Why I Oughta...

Over the years, I've written and linked to various 'garden rules' and 'garden mistakes' lists.  And, I've made a bunch of those mistakes. And, learned from the 'rules'.  But, over the holidays, I was talking to my oldest sister and my brother-in-law about gardening.  They're taking on a new, exciting project and are in the midst of planning a clean-sheet garden at their lake house in Michigan.  The conversation drifted towards them asking for advice on where to start.  And, that made me think about what I would tell other gardeners.  I went home and ended up writing a Google Doc that included some advice, links and thoughts.  After editing a little bit, it ended up taking the shape of being a list of rules (or advice) that I've seemingly adopted for my own garden.  I thought it was worth sharing as (in this case, like many others here on the blog), I've adopted Paul Graham's advice and wrote things out.  The act of *writing this list* ta...

This is always one of the toughest times in the garden for me:  things are done for the year and we're facing Fall decline.  But, that doesn't stop the weeds from showing up.  And, I've usually been not-so-good about keeping on top of them.  That's part of why I put "Be a gardener who weeds" at the #8 slot on my 2025 to-do list .  Last year, I let clover go too much.   This year, I've been better.  Between using my push-pull hoe and just yanking out clumps of weeds (and lots of clover), I've tried to stay on top of the weeds and get to them before they can flower.  In early August, I posted a photo of a big handful of clover I yanked out one evening .   This week, I did the same thing:  walked and pulled.   Clover, yes.  But, also some other stuff that was in flower.  Just-in-the-nick-of-time, I think. Here's to being a better weeder this year.

Martha Stewart hit me right between the eyes this morning with this quote about happiness.  She says that you can be happy for a year - if you get married.  And you can be happy for a decade - if you get a dog.  But...if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life - plant a garden.  See below. I'm adding this to the handful of pieces of garden advice/garden musings/garden quotes that I've collected here on my blog - including: It is better to plant a fifty-cent tree in a five dollar hole than a five dollar tree in a fifty-cent hole , Conifers should come first , never buy just one of anything , Audrey Hepburn's line/quote - "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" and... the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best? Today .  Martha's take on happiness fits right in there with these. I first came across this on TikTok in a promo for her Netflix documentary, but....on  Instagram  is where I found this (nicely laid-out four-pane...

My entire gardening life, I've been a Zone 5B gardener.  That means that my gardens have all lived in the USDA Zone 5b.  Just search for [Zone 5b] here on my blog and hundreds of posts will show up.  And, I suppose that I never considered that the maps change over time.  But..but...but...they DO!  They change.  In fact, they change every ten-or-so years and the USDA just (a couple of weeks ago) released their latest maps - the 2023 map.  The last time they released a map was 2012.   What's different in this new map?  Well, for me:  A LOT.  I'm in a whole new zone.  So long, Zone 5b.  Hello Zone 6a.   Dr. Trent Ford - The University of Illinois State Climatologist has a good explainer post up  and talks about how the 5b/6a changes have taken place: The boundary between zones 5b and 6a, representing an average annual extreme minimum temperature of -10°F, migrated 60 to 70 miles north, from around Springfi...

I had a little bit of time off earlier this week and I opted to do some annual compost program maintenance.   I've done this the past few years and #11 on my list this year was to 'continue on my compost journey'.   Here's what I wrote: 11.  Continue on our composting journey.   That starts with using  our kitchen bin , turning the mixed bin, amending with alfalfa and/or biosolids.  It also means that I need to keep moving through the two bins and tumbler set-up with the goal of a tumbler-full-of-finished compost to be used in the garden every season.   Fall leaves stored in Fall , full, properly mixed bin by end-of-season. Up until now, I felt pretty good about composting this year.  Between the use of Starbucks grounds as an additive to adding kitchen scraps , I've been good about putting more waste in the bins.  I've also made a pretty big mound/pile of material from various projects and all the leaves from my Spring ...

I'm nothing if not a gardener who keeps learning with every shovelful of dirt and every keystroke digging around the Web. And, I'm also guilty of calling things the wrong name from time-to-time. Part of what I've tried to do is to learn the actual plant names (genus species) vs. the trade names. But, I've also thrown around the terms 'variety' and 'cultivar' and 'sport' all over the place and NOT really learned when/where to use each one. What prompted me to think about the terms was an email from Gardeners Supply where they showed some 'common gardening terms' including Variety and Cultivar.  Here's a landing page  they have of those and other gardening terms like hybrid, heirloom and open-pollinated. A couple of nuggets from  that page : Many commonly available plants are varieties or cultivars, with interesting features that make them more desirable than the straight species.  Some cultivars are patented, making it illegal to propa...

This isn't part of *my* Christmas Haul (like the padded espalier training wire from last week), but I still wanted to post a photo of this gift that was received in our house by the Bird.  One of the things that we've done over the past year-plus is to watch ALL of the Marvel MCU movies as a family.  As part of that experience, some of the characters in the MCU have become family favorites. One of those is Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.  The Bird (now) has some Groot shirts and even a little magnet shoulder-sitting Groot that she'll wear around .   But, when I think about all of the kids, the one that has the MOST interest in nature and plants and gardening (with me) is the Bird.  So, I'm thinking that is part of the draw to Groot:  he's organic and is plant-based.    For Christmas, we came across this set of Groot planters on Etsy and knew that she'd love them.  There are four in the total set, but you can buy just one. Note: the...

What do they say about being 'on trend'?  Something like....if you stick to something LONG ENOUGH, it will eventually come back to being 'on trend'.  Like clothes.  If you loved wearing flannel shirts and Doc Martin boots back in the 1990's and you kept wearing them ever since?  Good news.  You're back on trend twenty-plus years later. With that idea, I suppose it is worth thinking about trends in gardening.  I've posted about trends in the past - here's a 2019 post about how gabion-style walls were on trend that year .  And in 2020 how creating little 'nooks ' was on trend.  There are various times when trends in gardening come out.  The first is typically during the Chelsea Flower show that takes place annual in London .  This year, the show was moved (Thanks, COVID.), but some trends continued to emerge - mostly related to the changing dynamics COVID has brought to our lives.  Something that seemed to percolate out of Chelsea thi...

We made a stop at the Potbelly's in Willowbrook right off of Route 83 for lunch recently and sat underneath this poster that you see below.  It advertises the DuPage County Centennial Flower Show in Hinsdale on June 9,10, 11.  At the bottom it reads: "Presented by the Home Gardeners of DuPage County".    It is in a lovely vintage frame. And, if you look even closer at the bottom, you'll see this copy that speaks to how the poster was created:  "Made by WPA Federal Art Project, Chicago, Illinois".  See below for a closeup of that section:  Pretty cool, right?  I mean...what could be better than a vintage poster that is both LOCAL and about something that I'm into (gardening).   A quick spin around the Web and it wasn't hard to figure out the provenance of this poster. The Library of Congress has a listing for it and even dates it: Jun 22 1939. I'm guessing that's the day it was added to the collection, so my hunch is that it was sent ...

I came across this video from Erin, the Impatient Gardener where she (and Alexandra from the "middle sized garden") talk about five gardening mistakes . And...the first one on their list - Buying just ONE of a plant - really hits home hard for me.   Why does it hit home hard?  Let me count the ways. One , two , three .  For starters.  In all three instances there, I *should* have both more.  Lesson learned. Go watch the whole video .  

Over the years, we've tried different annuals in front of our boxwoods in our front yard bed.  Our first full year - in 2018 - we planted some Ranunculuses - about eight of them.  Last year - in 2019 - we planted 16 orange marigolds.  Neither set of those did very well.  The marigolds were better than the Ranunculuses, but they didn't spread and some did better than others.  When we started with this bed, it was about 2" of mulch and then backfilled clay.  Not a ton of organic material to deal with beyond the mulch.  Over the years, I dug up spots and added pelletized gypsum a few inches down in an attempt to loosen up the clay soils.  (speaking of which...I should probably add some gypsum to my lawn this Summer) and tried to amend the soil to improve the conditions. Last year, I used a bulb auger to dig out the holes for marigolds, planted them and covered with cocoa bean mulch.  I read somewhere that the BEST way to loosen up cla...

My 2020 to-do list for the yard included this item in #8:  "Find cheap fruit trees (that include pollinators) and plant a Belgian Fence (somewhere)."  Welp, I found eight apple trees at the same Home Depot tree sale last week and brought them home to start a Belgian Fence.  Here's a look at some of them below. I have documented the Belgian Fences that we came across in Disneyland over the years.  Here's the first one that caught my attention on a trip .  And here's another from a different trip . I ended up picking apple trees for this because they had the right amount of them and had a variety that I was most keen to get:  Honeycrisp.  One of the things that I've picked up while researching the Belgian Fence was to learn that it is best to select two varieties of apple trees that are 'pollinators'.  In a look at the list for Honeycrisp apples , one of the selected pollinators is Yellow/Golden Delicious.  They are cro...

Back in Elmhurst, we planted a Pussy Willow (Salix Caprea) in our backyard next to our outdoor fireplace. I first came across it at Menards in 2011 .  Bought and planted in 2011.  One year later, it was going crazy.  Here's how it looked in Summer 2012 .  I liked the coverage the plant gave us, but we haven't planted one in our new yard despite seeing them at the garden centers the past few years.  But, this post about gardening New Year's Resolutions from the University of Minnesota Extension includes (as one of their recommended resolutions): " Plant pussy willows, a pollinator-friendly, eco-friendly and energy-producing shrub ". From the U of M post : Pussy willows (Salix discolor), a large 15-20 foot shrub native to Minnesota and much of northern U.S. is one of the first plants to bloom in the spring. Pussy willows provide some of the earliest flowers and pollen for honey and other native bees. The foliage also supports native butterfly caterp...

I was out in the yard recently wiring up that one errant trunk on the Saucer Magnolia and snapped a couple of photos of our front yard boxwoods.  You can see them above and you'll note that a few of them are showing quite a bit of brown/orange color on them.  Wondering if this is normal Winter behavior or something else.  I also note that they're all experiencing different amounts of this orange/rust coloring.  The first boxwood on the left is the most orange - and you can see a photo of this one below: The ones further North - which start to get out of the top photo are the most green.  The end one (on the North) has a 'hole' in it that was from some damage the previous few Winters.  See that one below that shows an orange section that has a large gaping 'hole' behind it.  The first time that I posted a photo of these boxwoods was in May of 2018 in this post about mulch .  You can tell that these have grown in size in the (almost)...

If you follow along on the Web for any hobby you might be interested in, you are certain to come across posts/articles in the early part of the calendar year that are all about 'trends to watch in 2020'.  One of the pieces that I read recently is this one called ' What will be the hot gardening trends of 2020? '.  There are some things in there that I think I see popping up over-and-over like "Plant Parenting" and the adoption of succulents (due to climate change/low water usage, etc), but there was one item that really got my attention:  Garden Nooks.  Those little 'secluded spot' that you can create in your garden.  From PennLive : Jody Davey, an indoor horticulture and programs specialist at Hershey Gardens , says she’s seeing more people interested in creating secluded spots for relaxing and enjoying their yard’s gardens. “Part of the reward of nurturing a garden is spending leisure time in the beautiful outdoor space you’ve created,” she said....