Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

One of the best things about feeding the birds is seeing a new bird you have never seen before. We’ve seen grosbeaks like blue grosbeaks and cardinals (which are a type of grosbeak) but this is the first rose breasted grosbeak we have seen. It’s not a surprise that we haven’t seen them before since they are migrating north to…

Our family would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I can proudly say that on today, June 28, 2010, I have found the first ripe tomatoes of the year! The tomato on the left is a Viva Italia but I forget the name of the one on the right (I really need to label the tomatoes I plant in the garden, my memory just does do everything I want…

This weeks plant of the week is another one native to the Smokey Mountains. It may be an easy guess but its a plant worth talking about. It likes the shade and gets plenty of what it likes in the mountains!Take a guess and tell me what you think!

Caryopteris cuttings root very easily from internodal cuttings with greenwood or semi-ripe wood. The best time to take cuttings is the the late spring to early summer to allow time for roots to form and the plant to get established before fall. Caryopteris was one of the new perennials I added to my garden last year. It did very well…

Please forgive the randomness of my title for today’s post.  It’s hard to sum up a weekend in just a few words!  Weekends are always busy times in the garden when the weather is as beautiful as it has been.  Sunday’s humidity was a bit high in anticipation of the rain that’s falling on the rooftop at this moment, but…

Today’s post is going to be a bit geeky.  I hope you can get past that because I think one of the most important parts of running a successful nursery business (or any business) is good financial management.  No matter how much you enjoy gardening you don’t want your business to lose money.  Planning on the front end for the…

My last post about the brick floor only had a small portion of the garden shed covered with bricks. I’ve made a little progress since then and have complete exhausted my supply of free bricks. I’ve been looking for more but so far I’ve come up empty handed. I’m pleased with how it’s turning out at this point but really…

I really didn’t expect to get flowers from the cuttings of Persian Shield I made in the fall. It’s been an added bonus but I was only trying to keep the cuttings alive long enough to plant them in the ground this spring. I’ve kept them in jars of water so far even though I should have long ago planted…

Sometimes you just never grow up. When I was a kid one of my favorite toys was Legos. My brother and I would build all kinds of contraptions from buildings to vehicles. Even today I still play with toy building blocks with my kids but there is a different sort of block that I like to use in the garden:…

Everything has it’s own time, even seeds. They just don’t last forever! Fortunately though many seeds do last a long period of time and you can use seed from previous years to grow your garden. I’ve had tomato seeds germinate that were over 10 years old. Best of all they produced healthy tasty tomatoes! I’ve had echinacea seed as well…

Late August is an important time in the garden. The summer heat is still with us, but cooler weather is on the way. For gardeners in zone 7, this is the point where preparation meets transition—wrapping up the summer season while setting the stage for fall and even next spring. If you’re in a warmer zone, you may have more…

The other day I wrote about crop rotation, it’s importance, and it’s benefit in the garden so today I thought we’d begin looking at the individual families of vegetables and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Since it is probably the most popular family, because of one of its members (the tomato), we’ll start discussing the nightshade…

Since I’ve talked so much about the arbor itself I thought for this post I would highlight the garden that the arbor takes you too. If you look past the arbor you will find a quasi-Japanese shade garden nook. I say quasi because it’s a hybrid of Japanese and American plants.  The Japanese elements are the Japanese maple, a side…

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…

One long anticipated task for me and my garden shed was the painting. It’s come a long way over the course of the past year – from nothing to an actual building capable of storing my lawn equipment, but I’ve really been looking forward to completing the painting. Even if the inside isn’t completely arranged and finished at least the…

I decided several years ago that I didn’t want to mess with chemicals in my garden.  It was an easy choice for me.  We had kids and I didn’t want to risk their exposure to dangerous substances.  I didn’t want to eat food covered in chemicals at the dinner table.  A tomato with a side of pesticide just wasn’t a…

Over the past month quite a few people have hit this blog searching for information on various topics. Sometimes their searches are in the form of a question and I thought it would be fun to go back and answer the questions. Most people looked for information with the word “how” but a few used “what”even fewer used “where” and…