Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

As I mentioned in my previous post the folks at EcoSMART sent me four of their insect products to me for testing. Generally I am loathe to apply chemicals in any form on the garden but since EcoSMART products do not leave toxic residues and use natural chemicals and oils I figured it would be worth trying. Please keep in…

Tall ironweed (Vernonia gigantea) is one of the few non-yellow flowering wildflowers blooming right now here in Tennessee. This extremely tall and purple member of the aster family can be seen throughout roadsides and fields in much of the country during the late summer or early fall. It stands anywhere from 3 feet up to 8 feet tall and occasionally…

Never say never right?  In my experience there are very few plants that are truly safe from deer.  This year I’ve had big time deer issues.  The extra tomato bed I planted was completely devoured by the two deer that are camping out in our backyard.  That isn’t shocking really.  I wasn’t able to put a good fence around any…

Some days it’s good to go outside and stare off into the cosmos. As you gaze you begin to wonder what’s out there in the cosmos? Is there life to be found somewhere out in the cosmos? Not here, but we’ll keep looking. Maybe here, we should look a little closer… What do we have here? There is definitely something…

While the snow is coming down I thought I would put together a rough draft garden layout of the gardens I hope to cultivate around the greenhouse once it is complete. The Landscape Garden Layout around my Greenhouse/Gardenshed Garden Landscape Layout for around Our Greenhouse Shed (not to scale) When planning out a landscape project like this the first thing…

‘Bluecrop’ Blueberry Bush As I indicated in my last post about the two camellias in one pot I’m always looking for ways to garden cheap.  Imagine my excitement when I stumbled across some ‘Bluecrop’ blueberries that are normally over $20 marked down to $5 each!  Of course I snatched two up (I might have gotten more had they had a…

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….

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated you on my raised bed vegetable garden. I’m pleased with the way things are looking right now. The tomato plants are taking off as are the squash and cucumber plants. You can see for yourself the benefits of gardening in raised beds! The tomatoes and other vegetables grow faster and larger.In the…

Just one really neat sight I saw this weekend was the monarch sipping nectar from the milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Milkweed is the host plant for the monarch butterflies which serves a very important role in the life of the fluttering favorites of backyard butterflies. Milkweed contains a chemical called glycosides which get consumed by the monarch caterpillars (see more here…

This year I’m determined to grow more out of my vegetable garden than the typical summer tomato!  In the past I’ve managed to sustain herbs like cilantro throughout the winter but haven’t been determined enough to nurture many vegetables other than spinach throughout the cold months. (It’s hard to get psyched up to run out in the cold for garden…

Here is Part Six of The Home Garden’s series of posts on how to garden on a budget.I began planning this post with the intention of talking about the importance of planning a garden. After typing and typing I realized that this is a subject so large that it really needed to be broken down into smaller sections. One of…

It’s almost that time of year again: Fall Planting Season! When the weather cools off, the days become shorter, Pumpkin Spice is everywhere (OK that may not be the greatest thing), and it will be time to get your fall bulbs and rhizomes planted in the ground. Planting these plants in the fall allows their root systems to acclimate over…

We would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!Posting over the next week will be irregular as we celebrate the Christmas season with our family. 

This week had a couple of nice days that showed a hint of spring starting to emerge. It’s not there yet, in fact we’re far from it but officially and we’re 10 degrees below normal still (I feel like a broken record). The good news is that the sun has been out and the rains and snows have subsided somewhat…

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…

Our front sidewalk garden has always been a tricky thing. I plant the plants I like there but I’ve rarely given consideration to other people who walk down the sidewalk which is becoming problematic. It’s a problem because of two things: many of the plants I plant attract pollinators (which doesn’t bother me a bit but does bother those who…

I do a lot of thinking. Too much probably but I have ideas and they have to work themselves out in my head or in the garden one way or another!  The gardening “off-season” is when I plan.  It’s when I take those thoughts in my head and entertain them before discarding the impractical ones.  You know, like the idea…

It may not be obvious, or maybe it is, but I think in 2013 vegetable gardening will be more important than ever.  There are a myriad of reasons why I believe this and you can pretty much observe it everywhere you go, some sign that points to the importance of gardening.  Let’s examine a few of signs of the growing…