Garden

Drying Herbs

September 20, 2012

Do you have an abundance of beautiful herbs still growing in the garden and would love to continue enjoying them through out winter? Drying them is a great solution. It is great to have dried herbs hanging close at hand that you can quickly trim and use in your cooking during those cold and chilly [...]

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Seed Gathering Saving

September 12, 2012

yarrow seeds ready to be placed in envelopes to be stored_

I never thought to collect my own seeds until my sister showed me how. It was years ago, she was in town visiting and we had decided to take the kids to a local amusement park. The park had several beautiful flower beds with hundreds of perennial flowers in full bloom. She saw a flower [...]

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Fall Garden Planting To Do List

August 9, 2012

Kitchen Garden in August ready for Fall planting @ ahealthylifeforme

Even though you may still be pulling the sprinklers around and gardening in the morning and evening to avoid the heat, its time to start thinking about our Fall vegetable gardens. Depending on where you live or what you want to grow, you may be able to plant seeds and transplants this month. Around here [...]

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Garden’s Are Showing End of Season Blooms

August 3, 2012

Cleo laying in the Formal Gardens enjoying the sunset @ ahealhtylifeforme

Usually about this time, I am pretty fed up with the garden. The blooms are fading and the produce is flowing, which means I am in the kitchen canning. On top of it I usually dread the kids going back to school. I know what your thinking… WHAT! However, my boys are either out [...]

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The Effects Of Hot Weather On Your Garden

July 24, 2012

Though I have tomatoes on the plants, they have just been sitting there and not ripening.

I like to order my seeds from a few different sources, one of them is JUNG SEEDS. They sent out their newsletter last weekend and an article touched on the Hot Weather and its effects on our garden. Since my garden really took a beating during the heat wave, I found the article really informative, [...]

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Making the Most of My Time in the Kitchen Garden

June 27, 2012

I’ve recently had a couple of people question the amount of time I spend in the garden. I thought about their questions and what I do do to work productively. In the spring and early summer I do spend several hours each day with maintenance, staking, stringing and mostly weeding. Which is something all gardeners [...]

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I Had a Pretty Fabulous Week

June 23, 2012

This week has been pretty exciting for me. On Monday I was notified by Jessica at A Lot on Your Plate that I had won her Baking Competition with my Chocolate Shortbread Cookie tipped in Chocolate Recipe. I was pretty thrilled! I did a little fist pump! She posted my recipe on her blog and [...]

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Kindness Caused me to Fall in Love with the ‘Daylily’

June 21, 2012

My father has a friend that he knew through his work that as a child I knew as “Boots”. I still to this day do not know his true name, because I have never heard him called or referred to as anything else. Though I have not seen him in years, my father still corresponds [...]

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My Morning in the Kitchen Garden in Pictures

May 30, 2012

This morning the Fog was heavy and it made the garden so peaceful. I took some pics and wanted to share. The dew was showcasing the spiderwebs and making the plants glow green. Foghorn was doing his morning jog around the garden letting his crows fly. There were no bees or butterflies out this early [...]

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What's Soft, Fuzzy, and Silver Green All Over? Lamb's Ears

May 27, 2012

With leaves the shape, size and plushness of Lamb’s Ears (Stachys byzantina), one look at this plant and its obvious how it got its name. It is native to Northern Turkey, the Southern Caucasus Mountain region and Southern Iran where it grows on rocky hills and scrub areas. In other words, it is a weed. I [...]

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Frogs & Toads, a Gardeners Friendly Neighbor

May 16, 2012

We have a small decorative pond in our backyard and we also have a pool. I usually am one of the last people to open my pool because every spring the frogs from our little pond go up and lay their eggs in the water that sits on our pool cover. I will have thousands [...]

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You Want Snakes in Your Garden! I Do!

May 9, 2012

In the garden snakes can be of great benefit. They eat insects or rodents primarily, which are likely to benefit the garden. Small snakes can do severe damage to a grasshopper population in a confined area in just one summer. I HATE Grasshoppers, and I get them every year! Not this year. I was doing some [...]