We’re going to eat some of our own, home-grown bananas this year! (Crossing fingers that everything goes well…). Honestly, I had pretty much given up hope that we’d have edible bananas from our plants, even though I’d seen some bunches on other banana plants in the area before. You may recall that we had a…
It’s seed starting time! And I want to show you why and how I get my seedlings in the sun as soon as possible. One of the common questions I get is how to keep seedlings from getting leggy and flopping over. Almost always, this happens from growing them indoors in weak light. Maybe you…
You may have noticed my ongoing banana saga, with my recent update about how a flower started to appear on Christmas day. Sadly, it did not survive. And it wasn’t the freeze that killed it! On January 25th, we had a freeze that got down to about 30 degrees. I placed two radiant heaters under…
We have a beautiful Mexican fan palm growing in our backyard, right next to my little office. I love it. Except that it’s growing so fast that it might be a monster! I’d be happy if it could somehow magically stay just like it is right now, but I know that it will eventually get…
Oh my gosh! We have bananas forming right now, in the middle of winter! Many of you have seen my previous post about growing bananas in Sacramento County – it’s actually my most popular article lately, so apparently a bunch of you are considering it. And you should! It’s a fun plant to grow, and…
Have I mentioned that this is how I got started gardening, about 42 years ago? So, I was 14 and we moved into a new house with no front garden. My mom asked if I’d like to help her design and plant grass, flowers, and trees to make our new front yard. I suggested a…
You may have seen our post from last year about our huge flowerbed across half of the front yard. This year, we decided to complete the landscape by mirroring that addition across the central walkway to the other side of the yard. As I sit here on July 5th, I can say it’s been a…
We needed to create a long trellis for the raspberries this year, and we decided to DIY it, learn a little lashing technique, and use some handy leftover branches from last year’s prunings. This was especially cool, since we’re trying to spend as little money as possible during this pandemic recession! After we finished, though,…