The best part about pruning red twig dogwood (remove up to a third of the oldest stems to stimulate new growth…or to rejuvenate older shrubs, cut the entire plant back to the ground every two years), is that you end up with a bunch of pretty red twigs… …which make free winter holiday decor for …
One of the tricky things about pruning is that some plants bloom on old wood, and some on new. If you’re lucky, you held onto the plant tags and know the name of your plant and can look it up. But maybe you’ve lost that, or you’ve bought a home with established plants, and so …
Started cleaning up the hellebores. If you have time and energy, you can trim away old leaves to reduce the risk of disease; new leaves will soon emerge. First pic is pre-trimming; second and third are post. Fourth is also post, but a different hellebore altogether. Flowers soon.
I *may* have gone a little nuts on Johnny’s Selected Seeds site last night, especially considering that last year, I had gotten so busy that I pretty much stopped starting seeds a month or so in, which means I still have *lots* of seeds leftover from last year. But in my defense, one of my …
I started the New Year off with a plant order at Old House Gardens. It’s not too early to place orders for spring planting — some items are already sold out. They specialize in rare and old breeds, and have limited quantities. I think their prices are pretty reasonable, and I’ve had good success with …
I’m not likely to get the whole house in order before New Year’s Day, and I’m not even trying to put that on myself! But I’ve been enjoying going through room by room and setting some of them to rights — making sure the plants have water, removing any dry leaves, and just appreciating them. …
Finally finished pruning the redbud, or at least, as much as I can reach. It took a while to get to this, because it requires our tall ladder, which is heavy enough that I need Kevin’s help to maneuver it from the garage to the front yard. (Okay, I could *possibly* manage it on my …
Peach harvesting this weekend. They’re in various stages of ripeness, and the ones that are mostly green, we’ll leave on the tree a little longer, but dozens of them are ready-ish, and some of them, the squirrels have knocked down and those need to be collected. (shakes fist at squirrels) Plans for the peaches: – …
It’s a very project-y kind of week. Here’s another one — replacing the garden bench in the front with something more stable (the one I had never screwed together solidly, and I didn’t love having it in the parkway where I want neighbors to be able to sit with confidence). Also, this one is a …
It’s too hot to plant anything outdoors, and too hot to want to weed (though I should), and we have roofers putting on a new roof for our house this week, so it’s also a little painful walking around the garden right now because even though they’re trying to be careful, my garden is crowded …
