Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

You have raised beds in your backyard ready to go for spring vegetables but over the winter what are they doing? Are they just sitting there?  I’m sure this idea has occurred to some of you before.  Why not use the raised beds over the winter to propagate a few plants?  The amazing thing is that this can work so…

Part two of my Arbor Day experiment will begin soon! Today I received my 10 free trees. I found them unceremoniously shoved into my mailbox courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. Fortunately I don’t think any damage was done. I would think that a package that has LIVE PLANTS in big letters on the outside of it would dropped off…

It’s that time of the year again. That time when I go out and take cuttings of everything I can. For today’s post I took 6 cuttings of a ‘Husker’s Red’ Penstemon (Penstemon digitalis) and 6 cuttings of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). I picked up the ‘Husker’s Red’ Penstemon on the discount racks last year just as it was losing…

Native plants have many advantages over exotic plants.  I thought for today’s Friday Fives Post I would mention five native plants that are pretty neat to have in your garden.  First though let’s define the terms native and exotic.  Exotic plants are those that are not indigenous to your region.  They’ve either been brought from other place by seed or…

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…

As yesterday we saw more and more fall color from the south in Virginia and Tennessee today brings us more proof that fall is here in the Southern U.S.. SC Gardener has fall foliage that is well worth a look! One post entitled Fall Color Isn’t Just for Trees: Shrubs With Fall Leaf Color gives us a look at the…

Here in zone 7 spring is showing signs of emergence. Daffodils are beginning to bloom, crocuses are popping up, and the weather is teasing us with 70 degree days (immediately following 4 inches of snow and 10 degree weather!) It’s time to seriously get ready for gardening! With that being said here is a list of things to do for…

I’m a huge fan of mustard.  There are few snacks I enjoy more than pretzels dipped in a delicious honey mustard.  I love it on sandwiches and as an ingredient in all sorts of things from chicken dishes to potato salad. Mustard is simply awesome.  That’s my opinion anyway.  It’s also extremely easy to grow mustard in the garden. How…

While I can assure you that my back is perfectly fine (at the moment!) I do need to have some work done on the back of the greenhouse shed. A few more things have been accomplished since my last greenhouse update but there are always more tasks to tackle (it seems like I’ve said that before). Since last time I’ve fitted a…

My daughter and I recently did a little project. We took materials that were lying around the house and put together a mini-seed starting greenhouse. It was a simple and easy project to work on with my 3 and a half year old daughter. Read on to see what we did.Materials: Paper roll tubes, a rectangular tin foil pan, a…

It’s time for October’s Garden Questions of the month! These are questions people have asked the search engines and found The Home Garden and hopefully they have also found the answers.  Q. Can you prune silver mound in the fall? A. It’s better to wait until spring. The foliage that remains above the plant will help protect it over the…

I love the spring time with its flush of new flowers and this spring’s flowers have one of the record books. Among those flowering plants one of the coolest is the Fothergilla major. Fothergilla is a small shrub in the Hamamelidaceae family that gets around 6 to 10 feet tall with a spread up to 5 to 9 ft. It’s…

Some plants are determined. Something in their genetic make-up decided long ago that nothing would get them down and nothing ever does. Take this river birch (Betula nigra) for instance. I received it from the Arbor Day Foundation but this isn’t one of the 10 “free” trees I received with my donation. I actually purchased this one. It was one…

The cold temps are keeping you indoors and you are going stir crazy.  You need to do something in the garden, with the garden, or for the garden and the seed catalogs showing up in your mailbox just aren’t good enough to get your gardening fix.  Then do this – plant an indoor garden!  Recently I put together a small…

This post is a little bit of a Hodge-podge of topics. A conglomeration of a couple of interesting things and one maybe no so much for you (but something I can whine warn you about!) Sunrise This morning we had a gorgeous sunrise that highlighted the early morning clouds.  I snapped I picture from our upstairs bathroom window. It’s a…

It’s been a week since my last Fall Color Project Update and the colors are only getting more colorful as we go! Charlotte told me about her Fall Color Project post last Friday with some very rich and colorful fall favorites. In fact the plants she has pictured are some of my personal favorites! Japanese maples and pyracantha are two…

Maybe you’ve heard of this already or maybe you’ve seen it in the stores yourself but Triscuit is promoting the “home farming” movement. It’s an interesting idea that backyard gardeners have been doing for many many years. Simply put home farming is growing your own food in the home garden. While gardening may be an all inclusive term to describe…

Yesterday in a walk around the yard we discovered some signs of the spring to come. Daffodils are sprouting up all over, the verbena is greening up and some sedum sprouts are peaking from their winter slumber. Maybe it’s early, but the temperatures have felt like spring. Historically our worst winter weather tends to happen in February and March but…