I’ve been eating a lot of my favorite early spring vegetable the past few weeks. Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) is the earliest vegetable harvested from the garden each spring – a sure sign that the gardening season has begun! One of nature’s perfect foods, asparagus is elegant yet easy to prepare. It is equally good [...]
Last spring, my husband removed some really overgrown burning bushes, also called winged euonymus or Euonymus alatus, from the garden at the top of the driveway. I was surprised that he wanted to do this – he usually balks at felling plants that are still alive – but I was overjoyed at the chance to [...]
Since I started to grow unusual edible plants, the hardy purple passion flower or Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) has become one of my favorite vines. Its exotic, stunningly beautiful flowers are set off by the attractive dark green foliage. The small, yellow, edible fruit produced in the fall are another reason to love this vine. The name [...]
It felt like 100 degrees in the shade on Sunday afternoon when a group of gardeners came to tour my kitchen garden. Not ideal weather for this enjoyable pursuit! Still, the intrepid garden gazers assembled at my house and ventured out into the broiling sun to take a look at edible plants in the landscape, [...]
I was at my mother-in-law’s house last weekend, and there were a couple of garden tours going on in the surrounding community. Like many gardeners, my heart quickens when I hear or read about a garden tour! Botanical gardens are wonderful if you want to glean information on different plants, to see collections of the [...]
Last year I purchased a small fig tree in a 2-gallon container near the end of the growing season. Since fig trees are not hardy in my zone 5 garden, I kept the fig over the winter in my unheated garage. In early spring, I repotted the fig into a larger and more decorative container [...]
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 [...]
Strawberry shortcake – the dessert I dream about nine months of the year, and consume as often as possible the other three! This is a photo of the shortcake I enjoyed last night, using berries from our new strawberry patch. We started the rather large strawberry garden last summer. It is an oval shape, about [...]
I gave a presentation at the Civic Garden Center in Cincinnati the other night on Edible Landscaping. Edible landscaping is the use of food-producing plants in the landscape. Many trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants with edible parts can serve the same function as ornamentals, and look just as good. Edibles can be incorporated into any garden [...]
Last year at this time, my daughter decided that she had outgrown her swing set. We listed the swing set on Craig’s list, and a young family came out, dismantled the set and took it away. I was ecstatic – a new place to plant stuff! I decided to use the space to grow things [...]