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Gardening Advice
April 25, 2018
Asparagus has to be my favorite early spring vegetable. Though it is wonderful cooked. I think it is best eaten raw while working in the garden. Asparagus is often started from one-year crowns, however you can plant asparagus from seed, too!
It's not hard to grow asparagus from seed; it just adds an extra year onto the wait period until you can begin to harvest. We planted '…
March 27, 2018
Do you have forsythia? Forcing branches into bloom inside can give you an early taste of spring while you are still in the midst of winter. Here are my photos showing you how to force forsythia in five steps.
Don't worry. Cutting off a few branches to enjoy inside won’t hurt them a bit. Spring-flowering trees and shrubs set their flower buds the previous fall. Once the buds have been…
March 23, 2018
Interested in planting a flower garden? Here are some planting tips for flower beds—plus, suggestions on which flowers to grow.
We all dream of a lush, lovely flower bed full of colorful blooms all season long. What we end up with is usually a different story. Does your color run out when the heat hits? Do the plants clash and give the impression of clown pants? Do the tall…
March 21, 2018
Do you want to improve the landscape design of your yard and property? Here are some tips for coming up with a design plan and getting started.
I'll be honest—I'm not much of a planner, and this lack of forethought is reflected in my gardening style. My flower beds are in a constant state of change depending on what new plants I acquire each season. Many are planted and moved…
March 9, 2018
Gardening in regions with a short growing season can be an adventure. There always seems to be another spring snowstorm around the corner! To take advantage of every possible growing day, we need to get our snow melted and garden soil thawed as quickly as possible.
We run a plant business here in New Hampshire, where our growing season is short, so it's important to get seeds…
February 16, 2018
Even though onions are cheap enough to buy by the bagful, for the greatest variety, you have to grow your own—and it’s not difficult to do. Here are some onion planting, growing, and harvesting tips!
Sure, we could just buy onion sets and plant those but there is not a wide choice of varieties available as sets—mostly 'Stuttgarter' or 'Ebenezer' and often they form a thick-necked onion that…
January 7, 2018
The new year is here and with it comes a crop of new plants for the garden. It has been too cold to do much of anything except prowl the pages of the seed catalogs looking for the new and notable plants for 2018.
Have you seen the AAS designation on some plants and wondered what that was all about? It stands for All-America Selections. Since 1932, this independent testing group has been…
November 9, 2017
Several years ago, I was given a potted agapanthus or African lily. After waiting all summer for my agapanthus to bloom, I had to finally admit that maybe it was time to repot it.
What is an Agapanthus?
Also called the Lily of the Nile, the agapanthus is actually native to South Africa—nowhere near the Nile.
There are seven species of agapanthus, which are in the same family as the…
October 5, 2017
I confess to being a lazy cook. For example, the idea of peeling, coring, and slicing apples makes me a reluctant pie maker. Here are three of my favorite kitchen gadgets to preserve the harvest.
In past years, after spending a few of the most beautiful days of fall inside processing tomatoes, apples, and pears, I could sympathize with Robert Frost when he wrote "I am overtired…
September 6, 2017
For several weeks we have seen monarch butterflies flitting around our gardens—stopping to take advantage of the nectar plants we have growing in abundance. We watched them turn from caterpillars to chrysalises to Monarchs!
They really enjoy the goldenrod, but there are other nectar sources that they like as well, including the zinnias, coneflowers, Joe-Pye weed, liatris, bee balm, asters,…
July 26, 2017
If you love Siberian and bearded irises, you have to give their Japanese cousin a try. They bloom much later than the tall bearded irises, extending the iris season from mid-July into early August.
The blossoms of Japanese iris (Iris ensata) differ from those of bearded iris mainly because they do not have the tall, upright petals (called standards) in the center of the blossom. They have…
June 7, 2017
In late spring, the rhododendrons are blooming! Here's more about this stunning flowering shrub—which are easy to grow as long as you have the right conditions.
What Are Rhododendrons?
Rhododendrons are actually the most popular woody landscape plant in the United States. There are over 800 species of rhododendrons ranging from spreading groundcovers a few inches high to 100 foot…
