Have you seen those little white daisy-like flowers growing in the gravel at the very edges of country roads? That is the herb chamomile. You can grow a taller, prettier version in your garden. There are a few different types of chamomile with many different common names, but for simplicity here, we’ll talk about [Continue]
Annual flowers bloom, set seed and die in one growing season. Perennial flowers live three, five or even thirty years. At first glance, it would seem that perennial plants are the way to go to save both the time of replanting each year and the money spent every year to purchase annuals. There is [Continue]
Spring is the best time for transplanting or dividing most plants but there are some that should be transplanted later in the growing season. Irises are transplanted or divided as soon as they finish flowering. Cut the flower stems off and cut the leaves back to 4-6 inches with a scissors, leaving a [Continue]
Annual flowers bloom, set seed and die in one growing season. Perennial flowers live three, five or even thirty years. At first glance, it would seem that perennial plants are the way to go to save both the time of replanting each year and the money spent every year to purchase annuals. There [Continue]
My dairy farmer neighbors sold their herd last June and have turned their attention to landscaping their farmyard. A year ago they hired a landscaping company who at great expense installed a small pond, put some plantings around it, planted a mis-labeled tree, and then went out of business. I’ve been asked to [Continue]
You may be ready to hang up your gardening tools for the year, but there is one more task to complete yet this year if you want a beautiful early spring garden. Mid-October is bulb-planting time. Flowers like tulips, daffodils, crocuses, muscari, hyacinths, alliums and scilla all grow from bulbs. They can be [Continue]
Its name is rather off-putting for someone who wants to grow a nice plant, but dead nettle is a pretty solution for the oft-asked question, “What can I grow under my trees in the shade where grass won’t grow?” Nettle implies something prickly or spiny, and dead, well dead implies dead. Dead nettle [Continue]
It’s hard to have missed the news articles over the past several years on the many health benefits of flaxseed oil. The omega-3 fatty acids in flaxseed oil help lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Other parts of the plant are also useful – the fibers are used to make linen cloth, high quality paper [Continue]
Because of the cool spring this year, we were fortunate to enjoy the blooms of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and other early flowers for many weeks. In June we are left with unsightly bare flower stalks and ugly, droopy leaves. What to do? Use a scissors or clippers to cut the spent flower stalks [Continue]
The International Herb Association has named calendula its 2008 Herb of the Year. Calendula is also known as pot marigold, but it isn’t the marigold you think of when you go to buy bedding plants. “Pot marigold” doesn’t come from the fact that it is grown in pots, although it is an excellent container plant, [Continue]