From the category archives:

Garden chores

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

I 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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Goldenrod: This native plant should be kept out of the garden

October 9, 2008

Goldenrod is my enemy
There, I’ve said it. I don’t care if goldenrod is a native plant; it is no longer welcome in my gardens. I tried to be understanding, truly, I did, but it just did not want to play nice with the other plants. It did not want to play at all: total garden [...]

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The No-Dig Garden Experiment

September 30, 2008

It all started when Jenn said my new bird bath needed some phlox. “Gosh, she’s right,” I mused. “And I have some bright pink phlox in the front bed that I want to move out before I dig out the goldenrod infestation. Those pink phlox would look perfect by the bird bath.”
Bird bath transforms septic [...]

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The first frost: To cover or not to cover?

September 24, 2008

Carol over at May Dreams Gardens advises us to Embrace The End of The Growing Season For A Happier Life. She says, “Save yourself both time and worry and forget about covering plants in the fall.”

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Weeding for the audience

July 27, 2008

Every year about this time, the Juneberry bed looks like this:

This photo was taken last July, but gives you the general idea: milkweed, musk mallow, lambs’ quarters, and a weedy form of evening primrose all detract from the daylilies that are supposed to shine here.

Being a detail person, in past years I have attempted to [...]

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The View From Here

June 4, 2008

The view from here is wonderful, as long as my back is to the garden, and my gaze goes across the road, across the far side of the valley.

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Servicing my watering needs

April 23, 2007

I had a conversation with a gardening friend about watering the other day. We each have strong personalities and the talk was lively and interesting, filled with opinions and advice. When the time came for “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” I did and I’ll share them with you too.
I have spent [...]

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Early Pruning

March 18, 2007

Pruning the apple trees is a rite of spring. In past years I had a tendency to get started late and finish in a somewhat hurried splurge of activity—tinged with a bit of panic that perhaps I wouldn’t get it done in time. This year I had to take a different approach.
Since I’m no longer [...]

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Uh-oh. Look who’s coming to dinner!

November 28, 2006

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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Frost, a Gardener’s Good Friend

November 26, 2006

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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