From the category archives:

How-to

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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How do I winter over hardy plants in containers?

November 11, 2008

Not too long ago, a reader emailed me and asked,
I bought some hostas and dwarf bleeding hearts to plant. Shortly thereafter I hurt my knee and I can’t go out there and plant them. They are all planted in one gallon plastic pots. How can I safely winter them? If I put them in my [...]

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Keeping rosemary alive indoors

October 19, 2008

Most herbs taste much better fresh, and rosemary is no exception. That’s why every winter I try to keep my rosemary alive in a pot inside the house. Rosemary is not reliably hardy north of zone 7, so while southerners can grow this in the ground and watch it take on shrub-like proportions, we cold [...]

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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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Spring madness: Search and rescue

May 8, 2007

If you are short on time, energy, and money, but notably the first two, be conservative. You’ll be more pleased with one fair-sized, well-composed, well-maintained bed than with a half-dozen large beds that are choked with quack grass and creeping Charlie.
That’s excellent advice from The Complete Flower Gardener by Karan Davis Cutler and Barbara W. [...]

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Pruning strategy for forsythia

April 27, 2007

Remember the forsythia I pruned so that I could force some branches? It doesn’t look so floriferous out in the open, does it? (For comparison, check out the forsythias here.)
When I’m faced with a plant that’s not doing as well as expected, I try to analyze the situation before taking action. In the case of [...]

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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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Using spreadsheets in garden planning: Part 2

January 17, 2007

In part 1 we logged into Google Spreadsheets and got things set up. Now let’s get this thing to do some work for us.
Creating the Formula
We’re going to teach this worksheet to multiply the price of a plant by the number of plants we want to give us the total price. The end result will [...]

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Using spreadsheets in garden planning: Part 1

January 16, 2007

I mentioned in a recent post that I use a spreadsheet to plan my garden purchases. Others have mentioned using a spreadsheet to track their seed sowing. But that doesn’t help you much if you don’t know a spreadsheet from a tablecloth, so let’s start right there: a spreadsheet is a computer program that arranges [...]

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Planting prima donna peonies

October 20, 2002

The peonies from Reath’s came on Monday the 7th, but because of various commitments I couldn’t plant them until Thursday. They came wrapped in plastic with wood shavings to keep them damp, and then the whole shebang was packed in straw or hay–the first time I ever saw that used as a shipping material. I [...]

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Prepare ye for frost

October 15, 2002

You were smart to bring them in. You don’t want the roots to freeze. Once they are in the ground, I would try to protect the tops for about a week to let them settle in. (The traditional vegetable garden protection is bed sheets from the house. You could also use the pot they just [...]

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