The garden is a demanding mistress this time of year. Despite our early spring when I thought I had a head start on gardening projects, I feel I’m behind again. The beds still need to be edged, plants moved, plants planted and, of course, weeding, weeding, weeding. Daffodils are fading and need to be tied into little packages so I ...
One of my favorite parts of being part of Proven Winners testing program is that I have the opportunity to grow plants I might not otherwise pick up. I’ll admit that when I pulled Superbena ‘Royale Peachy Keen’ out of the box I had flashbacks to my teenage bedroom, decorated in the latest hot colors of peach and forest green ...
I come from a long line of ink-stained wretches so it should come as no surprise that I love magazines and newspapers—the kind you can hold and fold and read at the beach without some sort of specialized case (and trust me, I’m a gadget girl too. I haven’t met a product that Steve Jobs had a hand in that ...
I cannot believe it’s August already. That fact is particularly sad given that I haven’t even weeded one section of garden for spring yet, nor edged any of the beds. Whoops. When I was gone a couple weeks ago I was on my annual trip (via sailboat) to Mackinac Island. I didn’t have as much time on the island this ...
Sometimes plants work together. Sometimes they fall a bit flat. In general I find that plants that work best together exhibit contrast, either in color or texture. Here are a few combos I found in the garden this weekend. Here is Proven Winners Superbena Royale Peachy Keen with purple ruffles basil (and you can see Blackberry Punch in there too). ...
You know I’m all about keeping it real here, which is why I sometimes show the bad and the ugly as well as the good. As I mentioned last week, here in the Midwest we are suffering from a truly cruddy spring. Most plants are stuck at whatever size they were when they were purchased at the nursery. The window ...
I pulled out the fall planting of the window box (which wasn’t looking all that bad other than the mums which were DOA) and wintered it up on Saturday. And just in time, I guess, since I didn’t even get a chance to snap a picture until Sunday when it was covered in snow. It’s not exactly gorgeous, but it ...
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Just a couple weeks ago I wrote here about how I manage insect pests in the garden. The general point was that human intervention is often not required. If you create a garden with a healthy ecosystem, things will all balance out. If that sounds just a wee big smug, you can rest assured that […]
Earlier this week I opened my garden to a group of master gardeners. Although this wasn’t an official garden tour, there was a still a bit of last-minute fussing, the kind where you look at your own garden with a more critical eye. That led to pulling out a “more natural” area next to the […]
Me in February: I’m going to grow an entire garden from seed this year! I will grow all the things I’ve grown in the past and add in at least 20 new varieties because I am a seed-starting machine! And I definitely need to grow a whole flat of everything because I need backups if […]
I do, on occasion check out a few gardening groups on Facebook. For the past couple of weeks they’ve been full of posts like this: “What is eating my plant and how do I kill it?” A variety of answers come in, but in every case there’s at least one answer like this: “Put Sevin […]
Once a year I go to Mackinac Island, an 8-mile-round island at the top of lakes Michigan and Huron. And for the last several years I’ve been giving a bit of a photo tour here. It’s become something of a tradition to bring you a few photos, although some years both the plantings and the […]
If you’ve been reading this blog for a number of years you know what’s been up. If you’re newer you may think I fell off the face of the Earth. So this post begins with an obligatory apology. Every summer I head out in mid-July for a week or a bit more. And every year […]
I admit I’m an espalier novice. When I first saw an espalier tree (I’m guessing on “Gardener’s World” or in a British gardening magazine), I thought I had stumbled upon some great European secret. Silly me. Espalier is happening everywhere, and it’s definitely growing in popularity in North America. And why would
I’ve been gardening seriously for a couple decades now and I was starting to think I knew what made me happy in the garden. I never expected that 165 gallons of water would become one of my favorite things. When I designed the vegetable garden I left a big space in the center for some […]
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced a spring like this. Cool days and cooler nights have persisted far longer than whatever can be considered normal, even in these days of weather that seems to have lost all semblance of normalcy. The partner to the cold temperatures is rain. In May it fell in long, […]
I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: The very best thing you can do for your garden is get out of it and into someone else’s. I cannot think of a a single time I’ve gone into another garden and not taken something away from it that I either learned or wanted to […]
There are plants in my garden that are coddled within in inch of their life. I check on them often enough that I usually know when a new leaf has emerged. And then there are the other plants that just quietly do their thing for years until one day you blink and wonder where that […]
The effects of our extreme winter are still showing up in the garden. With the cool, wet spring we’ve had (as much a blessing for a busy gardener who is thankful that the weeds aren’t head-high as it is a curse), everything is slower than usual. In fact I estimate that most things are still […]
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is what basic gardening book I recommend. And to be honest I’ve yet to have a great answer. But at least when it comes to growing food, I now have an answer. This post may contain affiliate links. See my complete disclosure here. I didn’t know what […]
At this time five years ago I would have been about 10 big contractor garbage bags in to my annual garlic mustard weed pull. The property, actually the neighborhood, was full of it. I would pull the stuff until my hand cramped up and no more garbage bags would fit in the car to be […]
