Garden Journal

The only time our over-4500-member garden club FB group almost descended into a real flamewar in all the years of its existence, was when someone spoke disaparagingly about his neighbors’ not eradicating their dandelions. Don’t do that, folks. Would you walk into someone’s living room and comment on how dusty you found it? Dandelions are […]

More seedling transplanting. A few notes: – the reason why they set up grow light systems on chains is so you can keep the lights just above the plants, maximizing their light. You don’t want them actually touching the plants, though, so check regularly and raise as needed. – another alternative to self-watering trays are

Went out and snipped one each from the hellebores, which are all now fully in bloom, trimming close to the base of the bloom and floating them in water, for an Easter tabletop display. There are a few repeats, because some are plants I divided and replanted, but I think have about 18 or so

I stopped by Empowering Gardens yesterday to get some more plants — they have lots of pansies, violas, ranunculus, hyacinths, and primroses in for your spring planters. Here’s a trick I learned at a free container gardening workshop up at Gethsemane Gardens (a lot of the nurseries offer free workshops, check their websites for dates

Swung by Home Depot yesterday and picked up some more pansies, plus ranunculus. I have a lot of planters to fill, so it’s going to be a little while before they’re all fully planted, but that’s okay — I kind of like doing it in stages in early spring, when everything is emerging bit by

We’re having another cold spell (fingers crossed it’s the last of the season), frustrating my plan to go out and start prepping the vegetable beds today. Instead, I’ve been reading the lastest issue of The English Garden. Reading garden magazines is a great way to learn more about gardening, though it can be a little

Took 10 minutes to finish pruning the Russian sage. You don’t have to prune it, but it gets pretty floppy and sprawly if you don’t, so most gardeners recommend cutting it back to about a foot high once a year, either in the fall or late winter. Russian sage is a great parkway plant, since

I barely got these bulbs in the ground last fall; I was swamped with work, and on what was probably the last day we could possibly get them in before winter, I made the whole family go out and dig up the soil and throw these in. I’m sure the squirrels got some of them,

I know it’s still very early in the garden, but it’s still a great time to go out and wander about. See if you can identify the bulbs that are coming up, and the perennials returning. Pictured below: hyacinths, something I can’t identify but I think is a native I planted last year (help?), fritillaria