grass Frost near the garden shed. Frost on the ‘Shasta’ Viburnum. While you can’t see the frost on the Sweet Autumn Clematis I thought the seed heads were worth a look!

One of the first plants I began planting here in our garden/landscape was the Japanese dappled willow ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ (Salix integra). It’s a beautiful shrub willow with dappled foliage that is said to grow from 10-12 feet tall. I planted it for several reasons. First of all I liked it! The dappled foliage gives three seasons of interest which in…

The foliage is still there on some if the trees and shrubs in our garden and is fading fast. Most of what remains now has a reddish hue in the leaves but in some cases what remains isn’t just the leaves. The ‘Shasta’ viburnum is showing red in the last few of it’s remaining leaves. In my garden it’s the…

Recently I started some heuchera seeds while we were suffering through the record setting deep cold of the last several weeks. I had to do something garden related to lighten my spirits that were quickly being squashed by the weather’s entrapments and starting some seeds seemed to be a good choice.  It’s easy to start a small container to bring…

I find that there are few things more rewarding in gardening than growing plants from seed. It saves money and lets you grow a variety of really cool plants that aren’t locally available. More than that though there is a feeling of satisfaction you get when you harvest from those plants you grew. Starting tomato and pepper plants from seed…

If you every wondered exactly why the beautyberry is called a beautyberry I’ll give you two words: “Beauty” and “berry!” These beautiful purple clusters of purple berries are well worth the wait each year for the autumn display. I’ve added several new beautyberries from cuttings to my garden this year and can’t wait until their display matches the first one…

It’s not everyday I get to write about something this life changing! You may remember that a while back I made an offer for some land. That piece of land didn’t work out and I was pretty disappointed. Sometimes life has better plans and we just don’t realize it at the time. Recently we found another piece of land for…

By now you may have received your first seed catalog(s) in the mail. It’s a fun time of the year for gardeners. We get to sift through the pages, read the descriptions designed to entice us, and dream of what we will plant next year. When the weather is cold and dreary the catalogs give us something bright and hopeful…

Take a look at the new plant of the week! Here’s a small hint: It’s a tree. OK not much of a hint. See if you can guess it!

I’m a little late on this list since we’re already over a week into August but over weekend I’ve come up with a list of things that I need to accomplish in the garden this month. As is very easy to do the garden has gotten away from me and with the start of football season coming soon it’s time…

Ginkgo trees are beautiful and amazing trees. These trees (Ginkgo biloba) are native to Asia and can be extremely long lived, as in over 1,000 years! In fact the ginkgo species existed at the same time as the dinosaurs. Ginkgo trees are also called the Maidenhair tree and have fan shaped leaves. In the fall the leaves turn an amazing…

It’s been a while since my last garden shed update and I’ve done a few more things. Not directly on the shed itself but around the shed. You’ll see in the pictures below that there are two distinct garden areas near the shed. One directly in front of the shed and the other to the left (eastern) side. In between…

Rhododendron calendulaceumThis week’s Plant of the Week was the Flame Azalea. Most people answered it pretty close. This is actually a native plant to the Smokey Mountains. It grows from four to eight feet tall and spreads out somewhere between ten to fifteen feet. My wife and I found this particular plant in 2003 along the Abram’s Falls trail. We…

With the rise of gardening in America lots of people new to gardening are taking up trowels and digging in the dirt. Some people are just returning to gardening while others are trying for the first time. Here is just a little advice for those starting off to help you along. 1. Start Small. Don’t bite off more than you…

To grow a healthy plant healthy growing conditions are important. Sometimes all a plant needs is watering at the appropriate times. Often, you have to give the plant more and that is where fertilizers can be useful. Fertilizers provide extra nutrients that may not be readily available in the soil. There are many types of fertilizers available for gardeners to…

But the harvest ain’t bad! Just look at this bunch of tomatoes: The round orange tomatoes are ‘Woodle Orange’, the round red ones are volunteers, the small and slightly purple tinted are some ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomatoes that didn’t grow as larges as they should have, and the elongated orange tomatoes are ‘Orange Icicle.’  The cherry tomatoes are all from volunteer…

Our first group of irises has just started to bloom.  The iris blooms are coming much later than last year due to the cold temperatures that have pushed everything back about nearly a month.  There are a just a couple types of iris here in my garden including the tall bearded irises, the Dutch irises, and some Siberian irises like…