Coming Soon: Grand Finale of Color by Sandy Swegel Quit tidying up. There’s something you seldom hear. Sanitation in the garden is important year-round, but September is special in that we are slowly building up to the grand finale of Fall Color that changing leaf color brings. You can help make that more spectacular in your garden. Leave […]
Get More Tomatoes THIS Year! by Sandy Swegel It’s time to prune your tomatoes if you live in Zone 5 and almost time in Zone 6. Sure there are great recipes (and movies) for fried green tomatoes, but you and I both know we much prefer red tomatoes ripened by the sun. So it’s time to take […]
2 Easy Ways to Have More Flowers Next Year! by Sandy Swegel Your task this week is to go stand in the part of your garden that has wildflower-y plants. You’ll notice two things. The first thing is that there are lots of spent flowers and seed heads that need to be deadheaded. Everything from rudbeckia […]
What’s Wrong with this Leaf by Sandy Swegel What do you do when one of your plants suddenly starts looking like it’s sick. I mentally go through a list of things I’ve seen before. Is it powdery mildew? Is that grasshopper damage? If the plant is next door to a yard that doesn’t have a […]
by Sandy Swegel I had to laugh this week when reader Mike Hood commented earlier on one of our sweet inspiring quotes about the virtues of gardening that “Gardening is a Battle.” Now maybe Mike was just trolling, but I am all too familiar with the feeling that gardening is a battle. When […]
More Wildflowers by Sandy Swegel The fields and meadows of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado are awash in wildflowers this year. Lots of moisture in the Fall and Spring has turned our mountains into riots of color that started early and keeps going and going. We, gardeners, keep playing hooky from our weeding tasks to hike along mountain meadows […]
Inviting Orioles for Summer Dining by Sandy Swegel This is the best time of the year. Summer Harvest is coming in strong. Cherry tomatoes and grilled marinated zucchini make wonderful summer suppers followed by fresh cherries and peaches. A bottle of cold Prosecco and French brie and a couple of friends make for lovely summer evenings. The […]
by Sandy Swegel Yesterday afternoon the musical ditty stuck in my head was a new rendition of “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer.” The music was the same but the lyrics were “I got dive bombed by a Hummingbird.” I was minding my own business weeding a lovely rock garden bed of yellow columbine and […]
What I Learned About Peas this Year by Sandy Swegel Two friends each planted a pack of peas back in March and lovingly watered and tended them while I watched. One garden produced 5 glorious pounds of pea pods and made the gardener, a cook, very happy. The other garden grew 12 spindly plants that have put […]
3 Ways to Enjoy Gardening More! by Sandy Swegel We had our first 100-degree day which always reminds me that I prefer to be a fair-weather gardener and garden where it is cool and partly shady. Sometime mid-summer, gardening can become a chore rather than a delight. So on that hot day, I thought about […]
