Posts

Posted on

How to deal with hairy bittercress and other weeds

Cardamine hirsuta, Lamium purpureum, Glechoma hederacea by AnneTanne

There is a cute little weed with tiny white flowers that is growing in many gardens and lawns in the United States, Europe  and Asia.  It is a winter annual that grows in spring. A winter annual is a plant that germinates in the fall and winter so that you may think it is dead because you don’t see it in those seasons and then in the spring it comes up, seemingly all over the place. (see here)  Some of the common names of this plant are hairy bittercress, pepperweed, snapweed, and land cress. Its Latin name is Cardamine hirsuta and it is in the mustard family which means it can be eaten. Mustards are winter annual plants. Hairy bittercress likes to grow in disturbed soil, in a sunny area that may be a bit wet. It is also found in greenhouses and newly potted plants and gardens.

Continue reading “How to deal with hairy bittercress and other weeds”

Posted on

A Good British Gardening and Landscaping Website

Now That’s a Vegetable Garden! by UGArdener

 

TheGardenLady is always looking for new, good websites to recommend. I love good gardening and landscape gardening ideas. And since I love British Gardens, when I can find a British website that has garden-related material, I am doubly interested.  Don’t misunderstand, I also use my favorite websites, the tried and true, such as Wikipedia, which has encyclopedic information.

Recently I discovered “SuperSavvyme” a British website. This site meets a lot of the criteria that TheGardenLady looks for. They have straightforward, inexpensive and easy tips for landscaping, such as how much garden paths add to your garden landscape or how much lighting adds to your garden with ideas of types of lighting to use.  They have tips on various plants to use in your garden- the rose growing column was particularly helpful, especially if you want to plant new rose bushes or want to know when to prune your existing rose bushes.

Continue reading “A Good British Gardening and Landscaping Website”

Posted on

The Banana Slug lives in Heaven

 

There are readers of TheGardenLady blog who tell me that “shh, it is a secret”: but they have found Heaven and it is in California. From looking at the photos below, I think they are correct.

The other weekend these Heaven-dwellers hiked to a favorite spot in the Redwood forest where they not only got to see their favorite slug- the banana slug.  The Pacific banana slug is the second-largest species of terrestrial slug in the world, growing up to 25 centimetres (9.8 in) long.  Banana slugs can move at 61⁄2 inches (17 cm) per minute. But they also got to see their favorite salamanders.

Do TheGardenLady readers agree that these Californians may have found the door to Heaven?

photo(3)

photo(1)

photo(2)

photo(4)

photo(5)

 

Posted on

VIDEO: Why Shane Claiborne Began Turning Guns into Garden Tools

As debates over gun control continue we need to completely reimagine the way we live in the world, says Shane Claiborne, author and activist who lives in Philadelphia. Looking for a creative solution to violence around him, he turned two AK-47s into a rake, a shovel and three hand trowels. “Now there’s people from all over the world that have sent us pictures of weapons conversion, so it’s snowballing and I think it’s a beautiful image,” he said. Earlier, Odyssey Networks profiled The Simple Way, which Claiborne co-founded.

Thanks for checking us out. Please take a look at the rest of our videos and articles.

To stay in the loop, bookmark our homepage.

Posted on

Raising chickens in your backyard

Our Chicken Coop by furtwangl

A very popular trend today is raising chickens in one’s back yard. Lots of people like the idea of having chickens in the yard because they eat insects and can help rid the lawn of ticks. When you raise just a few chickens, they can become pets. And think of the wonderful fresh eggs one gets from the hens. Some of the chickens even hatch Easter egg colored eggs.

When I was a child, every spring my parents would get a big box of baby chicks from the chicken hatchery. I loved the fluffy yellow babies that chirped in the box- we kept them in the house for warmth; but once the chicks started shedding their yellow down and started getting feathers, I must confess to losing interest in playing with them. Not all the animals on the farm are considered playthings. But a cousin who raises a few chicks on her property in Maine says her chickens have grown up and are family pets.

Continue reading “Raising chickens in your backyard”

Posted on

Honey Bee Troubles!

Bees are in Trouble! by Richard Elzey

TheGardenLady just read the most recent articles on the death of the honey bees and other bees. (see here) The death of bees has been a concern for a number of years now, but the most recent articles are saying that this year is the worst ever – that beekeepers are seeing death rates of up to 50% of their honeybees.

TheGardenLady wrote about the frightening loss of Monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico this year. So TheGardenLady is writing this column  to beg readers PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT use pesticides in your gardens or on your grounds this year. And please spread this advice to everyone you know. Get your kids to talk about what is happening. Make it a local issue that will grow into a national issue and finally into an international issue.

Continue reading “Honey Bee Troubles!”

Posted on

Macy’s 2013 Flower Show

1
 

This week TheGardenLady went to Macy Department Store’s annual flower show in Manhattan, NY. This year the theme is The Painted Garden.

Because Macy’s is doing renovation work in the store, this year like last year, they had the main part of the flower show in a tent behind the store. The tent is set up on Herald Square.  Luckily when I visited, the line was very short going into the tent so that when I got into the tent that was filled with flowers, I was able to get close enough to see the displays without much difficulty.

The photos on this post could be taken without too many people obstructing the view. I cannot imagine what it is like if the line of people were longer. There are so many flowers in the tent, there is barely room for people to walk around. And I was lucky when I looked at the decorated windows because there were not too many people surrounding them.  I was able to get close to every window display. Unfortunately the glare on the windows made it difficult to take photos of all of  these window displays.

Continue reading “Macy’s 2013 Flower Show”

Posted on

Gardens to see spring bulbs in bloom

MARCH BANK WINTERTHUR by PHOTOPHANATIC1

It is still a little too early for many spring bulbs to be blooming in TheGardenLady’s garden. In a few more days, flowers will seriously start showing off. The buds on my daffodils are ready to open- one already did.  I can see some hyacinths forcing their flowers out of the leaf bases. One gets a little impatient waiting.

If you enjoy seeing masses of spring bulbs in bloom outdoors, there are wonderful gardens that one can visit.

Winterthur in Deleware is a wonderful place to see early spring bulbs in bloom. This is the week is when their March Bank is especially lovely. What they refer to as the March Bank is the oldest surviving garden area at Winterthur. H.F. DuPont, the owner of the estate, began naturalizing daffodils on this rolling hill in the early 1900s and “by the 1940s had planted thousands of snowdrops, snowflakes, crocus, squills, and glory-of-the-snow.”

Continue reading “Gardens to see spring bulbs in bloom”