Heart of the Garden

  • Coffee Grounds in the Garden?

    Never add raw, un-composted used coffee grounds to your soil. Coffee grounds are so acidic, even acid-loving blueberries and azaleas wouldn’t appreciate sitting in a pile of your Maxwell House. If you add them to your compost, they should take up no more than 10% by volume. The same goes…

  • Are you Growing Vegetables or Weeds?

    What’s wrong with this picture? Answer: The deer stayed out but the weeds went crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking. Also, those flimsy tomato cages never work. Maybe they will work for peppers or cukes but NOT TOMATOES. We built this raised bed to keep weeds out and…

  • Rock Garden on a Hill

    What’s wrong with this picture? In under two weeks it was covered with weeds. Did I really think the grass would stay put? Or the dormant weed seeds I turned up wouldn’t sprout just because I would yell at them?  All those nice little perennials were choked by creeping charlie…

  • Cover Crop

    What’s wrong with this picture? It’s an anemic cover crop! I planted winter rye as a cover crop (a bit late in the season – mid-November) even though I plan to build (or rather HE will build) raised beds in Spring (even though he’s busy rebuilding our falling-down house.) So…

  • Forcing Bulbs

    I’ve been planting bulbs outside since Halloween. Most of them got a dusting of bone meal. It made Skippy happy as he went snorting up dust clouds and disturbing everything I’d planted, but we shall see if it makes a difference in the Spring. I threw some tulips in the…

  • Just Say No to Miracle Gro

    Why can’t I just make things easy and buy the product everyone wants me to buy? Miracle Gro is EVERYWHERE and it’s fertilizer and it’s all I know about and the ads tell me I should use it. They even sell it at Walgreens. I mean, Nitrogen, Phosporus and potassium…

  • Brassica Wine Fantasy

      This cacao shell mulch makes a great vintage.

  • Periwinkle

    What’s wrong with this picture? Answer: Periwinkle! Soon after moving here, I started digging up the grass to make proper use of the southern exposure. My parents gave me several trash bags full of periwinkle  which I started popping in the ground here. Why did I do that? Because I…

  • Invasive: Purple Loosestrife

    I bought this plant at a church plant sale last summer. It was labelled “Pink Salvia.” Is there such a thing? It turns out it’s purple loosestrife, an invasive weed that’s taking over many meadows along the Brandywine. Great. Thanks church.

  • Invasive: English Ivy

    I’ve been obsessing about yanking out all the english ivy I planted in my shade garden. It has evolved into a giant green medusa and I finally neglected my other chores today and psyched myself up with a Maori angry face chant and headed for the ivy. It was starting…