Choosing a vine for the garden is a tricky business. The perfect vine would be one that is beautiful, easy to grow and stops at the end of the trellis. The stopping part – or perhaps more accurately failing to…
Silver Lace Vine
Category: Gardening & Landscape
Blooming Morning Glories
It will be a jungle out there when my morning glory vines grow up! The morning glory can grow to be ten feet tall or more in a season, which made it a popular privy plant in the old days…
Alpine Strawberries
Alpine strawberries cause confusion, as sometimes they’re considered wild, and sometimes they’re not. They’re generally of the genus Fragaria vesca, which grows wild in northern Europe. They can be both red or white. If you do a search online for…
Okra plants
My okra plants are producing now! Grown from seed started indoors in April. It was first cultivated in Ethiopia. Records of its cultivation in ancient Egypt date to over 3000 years ago! In the following centuries was spread throughout Africa, the…
Marvel of Peru
Another one of my favorite flowers are blooming now: Four o’clocks or Marvel of Peru. It is an unusual plant, in that it may produce flowers of different colors on the same plant—including white, yellow, and a variety of pink,…
Scarecrows
As long as there have been farmers and gardeners, there have been birds trying to eat their crops. And throughout the ages, farmers have tried to come up with ingenious ways to scare them off. Nowadays, scarecrows are familiar sights,…
Purslane
First year in growing purslane. I have planted a couple of plants in a cement block and they are doing good. In the Mediterranean, it is used in soups and salads and has lots of potential health benefits. It lowers…
Garden Hacks For Lazy Gardeners
Here are some gardening hacks to use in your garden. Adding coffee grounds to the soil in your garden is a great way to enrich it with nitrogen, which encourages microorganism growth in the soil. Using coffee grounds seems to…
Garden Pummeled by Hail
It’s such a sinking feeling to have one’s garden pummeled by hail especially for farmers who lost crops. Anyways in a few days to a week you’ll probably get a good idea what is salvageable or not. It never looks…
Creating a Garden Collection
Creating a garden starts out as an innocent pursuit. You just want a pretty patch of flower or vegetables that flows and looks beautiful at least three seasons out of four. But there is that one plant that outshines the…
Diseases in Tomatoes
We’re having a lot of trouble with diseases in tomatoes. Leaves turn brown from the bottom of the plant and move upward. Is it a blight or a wilt? We’ve moved the plants and rotated them to a new location…
Outdoor Landscape Lighting
Since most outdoor landscape lighting is low voltage, it’s safe and easy enough for any DIYer to install. In fact, the only special tool you’ll need is a wire stripper, however, now many light systems have come out with a…
Growing Herbs in Pots and Planters
By growing herbs in pots and planters, you can grow tender perennials, such as rosemary and flowering sages year-round. I just bring them indoors in the fall. In addition, container gardening is a good option for gardeners who have limited…
Cedar Apple Rust in South Dakota
Cedar apple rust is a fungal disease that requires juniper plants to complete its complicated two-year lifecycle. Spores overwinter as a reddish-brown gall on young twigs of various juniper species. In early spring, during wet weather, these galls swell, and…
Container Gardening
Container gardening is a super-easy way to dress up your front porch, add a splash of color to shady areas, or cope with poor soil in your yard. Many plants thrive in containers. The most important thing is good drainage.…