Category: Plants

photos of plants

Posted on in Gardening, Weeds

What’s a Weed?

Taraxacum officinale Dandilion @DBG LAH 001

A weed is…

I subscribe to a variety of online gardening groups, mostly on Facebook. Lately there has been a lot of ranting discussion about whether or not dandelions are weeds. On the one hand, various gardeners are asking for help controlling dandelions in their lawns and gardens, often to please a landlord. On the other hand, various opinionated persons climb onto their soapboxes and extol the virtues of dandelion leaves, wine, and bee-friendly flowers, chastising anyone who would dare to disagree. (more…)

Posted on in Gardening

Annuals for Bouquets

Narcissus_Daffodils_Seattle-WA_LAH_9750.nef

Every year in early  March, Pete and I discover a FedEx package on our front porch. It typically arrives on a cold and blustery, perhaps snowy, day. It may be winter outside, but I know that spring will be found inside that box. I run downstairs, grab a large vase, and rush back to the kitchen, where I fill the vase with warm water. I eagerly tear open the package. Then, carefully extracting the bundles of flowers from the box, and sliding the rubber bands off to separate them, I snip off the ends of each stem with a pair of kitchen scissors  and arrange the as yet unopened daffodils in the vase. Thanks to some wonderful friends, over the next week or so, cheerful yellow flowers will provide the perfect antidote for Colorado’s late springs.

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Posted on in Botany for Gardeners

Cool Beans

When we think of legumes, we think of peas and beans, but those common foods are just the beginning. The pea family (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) is the third largest family of plants, with somewhere between 13,000 and 19,000 species (botanists disagree) that range from large trees to sprawling vines to shrubs and small forbs. They may look quite different from one another, but a careful examination will reveal a number of similarities, making the members of this fascinating family fairly easy to identify.

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Posted on in Garden Myths, Veggies

Garden Advice: Blossom End Rot

blossom end rot - public domainYou’ve put in the effort and grown your own juicy tomatoes. But when you finally go to pick them, you realize that the end opposite the stem is sunken and oozing. Yuck—it’s disgusting. Who wants to eat a tomato that’s rotting on the vine?

What you have is a tomato with blossom end rot (BER). It’s just what the name suggests—the blossom end of the tomato (where the flower fell off long ago) is decomposing, ruining the fruit. (Yes, we all know that tomatoes are fruit.) The question isn’t identifying the problem, it’s solving it. How can we keep our tomatoes (and peppers, watermelon, cucumbers, and squash) from succumbing?

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Posted on in Plant Profiles

This Houseplant Deserves a Star!

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?

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Posted on in Gardening, Landscaping, Surviving Winter

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)!

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