I like iris flowers just fine, although we have too many plants and not enough different varieties. What I don't like is how the plants look when they finish blooming. Ugh. Several plants were especially bad, with brown leaves and spots and soft rhizomes. I remembered iris get … [Read more...]
My Poor Zebra Grass – Too Much Snow! And Maybe Too Much Fertilizer?
We have gotten a lot of snow and ice and icy snow this winter. My poor zebra grass (Miscanthus) is showing the effects! Here it is all sprawled over coated with ice. It looks like a sad sea creature washed up on shore. This grass is vigorous and picks itself up after the ice melts or the … [Read more...]
Bunny Wars III Rabbits 3, Kathy 1 Losing Despite Mr. Hawk
My last post I claimed we were slowly winning the war against rabbits eating my flowers. Despite losing almost a third of my peonies and all our nasturtiums, I thought we had found a cure for the bunny infestation. Dave got some pellets that are supposed to get taken up into the plants to make them … [Read more...]
Bunny Wars II – We’re Winning the Battle – Keeping Rabbits Out of the Garden
Bunny Wars: Opening Battle A few weeks ago I showed how my peonies were attacked by rabbits with some of my favorites eaten! It's Bunny War time at our home. No, I'm not going to kill the little cuties. All I want to do is let them enjoy the great prairie acres behind our fence. They have … [Read more...]
Follow Up on Using Preen This Summer to Control Weeds
This spring I posted about using Preen to control weeds instead of mulching. You can read that article here: Mulch In the Flower Bed - What Type to Use? I haven't liked any of the mulch materials we used in past gardens - newspapers (yuck!), grass (weedy and smelly), bark (can't cultivate and it … [Read more...]
This Means War! Bunnies, Peonies and Me: Warfare in the Garden
I like bunnies. Cute, furry little creatures, I like watching them crouch under the bushes by my office hiding behind a wall of snow. Let's correct that. I used to like bunnies. Now it's war. Do you see the double row of glorious, happy colored nasturtiums? No? Neither do I, at least not … [Read more...]
Adding Magic to Flower Gardens with Pathways – How to Lay a Path
Way way back in our first home Dave and I put in a garden along the back edge of our lot, then we created a big huge circle planting area. Ugh. It was so hard to get into the garden to weed and hard to see the flowers. And it was ugly. I thought about these two false starts and realized that … [Read more...]
Mulch in the Flower Beds? What Type to Use?
I've read that mulch is a gardener's best friend. Mulch cuts down on weeds, holds moisture, gives you a non-muddy surface to walk. I've tried several different mulches and so far none of them is the panacea we hope. Bark mulch is traditional, what you see around shrubs in many yards and public … [Read more...]