In a very random Instagram moment over the weekend—a hastily shot story made while practically running past the compost as I dashed around trying to get a few jobs done before it rained—I showed an exciting compost-related development: a second bin! OK, very few things related to compost can possibly be classified as exciting, but it’s the small things, right? …
Hi there, homebodies! I feel obligated, as I do from time to time when I disappear for a few weeks at a time, to apologize for being a bit scarce. There was a reason for it a couple weeks ago and then, well there wasn’t and now in this new world we live in I can’t even really fully remember …
Do I dare? Do I dare even get my hopes up that we may indeed be having an early spring and trust that we will roll right into a warm spring and a “normal” summer? You know the answer to that. I absolutely should not do that and yet I will. I am. This year’s winter was (see? I’m even …
Last spring a trip to Pennsylvania provided inspiration that I continue to draw on now, especially on these cold winter days. I consider my visit at Chanticleer Garden to be the most influential garden tour I’ve ever taken, but just the day before I was at Longwood Gardens and it was no less inspiring. In my humble opinion, although these …
Annual vines are some of the hardest working, best problem solving plants in the summer garden. And with a grow habit so vigorous, when warm days turn to hot days and warm nights, you can almost watch them grow in front of your eyes. Vines are great for screening the less attractive bits in our gardens: an unsightly fence, big …
After you garden for awhile, you start to get a pretty good idea of what kind of gardener you are. Your style and approach to garden tasks becomes pretty clear. And after two decades of gardening in some form, I think my weak point is clear: restraint. As much as I know that restraint is good, that it leads to …
This post is sponsored by Jung Seed Company but, as always, the words and opinions here are my own. Is it just me, or are more people into growing plants from seed? In the past couple years I feel like so many people have asked me about seeds or shared their seed-starting tips and stories. Whether this is really the case …
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.
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
