Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

The holiday season is in full swing and while they say the recession is slowing we all should still be watching our pennies. Why not put together some low cost holiday gifts? If you’re interested check out my post on Low Cost Gifts For Gardeners at Complete Organizing Solutions!

A while back (a real long while) I setup a rain garden to take care of a drainage issue on one part of our driveway. Rainwater was pooling in one area of our driveway because it had no where else to go. The grass and soil was higher than the driveway on the side the water should have been draining….

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…

I certainly enjoy my coffee every morning (in fact you don’t want me not to!) but that’s not even close to what is inside these two cups. Can you guess to what purpose I’m reusing these two former fast food containers for? It’s not a hard guess and I suspect you already know exactly what I’m doing with them. Rather…

Rather than continue with lyrics that will end up stuck in your head for the rest of the day, let me tell you why I say “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.”  The weather has turned back toward winter which brings with it clouds and cold, but the unseasonable warmth of the last month has led to earlier show…

…SNOW! Yep the southern Blizzard of 2011 got us pretty good this time. We have somewhere around 4-5 inches of snow on the ground. Here are a few pictures of our winter wonderland! Snow on the Arbor Snow on the Blue Garden Shed Snow on the butterfly bush Snow on the eastern cedar Snow on a hemlock Snow on a…

Here is Part 4 in The Home Garden’s series of posts about how to garden on a budget.Often when people go to the plant nursery they look around and see what they can get for that immediate impact in their landscape. They see larger more established plants and can easily see how they will fit in their garden. If these…

It’s kind of an odd subject to bring up during spring but propagating mums for profit takes time. Spring is when you have to get started for fall mum sales. For the purposes of this article we are talking about the common chrysanthemum you find in stores everywhere during the fall. Also for this discussion it is important to note…

As crazy as it sounds I’m still putting plants in the ground with temperatures up around 100!  The weather may be hot but sometimes you just have to deal with it and move on with your garden plans.  Usually a plant will perform much better with less water requirements if it has been planted in the ground rather than left…

Let’s be real, foliage is more important than flowers!  Foliage is there 3 out of the four seasons and unless you have some fantastic re-blooming plant that blooms incessantly from spouting to leaf drop you aren’t going to have something interesting all the time – unless you plant with foliage.  Color, leaf texture, leaf shape, and leaf size all make…

April is an amazing time of year to get in the garden. The weather is better, the soil is warming up, and the plants are coming alive from their winter rest. April is the time of year when gardeners need to be going full speed agead to prep their Zone 7 gardens before the heat of summer arrives. Here in…

May your Christmas be a time fill with friends, family, hope, and joy!

Every year I notice these little green insects, aphids.  Well, sometimes they aren’t green, I’ve seen them in orange and yellow and they come in red, brown, and black too.  Whatever fashion sense these insects display one thing is for sure: you don’t really want aphids on your plants!  Aphids are a soft-bodied insect that love to suck on the…

Here’s a picture of our eastern property line. Along the line we placed 4 Canadian hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) about 8 feet apart to create a border hedge and privacy screen. The hemlocks will eventually fill together and create a nice soft evergreen screen for that side of the house. I would like to make this area into a woodland corridor…

In my latest YouTube video I went through and checked on many of the plants I’ve taking cuttings from this summer. There are a variety of plants in the video including rosemary, ninebark, fothergilla, boxwoods, crape myrtle, and cherry laurels. This was actually the first time I’ve tried rooting fothergilla and I had pretty good success taking a few small…

Viburnum dentatum is one of my favorite shrubs in our garden.  It’s not as showy as the Japanese dappled willow or the purple beautyberry.  It’s not as flashy as roses nor does it provide year round color like the ‘Otto Luyken’ cherry laurels.  But it does have an important role in our garden.  This viburnum never fails to flower prolifically. …

This may be an unusual tool to consider a garden tool but I have found my Swiss Army Knife very useful in the garden. As you probably know Swiss Army Knives have many useful attachments from the knife itself to toothpicks. I don’t use the toothpick at all but there are many other parts I use frequently. Disclaimer: Some affiliate…

Last weekend I put together a small front porch for my garden shed. You can take a closer look at it at the Greenhouse Shed page if you have a minute!