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Posts Tagged ‘Gardening’
One Word Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Home, Photography, tagged Gardening, Home, hostas, Knockout Roses, Landscaping, Wordless Wednesday on June 5, 2013| 2 Comments »
One Word Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Green/Sustainable Living, Home, Photography, tagged Gardening, Home, Photography, Wordless Wednesday on May 29, 2013|
Thoughtful Thursday-Flower Power
Posted in Gardening, My Thoughts, tagged Buy Local, Gardening, Greenleaf Nursery, Mammoth Cave Transplants, Thoughtful Thursday on May 16, 2013|
For today’s Thoughtful Thursday post, I would like to tell you about two garden centers in my area that I love to visit. When my mom was living, she ran a small garden center with my aunt and grandmother and, on my days off, I would go with her to pick up wholesale flowers. I loved these trips and enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful things offered by these businesses. Thankfully, they also sold retail and now I return every year to purchase my flowers from them. Please excuse the phone pics…I didn’t have my big camera with me.
Mammoth Cave Transplants is located in Edmonson County, Kentucky, just a short distance from Brownsville. The owners are retired school teachers who have this wonderful business right beside their home. If you are near, please stop in and have a look around. There are many greenhouses packed tight with blooming beauties along with trees, shrubs, garden art and vegetable seeds.
While you are there, take a second and pet the resident nursery cat, Smoke, who has been there for YEARS!
The second business is Greenleaf Nursery in Glasgow, Kentucky which is only about 30 minutes from where I live. This was the main place we bought flowers when I was a child and I remember going here with my mom every year. I have loved gardening from an early age and always enjoyed looking at all of the pretty plants and wanting to try them all! C & I stopped in a couple of weekends ago to pick up a hanging basket so I grabbed a few phone photos while we were there. It was a nasty wet day but the bright cheery flowers made it worth the stop in the rain.
Greenleaf had some beautiful displays set up to give people ideas of how to decorate with their flowers. If it had not been so rainy, I could have spend hours just wandering around looking at everything!
I hope you enjoyed this short virtual tour of two of my favorite places to shop. If you are in the area, please stop by and support these two long standing Kentucky businesses.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Gardening, Home, Photography, tagged bridal wreath, forsythia, Gardening, pear trees, violets, Wordless Wednesday on April 17, 2013|
Spring is finally here…
Forsythia from a start from my Nanny’s garden:
Bridal Wreath from a start from my great-grandmother’s garden:
Wild violets
Bartlett & Bradford pear trees in full bloom:
It all makes my heart glad!
Thoughtful Thursday-Gardening Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening, Thoughtful Thursday on August 30, 2012|
Looking back at my Thoughtful Thursday posts, I realized that it had been quite a while since I wrote about our garden. It has done surprisingly well considering the extreme heat and dry weather we had for most of June and July. Thankfully, since we have just the two raised beds and one strawberry bed, I was able to water them enough to keep everything alive.
Once the rain started back, I started harvesting more and more. My cucumbers have done great and the peppers and tomatoes have really made a comeback. This is what I picked Saturday before last…
There was also a handful of very small strawberries that I made strawberry lemonade slushies with and I still have several carrots left, too. That same day, I sowed a fall crop of lettuce and a few more cucumber seeds. There is just enough time before our usual frost to get a few cucumbers from new plants. Say a little prayer that our frost is a little late.
Our new grapevines are growing well, but it will still be a year or two before we actually get fruit from them. It is the same with the fruit trees. I am trying to be patient and let them grow more before bearing much fruit so they will be nice and strong.
The wood that we made our raised bed from is starting to deteriorate so C & I are trying to come up with an inexpensive alternative to replace the boards. We have a few ideas, but no concrete plans yet. We are thinking of using artificial deck boards, but they are so expensive. I might have to start stalking Craig’s List to see if we can find them on the cheap.
Considering the weather that we have had, I have been thrilled at the garden output and hopefully it will continue for a few more weeks!
Thoughtful Thursday-How To Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Block Wall, Gardening, Landscaping, Thoughtful Thursday on July 19, 2012|
We have finally gotten around to cleaning up the area where we built a new raised flower bed this spring so I wanted to show you how we did it. Using the stacking wall blocks was a new experience for us, but it turned out to be pretty simple. Our wall is just two blocks high so we didn’t have to worry about drainage pipe and gluing the blocks together. It was a great project to cut our teeth on.
We purchased the wall blocks, leveling sand and rock at our local Lowe’s Home Improvement store and we were lucky enough to score free delivery, because these babies were heavy. You would need a pretty heavy duty pick-up truck to haul these around. Anyway, the Lowe’s delivery guy, who we have known for a long time and went to school with, put the pallets exactly where we wanted them with a small fork-lift. So easy!
This is what we started off with:
Not real attractive, is it? We had the sidewalk poured last year and left the big empty space on purpose, but the weather was so hot that we didn’t get it done then. We proceeded to dig out the weeds and level the dirt as much as possible. It looked so much better just doing that.
C dug a small trench along the sidewalk and started pouring in the gravel and we leveled that as we went.
Next, a thin layer of leveling sand was poured on top of the gravel and we leveled as we went again.
Now for the fun part…the blocks!
We put two rows of blocks, but we had bought enough for three layers. Two was deep enough for what we wanted so we can use the others somewhere else. C’s dad was nice enough to bring us a load of dirt with his front end loader and then I went to planting. C & I had moved two Knock-out roses from my grandparent’s front yard that they didn’t want anymore so I planted those in there along with some perennial salvias and Shasta daisies. I love the dark blue, white and bright pink color combo. Since perennials are kind of expensive, I filled in the other areas with bright pink Vincas. Next spring, I want to add a couple of bright pink coneflowers. The roses have finally came out of shock and are blooming their hearts out. We are so pleased with how it turned out and how relatively simple it was.
We still have a little work to do on the other side of the sidewalk, but that will have to wait until cooler weather so we can seed a little grass.
Thoughtful Thursday: Gardening Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Gardening, Thoughtful Thursday on June 7, 2012|
It has been a few weeks since my last gardening update and, my goodness, how things have changed! C & I have been munching on lettuce for a couple of weeks now and it is so so good. The cucumbers have tiny little cucumbers growing so I seeded the second generation this past weekend.
The green peppers are doing great with one plant already having a little pepper on it. My sauce tomatoes and watermelons are also growing like gangbusters. The plants just love the warm and rainy weather we have had.
Here is a overview of the two raised beds:
My flowers are doing just as well as the veggies…
C & I moved these two Knock-out roses from my grandparents’ yard to ours and we were so afraid that they wouldn’t make it, but they did!
I just love this time of year! Every color seems intensified and all of the plants are so lush.
Thoughtful Thursday-What’s In Bloom Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Annuals, Asiatic Lily, Calibrachoa, Fan Flower, Flowers, Gardening, Geraniums, Knockout Roses, Perennials, Salvia, Shasta Daisy, Thoughtful Thursday on May 10, 2012|
For this thoughtful post, I am turning to flower power. Since it is May in Kentucky, now is the prime time to add color to your outdoor view. This spring has seen a few new additions around here, both perennial and annual. The raised flower bed behind the garage that we built this spring is going to be a perennial bed, but perennials aren’t cheap so I am starting slowly.
So far, I have planted 4 shasta daisies:
Four perennial salvias:
C & I also planted two knockout roses that my grandparents wanted moved from their landscaping. They are still trying to settle in and right now look a little sad, but they are hanging in there. In another bed are two new dwarf red Asiatic lilies that were a spontaneous purchase at Lowe’s.
In the two flower pots I have on the back deck, I used hot pink geraniums with white summer snapdragons, white calibrachoa and a spike.
Oh, there is also a new little gem in there, a double calibrachoa called Calibrachoa Mini Famous Double Amethyst. I just love this little pot filler!
On the front porch pots, I always do red, white and blue so this year it is filled with a spike, red geraniums (with the biggest blooms I have ever seen), white summer snapdragons, and blue fan flower.
I can’t end this post without posting a photo of the gloriousness of my double red Knockout roses in the front yard. These things are amazing! 
Thoughtful Thursday: Garden Edition
Posted in Gardening, Home, My Thoughts, tagged Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening, Thoughtful Thursday on April 26, 2012| 2 Comments »
Despite having extra-warm temperatures for most of March and the first part of April, Mother Nature has gotten back to normal. Our area has been having its share of little “winters” the last couple of weeks, which means much cooler temperatures. Normally, this is no big deal, BUT when all of the plants decided to come out and enjoy that early warm weather, it could spell trouble.
C & I had trimmed some grapevines in his parent’s yard a couple of months ago and they were coming out in full force. They covered them in burlap to protect them from the freeze, but, sadly, they got burned. Oh, well, they are recovering nicely now so hopefully no great harm was done. Our new grapevines got nipped, too, but they are starting to show signs of life again.
I am so glad that I didn’t jump the gun and try to sow seeds of veggies that need the warmth. I guess I had better confess that I didn’t do this because of my smarts, but because I just didn’t have the beds ready. God watches over us all the time! The early warm weather has given us time to do a few projects around the house. Last year, we had a concrete driveway and two sidewalks poured so this year we built a raised flower bed between one sidewalk and the garage. We still like a few more details, but here is a sneak peek:
I plan to have a how-to post on how we built our wall in the coming weeks. C also built another raised bed for me so now I have even more room to grow fresh veggies and fruits…
I have visions of paste tomatoes, green peppers, and small watermelons in here. See all that beautiful dirt? That is thanks to my wonderful father-in-law who took time out of his busy farming schedule to put his front end loader to work. He brought me four huge scoops of composted dirt/leaves/cow manure/hay that has been sitting undisturbed for a few years. It is gardener’s black gold! Thanks, R! You saved us a lot of back breaking, or at least back bending, work.
Well, that’s about it for now. In just a few weeks, I’ll be seeding cucumbers and watermelon, not to mention planting my tomatoes and green pepper plants. Oh, and how could I forget the flower pots that decorate my front porch and decks? They are coming soon, too.
Picture Perfect Cooking 