I probably wrote about this last year, but every year is like the first time when you harvest enough out of your garden to make most of a salad. My spring garden was very limited this year, as the gardens were in such a shambles from the fact that I didn’t have time to clean them out last fall (something I hope to NEVER repeat) and the weather doing funky things. I did manage to get a few of my [...]
Read moreFirst hydrangea blossoms opening right now.
Perfect Weather
This last week has been fantastic. The weather is warm enough to work outside and the humidity is still low. The gardens are bursting into bloom. I have snapdragons, carnations, dianthus, pansies, and petunias already in bloom. The hydrangeas first blossoms opened yesterday. My lilies have buds all over them.
Cornucopia In The Making
The trees have leafed out. The berry bushes are making berries. The grapes have buds on them. Best of all one [...]
Read moreOn several occasions I’ve talked about GMO or GE crops. Monsanto and Seminis are the two main companies developing these seeds. While developing their “frankenseeds” they’re also keeping their foot in the legitimate seed door. I recently found a listing of many of the varieties that Monsanto and Seminis sell.
What does this mean for the home grower or the conscientious gardener? Anyone who’s concerned about the effects of Monsanto’s work can vote with their pocketbook, by staying away from seeds [...]
Read moreOne thing that the US has is a poverty of varieties of vegetables. When you enter a supermarket you find just one kind of broccoli, one variety of carrot, one maybe two varieties of cucumber (eating and a pickling). What most Americans don’t know is that there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of varieties of almost every vegetable on the planet.
I recently found a great site for buying typical oriental vegetable seeds. Unfortunately I found the site after I [...]
Read moreFirst spinach seedlings of 2012 emerge.
Ta-da! The 2012 garden show has begun. The very first spring seeds have sprouted. Planted on 3/2/12 the very first spinach seeds have broken ground. I was waiting with bated breath, as it seemed like forever for the first seeds to emerge.
I planted both spinach and sugar snap peas that day. So far just a few spinach seedlings are showing.
We’re having a very hot spring already and I’m concerned that the rest of the [...]
Read moreThis is what the garden area looked like before we started any work.
This year I’m trying to be more organized about my planting. You see, there are certain vegetables that you don’t want to plant in the same place every year, because of soil born disease and pests. The most prominent of these are: tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers.
Last year I experienced early blight with my tomatoes. So, this year I want to be sure to plant them in a [...]
Read moreWhat little girl could resist growing a Beauty Bush.
Today is my birthday. So, I thought I’d take time to write about what gardening means to me, why I’m such an avid gardener.
In all honesty I think I’m an avid gardener because my mother was, also. She loved to be outside planting things and started me off at a very early age. I remember helping plant pansies at around the age of five.
Not too long after that, maybe a year [...]
Read moreShade patterns change throughout the year. Keep a log for successful planting.
Maybe you’ve got it on you resolution list to finally do something with the yard. You’ve got some ideas, but aren’t sure exactly which plants will work well for each garden.
The first thing you need to do is know the lay of your land. Which way is north, south, east, and west? How does the house line up with these directions? Where are large trees or shrubs located [...]
Read moreBeautiful fall foliage needs to be cleaned up to protect your lawn.
The first frosts have hit all around the country, with some people even experiencing record snowfall. The trees are bare, the annuals dead, the perennials sleeping, and surprisingly enough the camellias still blooming.
Now’s the time to do some cleanup in your garden, to be ready for next years display. First and foremost, if you have a lot of leaves covering either your garden or your lawn, you need [...]
Read moreHot or not?
Even the best laid plans run amok sometimes and in several of my plantings this year I ran into some problems. You see, I planted all my peppers which included sweet, paprika, and hot, all in the same area. I thought that I’d have no problem identifying them because they would look different.
I was wrong. There are just two plants that look different from the others, but they look the same as each other. But they aren’t [...]
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