If you’re wondering about my absence from the virtual world lately, it’s because I’ve been knee deep in my garden. The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous! In many ways, I much prefer to garden in the Fall than in the Spring. It is the best time to: get your plants in and/or plan out [...]

If I didn’t already have plans this weekend, I would be dragging my family to the 7th Annual Garden Festival of Roses at the Antique Rose Emporium in San Antonio. By the way, it was from the owner Mike Shoup’s rose book, Landscaping with Antique Roses (no longer in print) where I (re)discovered my passion [...]

My husband saw an info-mercial on upside down planters late one night and thought it would be a fun project to do with the kids. It was very easy to make but not very pretty. It was made out of a gallon jug container with about a 1.5″ diameter opening for the tomato plant. He [...]

After years of experimenting with different layouts, we’ve settled on a ‘U’ or horseshoe arrangement for our cage plants. You can reach each plant from all angles and it’s very kid-friendly. Our kids love hanging inside the U. We use 6″ grid cattle panel welded wire fencing for all our cages and plant eggplants and [...]

I just pulled out all of our onions this week. It is our first big harvest for this year. Onions are very easy to grow in Central Texas. We plant the onion sets very close together and use the thinned out ones as green onions. The ones I just pulled are from our edible garden [...]

Woohoo! Wish everyday was Earth Day. Here’s an easy idea you can implement: purchase a rain barrel and start harvesting rainwater for your garden use. Conserve water, save on water bills, and your plants will reward you for it (they do better with pH neutral rainwater than municipal water). In many cities, you can even [...]

No southern garden is complete without the presence of roses and no other rose class is more fitting in a southern garden than the Noisettes. The Noisette class descended from the first recorded American hybrid, Champneys’ Pink Cluster a.k.a ‘The Charleston Rose’, and is recognized as the first rose class originating in the United States.

Roses have a bad reputation for being difficult to grow and maintain. This may be true for modern roses that you often see at the floral shop. The plants that those long stem roses come from weren’t bred to look good in the garden. They were bred to, well, have long stems with a particular [...]

I love the springtime, I love gardening, and I love going to the garden center. One of my favorite nursery is the Natural Gardener in Austin. Besides the wonderful selection of plants, they have beautiful grounds with many demonstration gardens. I love taking my kids there and to make it extra fun for them, we [...]

Rooting cuttings is my favorite way to increase my plant collection. Some plants, like roses, are just hard to propagate any other way. Propagation by cuttings is very easy and requires little effort. You just have to be patient and wait for your cuttings to root…