Serenity in the Garden

The French have long understood that vegetable gardens can be places of beauty. They located their traditional  potagers , or kitchen gardens, outside their kitchen windows and included vertical structures, flowers, and artistic plant groupings designed for aesthetic appeal.  Flowers look beautiful and attract the all important pollinators to your garden. Read the wonderful article I have linked here for learning how to include beautiful flowers and more in your veggie garden.  Infographic - go here for more

Now More than Ever - Lets Get Kids Gardening -  When did we abandon the simple pleasures of growing carrots in milk cartons, planting hollyhocks along old fences or having fragrant lilacs at the corner of a house?  Let's reclaim this as part of our ordinary life... Hollyhocks We all have such memories - even city kids like me... It might be the 'weed' that smelled like licorice (anise hyssop),  or the buttercups that you put under your chin,  or the honeysuckle that you could suck a teeny drop of 'honey' from,  Honeysuckle the sweet smell of roses as you walked past a certain house,  or the bright yellow daffodils in early spring that sprang up overnight it seemed. daffodils by Jan Johnsen I would like us to revive 'garden memories' - to bring flowers, plants and gardens back into our lives. This kind of knowledge has been cast aside in favor of math and physics but I say children can learn thos...

You can buy seeds for Ms Mars sunflowers from here .  I love s unflowers. And the variety known as Ms. Mars ( Helianthus annuus  'Ms Mars')  has crazy merlot-colored petals that radiate out to form an eye-popping flower. The ray petals slowly turn from a purple to a pretty pink.  It is a dwarf variety, growing only 20"-30" high, with a strongly branching habit.  Ms Mars Sunflower - branching and dwarf variety . Click here for more.  Full sun. Easy to Grow.  Dark Purple buds.  Great for kids' gardens and anywhere. Plus, Ms Mars makes a stunning cut flower.  You can use petals and seeds in salads and cakes. And not only are the flowers permeated with a dark reddish purple hue but the leaves and stems are also tinged with this inky color.    Add this sun loving, happy flower to any garden - guaranteed to make you smile. 

Garden Gnome, anyone? A few years ago, the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK declared that the banned garden gnome was now allowed to be part of the  Chelsea Flower Show. Tackiness be damned! Garden gnomes for all!   Garden gnomes, those funny little white-bearded  creatures,  are associated in England with the landscapes of the not-so-rich and the unfamous.   According to English gardening maven, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen,  “Gnomes are very symbolic in English gardens as an anti-class statement." Born to be Wild Gnome Anti-class? anti- posh?  These happy little garden sprites (or small and creepy men, depending on your point of view) are reminders that we are all free to fashion our gardens, our little bits of heaven, in our own way.   I remember, growing up in Brooklyn, walking by many a 'bathtub Mary' in the chainlink bordered front yards of those lucky enough to have a front yard.   They would take a cast ...

The best homemade plant labels come from aluminum soda cans. from Greylustergirl blog They are inexpensive, durable, attractive and fun to make. And in the garden their reflective qualities act as rabbit repellents! You can have them dangle on supports ( made from clothes hangers) or tie them with twine on a pot. CUT THE CAN AND ROLL OUT ALUMINUM. Put on your gloves. Use the tip of your scissors to punch a small hole on the side of each end of the can. You can also use a steak knife or screwdriver to get the hole started.  Cut off the top and bottom of the can and discard . TRACE THE SHAPES AND CUT OUT. Next, unroll the metal as best you can and place the metal on a flat but flexible surface, printed side up . A pad of paper, a top of a notebook or a thick stack of newspaper are all good bases. Use a template tool to trace a shape with a ball point pen onto the metal. Press firmly to leave an indentation. Cut with a pair of sciss...

Worm tubes from National Gardening Association  Want to know a great way to  enhance biological activity in  your garden? Think of it as adding  probiotics to your soil.... Worm Tubes!  It is a fun way to use your vegetable food waste without the hassle of true composting. Worm tubes attract worms to your garden and this, in turn, creates rich, worm casting-filled composted soil for you to use.  Josh shows us how - click here And did you know that  worm compost suppresses plant diseases ? Research has shown that worm compost can successfully suppress  Pythium aphanidermatum  - a mold responsible for the dreaded 'damping off', where seedlings and young plants rot away at the base of the stem. The microbes  in the compost are key. They chemically prevent (disrupts the signalling)  the  Pythium  pathogen from accessing the plant.  This is why you should consider making worm compost with a 'worm tube' ...

I must admit I first discovered  Drumstick Allium  when I could not find any other allium bulb to buy...it was late fall and I had waited too long to buy the popular Globemaster Alliums... What to DO? I bought the Drumsticks and was thrilled at the result. These purplish - red blooms are small - 1" -and oval shaped.  They bloom in my part of the world in June atop wiry 24" - 30" tall stems and wave in the breeze...and they make a superb cut flower (which you can dry to be an 'everlasting').   Drumstick Allium bouquet - Martha Stewart Photo Drumstick Alliums look fantastic tucked in the early summer flower border...You can add these small bulbs easily in the fall around clumps of established perennials such as Artemesia, Yarrow, Nepeta and Agastache. They peek out around these plants and are a delightful addition that come back every year! Artemesia Powis Castle - Great with Drumstick Alliums - Great ...

When school gardens were first established, it was often to provide extra produce foo school cafeterias. They wanted to encourage kids to eat fresh food and to expose them to new tastes and types of fruits and vegetables.           That original goal has expanded.  Now educators across the country realize that school gardens offer a unique learning laboratory for students.  A school garden allows kids to study the natural life cycle of the vegetables—from seed to harvest. They  also provide a hands-on approach to learning about  nutrition and health.  And school gardens also show children that what you eat can be a product of your own work and design.   Over 7,000 American schools now have school gardens, where kids and teachers collaborate on design of gardens, nutrition information, the science of plants, harvest, and more. This graphic is inspiring and I hope leads to more school gardens! ...

Have you heard about Cucamelons?   Also called mouse melons?   This tiny watermelon look-alike from south of the border is grape-sized and tastes of cucumber with a hint of lime. They are going to be very popular soon, kind of like the 'ipad mini' of the vegie world... Why? because they are  pest free, drought tolerant, easy to grow,  and a vigorous climber/trailer that produces masses of fruit throughout the summer!  from Suttons Seeds in the UK Its botanical name is  Melothria scabra  and it comes from  Mexico/Central America  where it is called  sandita de Raton  (little mouse melon).  They have been grown there since Pre-Columbian times and need a sheltered sunny spot to grow.  from Suttons Seeds packet Their taste is unusual in that - first it tastes like cucumber but the aftertaste is something tart.. Karen Bertelsen of the blog  'The Art of Doing Stuff'  d...

milk carton gardening   Do you have simple summer garden memories?  I sure do.  And I hope the kids of today will have them too. I hope they remember the simple pleasure of growing carrots in milk cartons, tomatoes in large cans or maybe hollyhocks al ong old fences and lilacs at the corner of a house. We should reclaim these simple things as part of our ordinary life. Hollyhocks Honeysuckle Maybe you have some  memories like this:  It  might be the 'weed' that smelled like licorice ( anise hyssop), Blue Fortune Anise Hyssop The buttercups that you put under your chin,  buttercup reflection under chin - go here for more: Eat The Wee ds the honeysuckle that you could suck a teeny drop of 'honey' from, honey from honeysuckle - for more: Instructables  the sweet smell of roses as you walked past a certain house,  roses on trellis source: Nantucket today  the brigh...