I have two important updates to the information I’ve previously shared about Gardener Math. I thought of one of the updates when I was shopping for furnace filters at Menards. I have one of those furnaces that uses a big four-inch thick filter that is good for six months. I also pay property taxes every six months, so to remember to change the filter. I do it when I send off that big check in spring and later in the fall. It’s almost time to send that check/change that filter, which is why I found myself at Menards. “Wouldn’t hurt just to take a quick look at the garden department,” I told my ..read more

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for April 2024. Here in my USDA hardiness zone 6b garden in central Indiana, we are in the season of violets! The wild violets, primarily Viola soraria, are blooming here and there throughout the garden, and I am happy to see them. I am pro-violets! I let them grow and bloom and set seed and spread themselves throughout the garden. Some gardeners might think I’m crazy to do that, but I’m fine with that, too. I have several other violets for bloom day, including the first blooms on Viola soraria ‘Freckles’, which I grew from seeds I got from Hayefield Seed ..read more

WInter was kind to the pansies I planted late last summer! Wait, check that! The pansies persevered through the punches of winter, and came back to bloom in the spring. Or maybe I’m just an exceptional gardener who knew exactly what to do to nurture these pansies through the winter so when spring arrived, they’d perk up and bloom again. However it happened, some of the pansies I planted late last summer survived the winter and are once again blooming. A nice, unexpected treat because most of the time, pansies do not survive the winters here in my garden. But every once in a while, we have a m ..read more

That grape hyacinth… it’s a spreader. I have proof in my own garden. Is that bad? Not for me, it’s not. And every Easter when my sister sees it, she asks me what it is, says she likes it, and I make a mental note to get her some. Which I will dig out of my own garden. It’s a spreader, after all. In fact, I think I’ve dug it up in previous years and planted some in her small condo garden. I’ll ask her to check and see. Anyway, this post isn’t really about too much, other than I wanted to say… Every garden is unique, but gardening is universal. Please quote me on that. And please notice that I ..read more

It was a busy week last week, with preparations leading up to the big family Easter Egg Hunt and then the actual hunt, which we had late Saturday afternoon on what turned out to be one of the best days you could ever hope for when hosting such an event at the end of March. So that is why I am just now posting some very big news after not posting much on my blog last week. I finally have permission to make public the results of some plant breeding that I’ve been working on here in my garden. With the help of several researchers, I am now able to have an apple a day, picked right from my own ap ..read more

I was at the greenhouse a few weeks ago and noticed a rogue pansy amidst a flat of ‘Beaconsfield’ pansies. Instead of picking out that one plant, I plucked the flower and showed it to the owner. Doh! I should have bought the plant. Anyway, she watched for it to rebloom and set me a picture a week or so of one in bloom. I asked her to hold it for me. Then on Sunday, she texted me a picture of the whole flat. There were at least four more rogue pansies. I told her I would buy them all. I would rescue them. And that’s just what I did earlier today. I bought six rogue pansies, perfect for plantin ..read more

Today’s seed packet poetry is from a set of vintage seed packets, year unknown. I’d like to guess these packets are vintage 1950s but someone will likely say they are from the 1960s. I am still getting used to the idea that something that was around when I was a kid is now considered “vintage.” Recalling from the first post about seed packet poetry, here’s how the poetry is written. Find some seed packets… old ones, new ones, any ones. Look at the descriptions on the back. Then find a few phrases that you like and make a poem out of them. For no particular reason, for the first poem, I picke ..read more

Hello, Spring! I checked, and you aren’t officially arriving until 11:20 p.m. EDT today, so there’s time for me to give you some advice before then. But before I launch into my official advice, let me congratulate Winter on this fine, sunny day we seem to be in store for. But I must also admonish Winter for those biting temperatures this morning. Thank you, but 26F is quite cold. The pansies, violas, and everything else will come through it just fine, but it does give a gardener pause, doesn’t it? Anyway, Spring, it’s your turn. Here’s my advice for you. Take over quickly! We do not need to b ..read more

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for March 2024. Here in my USDA hardiness zone 6b garden in central Indiana, spring is rapidly pushing winter out of the way. After several warm days, the garden is in full spring bloom with daffodils, hellebores, crocuses, and pots of pansies and violas all in bloom. I walked over to the side yard earlier in the week and was delighted to see these little pinkish-purple violets blooming. I planted these years ago, as tiny plants I grew from seed. They’ve gradually been spreading in this one area and are always the first violets to bloom. Though I am sure ..read more

Now, where is that list of blog post ideas I wrote down? It was here somewhere. Well, never mind, because the first Glory of the Snow, Chionodoxa sp., showed up in the lawn on Monday. It’s wayyyy out there by the Vegetable Garden Cathedral entrance, if anything can be wayyyy out there in a garden that’s “about a third of an acre.” Oh, you saw that clover in the picture? Yes, it’s there for many reasons. First, it is there because I “purposely on purpose actually” sowed seeds for clover in my back lawn. I did that because I remember clover growing in all the lawns when I was a kid. We kids spe ..read more