Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

Arbor with Moonflowers One thing I really like about garden structures: no matter how much rain, how hot, or how dry they always look good! Fortunately our arbor also has the added benefit of a nice annual vine plant (moonflower) wrapping around it. Here is the arbor from the side yard looking toward the front yard. The homemade stepping stones…

Here is Part 8 of The Home Garden’s Weekly series about how to garden on a budget.I call it the Two Season Trick but there really isn’t much of a trick to it. Just plan in fall for spring and plan in spring for fall! Or as a general rule plan ahead at least two seasons. The budgetary savings here…

It’s that special time of the year when the tomatoes start ripening up and producing all kinds of luscious fruits for our consumption. Here is what I picked today. The top box of cucumbers and tomatoes was actually from yesterday but all the rest came out this afternoon. A couple of the tomatoes have some damage from irregular water, oddly…

Here’s another question for another Sunday! What are the best ornamental grasses in your garden? Ornamental grasses are great plants to use whether as a background or as a feature plant. There are all kinds of ornamental grasses to choose from; some are native and some exotic. In our garden we only have two varieties but I hope to add…

Today is December 1st, 2011.  The first day of the last month of the year, do you know what that means? Mockingbird on a Frosty Morning Only 137 days left until our last frost date here in Middle Tennessee!!!  WOOHOO! OK,I sound completely ridiculous here but think about all the stuff thathas to get done before that planting date over…

Every now and then it’s fun to go back and look up the statistics from The Home Garden to see what people are looking for and eventually wind up here. Sometimes the search terms are funny but hopefully the results lead the searcher to great info. So here are ten search terms that showed up that all began with the…

OK, here’s your chance!  Your weekend assignment is to come up with a garden/landscape plan that would fit a roughly 6′ by 10′ area that incorporates as many elements of the winter garden as you wish.  There are no rules or guidelines to follow, just do something that you think will look great and show it off!  Do your best…

It probably seems early and with scattered snow it certain feels early but it’s never too early to start thinking about the vegetable garden! Store bought vegetables just don’t thrill me the way the fresh garden picked varieties do. It makes sense when you consider that garden grown vegetables don’t have to be picked days before use just to be…

OK gardeners and garden bloggers I need your help. Years ago I bought our first video camera to help film the antics of our children.  I bought it just before our oldest was born and many things have changed over the years. Essentially technology has made my old mini tape video camera obsolete. I can’t even hook it up to…

This winter has just been weird. The weather, despite the weather prognosticators claiming a milder winter back in fall, has been colder than usual. Today’s snowfall just makes it seems like a second white Christmas here in Tennessee. Now before those of you north of here disparage what I’m saying keep in mind that Tennessee normally only receives 1-2 decent…

This weekend we were in West Tennessee attending a friends wedding and took a side trip to visit some of my wife’s relatives. While there I saw a horrifying site. At my wife’s grandmother’s house is a wonderful old oak tree that casts a welcoming shade on hot summer days, or at least it used to. On the right is…

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…

I think you will see why I bought Coreopsis ‘Limerock Dream’.  I have a fondness for perennial coreopsis since they are so easy to grow here in Tennessee. The colors on this variety drew my eyes instantly. It’s not plain yellow like my ‘Moonbeam’ Coreopsis or ‘Jethro Tull’.  The yellow colors seem to begin in the center of the flower…

Everyone is thinking about the garden right now, if not they should be!  The vegetable garden is where you can really reap the rewards of your backyard.  Sometimes though you don’t know what you should be doing and when or (if you’re like me) forget a few things every now and then!  So here is a little garden checklist for…

In my last post on the garden shed page I mentioned that I would show you in two parts the plantings. Well…I’m afraid I may have to expand that to three, we’ll see! After taking some pictures today and on previous days I’m happily astounded by the neat stuff I’m seeing. Please don’t take that as bragging since most of…

Many gardeners take the winter season off from gardening. They work hard from early spring through late far then take a little break but you don’t have to stop growing vegetables in your garden just because the weather has changed. One way to continue growing vegetables in cold weather is to construct a hoop house. A hoop house is simply…

This weekend was a busy one and not even really in the garden. The garden chores that need attention are significant but sometimes I actually have to get out of the garden to do other things! Hard to believe but it’s true! This weekend had me shopping for materials on Friday night until 9:00 at the local home improvement store…

Along one side of our property there is a narrow strip of land between the house and our neighbors’ properties.  There isn’t much room to do a whole lot of gardening (or so I originally thought) and this side of the house felt exposed when we bought our home in 2007.  This is how it looked a couple years ago…