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Busted Garden
My 2026 garden has mostly fallen short of even low expectations. I say “mostly” because of some surprise successes. Just about everything else failed to thrive due mostly to excessive heat and too little rain . Last fall, I hired a landscaping company to design and install a low-maintenance border on a steep bank. Going…
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Better Late…
My garden plans were disrupted early this season by drought, Tootsie’s demise, and the arrival of Mavis. With few exceptions, two flats of seedlings started indoors in early February didn’t make it. I never got around to planting two or three more flats. Even so, I do have a bit of a garden. When rain…
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Garden Omens
Success in the annual garden stems from a good start. Planting seeds, caring for seedlings, and preparing planting beds for the season keeps me busy from January to May. Anything planted much later is unlikely to survive a Georgia summer without nearly constant watering. Things started off well enough. I ordered seed in January, started…
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The Final Frontier
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Home-Grown Produce
My summer vegetable garden is a mix of successes and failures. Let’s get the bad. Corn, cucumbers and yellow squash have not done well. Between the chipmunks and vine borers, I was lucky to get two squash, two cucumbers, and a few pitiful ears of corn. Tomatoes have done great. The potted ‘Celebrity’ started off…
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4th of July Flowerworks
Growing flowers from seed allows me to plant uncommon varieties. Some selections are old favorites. Others caught my eye as I was putting together my seed orders. Here’s an update on this years’ choices. Gloriosa Daisy. I wanted Blackeyed Susans but ended up ordering a variety alleged to have double blooms. The petals look to…
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Early Success in the Garden
The 2025 season is off to a great start. Pushing back my seed-starting schedule continues to pay-off. By the time things were ready to plant, the soil had warmed up enough for seedlings to hit the ground running. And they did. Abundent rain and mild temperatures over the past few weeks fueled the growth spurt.…
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Canteerbury Bells
This year has been my best ever for Canterbury bells–a plant I’ve grown on and off for more than thirty years. They’re biennials–like foxgloves, forget-me-nots, and dame’s rocket. Folilage grows the first year and, in the second year, they bloom, set seed, and die. Outside of catalogs, I’d never seen Canterbury bells. I ordered several…
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A Good Start
Spring weather has arrived here in Athens. Locals say Good Friday is the safe planting date to avoid late frosts. Given the way Easter moves around, that’s tricky. I go with April 22–the day between the birthdays of Dad and his mother from whom I inherited a green thumb. Little is blooming beyond some store-bought…
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Pickled Weeds?
A post promoting vinegar (one gallon), salt (one cup) and dish soap (one tablespoon) as a replacement for RoundUp recently came across my Facebook feed. The active ingredient in Roundup is nasty, but effective at killing plants–and lots of other things. A more earth-friendly approach appealed to me. Weeds pop up in cracks in the…