Planting Ideas

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Kudos to Stark Bros

My first plant of the year has arrived, a ‘Goldcot’ Apricot Dwarf from Stark Bros, and I need to sing their praises.
I’ve talked up Stark Bros before, mentioning them as my favorite place to get fruit trees, but they beat themselves in quality this time. This dwarf apricot was around 4 feet tall, and nicely [...]

Japanese Irises are Better than Bearded Irises

There can be no discussion, the Japanese iris is superior, in fact, I think I hate bearded irises now, and they used to be my favorite flower.
Bearded Irises, Falling Down on the Job
So, seriously, what kind of slob falls down on the job? The bearded iris, thats who! These beautiful flowers used to be my [...]

Fall is for planting….. Fruit

Fall is for planting they say, you’ll see it all over when you go to the nursery or look at mail order catalogs, and why? Well, despite anecdotes about Spring showers, Fall actually has more rainfall AND the ground is also warm. Which all told makes it a good time to plant something, especially trees [...]

How to Grow Raspberries

I’ve blogged about raspberries many times before, which you’ll see in the “related posts” links at the bottom of this post. But I don’t know if I ever really went into depth as to how I grow them. In anycase, now is the time.
First, a little bragging. This picture was taken like the second week [...]

Train Clematis up a Post

File this under “other things you can do with fencing other than actual fencing.” Like my trick for saving shrubs from the ravages of rabbits I like to use fencing to form little cages, trellises really, around posts.
Posts, poles, supports, columns, whatever you want to call them, we all have them, we all need them. [...]

Grow your own food to save money

Food prices are growing like pole beans, and many people are planting more edibles in their garden, or taking up gardening for the first time, in an effort to save money. So, I thought a blog post on the subject would be both timely and useful.
Oil & Ethanol
First, why are food prices going up? Two [...]

Use Black Mulch to Brighten Up Shady Areas

Mulch comes in many colors, people have long been using the ever present red mulch, and in fact I would venture it probably rivals plain mulch in volume. There are also golden mulches, that look like very fresh wood. Then there are more subdued brown mulches that look like slightly older wood.
The main advertised benefit [...]

Naturalizing Crocus in the Lawn

Finally Flowers. Michigan had an abysmally cold February and March and all the bulbs and other plants were delayed, I heard that even one state to the South things were on schedule, but up here this is the latest start I remember in recent time.
But finally, things are waking up, and up first of course, [...]

Gardening Catalogue Deluge; What to Plant?

Apparently all the nurseries have a conspiracy to bury us gardeners in catalogues starting the week after Christmas. I don’t get why, but apparently we all must start thinking about what we want to plant as soon as we’re done taking down our Christmas tree. In the past week and a half I have gotten [...]

Edible Ornamentals

When planning your garden design do not forget that you can use vegetables in your ornamental beds.
Yes, I said it, vegetables in your ornamental beds. For some reason people see an ornamental bed as featuring eye-pleasing designs with organic layouts and nice flowers. Whereas a vegetable garden needs to have straight orderly rows like a [...]

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