It's that time of year again when the leaves are changing and the garage begins to look like doomsday preppers live here. My husband complains about it and I anticipated his reaction when he came home a few nights ago to find his garage workbench temporarily "altered." Not only has it been wiped clean and the empty chip bags disposed of, but it now has everything I need to keep my houseplants alive through the winter, namely water. In my experience, especially for a man motivated by food, having a good meal waiting on the day I begin infiltrating his man space is an excellent diversion. I've become a pretty good cook. His basement workshop has been "altered" as well. He's chosen to accept it in the same way he begrudgingly accepts that he'll lose a little turf to my garden each year. In ...
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Raised Bed Garden Glow Up Part 1: Pre-Stain Prep
Absence has definitely made my heart grow fonder and deeply aware that a garden glow-up is in order. It's not that I've lost the love for my garden, namely the raised bed vegetable garden, I've just been away from it and it's painfully obvious. From the weed covered area around the beds to the quagmire of random vegetables spilling out and everywhere, the vegetable garden reflects the year we've had. Stressful and reactive. I planted the tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and tomatillos, and that's about all I did. Somehow, things grew and I had a decent harvest which makes me wonder just how important the gardener is to the garden. As a sidenote, many of my just-blushing tomatoes have a single bite in them, courtesy of the growing population of chipmunks in the garden. Add that to the ...
Jalapeno Pepper Jelly Ain’t Just for Crackers
It's that time in the gardening season when you look at your garden and wonder, " What the heck am I gonna do with all those ____________?" Could be tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini. However you fill in the blank, discovering ways to use all that delicious homegrown goodness is challenging. Several years ago, I asked myself this question while staring at hill of huge jalapeno peppers. And that's how my family formed an addiction to jalapeno pepper jelly. Jalapeno plants are highly productive and if you don't have a plan, in the garbage or compost bin they go. Unlike my husband, I don't eat them like apples. Food pantries are a good option, as are neighbors, but spicy peppers are not a universally desired food. This is the moment water bath canning entered my world. A quick search of ...
Tropical Plants for a Cold Climate Garden
I love big, bold foliage. The "extras" of the plant world. You'll find tropical plants woven into every garden bed, not to mention the containers on the patio. I tend to like plants, and some people, one might call "extra." They make life a bit more interesting. Plants that scream look at me have a place in every garden and they make the smaller, softer spoken plants stand out and look even better. Funny how that works. Too much of the big stuff however, just looks like a bunch of big stuff. It's overwhelming. So I find that a tropical plant here and there makes the garden so much more interesting and it satiates my desire for a little something tropical in every bed or container. Cold climate be damned! My love affair with tropical plants began several years ago with Christopher Lloyd ...
Dahlia Fail and a Change of Heart
The dahlias are tucked away despite the fact that I swore off trying to overwinter them again after last year's dahlia fail. I killed all except one variety. It was my first attempt at overwintering dahlias and I thought the garage was the perfect spot. As it turns out, it's not. Chalk this fail, there have been many, up to some serious gardener error. Three crates full of clean, plump, labeled tubers by March had become three crates of shriveled, puckered pods. I learned two things from that experience – the garage is too cold for dahlia tubers and you have to check your tubers monthly. Ok three things. I stink at this dahlia thing. I went to all that effort to store them and basically forgot about them for months, expecting they'd be just as I had left them months before. Well, these ...
Black-Eyed Susan is the Perfect Late Summer Bloomer
I was listening to an Instagram Live chat between two well-known British garden designers earlier this summer and the conversation turned to the color yellow, or as these Brits referred to it, eff off yellow. I'm cleaning it up a bit here as they used the f-bomb to describe the unwelcoming affect of yellow in the garden. Apparently, it's rather obnoxious to the English eye and it got me wondering about the yellows, specifically the various kinds of rudbeckia or black-eyed Susan, I have throughout my garden. In no way do I find them offensive, maybe because I'm only part English. Whatever the case, I love yellow no matter how offensive others may find it and I thought you might like it too. It's funny, though, how the opinions of others can make you question your plant choices. ...
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