Sean and Allison McManus are Spoken Garden
Podcast: Growing Bulbs with Sean and Allison McManus
Sean and Allison McManus of Spoken Garden are our guests this week on the Gardenerd Tip of the Week Podcast. We talk bulbs and ornamentals.
Podcast: Eat Your Flowers with Loria Stern
This week on the Gardenerd Tip of the Week Podcast, we dive into edible flowers with Loria Stern. She's the author of Eat Your Flowers, a book bearing the name of her garden-to-table catering and private chef business.
Teri Speight and Black Flora
Podcast: Black Flora with Teri Speight
Teri Speight is back on the podcast this week. She spoke with us a few months ago about her book, The Urban Garden, which she co-authored with Kathy Jentz. Today we’re chatting about her other book, Black Flora.
Podcast: Flower Gardening with Jan Johnsen
Our guest this week on the Gardenerd Tip of the Week Podcast is landscape designer, author, and speaker Jan Johnsen. In addition to running her own landscape design firm, she is an award-winning instructor at the New York Botanical Garden.
Millet turning darker at the tips
Millet Update and Spring Colors
We planted millet in late February and planted it out last month and already we have an update! While many of the plants were destroyed by curious cats, the remainder have sent up impressive stalks of grain. This being our first time growing millet, we weren't sure what to expect. It's always fun to try something new and see what happens. Here's what we found in the garden yesterday: Millet apparently is a short crop, only reaching about 15" tall.…
Beneficial Flowers Build Your Ecosystem
One of the first things I talk about in my lectures about organic gardening is the importance of creating an eco-system around the garden. After all, a garden is much more than just a planter bed.
It's everything around it as well.
Beneficial flowers attract beneficial insects, which do a number of jobs for you in the garden. They can pollinate, they can eat other bugs, and they can also be food for birds. Let's explore some
of the easy flowers you can grow in your garden to attract beneficial insects: ...
The Truth about Seed Balls
You've seen the news clips about seed balls being dispensed from gum ball machines and tossed lazily amongst the weeds in vacant lots, but what ever happens to them? Do they indeed sprout and
blossom into beautiful wildflowers? Do they spruce up a desolate parkway in the midst of bustling city life?
I needed to find out for myself. So I bought two packages of seed balls for the Test Garden.
One set of seed balls was designed for hummingbirds, with larkspur, ...
Winter’s Bounty 2011
As the winter growing season is winding down, we've already planted some spring crops, and planned out the summer crops. There's still one important thing to do, however, before we move on to spring:
appreciate winter's bounty.
Even though we can see what's growing above ground, there's an element of surprise when harvesting root crops like carrots, parsnips and potatoes (okay - it's a tuber, not a root crop). Students
always ask me how they will know when to pick their root vegetables. I tell them to run their index finger around the ...
U-Pick Lavender
Our adventure in Ojai continue with the opening day of "u-pick" season at a local lavender farm. New Oak Ranch hung balloons out on the road
sign, inviting folks to come and pick a handful of fresh lavender for $5 a bunch. The farm features 20 different varieties of lavender (mostly Grosso, Hidcote, Buena Vista, and Provence) but
they also have Pixie tangerines, olives and walnuts.
The bees were hovering throughout ...
Gardens of Telluride
Once you arrive in Telluride, there is little need for a car, which makes for great sight-seeing on foot. When I was last here in spring, the flowers were just starting to get going and there was still snow on the mountains. Now the gardens are in full bloom and everyone is making the most of their gardening space. While I haven't seen too many vegetable gardens, I have been charmed by the plenitude of cuteness in every corner. I thought I'd share some photos from this beautiful mountain town:
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