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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More