In depth gardening advice from an expert gardener
Are you tired of throwing out flowers only days after buying? Taylor Patterson, founder of floral design studio Fox Fodder Farm, is showing three ways to help make your flowers last longer.
Continue reading “VIDEO: 3 DIY ways to make flowers last longer”
Watch gardening expert Kristin Schleiter’s tips on how to plant a mixed container, and then design your own pots with plants you love.
Michael Nuñez of Popular Science magazine is on the TODAY plaza to show Matt Lauer some high-tech gadgets to make your lawn into a “smart yard,” including colorful solar-powered light, gardening apps, and a robotic lawn mower.
Continue reading “VIDEO: Gadgets to make your backyard high-tech”
One way to eliminate insects and insect larvae is by having poultry in your yard. In the United Kingdom it is very popular to have fowl in the garden. One interesting structure for the garden is the chicken coop. Some of them are quite attractive. Google up English Chicken coops and hit the Images button to see some creative designs for chicken coops. Here in the US, gardeners who have a large enough space are now also adding chicken coops to their gardens. Not only do chickens eat ticks and other insects but they can really be another  interesting element in your garden. If you pet and play with the chicks from an early age, they can become like pets. A cousin in Maine had some chickens that their daughter always played with so they became friendly. These chickens laid Easter egg colored eggs. And because the chickens ate ticks, the property was free of the pests.
TheGardenLady was raised with fowl on her parents’ farm. I loved when we got the baby chicks each spring. Nothing is cuter than a baby chick. However I found that more friendly than chickens are ducks. Ducks do what is called imprinting on the person who plays with them. Ducks really make loyal pets. Read this to learn about what it means when ducks imprint. And watch this video to see how cute a duck can be.
I have always wanted to try planting potatoes in a black plastic bag. You can use any black bag as long as it is not transparent. For directions check out the YouTube video above. This is a fun project for kids to try.
If you want to be an even lazier gardener, you can buy a sack of gardening soil and cut out a hole and plant your tomato plant in it. You will need to use fertilizer in the garden soil you buy if it doesn’t have any added and a tomato cage for the tomato plant to grow and not topple upright. (see here) You don’t have to only grow tomatoes and potatoes in the bags, you can grow beans or peppers or experiment with other vegetables or flowers.
If you live in an apartment and only have a deck or patio that is in a sunny location, try “farming in a bag.” Â Or if you are limited in space, you can garden without doing any building of raised beds or buying fancy containers.
Have fun. And let the readers of TheGardenLady blog know how you succeeded with your bag garden.
I just heard that a friend was bitten by a tick that she found embedded in her skin and she found the tell tale bull’s eye mark in the area. She fears that she may have Lyme disease and is being treated with antibiotics. She was lucky because she found both the tiny tick and the tell tale bull’s eye. Not everyone is so lucky to find this evidence. This is her second encounter with a tick that carries a disease. The last time she had a tick borne disease called Babesiosis. Ticks can carry numerous diseases, not just Lyme disease and/or Babesiosis. See here.
Because ticks carry or are what is called a vector for numerous diseases, you can get different tick borne diseases. And you can get these tick borne  diseases in many parts of the world as well as in all states in the US. See here.
Real Spring weather might finally get here. The flowers don’t seem to mind this unusually coldish April weather that we are having. They are merrily blooming their heads off, while I am too cold to sit in the garden to do any work. So I am just walking around and admiring.
This is the time of the year to take a walk in the woods to see the little flowers that are called Spring ephemerals. These are perennials with a very short lifetime. They bloom and then the plant seems to disappear. The word ephemeral means “lasting for a very short time.” Â And one doesn’t see the plant again until it flowers the following spring.
Since TheGardenLady’s property is basically in the woods, my front lawn is covered with some of the spring ephemerals. Growing up, my daughter loved the flower called the Spring Beauty -Claytonia virginiana. I hate to mow my front lawn that first time in the spring because I always fear that because we couldn’t see the plants after flowering, we would kill the plants. But so far, we are lucky that they are still coming up every year for our delight. (One reason for NEVER using weed killers.)
I fear that spring ephemerals are not the hardiest “weed” in the garden and from what I have read about them, they do need a special environment- the rich undisturbed moist woodland. And they also need very specific pollinators. One pollinator is the Bumble bee (Bombus). (A reason not to use pesticides, too.)
Some of the other spring ephemerals on my property are:
Erythronium americium (Trout lily, Yellow Trout lily, Yellow dogtooth violet)
I had never seen this flower before I moved to this property. The first year I raked and found a trout lily, I made my husband come out to photograph it. I am proud to say that I now have one section of my garden where the trout lily has grown into a large 2 ft by 2ft patch.
I also have had the Trillium with the common name of Wakerobin. I guess it got its common name because it blooms in the spring when robins seem to awake after winter (though some robins stay around and are awake all winter). I looked for the Wakerobins this year but didn’t find them. Did they die off because of something or will they come back another year? It takes 7 years from it to grow from seed to plant.
Can you plant any of these spring ephemerals? Â If you have the proper environment that they like the answer is yes.
If you want to try raising spring ephemerals, don’t dig them up from the wild. Get them from friends’ gardens or there are nurseries that sell them. The good nurseries all raise them from seed- not from the wild. You can even buy seeds. Some of the spring ephemerals like Virginia bluebells I have planted and they are easy to grow and I am growing them successfully. Some like the bloodrood Sanguinaria canadensis and the Trillium grandiflorum are struggling even on my woodland property.
Go on line to find the particular plant you want. One wildflower seed source is this:
For buying plants check out this:
For more information on spring ephemerals read this:
TheGardenLady readers would love to see photos of any spring ephemerals growing in your woodland garden.
Every gardener needs a few tools, and a few tricks to keep their plants and flowers growing and blooming. Here are the basics from gardening editor Kristin Schleiter on how to maintain your garden.
This spring, TheGardenLady just planted a packet of organic Sunflowers Helianthus annuus Lemon Queen (see here). These sunflowers are known to attract numerous kinds of bees and butterflies. And after they have finished blooming, I can save the seeds to plant again the following year as well as give seeds to friends so that more gardens will have a good host plant for more pollinators.
But in my garden I also have many other native plants, as well as nonnative plants, that pollinators love to nectar on. These include:
Scabiosa pincushion flower
Of course, TheGardenLady has many more pollinator plants, but the above list was considered among the best plants for attracting pollinators. For a more complete list of pollinator plants for your area, go here.
What are you, dear reader, doing to attract pollinators to your property that you would recommend others to also do?
TheGardenLady received this question from Yvonne.
I planted a hass avocado tree in my garden about three years ago and it has been doing great until a week ago. I live in the NE side of Houston TX and have had so much rain in the last 30 days that the leaves are wilting and turning brown. The tree is about 11 ft tall. What should I do?
Flooding or too much rain is not good for most plants. It deprives the roots of oxygen. Avocado trees are particularly stressed from getting water-logged. (see here)
With all the rains the news has been reporting that Texas is having, there will be lots of plant problems – not only with your avocado tree. It is sad to say, but you might lose this avocado tree because of the excessive rains.
You can leave it in the ground and hope that it does not die.
Or, to try to save it as you asked, if the tree is not too big for you to handle you can dig it up and re-pot it with new soil. Get rid of as much of the mud as you can, put the tree in a pot large enough to put soil underneath and around the root (it should not be planted deeper in the pot than it was in the ground), prune back the tree from the top of the plant so that the tree is short (this will allow the plant to concentrate its energy to growing the root, not the entire plant) and then bring the newly re-potted plant into the house. Because you gave it the new dry soil, water it a normal amount – do not over water.
Though the video above shows how the transfer is done from pot to pot, you will be putting it in from the ground, but the instructions are the same (see here). Get the soil recommended in this video and give the tree a good start with azomite. What is azomite? (see here)