Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

As strange as it may sound there are things still growing in the vegetable garden in November and it’s not because of our unusually warm weather. Unfortunately there is only one vegetable growing but there are several kinds of herbs that are doing great. All the vegetable garden pictures were taken this morning while a light frost was still covering…

I know a lot of people are busy in their gardens, spending time with family, or working from home and may not have had a chance to catch up on the latest posts and videos from Growing The Home Garden. I thought it would be a good idea to put out a summary post with the past week’s post. Enjoy!…

Recently a representative of Hartley Botanic asked if I would be interested in hosting a guest post. Since I knew of the beautiful designs for the Hartley collection of greenhouses I suggested she put together a post about how to choose a greenhouse. And here it is! Choosing the right greenhouse You would think that a greenhouse is an easy…

Here’s an update from the vegetable garden! So far things are going pretty good. My tomato frost scare wasn’t as bad as I originally thought and since I have some spares to plant I should come out fine. I saw a scary 39 degrees on the forecast for Tuesday night but I’m prepared with coverings. I’m also starting a few…

Before Christmas we managed one more work day on the greenhouse shed. It was the last work day since the recent temperatures have been unbearably cold for working. It’s not predicted to be above freezing at all in the forecast. Snow is even being mentioned but I’ll believe it when I see it!We managed to haul in 6000 lbs. of…

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day here is my Anything Green Post! You are welcome to join in and post anything that is green and growing in your gardens in the month of March!Here’s the tour of what’s green in my gardens.The daffodils in my yard are still green while most of the other daffodils I have seen in our area…

I propagated plants! Propagating is a great way to increase your landscape plants cheaply. What could be better than cheap plants? This was the first summer I seriously experimented with rooting cuttings. Some plants can be propagated by division, some by stem and tip cuttings and others by root cuttings. What I did was mostly the stem and tip cutting…

I just posted an update on the greenhouse shed. I re-installed the roof window over the weekend. Hop on over the greenhouse shed page and see what I did!

Nandina domestica, otherwise known as ‘Heavenly Bamboo’, can be an interesting plant to put in your landscape but you may want to think twice before doing so. I’ll explain why in a minute but first let me tell you why so many people like it. It retains its leaves year round, it has bright red berries that are fantastic for…

One of the more interesting materials to use in the garden is stone. It comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and forms from small landscape gravel to river stones and large stone pavers. Its uses in the garden are nearly endless. Gravel can be used for patios, pathways, and for mulch. Medium and larger stones can be used for…

One of the greatest places to find fall color is on the campuses of our country’s learning institutions. Each of these beacons of knowledge are aesthetically landscaped to entice new students to come and to give the students and faculty that attend a sense of nature to enhance their education. This idea is alive at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. At…

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek at one of my favorite perennials that I decided to try and grow from seed this year, the heuchera! The seeds came from our corner shade garden which contains a small variety of heucheras like ‘Palace Purple’, ‘Mocha’, ‘Melting Fire’, ‘Fireworks’, and a heucherella named ‘Stoplight.’ Even in the winter they keep great…

Since so much of the garden right now is suffering from lack of adequate rainfall I thought it might be a good time to look back at a few past plant propagation posts.  Some of these are favorites of mine and hopefully they will be useful for you too! Propagating Shrubs: Hydrangea Cuttings ‘Shasta’ Viburnum plicatum var. tormentosa – A…

When researching plants for our new house holly trees kept coming up as ideas for foundation plantings. I want to focus more on native plants, not exclusively, but with a conscience effort to lean toward native species. So I started looking to native holly trees. Native trees offer more support for local wildlife and are generally better adapted to our…

Are you looking for something, anything to keep you going until spring time?  Are you frantically searching the garden for signs of life?  Here are two early signs to look for that will tell you spring is just around the corner! The daffodils are rising!  The foliage of daffodils always comes up early but these are especially early.  This photo…

Over the holidays we went to the West Tennessee town of Trenton to visit my wife’s grandmother. Her home rests in the middle of several acres of rich Tennessee farmland where they typically grow either soybeans, corn, or winter wheat depending upon the whim of the farmer. The crop is most likely determined through a system of crop rotation. Soybeans…

This week my family spent a few hours gathering and hauling rock from our home construction site. When we bought the property we knew that were were “gifted” with lots of rock on the site but the amount of rock is really much more than we imagined. Surface rock was visible in many areas of the property. Rock can be…

What is my favorite tree?  That’s a hard question to answer, since there are so many trees that I enjoy.  Some trees provide fruit, other trees, shade, and others flowers which makes them hard to pick a single favorite.  I have to categorize.  In the spring for the flowering trees I would have to say my favorites are the cherry…