As late summer falls on the Midwest, prairies turn golden as grasses dry, their seed heads ripen and flowers are in their glory. There’s little virgin prairie left today. But some prairie plants have found a haven in our gardens. Coneflower (Echinacea), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), blazing star (Liatris), blanket flower (Gaillardia), prairie dropseed (Sporobolus), switchgrass […]
The so-called “self-watering” or sub-irrigated container has been a great boon to those of us who want the satisfaction of growing our own food but don’t have space for rows of tilled earth or even raised beds. Of course these containers don’t actually water themselves. You still have to water. And as the plants get […]
I always have mixed feelings at this time of year. Overhead, the trees are closing in, like shade cloth covering a greenhouse. In my garden that shade, as welcome as will be when it protects me and my garden from the hot Midwestern summer to come, means an end to the season of sunlight and […]
One of my favorite places, the great Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, is all shiny and sparkly. In a good way. I remember when it was shiny and sparkly in a bad way: the day in June 2011 after golf-ball-sized hailstones smashed 60 percent of the glass in the nearly 2 acres of display greenhouses […]
The leaves started turning early this year, but not before the first little pumpkins appeared in the grocery store. It seems a little odd to have pumpkins on sale at the same time as zucchini, but not as odd as the fact that pumpkins and zucchini are the same species, Cucurbita pepo. “Pumpkin” is a […]
Winter has raged into Chicago. It was down in the teens a week before Thanksgiving, the kind of weather that freezes the soil like concrete and drives even diehard gardeners like me to the shelter of a greenhouse. I can’t quit gardening yet, though, because I have a problem: Some 300 bulbs I didn’t manage […]
Most of the plants I’ve ever received as holiday gifts have been temporary pleasures, best enjoyed while they’re at their prettiest and then composted like cut flowers after they fade. The amount of fuss and bother required to get poinsettias to color up another year is hard to justify when you can buy them for […]
The weather report may still be full of blizzards, but once Ground Hog Day rolls around, springtime becomes less of a memory and more of a prospect. That’s when it’s worth thinking about buying or building a cold frame to get a jump on the growing season. A cold frame is a low box with […]
Most gardeners have an ideal image of springtime: one sunny day after another, each slightly warmer than the one before, coaxing the crocuses and daffodils and perennials out of the ground in exactly the order promised in the catalog. There’s an occasional light rain, just to keep things moist—but never on the weekend. Needless to […]
