Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Notes from a Garden, October 2011

I’ve been bustling around the garden for the last few weeks, getting all the  tender plants in out of the cold. Tropical plants, such as all our common houseplants, need to move indoors by the time nighttime temperatures are consistently in the low 50s, weeks before the first frost would kill them outright. This is […]

How a prairie works, and how to capture a little bit of prairie in the garden

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 […]

Container watering: Not too little, not too much

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 […]