Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

An ecologically safe and easy to use weed killer is simply water! Just boil it in your teapot and water the troublesome weed with some scalding hot water. It is non-selective so anything it touches it could kill. It’s effective against most weeds but they may need a second treatment. Be sure to target the root and stem area. Just…

Here is a a list of posts that discuss using raised beds for gardening. Designing a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden: 11 Things to Think About Companion Planting Vegetable Garden Layout The Benefits of Gardening in Raised Beds My Vegetable Garden Layout My Vegetable Garden Layout Part 2 New Raised Bed Vegetable Garden Layout Building My Raised Beds

There are so many variations a person can make for a shade garden. Often there are similarities between plant selections or plant placement but the individual responsible for putting them together has a significant impact. Recently another Middle Tennessean sent me a picture of her shade garden. Rachel put together a very fine display of foliage and blooms that I…

The fan shaped leaves of the ginkgo are one of my favorite trees to watch in the fall. The leaves turn a bright gold that really is quite magical to see! You know what though? The summer leaves look pretty awesome too! Ginkgo biloba backlit with the sun.

I’ve been framed!  The greenhouse-shed almost is framed that is. The framing is coming along slower than I had hoped and as usual my goals prove to be loftier than time actually allows. I do this to myself all the time with projects, underestimating the actual amount of time necessary to complete it. My goal for Wednesday was to finish…

Spring is hitting us full force right now in mid April. Flowers are blooming everywhere! The mailbox garden is covered in spring time flowers and in just about every other garden is a spot of color to talk about. This post is plant and garden photo heavy so be prepared! April Blooms in the Mailbox Garden We’ll start the garden…

It’s been a while since I’ve recapped any of the older posts here at Growing The Home Garden.  Since today I’ll be at the Bloom N’ Garden Expo I thought I would put together a quick recap post for the Friday Fives.  The posts listed in this post have been around for a while and continue to be some of…

Happy Valentine’s Day! I gave these to my wife but thought I’d also share them with you.     Too bad you can’t smell them!

Growing corn in the home garden is a little different from growing in the farm fields. Corn has a few traits that you need to understand before you plant so that you can get a successful crop of corn in the late summer and fall. Let’s talk about growing corn as it applies to a home gardener! Planting Corn in…

It’s January but if you are like me you’ve been rapidly perusing the seed catalogs about as fast as they come in looking for new and exciting plants for this year. It seems that each day a new plant catalog comes in the mail and I see all kinds of plants that I’d love to have in my garden, but…

I’ll continue with the Seed Starting 101 Series tomorrow but I thought I would use today’s post to share with you a related project. Recently I purchased a seedling heatmat that I’ve been testing in the garage to see how seedlings will grow out there.  The results have been pretty good so far with good germination rates for kale, chard,…

Each year I’ve posted about the projects I hope to accomplish in the New Year. They aren’t resolutions, just goals or ideas. I may not even get half of the projects accomplished but I find that if I get some ideas before the garden season starts in earnest I can be pretty motivated to get it worked on before the…

A couple weeks ago I redid our self-sowing garden.  It was getting messy and too many weeds incorporated themselves into the garden.  I suppose they thought they could pass themselves off as desirable plants but their plans were foiled by May’s Lowe’s Creative Ideas Project!  The theme for this month was bulb plants.  Being one to never turn away from…

If you have a freely draining patio set in sand like I do you may have noticed weeds growing up through the cracks. These are generally caused by seeds that have landed on the patio and germinated and can be easy to eliminate. The most obvious way to deal with them is to try to pull them up. For a…

On a cold morning such as this you might be wondering “what can I do in the garden?”  Or you might be wondering “why does he know what I’m wondering?”  Or…maybe not, whatever the case is cold winter days are good for the garden and the gardener.  The garden needs those cold winter days to get enough stratification time for…

Another Tennessee sunrise peaks out through the bare trees. A chilly 22.9 degree Fahrenheit began the day but it warmed up to the 60’s in the afternoon.

Over the weekend we visited my in-laws for Easter. While there I always explore the edges of the woods and sometimes deeper but I really didn’t have to journey far to find this trillium. It was among a grouping of several other trilliums on the edge of a cedar glade woods in their backyard. All the trilliums were the sessile…

I don’t think it would be false to say that Japanese maples are one of the most popular plants in the landscape today. With all the interesting leaf shapes and colors it’s easy to see why people like them. I consider myself a fan of Japanese maples and have two young trees in our gardens (one near the side garden…