A few weeks ago, a friend arrived for dinner bearing a potted plant covered with the most amazing orange flowers. It was supposed to be a gift for my husband, who had recently spent 12 days in the hospital (you can read about that on my other blog), but I couldn’t take my eyes off the huge, intensely colored blooms. I’m pretty familiar with most common plants, especially ones sold in pots, already in bloom, however I didn’t recognize this one at all. What in the world could it be?
Category: Gardening
Blue Stars for Your Garden
Think of stars, fallen from the sky to land on green leaves. In April to June, flowers with five pointed petals, in shades of white to a pale sky-blue, appear in clusters on one-foot plants. The subtle hues give this perennial a peaceful presence in the garden.
A Plant Family to Love
What do all these plants have in common?[1]
Agastache x ‘Blue Fortune’ – Anise Hyssop
Buying Boxed Perennials
The calendar says it’s spring, and who is a gardener to disagree? Walk down the aisle of any Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Walmart, and you’ll find a colorful display of boxed bare root perennials, ready to pop into your warm spring soil. Cannas, lilies, bleeding heart, and clematis. Peonies, six dormant plants. Gladiolus and hostas. Caladium, phlox, and kniphofia. The photos on the packaging are so enticing to our flower-starved souls (especially after experiencing our recent “bomb cyclone,” a blizzard of apocalyptic proportions, which dumped 4-foot drifts in our yard)!
Plants Have Noses!
While plants don’t have lungs, they do need to exchange gases with the atmosphere in order to live, just as we do. To accomplish this, they have various sorts of openings.
Spring’s Dandy Lions
In spite of this week’s blizzard, spring is almost here, and soon we’ll be seeing bright yellow flowers filling the lawn or growing in a crack in the sidewalk. Dandelions—you either love them or you hate them, but it’s hard to ignore them.
Starting Seeds: Containers
I first posted this about ten years ago. Since my husband had unexpected bypass surgery today, I don’t have the time (or the concentration!) to write a new post. I hope you find this flashback to be a helpful reminder as we start our seeds for the upcoming growing season.
Raise your hand if you remember starting seeds in elementary school. Perhaps they sprouted in the cells of a cardboard egg carton. Sound familiar? Now, did your seedlings grow and thrive? Hmm, thought so. Granted, you probably forgot to water them, or you dropped the whole shebang on the way home from school. But it wasn’t all your fault. Egg cartons make awful seed starting containers.
What should you use to start those little seedlings? There are a number of excellent choices. Suitable containers share several attributes.
