From the category archives:

Garden chores

All Annuals Planted Now

June 28, 2009

Planted 6 Henna coleus and the last 2 Mint Mocha coleus and Midnight Lace vine. All annuals finally in the ground. Weeding next.

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Planting Coreopis and Rearranged Heucheras

June 20, 2009

Planted Redshift coreopsis and rearranged some heucheras last night and weeded here and there. The coreopsis is a trial plant from Skagit Gardens. On the tag it looks like it has a maroon ring around the center, so I planted it near the purple smoke bush. But in the accompanying literature it is pictured with [...]

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Uncovered my ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea

June 8, 2009
Thumbnail image for Uncovered my ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea

I finally uncovered my ‘Endless Summer’ and ‘Forever&Ever’ hydrangeas. I had discovered that dumping a bunch of dry leaves over them in the fall was sufficient to protect them from the erratic spring freezes that we have. The old branches help hold the mulch in place, and I cut them down in the spring when [...]

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More Annuals Planted and a Bit of Weeding

June 5, 2009

Planted 2 King Tut papyrus and 3 Augusta Blue Skies nierembergia, and weeded the front bed where I put the nierembergia.

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Pruning with a Reciprocating Saw

May 12, 2009
Use a reciprocating saw for your medium size pruning jobs

Carol’s done it. Mary Ann, the Idaho Gardener’s done it. So has Mr. McGregor’s Daughter and Cindy from My Corner of Katy and M Sinclair Stevens from Zanthan Gardens. They’ve all used a reciprocating saw to prune woody plants.
Not only have they pruned with a recip saw, they raved about how easy it made pruning. [...]

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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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Seedling light stand cleanup

April 18, 2009

Finished reorganizing the seed stand. Culled all the broken flats. Organized the cell packs. All this for the master seed starter, not me. My eldest daughter does most of the seed starting. I taught her everything I knew, and she improved upon it. So I just get everything back in order after a winter of [...]

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Canna Repotted

April 18, 2009

Repotted my one and only canna. It was sprouting in the basement.

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Fed My Roses

April 17, 2009

Put alfalfa pellets around my 3 roses today. I can’t even remember when I bought the alfalfa. Pee-yoo!

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Chores

April 15, 2009

Compost turned today. Long-lost kitchen thermometer found. Now if they could only find the measuring cup . . .

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Mud Season Chores: Cleaning up

March 24, 2009
Sedum thumbnail

I hate to admit it to you Southerners, but when the snow melts, what it invariably reveals is…a mess. I’m not just talking about the dead vegetation that needs to be cut back. There’s human-made messes that ought to be dealt with, too. But let’s talk about the plants first.
Cut back and clear out dead [...]

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Mud Season Chores: Pruning

March 22, 2009
Pruning with loppers thumbnail

Mud season, despite its fickle weather, not only has color, but its own set of gardening chores. For those of us living in cold climates, these chores anticipate the growth that will soon come as so many plants emerge from dormancy. Growth is so slow at the beginning of mud season that it is easy [...]

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Two things I learned while weeding today

November 6, 2008

normally don’t weed my beds in November, because it is too chilly, wet, windy, and perhaps snowy. However, we have been enjoying a string of unseasonably warm days and I was able to take advantage of it today. Weeding grass out of daylily foliage is usually pretty tricky, because the leaves are so similar. [...]

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