Let’s Host A Garden Tour Every Year, Honey!
Okay, just kidding. We’d probably keel over if we had to get the garden in shape for a tour every year. But it was a really fun day and if someone asked, we’d probably offer up our yard again for a tour in the future. Even though it was in the 90s with extremely high humidity, the 9-hour day went by fast and we honestly could have gone on yacking with visitors for at least another hour or two after the 4 p.m. closing time.
The numbers have been crunched and it looks like we had 367 people touring the 11 gardens on display—that’s the biggest year yet for the annual Hennepin County Master Gardener Learning Garden Tour. Our garden is small and the paths are narrow, so we were worried that visitors might feel cramped and rushed in a way that would keep them from experiencing the garden as it’s meant to be experienced.
Luckily, people trickled in throughout the day and meandered down the paths looking at everything. Everyone was smiling and happy and had a lot of questions. It’s mostly true that mean people don’t garden, and this day was a testament to that. Love fest would be a good way to describe the day, really, and who doesn’t want more love?
Read More»Our Yard Is On A Garden Tour
- On July 12, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Container Gardening, Organic Gardening, Perennials, Soil
7
Two days from now, on Saturday, somewhere around 300 people will be coming to check out our gardens as part of the Hennepin County Master Gardener Learning Garden Tour. Our house is one of 11 stops on the one-day tour, and we have been working like maniacs for three solid months to get the place in shape.
Front Yard “After”
Front Yard “Before”
Truthfully, as you’ll see from the photos I’m posting, we’ve been working on our yard for six summers in a way that would probably seem nutty to most people. But when I volunteered us for the tour, we really had to kick things into high gear and we have now completed EVERY project that we had on our to-do list for the yard. Had it not been for the tour, we probably would have stretched those projects out over three years or more. So while we’re exhausted, we’re also really glad to have little more than weeding and watering to do next summer.
Read More»Zombie Garden Gnomes
- On June 10, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Perennials, Uncategorized, What In Tarnation?
- 0
I admit it. I have never understood the allure of garden gnomes. Ugly, dumpy and slightly creepy in a pervy kind of way, gnomes always make me wonder about the sort of person who chooses to use them as garden accents.
Why do they like these creatures? Are the gnomes perceived as funny, cute, hip, what? Did somebody this poor homeowner loves foist gnomes upon them as a gift so now they feel like they have to set them out in the garden—at least for a few weeks until they can claim that some neighborhood kids took ’em?
What is the story?
The situation is completely different with zombie gnomes, however. Created by Los Angeles-based couple Chris Stever and Jane DeRosa, these gruesome gnomes make no attempt to hide their creepiness behind props like whimsical pointy hats. Happily noshing on pink flamingos and other hapless garden dwellers, they broadcast what many of us have suspected all along. “Yes, gnomes are creepy,” they would say if their mouths weren’t full of tasty flamingo meat. ” In fact we are the blood-thirsty undead come unbidden into your yard.”
Please tell me those don't taste like chicken, too.
Buoyed by their forthrightness, and my longtime love of all things zombie, I ordered some up right away. If you’d like some zombie gnomes for your garden, go to Chris and Jane’s Place, the couple’s shop on Etsy. Be aware that it says on their website that due to increased demand it may take up to five weeks for your zombie gnomes to arrive.
I figure that’s fine. I need a little time to let the cute turtle and rabbit statues out in the backyard know that they’d best get their affairs in order.
Got Ugly Bulb Foliage To Hide?
- On May 24, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Perennials
- 3
Tulip 'Queen of Night' and Sedum 'Matrona' (Cornell University)
If you love flowering bulbs, but recoil at the thought of having to look at their withering foliage long after the blooms are gone, Cornell University has good news for you.
Knowing that the right plant combinations could successfully hide fading leaves, researchers at Cornell spent four seasons putting bulb/perennial pairings to the test at the university’s trial gardens in Ithaca, New York.
Their results, including some helpful photos of the two plants progressing together over several weeks, are available on the university’s website: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/combos.
As someone who has mostly tried in vain to effectively pair up plants in ways that really do hide ugly, yellowing foliage, I’m grateful to Cornell for putting real energy into actually testing plant combos to see what works and what doesn’t. When deciding which pairings looked good and worked well together, the researchers considered the same types of things gardeners think about: color, foliage type and texture, bloom times and the rate at which the perennials they planted mature.
Read More»New Condo Tower For the Worms
Worm Factory® 360
I’ve written about my worm bin a few times over the past several months, so some of you probably know that I started vermicomposting back in February. I’ve wanted to try composting with worms ever since I read Amy Stewart’s book, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms, a few years back.
I opted to start simply with one of those inexpensive plastic storage tub bins that don’t have stackable trays like the more high-tech worm bins do. With the tub, you just layer some shredded newspaper and other things worms like for bedding in the bottom, add red wigglers and then keep them fat and happy with kitchen scraps so they’ll eat, poo and reproduce until you have a bin filled with nutrient-rich worm compost to use on your plants.
After three months, I can definitely say that the tub system worked just fine. It didn’t smell, the worms seemed healthy and food was definitely being turned into vermicompost (poo). But I have to say that I got tired of digging around in a big bin full of decomposing food scraps to see the worms in action. Amy Stewart wrote a lot about how much she enjoyed sipping her morning coffee while watching her worms enjoy eating things like banana peels, and I wanted to do things like that too.
Read More»Soil Testing: Not Such A Wonky Pain In the Butt Anymore
As a master gardener, one of the things I’m supposed to advise people to do is get a soil test before they start plopping plants in the ground. I admit that I’ve chafed against having to say this forever because, honestly, I’ve had a garden for 15 years and I’ve never tested my soil.
Also, I once asked a big group of master gardeners if any of them had tested their soil and not one of them had done it either. Instead, we all admitted to relying on the lazy gardener strategy of putting plants wherever we wanted to and just moving them someplace else if they didn’t do so well. Second time’s not a charm? Move that plant again, we say. After three strikes, hey, give the poor thing away to a new home where it might luck out and get more doting parents.
Read More»
