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For my garden column this week, I wrote about adding native plants to your landscape. Here’s a link to it in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Native plants a natural fit for home landscapes. I think a lot of folks are unaware of the wide variety of native plants available to us and how they add to our gardens. Many […]
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How many of you are yearning for some color in your garden right now? If you live in a temperate area of the country like I do, I’m certain you are just as anxious as I am. One of the things I’m slowly starting to see in my garden is spring bulbs, and they are a sight for sore eyes, […]
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OK, so your Amaryllis (a.k.a. Hippeastrum) bulb has bloomed. Now what? Don’t throw it in the trash or the compost bin! With a little care, they can bloom again for you next year. Every winter, I love growing these amazing bulbs because it makes me feel like I’m gardening while the snow is flying outside. The flowers are absolutely gorgeous […]
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Do deer drive you insane? It seems like they are a huge problem in so many areas of the country and I get a lot of questions about how to keep them out of the garden. While visiting a friend late last summer, I saw how she is dealing with deer — easily and successfully. And you need to know […]
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I recently wrote that February is the month to pot up any geranium plants you may have overwintered. Well, it’s also time to pot up your overwintered Canna lily bulbs. That’s pretty exciting, right? When you think of how nurseries and garden centers sell a single potted Canna lily for anywhere from $6 to $12 each, it’s well worth your […]
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If you overwintered your geraniums using my method of knocking the soil off the roots and storing them in a bag or box, it’s time to pot them up again. I don’t know about you, but I find that exciting because it means spring really is coming! I just potted up mine and had fairly good results from the overwintering […]
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I recently wrote about using “vernalization” for starting artichoke seeds. There are two other seed-starting terms that you might find both interesting and useful when growing certain types of plants: stratification and scarification. I thought it might be helpful to define and elaborate on all three terms here so everything is together in one place for you: Vernalization: This is […]
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I know I’m forcing the issue here but, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the bulbs we’ve all known for so many years as Amaryllis are actually called Hippeastrum. So here is an update on how my Hippeastrum is doing! (After all, as a garden writer, I should probably be using the correct terms myself, right?) This gorgeous […]
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Well, here we are in the dead of winter and I’m talking about how to propagate geraniums by taking cuttings. Why now? Well, the cuttings I took of my ivy geraniums last fall have been doing so well, I decided it was an important skill to share with you. The take-home message from my latest video is simple: Don’t be afraid […]
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Have you ever noticed how we humans tend to focus on the things we have done wrong, rather than all of the things we’ve done right? Well, we gardeners are no exception. We often fixate on our “failures” rather than learning from them, which ultimately leads to success in our gardens. As a garden writer, I often hear from readers […]
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