Plant Profile: Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens)
Karen This rapidly growing, climbing or trailing woody vine is evergreen and a member of the logan family, Loganiaceae, a group made up of about thirteen genera many of which are…
Book Review: Compost Critters
Is a compost pile just a mound of plant debris and kitchen scraps? No, and Bianca Lavies’ book, Compost Critters, reveals the amazing critters that inhabit the compost pile and…
Earth Kind Roses: Nearly Thornless
The thorns, or prickles, on roses can make them very unpleasant garden companions especially when you have to weed, spread mulch, fertilize, deadhead, or cut flowers. Roses that lack prickles…
Plant Profile: Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)
Quaking aspen is a deciduous tree native to the cool climates of North America from Newfoundland across the subarctic to Alaska and British Columbia, south to Pennsylvania and Iowa, and…
Beneficial Insects and How to Attract Them: Ground Beetles
Ground beetles are members of the Carabidae family of insect with about forty thousand species worldwide, two thousand of which live in North America. They are variable in size and…
Plant Profile: Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Oriental bittersweet is a deciduous woody vine native to northern China, Japan and Korea growing up to 60’ tall often girlding and killing nearby shrubs and trees. It is a…
Book Review: The Urban Homesteading Cookbook
Do you live in the city but want to homestead? Michelle Catherine Nelson’s book, The Urban Homesteading Cookbook, will give you all the information you need to start collecting, growing,…
Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wine: Clover Wine
Clover wine today is made with the flowers or red rather than white clover. Over a hundred years ago when my paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright, wrote her book Old…
Plant Profile: Desert Olive (Forestiera pubescens var. pubescens aka F. neomexicana)
Desert olive, also known as stretchberry, elbowbush, spring goldengrow, Texas forsythia, and downy forestier, is a thicket-forming deciduous shrub or small tree is native to desert slopes, canyons, woodland edges…
Plant Combination: Rose ‘Graham Thomas’ and Clematis’ Francizka Maria’
‘Graham Thomas’ is an exceptional rose with intense gold colored flowers that fade to lemon yellow. The plant blooms in flushes all summer and makes a striking combination with the…