The Fairly Quiet Gardener Blog
This Week in the Garden: April 15, 2025
Spring is fully underway and the garden is coming alive with energy. The trees are leafing out and the garden feels more full and peaceful as they do. The fruit trees are in bloom in the orchard. The spinach, potatoes, and onions are pushing through the soil and volunteer cosmos are popping up in cracks here and there where the wind blew last year’s seeds. I love spring. It’s a season of surprise and renewal, and it feels like the garden itself is stretching and yawning awake. It’s funny how 74 degrees can feel like a blazing 94 after the long chill of winter. Layers of heavy shirts or jackets are shed as we readjust to warmth.
I Love the Golden Hour
It is just after 8:00 pm and the sun has emerged from behind the clouds. The fresh green of spring is bathed in the last golden rays of the day and the garden is glowing.
What is a Rose Gall Wasp?
A rose gall wasp is a parasitoid wasp (tiny and harmless to humans) that lays its eggs in rose plant tissue. The wasp doesn’t sting people — it uses its ovipositor (egg-laying organ) to insert eggs into rose buds or new plant growth.
Rooted In Wisdom: Cultivating Ideas and Harvesting Lessons — Part 2 of 1,000
I am two seasons into the creation of our garden, Shortmeadow, and just entering the third. And all of my spare energy and time has been poured into taking a former pasture and shaping it into a densely planted garden oasis. A perimeter backdrop of tall evergreen hedging. An orchard, a woodland garden, hedged garden rooms filled with color, a more natural (some might say scruffy) hill planted with a variety of trees and shrubs, the list goes on. A place of (eventual) privacy where I too can “dissolve into grooved movement and flowing, nameless green.”
This Week in the Garden: March 30, 2025
The daffodils and forsythia are in full bloom, the yellow singing out in the landscape. I planted seven or eight forsythia along the back fence line with the intent to have a big, bright yellow hedge each spring. It is in its second season and already each plant is becoming more substantial.
Rooted In Wisdom: Cultivating Ideas and Harvesting Lessons — Part 1 of 1,000
It is the accumulation of moments experienced privately in our gardens or shared exuberantly with others that build up in layers of memory and meaning. As we create this new garden of ours, which has been named Shortmeadow in playful homage to Monty Don’s Longmeadow garden, we are building layers of memory and meaning. It was the same in our prior garden.
A Guide to Growing Peas and Sweet Peas for New Gardeners
Whether you're looking to grow your own peas for fresh eating and to add flavor to your meals or to create a fragrant, colorful display of flowers, both peas and sweet peas are fun and relatively easy choices for new gardeners. In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know to get started growing peas and sweet peas, from when to sow the seeds to when to harvest.
Plant Spotlight: Hyperion Dogwood
I planted two Hyperion Dogwoods (Cornus x ‘KF 111-1’) last fall with one on either side of a path leading at a 45-degree angle into the center garden from the southeast corner. The vision is to have the canopies grow over the path and eventually touch, forming a green “tunnel” during the summer that becomes multi-colored in the fall sporting shades of yellow, purple, and orange. And, perhaps best of all, in spring the trees are smothered in large white bracts.
This Week in the Garden: March 16, 2025
This past fall/winter I started the process of moving a row of blackberries four feet to the west as the plan for the area between the storage shed and raised beds took an exciting new direction (and I think it’ll be a much better use of space). The blackberries were moved to provide space for the eventual construction of a potting shed, greenhouse and pathways. This week, as the ground isn’t frozen solid, gave me the opportunity to continue the effort.
A Must Watch Video for Rose Care in March
When you find a useful and enjoyable source of garden knowledge, wisdom, fun, entertainment - whatever! - you just want to pass the word and share it with other people.
This Week in the Garden: March 1, 2025
We have come through the worst of what winter is likely to throw at us (fingers crossed) and emerge into March, hopeful and ready for action in the garden. The daffodils are starting to emerge in the orchard meadow and I’m starting to see tulips pushing up through the bark along the front walkway, always an encouraging sign! The first weekend in March was sunny and fairly warm, perfect for getting out into the garden and doing some spring cleaning and digging.
Late Winter / Early Spring Tasks for the Backyard Fruit Garden and Orchard
Late winter and early spring weather can be unpredictable and erratic in many locations. It usually is in ours. And while it can be a relatively low key period (if you so choose) compared to the hustle and bustle of mid- to late-spring and summer, there is still a fair amount that can be done out in the fruit garden and orchard.
Creating a Garden - Shortmeadow: Clearing the Site and Building a Hill
Our lot was essentially compacted soil and weedy pasture with a few brambles along an abandoned ditch bank and one wild rose. It was still very beautiful when the tall pasture grass was at its best.
This Week in the Garden: February 9, 2025
Overnight the garden was blanketed under 4-5 inches of snow. January and February seem to be the months that we get the most snow, if we’re going to get much or any at all. It can also be quite mild for days or weeks at a time. This morning was clear and sunny with a sparkling blanket of snow laying under a bright blue sky.
General Tasks for the Winter Garden
In January, gardeners have started a new calendar year but most of us are still weeks or months away from warmer weather and the spring gardening season when many of us dust off our tools and start to really think about gardening. (Okay, many of us never stop thinking about gardening.) HOWEVER, there is plenty that can be done in and around the garden during the winter months that will get you caught up from last season and/or set you up to launch into the coming season.
Creating a Garden: Compost Bins
As you can see from the picture above, I was eager (overeager, really) to get started creating and building the garden. As soon as we owned the land and before the ground had been cleared, fences installed, or ground broken for the house, I was already launching into projects.
Choosing the Right Garden Hoe
Using the right tool for the job in the garden will save you time and effort...and potentially money. Discover nine different types of garden hoes and their uses. Find the garden hoe that will help you in the garden with your specific gardening tasks.
Reminiscing: Our Former Garden (Part 1)
When you move to a new home that has space for a garden, you get swept away in the plans and possibilities for the new and can quickly forget the old. But we leave a piece of ourselves in any garden that we tend and nurture. And, I would wager this is the case for most gardeners, there is always some level of connection to that particular plot of dirt and the plants that may still grow there.
This Week in the Garden: January 19, 2025
The weather has been cold but quite sunny this week. Aside from anything that requires digging (although I still do it as often as the ground allows), I find that winter is usually a great window of opportunity to work on building projects: sheds, screening structures, obelisks, pergolas, the list goes on.
The Pros and Cons of Landscape Fabric
My feelings toward landscape fabric are probably not as strong as hate or love, more of a like or intense dislike for most landscape fabric / weed barrier products. To date, it has mainly been on the intense dislike side of things. Generally speaking, I prefer to have just an organic mulch down that I can move aside to weed, etc. without having the hassle of landscape fabric as it breaks down or becomes less effective over time