The ups and downs of the gardening world.
Botanic gardens are opening up to visitors and I wondered how my favorite, Longwood Gardens, would handle the different pressures that Covid is bringing to the visitor experience. Enjoying the gardens is partly an outdoor experience but also an indoor experience of visiting the huge Conservatories. Reservations for timed entry are required like in the …
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Whats blooming in my garden? Elderberries!! The sweet umbels of creamy colored flowers that can reach 12" across are so fragrant and have a unique smell, kind of like floral, creamy, and summery all in one package! All cultivars look very similar with their shrub-like plant structure, compound leaves, and big, beautiful clusters of white …
Continue reading "Elderberry-Growing and Using a Versatile Herb"
Yes, yes, I know tomatoes and jam is an oxymoron, but when I spotted a recipe for tomato jam that included chocolate, I was hooked. After all, I had tasted and enjoyed tomato sorbet which is another sweet treatment for my favorite garden edible, so I was willing to give jam a try. To clinch …
Continue reading "All Jammed Up! Creating Savory Tomato Jam From Heirlooms"
'Jeana' Phlox is one of the top pollinator attracting plants in my garden in the dog days of summer. Attracting dozens of butterflies and other assorted bees, my patch starts in the late morning with a few butterflies and by the end of the heat of the day, the plants look like they are fluttering …
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Stuck at home during the pandemic, what could be better than a fresh delivery of a hand picked and arranged bouquet of vibrant flowers? That is exactly what Floriculture Microfarm specializes in. I love to promote small local horticultural businesses, and this one really brings joy to the life of many people - weekly! I …
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If you have never grown blackberries, this is one of the easiest and most satisfying berry to grow. I started with one "cane" or stem of a thornless blackberry variety some years ago and it grew to be one ginormous mass of a plant. Taming the canes by growing them on a trellis of cattle fencing …
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Inundated with cucumbers this summer, the cukes in my frig reached critical mass and I had to do something about it, or we would be over run with them. I had at least 100 of them stuffed into every space in my refrigerator and I had already made cucumber salad, cucumber water, and everything else …
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Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic, and Aromatic Ah....The fragrance of lavender! Evoking many memories, like wandering through blooming fields of lavender on a hot summer day buzzing with bees. This is one herb that if I were on a desert island, I would want to grow! Growing lavender in my garden every year is essential and I …
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Working outside I encounter a lot of unusual pests and annoyances. One of my most despised pests is the Tomato Hornworm. Tomato Hornworms are really big green alien-like caterpillars that can munch through and devastate your vegetable  garden. Nondescript brown moths lay pearl-like eggs on your tomato, pepper, or eggplant, from which the big green monsters …
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With all the new intros of flowers, people forget the old-fashioned flowers that our grandmothers grew and enjoyed. 'Flowers with a past', or 'flowers with history' intrigue me even in the face of the preference of perennials in recent years. So many people when they hear that a plant is an annual turn up their …
Continue reading "Growing Heirlooms – Old Fashioned Annuals That Rock!!"
