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Summer in review as seen through one container
The last day of summer came and went in the most depressing way possible: with an all-day downpour that kept me out of the garden. This summer-loving gardener is not pleased. It is my sincere hope that we have a lot more summerlike weather ahead because as usual, it feels like summer has absolutely flown by. I am in no ...
Late season garden rescue: To salvage or call it a year?
Everything was going fine until it rained. And rained. And rained. Our weather station temporarily went on the fritz last week when a night of lightning took out the power, but we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 inches of rain in about four days. That much rain at this time of year is a recipe for flopped and ...
A great onion harvest proves taking chances can pay off
These are the onions I grew this year. I harvested them this weekend and they may be the single best argument for trying new things in the garden.I can’t give you poundage because I just pulled them and they are curing but I can assure you I’ve never grown more onions before. And here’s where it gets mind-blowing for me: ...
Summer, celebrated with a perfect BLT
I can tell you the exact moment that summer started at my house: 12:27 p.m. September 2. You read that right. That is the moment that summer started. Reports of summer’s death have been greatly exaggerated. And in this house summer starts the moment that I take the first bite of BLT featuring a giant slab of tomato from my ...
The one thing I really didn’t want to find in my garden (or my house)
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 I’ve gotten what’s coming to ...
Zen in the garden: A newfound joy of floating flowers
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 small path that leads to ...
The great seed-grown annual show
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 something doesn’t grow. I love ...
How to manage garden pests the lazy way
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 dust on it. That kills ...
From Mackinac, with color and love
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 photos are better than others. ...
Midsummer garden check-in
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 have great intentions of ...
Espalier everywhere
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 wouldn’t it? It’s beautiful, but it is also a ...
Container pond love … who knew?
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 kind of feature. A small ...
A great year for hostas (and slugs)
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, persistent downpours. In June it ...
The most inspiring moments from great gardens
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 incorporate into my own garden. ...
Celebrating surprise plants
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 beautiful plant came from. And ...
Tallying up winter’s losses
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 two weeks behind what I ...
Letters from the Garden
Letters from the Garden
