Bloom Tuesday, No. 12

Bloom Tuesday? It felt a bit like doom Tuesday, what with the car breaking down in the Target parking lot, the phone lines getting cut at my office (no internet or phone all afternoon), and yet another dog-related health crisis. (Good news! We now qualify for the regular customer discount on lab work at the [...]

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What’s Up with Begonias?

A reader e-mailed me about a problem with his begonias, which he says are performing much more poorly than they have in previous years.
Here’s how he described the problem:
” The begonias were planted on Mother’s Day in rows 9 inches apart with 10-inch spacing
in the rows…With the exception of limited sunlight in the AM, they [...]

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Bloom Tuesday, No. 11

Last night, while walking the dog about 9 p.m., my husband commented that it seemed darker than usual. We have crossed over to the backside of summer, and as if they know it cannot last forever, the summer flowers are blooming in desperation.
A daylily I was given during a Garden Writers of America tour last [...]

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Taking Better Garden Photos

Many gardeners like to take pictures of their gardens, partly to keep records of how things look and partly out of the parent-like pride people rightly feel about their gardens. Getting good garden shots is not easy–as I have certainly discovered while keeping this blog. Some photos look washed out, some too bright, sometimes the [...]

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Garden Trends: The Cool Stuff

Who knew my Mom was so cutting edge? In Florida this winter, she showed me her containers, a trio of nice-looking decorative pots, each with a single Sunpatiens impatiens in it. “I’m not putting all kinds of plants in my pots anymore,” she said. “I just put one in there and it looks good.”
Right [...]

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Garden Trends: The Big Picture

While gardening is often viewed as a classic, homespun activity, it is as shaped by trends and fashions just as much as clothing, home decor, or music. Ed Lyon, director of the Allen Centennial Gardens at the University of Wisconsin and a frequent garden lecturer and author, helped Master Gardeners pick through demographic data and [...]

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Another Knockout Coming in 2009

Good news for lazy rose growers: Another Knockout® rose will be available next year, and this one is white. William Radler, the Milwaukee breeder who created the incredibly popular Knockout roses in his backyard, told a group of Midwest Master Gardeners that a new white rose, expected to be called WhiteOut, will be introduced in [...]

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Schmoozing with the Master Gardeners

Despite a lot of rough weather in Wisconsin, I’ve arrived in Milwaukee for the Midwest Regional Conference of Master Gardeners, which has attracted gardeners from Minnesota to Michigan. Full disclosure: I am NOT a master gardener–far from it! But consistent with the generosity that is the essence of master gardeners, the conference is open to [...]

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Bloom Tuesday, No. 10

The summer flowers are in full bloom now, and for that, I am grateful. The perennial bed near my front door tends to look a little–um, how shall I put this?–scruffy–until July when the rudbeckia and coneflowers come in. The bed looks nice and summery now and a few other mid-summer blooms have checked in [...]

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A Tale of Two Tomatoes

I bought the two tomatoes pictured here on the same day, from the same vendor and have fertilized and watered them in nearly identical ways. They are different varieties, but each tomato came in the same size pot, a 4-incher. So what happened? Why does the tomato on the left look so sad, even [...]

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