The expression "Go big or go home" resonates these days. I had been looking for a job this last year. Something full-time. Little did I know I'd find myself managing the largest raised bed garden on a farm in Illinois. Twenty years of freelance writing and photography done ten feet away from my bedroom has taken it's toll. I've wanted a little more distance between my work life and my home life. With the girls away at school, there's no need for me to stay here doing something that no longer brings me joy. A quiet house gets lonely, fast. The idea of returning to full-time employment both thrills and scares me. When you're a work-from-home mom, you're the boss. You get used to it. The schedule, the errands, the flow. Transitioning to someone else's schedule is slightly daunting. ...
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 ...
Tough Perennials for a Colorful Fall Garden
Place the word "tough" in front of a word and oftentimes you get a negative meaning. Meat. Disposition. Decision. Childhood. No one likes tough meat or a tough childhood for that matter! But put it in front of "plants" and every gardener listens. Tough plant you say? To survive in my garden, you (the plants) gotta be tough. I'm not a plant coddler but instead subscribe to the Joan Crawford school of gardening. So when I was planning my side yard last winter, I focused on tough plants for a fall garden. It's very specific, but being specific keeps me on point and narrows my focus. With so many plants from which to choose, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Here's my criteria: 1. I want flowers until frost. 2. I want to to see them from inside the house. 3. I want to do as little as possible ...
The Verdict Is In on Species Tulips
This spring, I spent a lot of time observing and waiting. Such is the life of the gardener. But I was anxious to see how long the species tulips planted last fall would survive in my garden before their beheading. I have a rabbit issue. Which means I have a tulip issue too. Despite several attempts, I simply can't grow them. Ever. Or so I thought. The most success I've had was with two small patches of Darwin tulips planted years apart. The first, a red variety, was beautiful and ignored by everything except me. The sin bin, also known as the dark space beneath my neighbor's deck, wasn't part of the equation yet so I didn't have a rabbit "issue." But then another neighbor set his domesticated rabbit free after tiring of it. It was a Christmas gift they gave to their children and by April, ...
Picking a Cover Crop for the Raised Beds
Over the years, I've grown all kinds of crops in my raised beds. The glass gem corn (pictured above) is my most recent experiment. To me, everything in the garden is an experiment because nothing in gardening is a sure thing (unless we're talking about mint). Oftentimes, I've taken the soil for granted with the yearly expectation that the soil will continue to churn out the most delicious produce my family and me wait all year to relish. So this fall, for the very first time in my 20-plus years of gardening, the veg plot is getting a cover crop. Perhaps the relative success in the veg garden can be attributed to the modest amount of compost that I add every year from my small compost bin, as well as the organic fertilizers the plants receive both at planting time and throughout the ...
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