Cold Climate Gardening

This just came to my attention. Barbara Damrosch dishes the dirt about these rodents in A Game of Whack-a-Vole:
No sentiment please. No matter how reverent we gardeners may feel about the web of life there are times when the list of predators must include you.
We’re on the same page, Barbara.

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Most garden blogs are written by home gardeners. A few are written by garden writers, and a few I’ve seen are written by nursery owners. The Plant Hunter - New Plants is the first blog I’ve seen written by someone involved in the process of bringing new plants to market. Tim Wood is currently the […]

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One of the first gardening things I did when we moved here over fifteen years ago was to dig up the rose bushes and get rid of them. I didn’t want to have anything to do with plants that needed to be babied to get through the winter and perpetually sprayed to get them through […]

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This is one of the better reasons for trimming back all your perennials in the fall. Less hidey-holes for the resident rodents. There are probably half a dozen of these holes in the Birthday Garden alone, and there are plenty in my other garden beds, too.
Where’s a feral cat when you need one? Or an […]

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Barbara Damrosch makes the case that frost is a gardener’s good friend. She points out that the action of frost on the soil helps to break it up and improve it, and gives suggestions on how to use this to your advantage. This is a more workable idea for vegetable gardens than for perennial beds, […]

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The standard (and good) advice is to plan your garden first, and then plant the woodies, the trees and shrubs, before anything else. This advice is rarely followed. Why? Because most gardeners don’t plan on being gardeners. It sneaks up on them. And what usually snookers them in is not a tree, but some ravishing […]

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I love a good gardening quote, and Henry Mitchell is eminently quotable.
It is a great joy the day we discover that we can learn things without having to make the mistake ourselves. (p. 81)
What makes a good garden quote? Well, I could take the easy way out and say I know it when I see […]

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