From the monthly archives:

April 2006

The Iceman Cometh: April freeze casualties

April 29, 2006

After my shrubs got planted they enjoyed a weekend of glorious weather. But I happened to notice Sunday morning that it was supposed to get in the low 30s that night. Low 30s, I knew, meant definitely below freezing around here. I made a mental note to bring in my potted plants and cover the [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Bending the Rules, Planting Shrubs

April 16, 2006

When we last left our gardener, she had just received her Fedco shrub order, shortly after removing one and a half pounds of dock root from the spot where she wanted to plant her Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer.’
Have you ever had a gardening project turn into a Project? Heh. If you’ve been gardening any length of [...]

10 comments Read the full article →

What’s Up? Dock!

April 11, 2006

From this space, roughly five feet wide by six feet deep . . . . . . I dug out all these dock roots (that’s a 15-inch ruler) . . . plus this wagon full of rocks . . .plus these additional weed roots, mostly goldenrod

15 comments Read the full article →

Signs of Spring

April 11, 2006

The Gardener in her Garden

Here I am this past Sunday transplanting Lemon Lilies (Hemerocallis flava) from the back of the Birthday Garden to the front of it. They are a very old-fashioned daylily, but not as vigorous as the Tawny Daylily (H. fulva). Although they bloom early for a daylily, they are shorter than the [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Four Yahoo Groups

April 11, 2006

The previous post about registration not being necessary was prompted by an email I got:
Hi! I registered to be a part of your Zone 1-3 group and I haven’t heard yet
whether or not I was accepted. Last I checked my membership was still pending.
Wondering what is up and what I should do [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Registration not necessary to comment on Cold Climate Gardening

April 8, 2006

In the upper right hand corner and down at the bottom of the sidebar (in the Meta section) is a link that says Register (if you’re not already registered). That is there just in case spammers or trolls get so bad that the only way to control them is to require registration for all commenters. [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

My Gardening Things

April 7, 2006

Thanks to the Garden Djinn, I learned a new song and a new word today. My Gardening Things is sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from the film The Sound of Music.
My Gardening Things
Catalogs breeding and seedlings are sprouting
Weeds have arisen and beds are a-calling
Spring has erupted and bitten us all
There’s so much [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

One Year Ago Today: Cold Climate Gardening’s transition to a website now complete

April 5, 2006

No, it’s not my blogiversary. That’s August 27, 2002. But one year ago today, I switched from an old, outdated version of Movable Type to WordPress. Along with the change to the inner workings of the website came a whole new look–and a whole lot of work. WordPress gave me the flexibility to integrate the [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Spring Panic

April 3, 2006

Michelle Owens is right. As soon as spring has sprung, I’m already behind. I used to think, “Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that later.” This kind of thinking explains why I was always planting stunted seedlings in July.
And then there’s the climate. Discerning when mud season ends and spring really begins–well, that’s not [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

What to put in your Homemade EarthBox(TM)

April 3, 2006

Shirley Glaudo writes:
I am working on building a homemade earth box. I would appreciate the “recipe”to fill the box.. what kind of soil, how do you determine how many plants and I hear you put fertilizer on top of the soil but what kind – 8-32-16? When and how do you water. I will [...]

9 comments Read the full article →