The June garden can be quite overwhelming. There is a lot to seed still, a lot to rip out, a lot to build, a lot to maintain, a lot to harvest, and a lot to clear and get ready for the next crop. We plant continuously here at Laughing Duck gardens, and try to put [...]
Read More..>>First Shirley poppy (Papaver rhoeas), one of my favorite flowers that I let seed all over the garden.
They come on the heel of the orange-y wispy field poppies, and they come in shade of pinks and reds, from the clearest vermilion to dark wine; some have black crosses as their center, other white blotches. They [...]
Read More..>>Actually not from the woods but from a very nice garden that was open during Virginia Historic Garden Week. But the dogwoods are blooming in the woods too - although the last couple of very hot days is shortening the bloom time. Other than that, it’s been a fabulous spring for dogwoods, rebuds, sassafras [...]
Read More..>>It’s time to start hardening off the babies. At least, for those of us in the Northern Piedmont (and in the mid-Atlantic area). Yep, time to start hardening off the hardy annual vegetables that were lovingly started indoors. That include you people who took one of my “Starting The Veggy Garden from Seeds” workshops [...]
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Comments(2) Spring is blue and red: blue clear sky and red maple flowers.
Indeed the maples are blooming now, the earliest single species source of nectar and pollen for our bees.
Read More..>>Finally - rain. Gentle, slow, soft, over the course of a few days.
A the end, it did not add to that much altogether - maybe 1/2 inch (as measured by my hand thrust in a bucket that was left out). Nonetheless, it was rain in what has been a cold and dry winter with hardly [...]
Something softly went through the hollow last night, dropping huge handfuls of wet snow all over. The snow on the ground was gone by mid-morning, but wads of sticky whiteness remained in shrubs and dry grasses - looking like cotton candy.
Meanwhile, inside under the shop lights, seeds planted earlier this month have germinated, true leaves [...]
Read More..>>Do you do pot?
Not that kind of pot, silly! But “pot” as in food grown in a container…
Virginia Rockwell asked me in a comment on the post labeled “Eating Local in the Northern Piedmont in Winter” if I have “any tips for newbies [about] growing your own in central VA? […] focusing on growing edibles [...]
Today, we are not planting potatoes in the cold frame.
View toward the upper garden
and view toward the lower garden (from the safety of the porch)
and the seed starting area in the house…
On the other hand, it would be a good day to go scatter seeds of Shirley poppy, nigella, chamomile, and all those hardy [...]
Read More..>>Yes, this is a food related post. Look closer… can you find the honey bee? her butt sticking out from one of the snowdrops? “her” indeed… they are all “she”, you know.
ah… honey: the food of the gods! bee barf!
On warm sunny days, they fly out of the hive where the cold weather has kept [...]
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