Here’s an early bloom on one of my daylilies (fading already).
I was very excited to see this open because I couldn’t remember what color of daylilies I planted last year.
I bought a bunch of them from R. Seawright Gardens in Carlisle, Mass. I spent a long afternoon walking through the fields of daylilies, studying binders [...]
A week ago I was excited to see the first yellow flower on my zucchini plants. Now it seems as though everything has doubled in size in just a few days and baby veggies are popping out everywhere.
Tiny pinky-finger size zucchinis have formed. Even tinier cucumbers are growing under the shade of spreading leaves.
And the [...]
I’m beginning to suspect that my last batch of homemade compost didn’t get hot enough to kill all the seeds from the decomposed vegetables and fruits. I’ve had some interesting plants sprout everywhere I spread the compost. This is the most prevalent of the mystery plants:
Doesn’t it look kind of like tomatoes?
I pulled dozens of [...]
Here’s an excerpt of a blog comment from a reader named Steve that I think speaks to the emotion involved in garden pests.
He wrote in about my co-worker Fran’s woodchuck problem.
Kill that beast while you can – view him as a rodent who wishes to destroy your hard work and you will feel less guilty.
I [...]
This morning I found two pleasant surprises: a blossom on a zucchini plant and a blossom on a nasturtium.
The zucchini’s not a big deal, except that it’s the first big blossom in my veggie garden:
The nasturtium is a little more exciting because I started this plant from seed. The nasturtium went through a lot to [...]
My Yard Dirt column today is about the grubs I found in my compost pile on Sunday.
I thought I was taking a picture of lawn grubs — my nemesis — to show on the blog.
It turns out these are a different kind of grub, the larval stage of the green fruit beetle.
Either way, they’re pretty [...]
I reader e-mailed me last week in response to my Yard Dirt column about lettuce and my reluctance to harvest and eat from my little lettuce garden because it’s dirty.
Here’s an excerpt from his message, which he titled, “Dirt isn’t dirty:”
… At least your garden dirt, enriched by your compost isn’t! Heaven alone knows what [...]
It’s Friday, so let’s end the week with some “show-and-tell.”
The advice from the sunflower experts is working great. Here are my seedlings. Meanwhile, the leftover seeds that I put directly in the ground aren’t doing anything. The guys at Sunflowerocity.com sure know what they’re talking about.
If you read my Yard Dirt column Wednesday, then you [...]
I was almost late for a meeting this morning because of the little Disney scene playing out in my backyard. I knew time was tight, but I froze at the bathroom window unable to look away.
What caught my eye was the cluster of little brown birds in my vegetable garden. Birds love that garden and [...]
This is a guest blog entry from Salem News reporter Ethan Forman, who’s pretty excited about a new garden tour in Boxford, Mass., and wrote an article about it in today’s paper.
Driving around Boxford one afternoon, I came across a little white sign on Kelsey Road: “Harlan P. Kelsey Arboretum.”
I’d heard of the arboretum — Kelsey [...]
Julie has been chronicling her lawn adventures and mishaps since 2005 in a weekly column called Yard Dirt, which appears (
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