Gardening Articles, Tips and How-tos - Dave's Garden
Welcome to our library of articles, where you can search and browse over 2,000 articles written by our own team of garden writers. Interested in becoming a Dave's Garden writer? Submit an article to apply.
Lady, Corky and her son Lucky, another Lucky, Lill, Mitzi, Rags, another Lill, Molly, Sidney, Honey, Sadie, May, Ned, Tim, another Mitzi: a litany of dogs that have dashed through my life. Pepper, Polly, Smudge, Suzy: pups that barely put in an appearance before they were gone. Hunting dogs and herding dogs, farm dogs all, allowing us to work with them.
Tired of winter yet? These early bloomers provide a needed break from the cold at just the right time. Their subtle flowers offer sweet perfume that flavors the air as early as February.
Have you ever looked inside of a cracked walnut? I've often done that, but it never occurred to me to see what it was so obvious: the cross shape between the two kernels.
March is another great month for succulents flowers (most winter and spring months are), though this one is more evenly spread out among the various succulent and related families. This article is an introductory guide to what one might expect to be blooming this time of year.
Easter! For many people, in addition to the implied religious festival, Easter means buying eggs. Whether to dye, display, or hide, whether empty or hard-boiled, Easter is about eggs. Here's an easy Easter craft you can try right now by saving eggshells and using seeds or tiny plants.
Flowering maples are sometimes known as parlor maples, since they used to decorate chilly Victorian front rooms. They actually are members of the Abutilon rather than the Acer family, but they do flower. Not as prolifically for me as the ones in catalog photos, but those businesses have greenhouses and I don't!
The Secret Garden - what did it really look like? If you've read the book, you remember the bricked-up secret garden which came to life when tended by Mary Lennox. If you haven't, perhaps I can convince you to pick up a copy somewhere and read it! Although it's a children's book, it has captivated the hearts of gardeners for generations. Here are some photographs of what the adult in me thinks the flowers in Mary's Secret Garden might have looked like.
Gardeners have a keen sense of humor and we know that you'll enjoy adding your family-friendly quote or description to the image. We'll supply the picture and everyone can post their funniest title. We can't wait to see what you come up with!
As gardener in a seaside community you need to always consider your choice of plants based on their saline-resistance. Not just salty soil, but especially salt-laden winds can wreak havoc with your beautiful plantings. Fortunately there are a number of plants that are eminently salt-resistant. Because of my location I will concentrate here on plants that grow in the beach areas of Florida.
Raised bed gardens on rooftops can be a great solution for urban dwellers. Raised beds are big enough to turn any rooftop into a small farm growing herbs and vegetables, or into a decorative garden space. They are easy to maintain, and provide all the benefits of container gardening, but on a bigger scale. Rooftops have some unique features that need to be taken into consideration when planning to install raised beds. Some planning is necessary to avoid unnecessary costs, and avert a possible disaster.
I live on a typical suburban lot, so my gardening space is somewhat limited. My primary interest is heirloom tomatoes and the majority of my space at home is devoted to growing these. I acquired a plot in a local community garden, part of which I devoted to growing potatoes. Let me take you through my experience in growing these tubers for the first time.
African Violets are usually grown for their flowers. But even the most carefully tended and fertilized African violet won't bloom constantly. Variegated foliage makes some varieties exciting even when they're out of bloom. Imagine leaves so lovely that blooms are a bonus...
Winter in Ohio (Zones 5, 6 and 6a) begins in December and continues through the end of March--sometimes longer in certain years. An array of winter blooming perennials and shrubs helps us get through the dreary, cold days. And in more temperate regions, a greater variety of floral displays helps keep the winter blahs from setting in.
Yellowroot is rare in the nursery trade but this small shrub is native across eastern North America and featured at renowned arboreta such as Arnold in Massachusetts and JC Raulston in North Carolina.
I was a Camp Fire Girl from kindergarten through seventh grade. I learned many things, although not all of them were immediately useful to me, like How To Make A Hospital Corner, How To Fold A United States Flag, and How To Dance The Foxtrot. But almost fifty years later, there is one lesson I have never forgotten: How To Light A Fire.
The dawn redwood is a living fossil. The genus Metasequoia was thought to be extinct for millions of years. Imagine the excitement in the plant science world when living Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwoods) were discovered in the 1940s in China.
My Great Aunt Bett was known as the Medicine Woman in the mountains of eastern Kentucky where I grew up. She was indeed a formidable woman, even to me, since she could drape that stinking asphidity bag around my neck and get by with it. This is the story of our trek up the mountains on our search for the new shoots of poke, and of all the magic held secretly within the pokeweed plant.
Gardeners have a keen sense of humor and we know that you'll enjoy adding your family-friendly quote or description to the image. We'll supply the picture and everyone can post their funniest title. We can't wait to see what you come up with!
Where, Oh where, has my little plant gone? It was my pride and joy. What do I see now? Well, look for yourself: some strange brown dried up creature from outer space has eaten my beautiful plant.
I finally realized that some of my gardening practices made more work for myself and by making a number of small changes it became much easier and less time consuming to prevent and control grass and weeds in my gardens. Using cut edge borders, avoiding perennials at the front of the border where grass and weeds like to sneak in and finally, the need for mulching as one of the first steps in spring to keep weed seeds from getting sun needed for germination.
Good morning dear readers, I hope you had a good rest after our visit around Hong-Kong. As promised today is a green day with a visit to the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, which I am sure you will enjoy!
Several botanical names derive from Greek myth, from the stories of gods who changed a hapless mortal into a plant. But Daphne gave her name to two completely unrelated shrubs.
Spring is near, despite the snow and freeze outside, so I'm looking forward to start the gardening tasks I need to do indoors, until the weather will be warm enough to allow me to start working in the garden as well.
Now is a good time to make hardwood cuttings, especially of deciduous trees, shrubs, and other woody plants. The procedure is surprisingly easy and is an effective propagation method for many plants.
The first time you lifted the lid of one of your winter sowing containers and found a tiny green sprout, your eyes grew wide with wonder. It worked! You threw seeds in a milk jug, stuck it outside under your deck, and suddenly you have a baby plant! Amazing. Then another sprout appeared. And another. Now you have thickets of sprouts in an acre of winter sowing containers… What to do?
If you're making a gingerbread house, by all means add icicles made from icing; they're the epitome of cute for a ski chalet. But if you're a homeowner, icicles can signal heat loss and gutter damage. And how do icicles affect your plants?
The striking coloring of the Eastern towhee makes it highly noticeable, should you be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. You're much more likely to hear it energetically foraging through undergrowth.This species searches out insects and seeds in leaf litter, using both of its big feet at once in a lively backwards hopping motion.
If you are dreaming of fresh homegrown vegetables, or just itching to get out of the house and into the dirt, your wait is nearly over. Plant these varieties before the final frost for spring gardening success.
Gardeners have a keen sense of humor and we know that you'll enjoy adding your family-friendly quote or description to the image. We'll supply the picture and everyone can post their funniest title. We can't wait to see what you come up with!
It's Saint Valentine's Day, February 14! It's a day to give a superhero or princess valentine to everyone in first grade, or to buy your sweetheart at least one rose, if not dozens of them! It's a day to present your significant other with the biggest most ostentatious card you can find, the one that says "for all the million ways I love you...." and then lists them each in great detail (it's a big card). It's DEFINITELY a day to give that special someone chocolate (a known aphrodisiac*). But what happened to St. Valentine, and what is this article doing on a gardening site?
