by Margaret Telsch-Williams

As September rolls in, suddenly it feels like summer is slowly slipping away. Thankfully, I can look around the base of my deck and see the light pink blooms of sedum just beginning to fill in and open wide. It's no wonder the name of a common variety of sedum is called "Autumn Joy" since it brings bright colors back just when everything else is starting to fade.

If you haven't experienced growing sedum, then you're missing out of one of the lowest maintenance plants around. Sedum is considered a succulent like jades and cactuses and the light green ...

By Carole Corlew

One of those special gardening moments happened the other day.

The biggest Angel's Trumpet at the old house has been growing tall and strong from the ground, the branches thick and tree-like. This one is near an Angel that hasn't done well. I had taken the puny one from a pot and planted it in the ground, saying "this is your last chance."

So I was sitting on the porch step looking at them both near the roots when I saw the odd thing. The strong trumpet had one strange, elastic-looking branch. It ...

by Jeanne Grunert

 

What's fall without the glorious color of mums? I love chrysanthemums. They're flowers from my childhood. My dad grew mums for competitions in the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society. He entered his first show when I was in kindergarten, and fall wasn't complete without a weekend spent at the local college while the flowers went on display. After the show, I took bouquets to school and church; I think the teachers looked forward to the mums as much as I did!

I grew up in a suburban, almost urban enviornment. If a deer wanted ...

By Janet Clark

In June my family took a vacation to the Pacific Northwest. This photo of my husband and I was taken at the Stanley Park Gardens in Vancouver. Just one month later, my husband passed away. Joe taught me many things during the thirty-one years we spent together, including how to garden.

I can't really remember exactly when he planted our first garden, but I know it was shortly after we were married. Inspired by our next-door neighbors, who were also his best friend's grandparents, he tilled up a good-sized plot in the backyard ...

By Carole Corlew

We've been working hard, getting the new house set up. It has been an ordeal. When is moving not an ordeal?

When I have time, I slip outside and work in the very small patch of ground in the front of the new house. This is my gift to myself. The small patch is the only space in front with full sun.

There are other spaces in back that will need a great deal of work. There was bamboo there, running bamboo. It was put up as a privacy screen beside the back ...

 

BY AMY JEANROY 

For the first time in years, I am excited about gardening into the fall. Instead of thinking of it as the last few weeks of growing time, I consider it a second chance at making something grow. The more I chat with my online gardening friends, the more it seems everyone has had issues this year. 

One of my favorite fall plants is the mum. Garden mums come in such gorgeous colors, and if they were cut back by early summer(at about 12 inches) they will have produced a bushier plant and you get that ...

by Jeanne Grunert

I'm grateful for the rain over the past two weeks in my little gardening corner of the world. The lawn greened up seemingly overnight, and the flower garden decided to bloom once more. What I'm less enamored of are the weeds - and lots of them. Crabgrass has moved in, grasping firmly with long runners, refusing to leave. Duckweed, Johnson grass, clover, dandelion....you name it, I've got it.  They're slowly reclaiming our gravel driveway too. If I had a time lapse camera, you'd actually be able to see their creeping resilence moving from ...

 

by Jeanne Grunert

 

This morning as I stepped outside my front door, a trio of large toads hopped off the porch and jumped pell-mell for the flower beds. I laughed with delight to see their antics; I have a soft spot in my heart for toads. As a child, my summertime was filled with trips to the sump, the urban equivalent of a pond, to capture Bufo americanus, the American toad. I would carry them the ten or so blocks from the water catch basin called the sump to the garden and release them, a ...

by Margaret Telsch-Williams

Giving new life to your garden can seem next to impossible in the heat of summer, especially if you are growing plants which aren't heat and drought sensitive and you are seeing the misery of struggling produce. Luckily, fall planting is coming and you have a great opportunity to bring your vegetable garden back to life.

From beets, kale, and lettuce, to spinach and turnips, it's time to take advantage of those used up beds of plants which are clearly spent. Before you can plant seeds or transplant seedlings you'll want to take a few actions to prepare ...

By Janet Clark

This summer will go down in weather history as the second wettest ever in Iowa. So far the state had averaged 22 inches, a sharp increase from the normal summer's 13.7 inches.  The torrential rains followed by extreme heat have unleashed an insect plague of biblical proportion. The moths, dragonflies and unidentified flying objects are kind of fun to watch, but the mosquitoes make gardening a challenge, to say the least. I spent five minutes outside yesterday gathering tomatoes and green peppers and came back in with six bites on each arm, three ...