Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

We all know that Christmas is on it’s way and the gift buying season has commenced! Fortunately gardeners are easy to please with presents! Just find them something they can use in the garden and they will be thrilled! Below are some easy gift ideas for gardeners that you can use to give those with green thumbs something for Christmas!…

When gift giving holidays are upon us (and happen during the growing season) I like to find gifts that can be planted in the ground and will give back the pleasure of the first gift many times over. I did that again this year with Valentine’s Day. My usual gift to my wife is the sweetly scented hyacinth.  The flowers…

The rains finally came! I know gardeners everywhere in Tennessee were excited to get this latest blast of precipitation. The front moved through yesterday in the late morning and continued to sprinkle intermittent showers upon us but it wasn’t until the nighttime hours that the real rains washed away the dust of August and September. The rain gauge picked up…

I’m a huge hosta fan. I wouldn’t call myself a collector but I really enjoy how well hostas thrive with very little need for attention. Hostas certainly have a few issues but to me they are a very easy going plant to grow in the garden. There are so many varieties of hosta available with all kinds of variegation that…

Today was beautiful. The sun was out and the temperature was in the low to mid 60’s. That’s what I call perfect garden weather! I didn’t have much time to garden but needed to do a little something and was able to spend about 30 minutes on a small project. Back in the fall I used my black tarp technique…

Why should you consider raised bed gardening for your vegetables? It’s a good question. The alternative is to put the garden in the ground which people have done for centuries with success. Why change a good thing? For the small home garden raised beds are a much better option. Below you will find some very good benefits of gardening in…

I knew what I was going to do today. Weather permitting I would get outside and harvest our basil and not only make our dinner using it but make enough to have pesto a couple times during the winter. I planned ahead and we stopped by the grocery store to get more Parmesan cheese. We also picked up some milk,…

Wild animals have always fascinated me and I think there are not many that have the beauty and majestic nature of the birds of prey. While we were at the Bloom ‘N Garden Expo on Saturday there was a table set up from a wildlife rescue group. I wish I remembered the name of the group so I could give…

Do you know the feeling you have when everything major is accomplished for a while and you have nothing pressing that needs accomplished? You may still have chores and tasks that need done but it’s more maintenance than giant projects that constantly beckon for your attention. After hosting our garden club meeting where I lectured about building an arbor and…

Gardeners in Tennessee should be wary of planting anything this weekend. I know the temptation to put things in the ground is great (it’s eating away at me too) but just look below at the temperatures for Sunday and Monday night. According to The Weather Channel it dips very close to freezing. A much better day to plant would be…

Within a mile of our home lies a beautiful pastureland divided by an old country road. The pastures are separated in a way that doesn’t diminish their beauty but rather enhances the quaint rural scene. This is my preferred route to take to and from our neighborhood when I can. In every season it has something breathtaking to observe. Whether…

Many people find The Home Garden in search of gardening tips so I thought today I would oblige all the seekers of garden tips with a post all about and only about garden tips! Garden Tip #1:  Daffodil Tips! Garden Tip #2Compost is good – Use it! Make it!Keep a compost pile in the backyard to get rid of your…

Fall vegetable gardening can certainly be interesting in Tennessee!  You never quite know how the weather is going to shape up.  Is it going to frost early?  Late?  Will the temperatures be normal or extra warm like we’ll be having this week?  You just never know.  For gardening weather this October we’ve had a couple light frosts but nothing damaging…

Our garden sits precariously between zone 6b and 7.  We’re in a very borderline area with multiple micro-climates within the 1.3 acres of land we have around us.  We’re far enough into the warm season now that the frosts should not happen again until fall, but then we thought we were done with frosts over a month ago! This weekend…

I’ve been perusing many catalogs over the past several days trying to figure out what seeds to get. I finally wrote down the vegetables the other day but while looking at the plethora of pictures in the catalogs I found a perennial shrub that intrigues me. I’ve seen it before but the catalogs’ pictures make the Blue Mist Shrub come…

My addiction to plant propagation has reemerged from it’s winter slumber. It’s Spring which means it is time to get many kinds of cuttings ready for growing. It’s still early and many of the plants I’d like to propagate still don’t have adequate foliage but agastache, catmint, and salvia are ready to root! In my garden I planted two Agastache…

It’s amazing when you go back and think about time and how quickly it flies by. Earlier we were listening to the “90’s” station on the cable TV music station and I realized that even though the 90’s didn’t seem that long ago 1996 was actually 14 years ago! Yep time flies fast just like 3 years of writing this…

Orange! The orange standouts are new to flowering this year although some were planted last year in anticipation of a showy display. Daylilies of course come in all kinds of colors. This one has a little orange in the center while remaining mostly yellow and was picked up at the plant swap last year. The Asiatic lily was a recent…