Last year, I had trouble with some vegetable crops (zucchini and corn) because they weren’t being pollinated. This year, I’m going to have lots of flowers to get those pollinators in my garden. This is great for me, because I’m more comfortable in the flower world. Even though I am a flower person, I’m not so familiar with a lot… Read more »
When rosette-type succulents get leggy and stretched, what do you do with them? Chop off the healthy rosette at top and replant it, right? Maybe take the remaining leaves and propagate? Well, I saw this post on Fat Plant Farm’s Instagram feed earlier this week that showed another alternative: removing the lower leaves, creating a tree form. Succulent trees! And… Read more »
On a Twitter chat, I once heard a gardener say that she inherited a notebook full of gardening advice from her grandmother. It was full of advice on the local growing conditions, her grandmother’s tricks and tips that she’d learned over probably decades of gardening. Talk about an heirloom! That’s information that should probably be published. A gardener would sell… Read more »
One of my garden goals for 2017 is to switch over to drip irrigation for my vegetable garden raised beds. Last year, I used a tripod sprinkler, which wasted a lot of water and left me with some disease problems. I’ve been pretty intimidated at the thought of drip tubes. You basically buy all the parts to make a custom… Read more »
Do you have a beginner gardener to shop for this holiday season? Here are a few gardening gift ideas to generate more success in the garden or to keep a beginner gardener’s inspiration going strong through the winter. Roo Aprons Women’s clothes do not have pockets. It makes me insane. That’s why I like the big pouch in Roo Aprons…. Read more »
Why can’t I get a sempervivum (also known as hens and chicks) to survive? I’ve grown succulents like jade and haworthia plants that have propagated many new plants. They’re all over my house. But I’d just about had it with failure after failure with hens and chicks when I reached out to Altman Plants for help. Bob Reidmuller is resident horticulturist at… Read more »
I’m in the process of finishing up my first summer of vegetable gardening and I’m looking back on quite a few successes. I started in April with seeds and I grew and harvested tomatoes, peppers and zucchini in July through September. I stopped an outbreak of blossom end rot. Other things I tried were pure learning experiences. I didn’t get… Read more »
I can’t be the only one who has accidentally grown a hallucinogenic plant in their yard, right? Here’s how I found out what was going on in my garden container. That week, the #Gardenchat Twitter chat topic was plant identification. Participants were all talking about the plants and weeds in their yards that they needed help identifying. I didn’t think… Read more »
Growing vegetables from seed seems like a really easy process. Step one: Buy seeds. Step two: Plant them. Step three: Eat vegetables. But watching my seeds progress/not progress to mature plants this summer and now getting ready for a fall vegetable garden has got me twisted up in knots. When I bought a bundle of vegetable seeds this spring, I… Read more »
The movement to bring pollinators back to the garden is big. I’ve heard about it mainly through the concern over colony collapse disorder and the disappearance of bees from some parts of the United States. I think people generally support this movement. No one likes to hear about species in trouble, but do we really understand what pollinator decline means to us?… Read more »