If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I’m going to weigh in with my own answer to this age old question: No. I say that because on Sunday we discovered that a very large tree had, in fact, fallen in our woods, not far from our house, …
I’ve mentioned before that the idea that a garden is ever “finished” is a fallacy. Because it is constantly growing and changing, gardens are in a state of evolution at all times. It’s not like redoing a room in your house where you paint the walls, get new furniture and then stage it perfectly to take a bunch of photos …
Well I made it through the first post-Labor Day week. This summer has been so incredible (I know, I won’t shut up about it, sorry) that I was truly melancholy Monday just thinking of it ending. Despite my best efforts, my thoughts have turned to gardening tasks that need to be attended to before frost and suddenly I’m feeling concerned …
I would be crazy to complain about anything that happened in the garden this summer. The weather has been lovely, possibly even perfect. For the most part we had warm temperatures with plenty of rain mixed in. Sure, there were a few dry weeks, but I only had to do supplemental watering a handful of times. And yet, there is …
It’s been a great year for dahlias here. Who am I kidding? It’s been a great year for everything in the garden, but the dahlias are appreciating our lovely summer as much as anything. A few have been unfairly (in my estimation, at least) targeted by slugs, but for the most part they continue to bloom their little heads off. …
How did it get to be Friday again? Specifically a Friday late in August? Sometimes it feels like the world is spinning a bit too fast. Loi Thai photo Have you seen Loi’s fabulous Limelight hedge? I can’t believe it’s only three years old. (Stephen, if you’re reading this I’m sure you knew I’d put this in today! 🙂 ) This lesson …
I first saw Eupatorium capillifolium ‘Elegant Feather’ late last summer at a baby shower. I spotted it from inside the house and ran out at my first opportunity to give it a closer look. It looked to me like a soft, feathery evergreen and I had to seek out the landscaper who planted to gardens to find out what it …
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.
Just a couple weeks ago I wrote here about how I manage insect pests in the garden. The general point was that human intervention is often not required. If you create a garden with a healthy ecosystem, things will all balance out. If that sounds just a wee big smug, you can rest assured that […]
Earlier this week I opened my garden to a group of master gardeners. Although this wasn’t an official garden tour, there was a still a bit of last-minute fussing, the kind where you look at your own garden with a more critical eye. That led to pulling out a “more natural” area next to the […]
Me in February: I’m going to grow an entire garden from seed this year! I will grow all the things I’ve grown in the past and add in at least 20 new varieties because I am a seed-starting machine! And I definitely need to grow a whole flat of everything because I need backups if […]
I do, on occasion check out a few gardening groups on Facebook. For the past couple of weeks they’ve been full of posts like this: “What is eating my plant and how do I kill it?” A variety of answers come in, but in every case there’s at least one answer like this: “Put Sevin […]
Once a year I go to Mackinac Island, an 8-mile-round island at the top of lakes Michigan and Huron. And for the last several years I’ve been giving a bit of a photo tour here. It’s become something of a tradition to bring you a few photos, although some years both the plantings and the […]
If you’ve been reading this blog for a number of years you know what’s been up. If you’re newer you may think I fell off the face of the Earth. So this post begins with an obligatory apology. Every summer I head out in mid-July for a week or a bit more. And every year […]
I admit I’m an espalier novice. When I first saw an espalier tree (I’m guessing on “Gardener’s World” or in a British gardening magazine), I thought I had stumbled upon some great European secret. Silly me. Espalier is happening everywhere, and it’s definitely growing in popularity in North America. And why would
I’ve been gardening seriously for a couple decades now and I was starting to think I knew what made me happy in the garden. I never expected that 165 gallons of water would become one of my favorite things. When I designed the vegetable garden I left a big space in the center for some […]
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced a spring like this. Cool days and cooler nights have persisted far longer than whatever can be considered normal, even in these days of weather that seems to have lost all semblance of normalcy. The partner to the cold temperatures is rain. In May it fell in long, […]
I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: The very best thing you can do for your garden is get out of it and into someone else’s. I cannot think of a a single time I’ve gone into another garden and not taken something away from it that I either learned or wanted to […]
There are plants in my garden that are coddled within in inch of their life. I check on them often enough that I usually know when a new leaf has emerged. And then there are the other plants that just quietly do their thing for years until one day you blink and wonder where that […]
The effects of our extreme winter are still showing up in the garden. With the cool, wet spring we’ve had (as much a blessing for a busy gardener who is thankful that the weeds aren’t head-high as it is a curse), everything is slower than usual. In fact I estimate that most things are still […]
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is what basic gardening book I recommend. And to be honest I’ve yet to have a great answer. But at least when it comes to growing food, I now have an answer. This post may contain affiliate links. See my complete disclosure here. I didn’t know what […]
At this time five years ago I would have been about 10 big contractor garbage bags in to my annual garlic mustard weed pull. The property, actually the neighborhood, was full of it. I would pull the stuff until my hand cramped up and no more garbage bags would fit in the car to be […]
