We had a little bandit in the garden tonight. You can click to zoom in and get a slightly better view.
My friend, Mitch, over at Krayton Seminars just sent me a link to this iPhone gardening app which is free for today only. Grab it while you can!
Garden Pro (via iTunes)
App Info:
FREE for today only!
Do you love flowers and plants? Do you work with flowers and plants? Garden Pro lets you take all the necessary information of your flowers and plants, in your hand, wherever you go. The most complete Garden reference with over 1200 beautiful species with lots of info, including… common and botanical names, descriptions, light, water, soil and climate requirements, planting and bloom times, most important care to do and more about flowers and plants you enjoy.
After a busy weekend that didn’t allow for any time in the garden, I spent an hour or so in the back garden today after a morning in my office paying bills and processing deposits. This office time is the traditional Monday morning task to insure that all the bills for the week get into the mail.
I have a page long list of things that need to be accomplished in the garden before our big summer party later this month. This will also be a party to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, so I want to have the garden looking as nice as I can — both for myself and my wife.
Today’s task was the Spring/Summer cleanup of rose bed #2 in the back garden, much like I did with the larger bed a few weeks ago. There are 2 large pine trees overarching this bed, so there was a thick mat of needles over the bed. In some ways, this made the cleanup easier, as they matted together and came up almost as one unit. All this went into the leaf pile for a future trip through the chipper shredder and then into the compost bins.
Rose bed #2 Before
 Rose Bed 2 cleanup by Douglas Welch |
Rose bed #2 After
 Rose Bed 2 cleanup by Douglas Welch |
Just as with Rose bed #1, my wife will re-edge this bed in some fashion. I am thinking of trying a wine bottle edging here, as it is the smaller bed, but we haven’t yet collected enough bottles to complete the circle. Maybe after the party?! (LAUGH)
Hope your garden is doing well! Add a comment and let us know what is happening. You can also Tweet us at @gardenersnotebk on Twitter or drop us a line on the AGN Facebook page.
Encino Cactus Festival To Highlight Fire Safe Vegetation
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| Image Courtesy LACSS |
With the dry heat of Summer soon upon us, many Los Angeles residents are turning to nature for ways to stay cool, limit water use, prevent fire danger and add beauty to their lives.
It will not surprise you then, that Los Angeles Firefighters are among speakers at a special event addressing these issues and more. We hope you’ll join usSaturday and Sunday, June 11-12, 2011for the:
Los Angeles Cactus and Succulent Society
11th Annual Drought Tolerant Plant Festival
City of Los Angeles – Sepulveda Garden Center
16633 Magnolia Boulevard
Encino, CA 91406
The show runsSaturdayfrom9:00AM – 5:00PM, with presentations starting at 10:00AM; and continuesSundayfrom9:00AM – 4:00PM, with kids events starting at 10:30AM.
On Saturday at 1:00PM, LAFD Assistant Chief Mark Stormes will engage attendees with an informative discussion of“Vegetation Management in the Los Angeles City Brush Zone”.
For additional information about this event, please visit:
Submitted byBrian Humphrey, Spokesman
Los Angeles Fire Department
Wow! I saw this picture come through Twitter today from @deltagardener. That is one fine looking potato patch. They replied to my Twitter post with:
deltagardener @gardenersnotebk we harvest on June 14, cook them and serve them for picnic lunch for kids
Wish I could have a potato patch like this. Need much more sun (and motivation (LAUGH)) for that, though.
My fellow Saturday6 member, Gina from My Skinny Garden, will be holding her Lowe’s appearance this Saturday in her native state of Illinois. You can find complete information below, including time and location. If you get a chance to drop by, please tell her I said HI! — Douglas
My Skinny Garden at Lowe’s Naperville Saturday June 4th!
Tomorrow morning I’ll be joining the Troy-Bilt team at Lowe’s in Naperville, IL to try to answer your gardening questions while they show off their awesome equipment. If you are in the area, please stop by to say hello! I would love to be able to meet some readers. If you do stop by, remind me to tell you about the “thrown objects room” at the Troy-Bilt facility. I visited in early May and had the opportunity to see all the crafty ways they test safety and noise level on their equipment and I’ve been planning to write about it but haven’t gotten around to it, yet. It was far out!
1440 South Route 59
Naperville, IL. 60564
10:00-1:00
via My Skinny Garden at Lowe’s Naperville Saturday June 4th!.
Disclosure: This post is in conjunction with my paid partnership as one of the Saturday6 from Troy-Bilt. All thoughts are my own.
- A collection of gardening items I found interesting this week.
- Bad gardening examples in TV advertisements – May 31, 2011 – What happens when gardening ads go astray? We end up shouting the TV, of course.
A recent sale from my Cafepress.com stores reminded me that I had several garden-related products in my stores over there. Here are links to all the pretty flower and outdoors items I have created. You can use the arrows to move through the various product or click any link for a larger view.
Make Custom Gifts at CafePress
Carol O’Meara over at Gardening After Five has a bone to pick with gardening-related television advertisements and I must agree with her.
“The three-second scene shows a man grabbing the tree by the trunk in order to lift it from its pot, which proves that the fellow doing this is an actor, not a gardener. A gardener knows this is a no-no. Grabbing the tree by the trunk to lift the heavy root ball from the pot puts the tree at risk of damage to the bark, which is sensitive in spring growth.”
I must agree with Carol on this point. The realities of advertising often means that the gardening examples seen most often are bad examples. As I commented on the blog…
Good to know I am not the only person who screams back at the TV! (SMILE) Usually my outbursts relate to bad technology use or depictions, though.
Ah, but you did the correct thing in response to this ad…you wrote about it and the right way to do things.
Where would we garden bloggers be without all the bad examples we see every day?!? (LAUGH)
This particular ad calls for a detailed post, using the advertisers named, such as “Don’t plant trees the way!” In that way, you might actually catch some folks who have viewed the ad — just the people that need the info the most.
I do believe that the best thing we garden bloggers can do is use the bad examples as great fodder for future posts. I often find that responding to the things I read and see is much easier than creating blog posts out of whole cloth. That said, my own garden usually provides much to write about, even if it is my own form of bad examples or simple mistakes on the garden.
What bad gardening examples have you seen lately? Share them in the comments!
A bit of blue splendor from one of my recently divided agapanthus in the back garden.
