MULCH IS NOT A DECORATIVE ITEM, like carpeting or paint! If chosen carefully and applied properly, it’s the most important soil-building, plant-sustaining tool a gardener has. At this time of year, I’m asked a lot about mulch, but most of the questions make me a little nervous, because they center on the aesthetics only. It seemed a good moment for a friendly reminder about what mulch is (and isn’t), and how to use it, in the form of my Mulch FAQs.
i repeat: mulch is not a decorative accent!
April 17, 2012 at 1:05 pm
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margaret’s garden on the garden rant site
April 17, 2012 at 12:49 pm
I LEFT HOME LAST WEEK (without telling Jack first!) for a lecture in Baltimore, the farthest I’ve been from here in more years than I can recall. Besides a great crowd at the event held by the Maryland Horticultural Society, there was an extra treat: I got to meet Susan Harris, one of the four bloggers who collaborate on the wildly popular site called Garden Rant. Here’s what Susan had to say about that.
tomato 101: sowing, transplanting, caring
April 16, 2012 at 10:13 am
THE ANNUAL RITUAL BEGINS: At tax time in the Northeast, we start our tomato seeds indoors, though many of you may be putting your seedlings out in the garden already or otherwise way ahead of me. Whatever part of the delicious but sometimes confounding tomato-growing cycle you’re in, we’ve got it covered:
help! one thousand too many garden to-do’s
April 16, 2012 at 9:01 am
UNDER THE BRONZE FROG ‘PAPERWEIGHT’ (actually a door knocker that never met up with a door), there they are: The last week’s garden to-do lists, scrawled by a certain madwoman on re-used computer paper in her compulsive hand. Scary, isn’t it? I so love when I get to cross out an item, even though another 10 quickly replace it. The spring that’s too fast and too dry (and today far too hot: 87 degrees forecast) is one I cannot keep up with, but I’ll pretend with the pacifier of my funny lists to try. How are you faring over there?
beloved conifer: prostrate japanese plum yew
April 15, 2012 at 10:06 am
I KILLED, OR AT LEAST MAIMED, ITS UPRIGHT COUSIN. TWICE. But the prostrate-growing Japanese plum yew, Cephalotaxus harringtoniana ‘Prostrata,’ just keeps happily stretching its legs—and arms—on my back hillside. A handsome, heat-tolerant conifer that creates a sprawl of semi-glossy green groundcover in the shade…even though it’s many times wider than any book or other reference promised. More of a good thing, I guess you could say, and also deer-resistant. [read more…]
up close and personal with great blue herons
April 10, 2012 at 9:05 am
THIS SIMPLY MAKES ME HAPPY. Talk about up close and personal, huh? Thanks as ever to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for letting us see such intimate views of the avian world. You may recall that the great blues like the occasional feast in my backyard frogponds, but I have a cure for that (or at least a semi-deterrent): [read more…]
need great groundcovers? who doesn’t!
April 9, 2012 at 8:59 am
IF IT EVER RAINS PROPERLY here, I know what I plan to do: divide and conquer! (Conquer beds, that is, with divided-up groundcovers.) A recap of some favorites that I rely on:
doodle by andre: making toast, al fresco
April 5, 2012 at 6:11 am
NEED I SAY MORE? (Oh wait, I already did.) Thanks, dear doodling Andre Jordan, for taking my calls lately. A girl needs a Complaint Dep’t. 24/7/365 these up-and-down days, it seems.
growing under cover: tips from paul gallione
April 4, 2012 at 1:05 pm
I PLAN TO GROW Crucifers and Cucurbits under cover this year, and the rampaging local woodchuck is the least of the reason why. But I wanted to get the details right from the sometimes-overwhelming catalog choices—the appropriate weight of fabric, and the gear to support the row cover and hold it in place, among other tips—so I called Paul Gallione of Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine for some advice. [read more…]
