Why I Oughta...

You just brought home that awesome pot of Mums from Costco (or the pumpkin patch that you went to this past weekend) and put them up by the front door along with some of your pumpkins and gourds.   You're worried about killing them by forgetting to water them - that's very valid.  But, there's another problem you're about to face:  flopping, open-crowned mums.    Some call this 'falling over' and unless you have a number of your mums tucked-in tightly together in a cluster, your mums are going to 'fall over' or flop.   How do you avoid it?  By using a piece of string or twin or wire to tie them up and keep them held together at the top.  I wrote about this pro-tip back in 2017 - when I encouraged everyone to take a piece of string around the foliage and stems of their mums and tie them together .  I've been doing it ever since. This year, we went with a monochromatic nursery container of maroon or dark red mums.  I used a piece of padded garden wire

Back in 2020, I discovered Toad Lilies and set about trying to plant a few of them in my woodland garden in the far back .  Like a lot of other things, these were shared by Erin the Impatient Gardener, who shared them in her own garden.   Come Spring 2021, I planted a few small containers of them in a little drift in the southwest corner of our lot .  The variety that planted are called Gilt Edge Japanese Toad Lillies and they were IMMEDIATELY destroyed by the (dang!) rabbits .    That's when I installed some rings of Chicken Wire to protect them.  I've left those rings in place for three-plus years now and because of that (I think), well....we *still* have Toad Lillies.  Not a lot of them.  But, they're still here. I posted the VERY SAME photos last year - about a year ago.    Here, below, are a couple of photos showing the remaining Toad Lillies.  These get ZERO supplemental water, so they're just doing their thing on their own.   With a little water, maybe these wi

I've done these ' Christmas Haul ' posts over the years where I show off some of the gifts that I have received from family and friends at the holidays.  In 2011, I posted a couple of Beatles magnets that I received .  In 2018, I posted a photo of a bird seed bell .  For 2019, Nat's folks gave me a heated bird bath for the backyard .  Last year, I received a gift that sat RIGHT at the intersection of two of my loves:  Disney pins and jigsaw puzzles .  And, I also put a new pair of chainsaw protection gloves to work in the Spring.   This year, I received some fun gifts from Nat and the kids and as part of a family gift exchange, Nat's brother gifted me a few things for the yard.  I mean...what else would I want, right? The first thing they gave me is here, below.  A double pack of Rapiclip Soft Wire Tie (Light Duty) espalier training (padded) wire.  Each of the spools is 16 feet long.   I've posted about this padded training espalier wire before and have found i

Four weeks ago, I posted a series of photos showing how I had pruned both of the Greenspire Linden trees that we have espaliered into a Horizontal Cordon .  We went from four levels down to three and then restrung the wire to support a new fill-in fourth Cordon.  When removing the top Cordon, I cut what is technically called the Apical Meristem in an attempt to redirect some of the growth this season to the existing Cordons with the goal of beefing them up and then thinking about how we might be able to turn the tips up into a Candelabra shape.  (Scroll down in this post to see the different espalier shapes including a Candelabra .) A few things to call out though: First, in the photo above, you can see that we have one misaligned Cordon level.  On the left, the limb is coming out about four or five inches higher than the limb on the right.  I've trained the one on the right *up*, but there is currently this misalignment.  Is it a deal-killer?  I don't think so.  Especia