Gardening is an effort that brings us closer to the ground and helps us to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the things that grow around us.  It's not simply throwing some seed on the ground and hoping they'll grow.  Gardening, true gardening, takes research, time, exertion and patience.  Not only can gardening be rewarding in the beauty it provides and harvest at the end of a long season, but it can also add the value of your home and your peace of mind. 

One very interesting and beneficial thing I discovered this year is the amount of avid gardeners out there that are willing to share their garden bounty with others.  Like any other gardener sometimes our eyes get bigger than our gardens and we buy way too many seeds.  Many times they sit in a box for years until they go moldy and are no longer viable.  Trading them with other gardeners would be a much better way to get them used up.  Please visit my trade list for my list of plants, seeds, non garden items and wanted items.

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Make Your Own Seed Starter Pots
By Liss Burnell (c) 2005

Easy to make biodegradable plant pots.  Made with newspaper and homemade paste.

Newspaper Seed Starting Pots

Make your own biodegradable seed starting pots with your old newspaper.  Less chance of transplant shock when you can transfer seedling, pot and all to the garden

Newspaper Seedling Pots from OrganicGardening.com

Popular Garden Decor Trends
Yard and Garden Decor brings you the latest and greatest in popular garden decorations and accessories.

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1/10/2008

The new year is here and things are strange.  Strange, you ask?  Here in zone 5a in early January we typically have a few inches of snow on the ground, chilling winds and salt trucks around every corner.  Save the storm we got right at the beginning of the year we haven't had any this week and warmer than normal temps.  And by warmer I mean 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.  We are used to temps between the teens and 30s but this week we have had four days with highs in the 60s and rain every day. WOW!  I'm not complaining.  The only bad part for my little girl and I is that we didn't get to enjoy one of them.  We were trapped in the house with nasty colds with all the fever, coughing, and hacking that goes with them.  Poor little thing sounded like she had the croup at first, but some steam therapy and TLC from mommy brought that back under control. 

This time indoors has given me opportunity to make some newspaper seed starting pots to put in my winter sowing greenhouses (milk jugs :-)).  I have 11 cut and 5 of them filled with 20 little pots each.  There are 2 more drying out and I'd say 8 more in the shed waiting for some attention.  I'll post pics as soon as they are ready to go outside.

11/29/2007

Here it is the last week of November and still little sign of snow.  That is very odd for this time of year in this area.  The Italian parsley that I have growing in a container outside is still very green and so are the left over lettuces and chards in the back yard.  I've been too chicken to go out in the cold to harvest them.  This weekend we may be running low in the house so I'll have room to store the harvest in the fridge.  Who would've thought I'd be thinking of harvesting anything at the beginning of December!

11/21/2007

As you can see from the top of the page I've added a submenu for the gardening section.  We will delve deeper into the facets that make up a gardener's routine.  Our first section is Seed Collection.  Please continue to check back for more additions. 

11/9/2007

The Spring Hill catalog really is enjoyable to look at (I just realized it's an old, old one from Spring 2005).  I have not as yet had the privilege or the money to buy from them, but the lifetime guarantee on their plants really is tempting.  Their ideas for garden layouts are very useful.  I might put them into practice next spring.  That'll be my other project for the winter - garden layouts around the house.  Maybe next year I can get hubby to help me a little with the more "manly" jobs.

11/6/2007

Incredibly, it snowed today.  It was just a light dusting, but just enough to remind you that winter is just around the corner.  It has been so unseasonably warm in NW Ohio that I've waffled so much, maybe too much about getting my pots inside and mulching my flowerbeds.  It's just cold enough to make you not want to go outside.  Those westerly go right through you like little daggers.  It is amazing that just one week ago it was warm and sunny and my baby girl and I were outside without jackets.  I just pray for one more nice day so I can get my work done outside.  Otherwise, I'll be like a prairie dog running out and back in so I don't get too cold.  Plus, my little one loves to come outside with me and it's too cold to have her out too long.

11/1/2007

I cannot believe it is November already.  Doesn't seem like that long ago summer was just beginning.  Now in six short weeks we'll have old man winter on our doorstep again.

My daughter and I were outside today planting some iris corms.  They are spaced about 6" apart and I don't think I'm going to have enough room to plant them all.  As you can see from my post below I ended up with quite a lot of iris corms.  Some are purple, some yellow and some yellow with the rust colored throat.  The site will be quite splendid next spring when and if they bloom.  My daughter treated the corms like they were babies and handed them to me to put to bed and pretended the roots were jammys.  She enjoyed playing like Tigger and bears and dinosaurs until she got too cold and wanted to come inside.  She is so much fun.

10/31/2007

Today I dug up my cannas and dahlias that were frostbitten over the weekend and I actually did find one begonia bulb that survived the summer.  Sadly, only one of my cannas survived it never matured enough to bloom this year though.  Now I just have to figure out how and where to store them for the winter.

10/30/2007

This year was the first year I was able to earnestly pursue gardening.  I've been dabbling with perennials and vegetable gardening on and off for the past 15 years.  When I was at home with my parents I had a pretty good sized plot that they let me take care of and I loved it.  My sophomore year that I home schooled the vegetable garden was one of my prized projects.  The garden provided us with some great corn, beans, peppers, zucchini, and pumpkins and helped me to lose 25 pounds. 

Now in a new place that we can call our own it was my desire to make the land burst with color.  The summer was extremely dry and hot so the extent of my revamping of the land had to be limited.  My husband encouraged me to take up container gardening.  That worked out well since the containers were close to the house and were large enough to keep flowers, small shrubs, and some tomato and pepper plants. 

In expectation of getting an early start next spring (2008) I dug up 4 x8 foot plots in our back yard for vegetable gardening.  I've sought out every potential place for flower beds for a couple reasons.  One is to gussy up the place a bit and the other is to try and eliminate the need to trim with the weed whacker.

In the front of our house near the end of our driveway I made two 6 x 6 pie shaped flower beds.  At first I didn't have a clear idea of what to plant in them.  My friend Bobbie invited me over one day to take some plants from her catch-all flower beds and my plan was set.  She gave me white yucca, pink garden phlox, pink wild geranium, yellow daylily, hollyhock, some small variegated hostas and lily of the valley.  The hostas and lily of the valley had to go to the shade bed at the back of the house and the hollyhocks went back to a sunny spot there, but all the other items found a home in those front plots.  I had some dahlia and canna tubers and some asiatic lily bulbs that I also planted there.  Near the end of the season after a whole summer of looking I finally found some very pretty "Spangled Star" and "Neon Pink" dianthus and artemisia that lined the peak, front border, of the beds.

Craigslist and FreeCycle were also great sources for plants this year.  I got to connect with people from all around the area that love gardening and want to make sure their extras don't go to waste.  Hostas, irises, hibiscus, coneflower and giant daylily were among the plants that came from the resulting ad leads.  The same day that I followed up on those ads my father in law offered some Elegans hosta which I gladly accepted and gave him some iris corms from my earlier score.  Another friend of mine saw my ad on FreeCycle and mentioned that her parents, with whom I'm also friends, had hostas they wanted divided.  As I have become a sucker for hostas and anything that will grow in the shade I made arrangements to go and get them.  When I got there, Margaret, my acquaintance's mother, dug up daisies, irises, dianthus, liatris, coneflower, coral bells and more daylilies. 

After a bit I had more than I could reasonably handle in such a short period of time.  Just days before we went on our "50th Anniversary Celebrating-Family Reunion-Vacation" to Georgia my mom was kind enough to come over and help watch my little girl while I tried to find a place for all the plants.  Many had to go in containers, though next spring they will find a home under some trees in our front yard.  I can't wait to see what the flower bed at the back of the house is going to look like when it fills out in the spring.  I planted four varieties of hosta, coral bells, and ferns near the north side of the house.  It was never easy to mow there and is fairly sheltered from the wind. 

Around the same time I got up the guts to ask a neighbor in town about her hostas.  Thankfully she was very friendly and even agreed to share pieces of them with me.  They are very beautiful variegated hostas that seem to glow in the moonlight. 

The past three nights we have had some pretty nasty killing frosts so it's time to wrap things up for the season.  Dig out my bulbs and tubers, bring in my potted plants and pull out the remainders of the vegetable garden that bit the frost over the past few nights.