You probably know that before the advent of modern chemical dyes we relied upon plants for making dyes. These dyes came in a surprising array of colors, though they tended to be more earth toned and less bright than our modern dyes. Nonetheless, plants can produce an amazing array natural dyes in highly versatile colors….
Category: Gardening
How To Successfully Overwinter Passion Flowers
Today we are going to give you some tips to help you succeed with overwintering passion flowers. How easy and how much success you have is based upon a lot of variables. Some cultivars are easier to overwinter than others. Also some climates and environments make overwintering easier than others. As a rule, passion flowers…
Protect Your Plants With Functional DIY Hose Corners
Today we are going to share with you one of our favorite garden hacks. Hose corners. Unless you are one of the lucky few who has water lines or drip irrigation to literally anything you could possibly want to water or irrigate, you probably deal with hoses at some point. They are frustrating! If you…
Help! Something Is Eating My Passion Flower
Every summer we receive questions from people wanting to know “what is eating my passion flower?”. While there are many things that can eat passion flowers, the quick answer is most likely fritillary caterpillars. Often passion flower plants will go from looking perfect to full of holes seemingly overnight. While the damage can seem alarming,…
Our Favorite Long Blooming Plants
As per reader’s request, today’s article is a list of our favorite long blooming plants. There are certainly many uses and a place for short blooming plants in your garden. These short-lived blooms like lilies, peonies and iris are often the focal points and showy stars of the garden. However, it is the less showy…
My Passion Flower Isn’t Flowering. Why??
This is a very commonly asked question, and also a difficult one for us to answer. The reason it’s so difficult to answer is that everyone’s situation is different. Every single yard and even locations in the same yard are different. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to remotely determine what is going wrong. This…
What Passion Flower is the Best??
One of the things we are most frequently asked is “what passion flower would be best?”. So today we are going to look at how to select an appropriate passion flower. “Best” is always going to be subjective to your specific wants and needs, but this is how to evaluate what we have vs what…
How To Prune Stone Fruit Trees Like Peaches Or Cherries
A few weeks ago, we took a look at how to prune apple trees. Today we are going to look at how to prune stone fruit. Stone fruits are things like peaches, plums, and cherries. They grow differently than apples and require a completely different pruning strategy. Before we get started pruning a peach tree,…
How To Prune Blueberry Bushes
If you have the right soil, blueberries are one of the easiest to grow fruits. They can live for 50 years or more, require little care, have no pest or disease problems to speak of, and can easily be grown as no spray fruits. They are so easy to care for that many people never…
How To Prune Apple Trees
Today we are going to take a quick look at how to prune apple trees. While it is true that your apple trees will produce fruit without pruning, you will get better, easier to pick fruit if you prune the trees. Ideally apple trees should be pruned yearly. Young trees will require little to no…