Last week I told you about how I found ramps (wild leeks) in our back yard and got a few more from a nice neighbor. I could hardly wait to try them but it was the middle of a busy week so I had to take a pass on all the fancy schmancy recipes I found for them online and ...
We ran into our neighbors who live at the end of our road this weekend while we were out walking the dogs. They are lovely people but they don’t live at this house year-round so we don’t get to see them very often. As we were chatting (mostly about what a pain garlic mustard weed is), she mentioned that they ...
Welcome to my first ever video post! This has been a long time in coming, mostly because I didn’t realize how much time was involved in making and editing a video. I actually kind of gave up on the process, which will be totally obvious when you watch the video which is an exercise in awkward Midwestern accents, squinting, bad ...
Soil testing is one of those things you often hear you should be doing but few people do regularly. I can’t tell you the number of times that our master gardener’s class instructors harped on us to do soil tests. They aren’t hard to do: take a sample from a few inches down, put it in a baggie, label it ...
Another hairy deadline at work has passed (or will have, I pray, by the time you read this) which explains the lack of posts last week. It’s funny how what is normally a pretty laid-back time of year around here is so hectic this year because of the early spring. In the past I’ve actually gone a little stir crazy ...
Cue the collective groan. Who can pass up a good “orange” pun? It’s just my way of telling you to make sure to catch my guest post at The Design Confidential about how to incorporate the Color of the Year (Tangerine Tango, but for purposes of gardening we’re calling it orange) into your garden. In it I lay out a ...
Most gardeners I know go to the nursery even when they aren’t looking for plants. They often buy things with no idea of where they are going to put them, just knowing that they NEED that plant. But people who don’t consider themselves gardeners who buy plants to pretty up their landscape don’t buy things they don’t need. They buy ...
The Impatient Gardener blog was started in 2009 and its library of posts includes practical how-tos, plant guides, favorite garden gear, successes and failures and much more. If you’re looking for something specific, the search function at the top of the page can help.
I love mail order, particularly for gardening products, since our selection in the area is somewhat limited. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities. For most gardening companies, before I buy I consult the Garden Watchdog which has customer reviews of companies. This time of the year, I order so many things that […]
If you’ve been here before, this page probably looks different to you. I’ve been playing around with the various blog templates, trying to find something that suits me and the subject matter. If you have any suggestions, particularly as far as readability goes, I’m more than happy to hear them.
I’m not sure why (well, I’m sure it has something to do with the big lake about 500 feet from my house), but spring seems to take forever to arrive at my house. Right now the only real signs are a few daffodils and the arrival of the Virginia Blue Bells (in the foreground). All […]
So the first plants to have the honor of going in the new veggie garden are onions. I bought onion starts (a long-day onion sampler of Walla Walla, Ringmaster and Mars onions) from Dixondale Farms and planted them Saturday, April 25. Then I planted them again on Sunday, after we had almost two inches of […]
The new raised vegetable garden is almost finished. We still need to mulch the path between the beds, and put up the deer fence around it, as well as the door at one end. We (and by we, I mean my husband) made it with cedar posts sunk into the ground about a foot, and […]
The compost bin we threw together two years ago in about 15 minutes and four pallets has disintegrated. It didn’t help that we stirred the compost pile with the Kubota. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I REALLY want this: Lee Valley Tools Compost brackets. I first saw this on Gardening by […]
For the first time in my life I’m going to try my hand at vegetable gardening. Well, not the first time. When I was a kid my mom gave my brother and I some space in her veggie garden to grow things that are satisfying for kids to grow. In our case it was radishes. […]
Local gardeners, take note. The Ozaukee Master Gardener Heirloom Plant and Herb Sale is 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 23, at Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin. More than 11,000 plants will be for sale. Just about every kind of herb you can think of (and plenty you didn’t know existed), plus heirloom tomato, peppers […]
It really is. And there’s nothing like becoming a gardener to remind you of that. I’ve been gardening for about 15 years now. Well, 15 if you count the peppers I tried to grow in a pot on the front step of my first post-college apartment that I watched with eager anticipation of eating something […]
