We lost our one-year-old Hummingbird Mint plant to that frigid cold snap last Christmas. A hardy perennial, it didn’t survive that week of artic-like weather. This spring, we immediately searched for and found another and it’s in the ground now. Fellow gardeners, this is a plant you want to have. Though it attracts both butterflies and hummingbirds, we wanted it near our fishpond to draw in … [Read more...]

Doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it? That’s because you don’t necessarily eat eggs with tomatoes, you put the eggshells in and on the ground when you plant tomatoes. If you do, you’ll grow more and larger tomatoes and eliminate or reduce those black spots on the first fruits. I didn’t do well in chemistry, but I know that calcium, especially calcium carbonate, is a great additive to the … [Read more...]

Last week, within 2 days, we alternately turned on our air conditioner and then our gas logs. April weather can be strange indeed, which poses problems for back yard gardeners. Though the air may feel warm, the soil temperature may well be still too cool, and a sudden late frost is always a possibility. Planting tomatoes and peppers too early in cooler temperatures can cause stunted growth, … [Read more...]

  My wife is a Mulch-aholic. I have gone to their meetings, and there is no cure. It’s an illness caused when your mother didn’t let you play in the dirt as a 4-year-old. Each spring, Lowe’s brings in 2 tractor trailer loads of brown mulch – one for Nancy and one for all the other gardeners in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Mulch-aholics ofte try to hide their sickness. Rather … [Read more...]

I am chomping at the bit to start digging in my garden. I have planted a few peas, beets, onion sets and lettuce, but I must bide my time before the summer garden goes in. Still, that doesn’t stop me from buying garden toys, and I have a new one – a cucumber trellis. I have found that most cucumber vines like to climb if there is something nearby to cling to. They’re up and at ‘em like Jack … [Read more...]

  The seasons have changed. The Christmas displays are down at Wal-Mart and in their place are 50-foot racks of seeds. It won’t be long. This is the time of year when my thoughts turn to the garden, hoping the tomatoes will behave and the cucumbers will be plentiful, and praying that the squash borers will take a year off and that rain will come, but not all at once.  About the only … [Read more...]

I plant spring onions from sets every year. They are usually the first things to pop out of the ground. Then, after about a month, they are mature enough to pluck from the soil and eat as delicious, tender spring onions. But I never pull them all up. A few get a little too plump for raw, spring onions, so I leave them alone. By July, the green tops have disappeared, and it looks like the onions … [Read more...]