Winter came back. I knew it would. I knew that this mild winter and early spring that we were blessed with was just too good to be true, but mentally I had moved on. The end of the week brought us horrible weather and this morning the trees were shimmering with ice on their branches and every sign of live ...
The other night I had a dream that I was in a nursery buying potting mix, except it wasn’t called potting mix, it was called compost. And I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out if I wanted ericaceous compost or not. But here’s the thing: Calling potting mix compost is not common in the U.S., and ...
It’s Friday Finds time, but first I wanted to share a couple pictures from my trip to Austin with Troy-Bilt’s Saturday6 gang last week. Troy-Bilt sent the Saturday6, a group of bloggers who work with them, on a shindig to find out about some new products, explore Austin and do a little good. (Disclaimer: They paid for this trip as ...
It’s Friday Finds time! If you missed today’s earlier post showing off my now hanging staghorn fern, check it out here. Deborah Silver photo I have long been in love with Deborah Silver’s “grass” floor, but now she’s gone and put English daisies on it and I’m completely smitten. Some great seed starting do’s and don’ts from Erin at Floret ...
Gosh, gang, I’m really sorry there weren’t more posts this week. I’ve got 25 balls in the air and none of them have quite landed yet so I’m never quite ready to blog about any of them and they keep me too busy to blog about anything else. But I do love a good Friday list, so let’s go for ...
I’ve got most of my seeds ordered (and delivered), I just ordered some more willow twigs to start this year and I’ve got my eye on this dogwood and have come *this close* to ordering it about three times but I can’t think of where I’d put it. Cornus kousa ‘Rutpink’ This is the time of year that I really ...
I spoke at a local school’s career day yesterday. It was, um, odd. And then I looked around and found out that of the other people speaking at the career day, two were good friends a year older than me, and another two were two years old and two years younger than me. And I though, huh, I guess we ...
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According to my seed-starting spreadsheet, which I make every year to tell me when and how I’m supposed to be starting seeds, March 14 was the day to start my sweet peas. But I couldn’t wait any longer so I got all wild and crazy and planted them last weekend. (I’m a seed-starting rebel, I tell […]
A few years ago I grew ‘Dalmation Peach’ Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) for the first time. It’s a gorgeous foxglove, carrying peach to pink flowers atop 2-1/2 foot tall stems. But its best feature is that it will bloom the first year, unlike most foxgloves, which are true biennials and don’t bloom until the second year. [&
UPDATE, April 2021: I’m sad to report that boxwood blight has been positively identified via plant samples I sent to the plant disease diagnostic lab in my garden. The five boxwoods in the first photo of this post are infected and will be removed. At this time I have not found signs of the fungus […]
This started as a post to share what I’m growing from seed this year. What it evolved into is a sordid tale of seed hoarding, a gardener so traumatized by a never-ending winter that she completely overestimated her ability to grow so many plants and, in the end, a way to justify it all. As […]
I’m always amazed at how my fanaticism for gardening has grown exponentially, but it’s most apparent in my seed starting efforts. When I first got serious about gardening I didn’t grow anything from seed. Who has time for that, I thought. And it seemed like it would be difficult and require all kinds of equipment. […]
I’ve just come off the first few presentations of a talk I’m doing on some of the best new plants you’ll find in garden centers this year and spending all that time looking at new plants has me seriously excited about some of them. There are so many new plants coming on the market this […]
Winter has arrived. Cue the griping. I know I complain about the weather somewhat frequently, but as I’ve explained before, that’s pretty much my birthright as born Midwesterner. Winter (and whatever spring we have) in Wisconsin can be so boring that we literally can’t think of anything else to talk about. So a lot of conversatio
I’ve asked the opinion of my dear readers many times and it’s always an illuminating exercise. It’s interesting to get a feel for a direction others think my garden should go, even if you only know it from photos and descriptions. But in the nearly 10 years this blog has been in existence, there has […]
A quick note: This post is a partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement. But you know that all words and opinions are my own. I also apologize for the messy basement visible in this post. Imagine a vegetable garden full of orderly but abundant raised beds on a bed of charcoal-colored gravel. At its entrance is […]
There aren’t a lot of opportunities to add really special plants to established gardens. Special plants require very specific placement so they can be seen and appreciated, and surrounded by a cast of supporting characters that don’t threaten to try to upstage the star. When I finally decided in fall to attempt a rescue mission [&hellip
If you’ve gardened for any amount of time you’ve probably been told test your soil. In fact you’ve probably been told to test your soil multiple times. Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not going to give you a pass on this one. You really should send a soil sample to a soil […]
I read most of Lee Reich’s book The Ever Curious Gardener in an unlikely place: on a Florida beach with my toes in the sand. I think Lee would be the first to tell you his book is not your typical beach read but there I was, in between dips in a very warm gulf, […]
Despite ample time over the holidays to figure out what seeds I want to order, I’ve not gotten my act together on an official seed order yet. I know my must haves, which include Chelsea Prize cucumbers, and ‘Gigante’ Italian parsley among many others, but I haven’t gotten around to checking if I need to buy […]
No sooner had the Christmas dinner dishes been cleared than that little voice in my head started whispering, “It’s time to think about gardening again.” That little voice was obviously a little drunk, because it’s not like I ever really stopped thinking about gardening. But my semi-drunken intuition wasn’t completely w
