From the category archives:

Acquisitions

Did my plant make it through the winter?

May 8, 2009
Read about plants that didn't make it through the winter

Spring: when a gardener wonders which of last year’s new plants made it through the winter. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote down a list of things I had planted last year but hadn’t seen make an appearance yet. Here’s the list, with my current thinking on each (click on each thumbnail to enlarge):
Hedyrotis [...]

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Protecting Newly Transplanted Plants

April 28, 2009
Read about protecting your newly planted treasures from the weather

I bought this little Anemone nemorosa at the post-meeting plant sale at the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society in Ithaca, NY last Saturday. After doing a little research, and finding out it likes shade and woodsy soil, I planted it on the shady side of the house on Sunday evening. I [...]

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Anemone nemorosa

April 26, 2009

Planted the Anemone nemorosa that I bought at the Ithaca rock garden meeting. Pale lilac flowers.

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Using spreadsheets in garden planning: Part 4

January 21, 2007

In part 3 I showed how to put the finishing touches on a spreadsheet that calculated the potential cost of a plant order in progress. But because of its tabular format, a spreadsheet is often used in situations where a lot of information needs to be organized, even if no calculations are made. Below are [...]

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Using spreadsheets in garden planning: Part 3

January 20, 2007

In our last part we had finished entering data and were getting ready to sum up. Actually it’s best to create this autosumming Subtotal before you enter much data. That way, you have a good idea how much your wishlist is costing you as you go along.
Creating a Subtotal
The first thing you need to do [...]

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Gardening catalog deals and deadlines for 2007

January 5, 2007

Have you ever gotten ready to order from a mail order seed or plant merchant, only to discover if you’d ordered a few days sooner you could have gotten a discount or a freebie? I have. It’s more than annoying–it makes me feel like I’m losing my penny-pinching touch. So I decided that this year [...]

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Hawthorn Hill Farm in Cooperstown, NY

August 20, 2006

Thumbs, toes, and baby toes up, Hawthorn Hill Farm daylily nursery is a winner. The setting is bucolic, the grounds are beautiful, the plants are well grown, and the pricing is good.
Beth and I planned our trip for a Saturday and wouldn’t you know it, rain again. But the sky water was mostly light showers [...]

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A Few of My Favorite Things

July 18, 2006

It’s been a long time since I last published an entry. It was painful to be gone, and I’m glad to be back. Perhaps I’ll devote an entry to my excuses, but for now I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things, culled from images taken while I was “gone.”This is the bird [...]

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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 [...]

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I can’t believe I did this

February 12, 2006

I’ve wanted a birdbath for a long time, but most birdbaths I’ve seen just didn’t appeal to me. They either seemed too crude or too faddish, and every single one that didn’t look shoddy was too expensive. I really liked the classical good looks of this one, but it was $375 in an upscale catalog, [...]

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The Rest of my Plant Order

May 7, 2005

This is a continuation of the post started on May 4th.
Over the past couple of days it’s dawned on me that my plant acquiring habits have changed. When I started out gardening, I drew a map of my first bed to scale and decided on a color scheme. Then I looked through the catalogs and [...]

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Santa came today

May 4, 2005

Okay, it wasn’t really Santa Claus. It was just the mail lady and the UPS man, bringing my two plant orders of the season on the same day. But I felt the same excitement I had felt as a kid on Christmas morning as I made my way down the stairs, wondering if Santa had [...]

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Perched on the Edge of Spring

March 31, 2005

I can hear, but still not see redwing blackbirds trilling in the trees, and this morning the Canada geese announced themselves with plaintive hooting and great lazy shadows crossing the lawn. We are perched on the edge of spring! I’ve been preoccupied for the last three years with other matters, and gardening has taken [...]

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