xan's Ideas garden

Just wanted to put up a plug and a thank you for my one of my favorite blogs, MrBrownThumb, font of much gardening wisdom and nexus for all things gardening on the web. He put up a post last summer asking for pictures of gardeners hands, and the prize would be a pair of gardening gloves. Inasmuch...

Of the lunar events that mark the calendar, I think the fall equinox is my favorite. There is such a sense of balance as the garden stands poised between summer and winter. There is still food to harvest, and a few 3-season flowers like cleome and black eyed susans won’t give in to the co...

A list of Chicago-area invasives, from the Chicago Botanic Garden (via MrBrownThumb). Shockingly, many many of these plants are common items at area garden centers, including Berberis thunbergii (I guess I’ll take mine out), Crown vetch, Spurge (again, just planted it, out it comes), Vinca ...

The annual argument with the bindweed over who’s in charge is starting. It helped a lot that I cleaned up the fence area so much this year— I was able to nip many sprouts not in, but rather before the bud, so to speak. And in general, the garden seems to be skipping the “peak&#...