Hopefully, by now you’re harvesting bountiful crops from your veggie gardens. Snip fresh herbs regularly, to keep the plants vigorous, as they don’t just sit around waiting for you to decide that they’d spice up a summer salad or iced tea. Make some basil mojitos if pesto has worn out its welcome already at your […]
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Archive for Survival In A Hot Humid Climate
In 2018, much of the state of Georgia is still in some phase of drought, including severe in parts of the southeast corner. Lake Lanier, the source of most of metro Atlanta’s potable water, is only about 7.5 inches below full pond level as of last week. Things don’t look so bad for us in […]
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Ideally, your yard includes areas exposed to full sun, shade, and everything in between. That would allow you the greatest flexibility in planting perennials, groundcovers, trees, and shrubs. But maybe you are blessed with an overabundance of shade, which is not at all unusual in our area. No problem, you can still have gracefully curving […]
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Some of us are perfectly content with just trees, shrubs, and groundcovers, but many of us also want the luxury of perennials, for their beautiful and colorful blossoms, foliage interest, fragrance, wildlife attraction, or the way they soften the edges along paths and boundaries. Perennial borders, whether sunning themselves all day, or keeping cool in […]
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First, a brief history of lawns. Then we’ll rant about how they are the single most wasteful use of water. (Just kidding. But only a little.) The word lawn may have evolved from the Middle English word launde, which described a naturally occurring opening between wooded areas, where a variety of low to medium height plants […]
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If you try not to use chemicals in your vegetable gardens, chances are you spent quite a bit of time this summer handpicking and squishing all sorts of insects, in all stages of life, from eggs to larvae to adults, from your vegetable plants. The bad news is they’ve already planned their comeback attack for […]
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So I walked into my favorite plant nursery (you know the one) in early spring, and saw this strapping, young Stewartia pseudocamellia, just popping with flower buds. Stewartia trees are generally not easy to find, and worth their weight in gold to those of us who love its form, bark, and blossoms. Of course I […]
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Keeping Cool We are reminded during mandatory flight safety videos to take care of ourselves, first, then help others. The same principle applies to gardening in hot summer weather – we can’t water and tend to our gardens without first making sure that we are cool, protected, and hydrated. Avoiding the heat altogether is the […]
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