Gardeners get itchy in spring. The hand tries to wrap itself around a trowel uncontrollably, against the better judgment of the gardener, like something out of an old horror movie. We may know, rationally, that the risk of planting out tomatoes and other warm-season vegetables in cold soil with a chance of frost is too […]
In my part of the Midwest, April is the time that daffodils are in their glory and the wildflowers bloom. Supposedly. This April, most of my daffodils are already bloomed and dried up and gone. Tulips popped in the third week of March. Scilla and muscari bloomed simultaneously. Forsythia and redbud – normally the first […]
It’s getting on for the time when my checkbook burns a hole in my pocket. Not a credit card: Many plant sales don’t take credit cards. And plant sales offer me some of my best plants. For months now, the volunteers at my local conservatory have been nurturing unusual herbs for their annual herb sale. […]
We’re having a mild winter in the upper Midwest, or so they say. But it’s still cold enough to trap us indoors day after cold, dreary gray day. Those lucky enough to have a home “conservatory” or greenhouse (and a heater) still have a place to putter. The rest of us try to keep busy nursing light-starved houseplants […]
Nowadays, the seed catalogs start to fly before the snow does. It can be hard to focus on Christmas shopping done with visions of heirloom watermelons and container carrots dancing in your eyes. But in January, it’s time to take down the tree and set up to start seeds. In the Midwest, the short growing […]
White Christmas? We can only hope. Not just because snow makes the holidays so much more picturesque, but because it does wonders for a garden. Last year we had snow cover almost all winter — common up north, but unusual in more southerly parts of the Midwest. Then we had the most spectacular spring. Bulbs […]
In the early spring, it’s such a delight to come upon a garden that bursts with daffodils, scilla and crocuses. Yet it always amazes me how many front yards are still mostly bare and brown, with just a few shoots poking up. Without a bulb layer, you miss a whole season of color. Bulbs are […]
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 […]
One of the most satisfying things about a garden is that it makes you part of the entire cycle of nature, from seed to sprout to flower to fruit to compost. That’s especially true if you save seeds from your plants at the end of summer to replant the next year. There’s nothing quite like […]
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 […]
