Share my passion for all things gardening!
As many of you know, my husband and I are avid birdwatchers. Over the years, we’ve learned what will attract birds to our garden, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is by adding birdbaths. Birds need to drink water and bathe — typically every day. Even though our bird feeders attract them, along with our landscape filled […]
Read moreAs a garden writer and a member of the professional organization, the Association for Garden Communicators, I occasionally receive seeds or product samples to test. (hey, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it) Last December, I received a cool package from Burpee Seeds that I wanted to tell you about. What they do is send out a type […]
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The Wellness Garden: Grow, Eat & Walk Your Way to Better Health by Shawna Coronado (Cool Springs Press, 160 pp., $24.99) Meet Shawna Coronado. Diagnosed with severe spinal degenerative osteoarthritis, her future looked bleak. She suffered from debilitating joint pain and inflammation that affected her everyday life, limiting what she could do. She could have resigned herself to the use […]
Read moreGardening Complete: How to Best Grow Vegetables, Flowers, and Other Outdoor Plants (by Authors of Cool Springs Press, 376 pp., $30) If you are looking for a comprehensive outdoor gardening book on just about every topic you could imagine, then take a look at the newest offering from Cool Springs Press: Gardening Complete. For this monumental project, they pulled together a […]
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Whenever I review a garden book, my goal is to share a good source to learn from. It might be about growing vegetables, propagating plants, landscape design ideas, or cool DIY projects. This time, I’ve found something to help you learn from yourself in the form of the Three Year Gardener’s Gratitude Journal from Chelsie Anderson and Donna Balzer. I […]
Read moreIt can be easy for gardeners to get into a routine of planting the same old vegetable varieties year after year. We all have our favorites, right? Well, just when we vegetable gardeners thought we had it all figured out, here comes Niki Jabbour to take us out of our comfort zone with her latest book, Veggie Garden Remix (Storey […]
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I know I’m forcing the issue here but, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the bulbs we’ve all known for so many years as Amaryllis are actually called Hippeastrum. So here is an update on how my Hippeastrum is doing! (After all, as a garden writer, I should probably be using the correct terms myself, right?) This gorgeous […]
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Last year, while looking through a seed catalog, I saw a listing for something called “solar mulch.” Hmm, what’s that, I wondered? I learned that solar mulch is a green plastic sheeting that will do two important things for a vegetable grower like myself: It greatly cuts down on weed growth. It can raise the soil temperature by as much […]
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After reading Jessica Walliser’s book, Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden, I’ve become a big fan of her work. She does a great job of tackling useful subjects, breaking them down into their most important components, and delivering this information in a very approachable way. So I was excited to hear about her newest book, Container Gardening Complete (Cool Springs […]
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Don’t let flies prevent you from enjoying your porch, patio or deck this summer. There is no need to spray poisonous chemicals to control them, however. Our neighbor boards horses and we keep chickens — between these two sources, there is a potential for a lot of flies. We have been using the Rescue Fly Traps since 1993 with great success. Their […]
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