Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Happy Halloween! Here’s our pumpkin and our little girl dressed as Tigger!

The cobblestone patio is close to finished, very close, but not quite done yet. I had hoped to have the it done before my daughter’s third birthday (this past Wednesday) but Fay had other plans. The rains delayed my work for several days both while it was raining and afterward since I had to wait for the sun to dry…

It’s been a while since I joined in with Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day so I thought I’d share you a little of what is blooming in the gardens around our home.  For our garden this year it’s the usual suspects who are in flowering.  Daffodils, crocuses, and winter jasmine are coming along strong while other early spring/late winter flowers are…

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…

As always I’m excited to get new plants through plant propagation and I’m pretty excited to add 5 new dwarf arborvitae to the collection!  I bought the ‘Little Giant’ arborvitae (Thuja occindentalis) last fall on the discount rack and planted two of them in the birdbath garden on either side of the pathway to the bench spot.  The idea was…

It’s time for another peek into the vegetable garden! The fall vegetables are picking up their pace while the summer ones are rapidly screeching to a halt among the rains that have been making Spring Hill, Tennessee seem much more like the Pacific Northwest. I saw the sun yesterday for about 15-20 minutes and used that time to scope out…

I officially nominate the pumpkin for vegetable of the month! Do I hear a second?I realize that the selection of a pumpkin may be predictable but it’s such a seasonally appropriate vegetable for October. After all could you have even think of fall harvests and Halloween without pumpkins? Whether they are turned into pies or Jack-o-lanterns these orange globes of…

It isn’t often I have a product to test in my garden where I actually say “Holy crap, this is awesome!” when no one else is around. Really. Products that good are really hard to come by because I’m fairly picky. A few weeks ago I was sent two items from Fiskars to try out. For disclaimer purposes I was…

Along the posts of the arbor project we added a little decoration. Welcome to Japanese Maple Leaf Decor 101: How to Stain an Arbor! First we put the initial coat of stain on the 4″x4″s then placed a leaf of a Japanese maple on the still slightly damp wood. Then we removed the leaf after a second coat of stain…

After the summer garden is gone there is still work to be done. My daughters and I went out last week to take care of some last minute raised bed winterizing. We are doing one important step now: adding organic matter. Why?  Because organic matter matters! By improving the soil you enrich it with the nutrients the plants need to…

Please ignore the mess of bricks and leftover lumber lying on the floor at the bottom of this picture. Instead focus on the cabinets! Family friends were cleaning out their basement and passed on quite a few pieces of lumber and odds and ends they thought could be reused. The cabinets came along for the ride too. With a little…

Over the weekend I put together a garden for the opposite side of my sidewalk. Here’s the layout of the garden. I did this layout after I planted the garden and it isn’t to scale. It is roughly 18-20 inches wide and probably 25 feet long. I only used plants that I could transplant from other locations in my yard…

This post will begin a series of several posts that I believe are “must have” garden plans! These are plants that I think are great for the garden in some way. Maybe they are beneficial for growing other plants, have some important benefits, maybe in the case of vegetable produce are delicious, or are simply beautiful plants to have around!…

You may not now this but there is a divine influence on the gardening world.  It is said that: When a gardener properly takes care of his lawn, allowing it to grow high, only cutting a third at a time, and takes care not to poison the earth with unnecessary fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that a sign will be given…

I mentioned several weeks ago (a couple months ago) that I was wanting to remodel my front garden. I was mostly speaking of the area directly in front of the house but since then an additional idea popped up. There is a small area around a Bradford pear tree that I envisioned an elongated oval shaped bed. Eventually that ornamental…

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….

Everyone loves a good tomato but sometimes there are problems. Take cracking in tomatoes for instance. Cracking in tomatoes might seem concerning but the answer to why this happens is very simple: inconsistent moisture! Often tomato cracking can appear when there has been a dry spell followed by significant rainfall. The fix is also very simple, be more consistent with…

Why do I like Red Twig Dogwoods (Cornus sericea or Cornus stolonifera)? If you look in the picture below the reason should become red-ily apparent. The multibranched shrubs stand out with a bright red coloring that looks fantastic in the wintertime. When the trees are bereft of leaves and the stems are left, the red twigs won’t disappoint for winter…