You could be forgiven for mistaking coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) for a dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) from a distance,especially if you didn’t know that coltsfoot is the earliest blooming wildflower in northeastern North America. Can you tell them apart when I put them next to each other?Furthermore, coltsfoot flowers bloom without any foliage at all. Dandelions send [...] read more

Very early this morning, the temperature bottomed out at 18F, so my max-min thermometer tells me. And yet, when I looked out my window, there was not a speck of frost on the grass. If I hadn’t consulted the thermometer, I would have thought it was a lovely spring day out there. (The grass has [...] read more

74F Last Thursday, 16F Predicted Monday Cold climate gardeners, we knew this was going to happen, didn’t we? After the incredible, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming spell of beautifully warm weather, the real March weather is coming back with a vengeance. I don’t think it got quite as warm here as it did other places in my general area, [...] read more

The unseasonably mild weather has prompted me to start in on garden clean-up. And since the garden was untended for at least a year, there is a lot of cleaning up to do. This was what the garden looked like last year in early June, the first time we went to see the house we [...] read more

Veteran garden bloggers probably remember Garden Voices. “Back in the day”–before Twitter, before Facebook, even before Blotanical–it was the best way to find new garden blogs. Garden Voices is a blog aggregator, a website that collects–or aggregates–posts about a certain topic, so you can get an idea of what the blogosphere is saying about that [...] read more

There is nothing blooming at my new (to me) garden. That lack will have to be rectified. But my daughter Cadence was going right by the old place yesterday, and I asked her to take pictures. So I can tell you that the winter aconites (Eranthis spp.) are now blooming. I was there less than [...] read more

Desperate Gardener Seeks Help Whipping Shed Into Shape When we moved here late last fall, we pretty much threw all the garden tools and equipment in the shed and turned our attention to arranging the inside of the house. Now that mud season is here and spring will soon arrive in earnest, I need to [...] read more

One six ounce glass of snowdrops… yields……eleven small but exquisite snowdrop bouquets. Snowdrops have a fragrance that is similar to sweet alyssum or certain daffodils (not poeticus or jonquils). We picked these at the old garden and the truck was filled with the scent of them on the way home. I will be moving as [...] read more

A couple of years ago, I told you to choose your fall-planted bulb locations now, when the snow is just beginning to melt. Of course, it helps to have snow. We finally got some, and I thought you’d like to know I’m following my own advice. I went around the yard, camera in hand, taking [...] read more

Forcing hyacinths is not that difficult. The hardest part is remembering to order them early and start chilling them soon enough. If you want them to bloom in mid-January, you should start chilling them by October 23rd. At that point in the gardening season, you are more likely to be frantically planting the last of [...] read more