When the tops of the alliums (garlic, onions and shallots) turn brown and fall over, it is time to harvest. Today I dug up the garlic and shallot bulbs. Tomorrow, I’ll dig up the onions. The harvesting is especially easy to do with the moist soil from the plentiful rains we’ve been having this month! [...]

There is often a spot in the mixed flower and shrub border that looks a little drab or dreary – because the flowers aren’t blooming yet; because you just cut back something that was going to seed; because you planted a colorful shrub that hasn’t yet reached its full size, so there is empty space [...]

                                1.  The tomatoes are coming along . . . This year, I decided to use a more aggressive training technique for my tomato plants. Instead of just letting them scramble up willy-nilly through a tall tomato cage, I’ve been [...]

On the 15th of each month, garden bloggers from around the globe post pictures of the things that are blooming in their gardens on that day. I’ve decided to join the crowd and add my own photo montage. There are a lot of things blooming right now, so I’ll limit mine to the most interesting [...]

If you live in the Midwest, you know that we’ve had storm after storm in the past few weeks. When it’s not raining, it’s hot and muggy. I’ve emptied one to four inches of water from my rain gauge every day or two. The rain is not falling slowly over time, so that it can [...]

During a recent visit to my brother’s house, he confessed that he might have killed some new Salvia ‘May Night’ plants that he had transplanted to the garden a few weeks before. Despite carefully burying the roots and watering the plants in, the plants had slowly turned brown. I took a look, and the plants [...]

One plant that I would be sad to live without is feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium, also sometimes sold as Chrysanthemum parthenium). It is a charming plant that is a member of the sunflower family. A perennial herb, it prefers to grow in full sun, and usually reaches about 24 inches tall. It is hardy to USDA zone 5. Feverfew [...]

Whew, it’s been a busy spring! I never got around to planting seeds for some of the summer crops in my vegetable garden, which I normally would have planted a week or two ago, so I tackled that job this weekend between thunderstorms. Here’s what I planted: Pole Beans: ‘Scarlet Runner’ from saved seeds and [...]

I’ve been in Michigan the past week. My daughter had an Odyssey of the Mind World Finals competition at Michigan State University – her team, from Ursuline Academy, came in tenth place in the WORLD for her problem! We also spent a few days with my brother in nearby Chelsea, MI. It was interesting staying [...]