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My Northern Garden

red peony flower with yellow center

A Tree Peony in Bloom

Plants

Yesterday I noticed my tree peony has started to bloom already — in fact, it went from just slightly open to fully in bloom in a few hours Saturday afternoon.  My other peonies — all the herbaceous type — have a few tight balls on them, but no sign of bloom.  I bought this one (sorry, I don’t have a…
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soil in raised bed

How to Make a Lasagna Garden

How to

Lasagna gardening is a no-till method of starting a garden — usually one for vegetables — that produces humus-rich soil, the ideal environment for “heavy feeders” such as tomatoes. The basic idea is that you layer materials that normally would go into compost to create your garden bed. Like lasagna, the garden has several types of layers and, after it…
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root bound perennial

How to Salvage a Root-Bound Perennial

How to

If you come across a plant that looks like this…do not plant it right away. It’s badly root bound. The specimen above is the root ball of a Mammoth™ mum I purchased at a grocery store recently. Mammoth mums are a newish variety out of the University of Minnesota that reach a size of 3 feet tall and 5 feet…
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white cherry blossoms in spring

Why Plant Spring Blossoming Trees in the North

Uncategorized

For a few years in the 1980s, I lived and worked in Washington, D.C.  Spring is long and glorious around the Capitol city, so visitors and residents enjoy two months or more of spring blossoming trees, including magnolias, cherries, dogwoods, crabapples, quince, and many others. The spring blossoming tree season here is much more compressed, which makes it more startling…
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red geraniums in large number

A Sea of Geraniums and Other Sights at Donahue’s

Plants

This weekend is one of the biggest plant shopping weekends of the year and the folks at Donahue’s in Faribault are certainly ready for it. I visited Donahue’s earlier this week for a behind the scenes tour with Mary McIntyre Donahue, one of seven (or is it eight?) Donahue relatives currently involved in the massive greenhouse and clematis operation, about…
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Top Posts & Pages

  • Jams, Jellies, Preserves: What's the Difference?
  • Out-Smarting Japanese Beetles (And Some Good News)
  • Growing Lilies in Containers
  • Four Peony Problems and Solutions
  • How to Pollinate a Meyer Lemon Tree
  • Serviceberry Syrup: A Seasonal Treat
  • How to Identify an Ash Tree
  • Can You Eat a Sweet Potato Vine Tuber?
  • Mushrooms Growing in Straw Bales
  • Two Things You Did Not Know about Japanese Beetles

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