Niki Jabbour's Blog, page 60

Small evergreen shrubs for year-round interest

Evergreen plants have much to offer. Not only do they provide four seasons of visual interest to the garden, they also serve as windbreaks, increase privacy, and provide food and shelter for birds and other wildlife. Unfortunately, most home landscapes include the same five or six evergreens, most of which grow way too large for [&hellip

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Planting a raised bed: Tips on spacing, sowing, and growing in raised bed gardens

You’ve built your raised beds, or upcycled an old item into the perfect veggie garden. Now comes the fun part: filling it—and then enjoying your bountiful harvest later in the season, of course. We’ve teamed up with Eartheasy, a company that provides info and products for sustainable living, including natural cedar raised garden beds, to [&hellip

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Thinning carrots: How to plant and thin carrot seedlings

Thinning carrots is one of those tedious garden tasks that, although necessary, isn’t much fun. But why do we need to thin carrots anyway? It’s because carrot seeds are very small and it’s easy to accidentally plant them too thickly when sowing the tiny seeds. If carrots are spaced too close together, there isn’t enough [&hellip

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Flowering shrubs for shade – Top picks for the garden & yard

If you’re a gardener or homeowner with a lot of shade on your property, you may find yourself struggling to find plants that thrive and bloom with minimal sunlight, especially when it comes to shrubs. While there are many colorful flowering perennials and annuals for shade, there are far fewer shrubs with vivid blooms for shady [&hellip

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How to keep squirrels out of your garden

In my first home, I dug out a wee little veggie garden in the backyard. That first spring, I planted cucumber seedlings alongside a few other edibles, like tomatoes and peppers. For some reason, the squirrels focused on my cucumber plants. Every morning I’d go out and a seedling had either been dug out or [&hellip

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How to plant and grow a cut flower garden

While growing vegetables is my passion, I also grow a cut flower garden because I enjoy having a non-stop supply of beautiful flowers to harvest for homegrown bouquets. And while many plants are grown for their flowers – perennials, biennials, bulbs, and even edibles – annual flowers like zinnias and sunflowers are among the most [&hellip

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Types of lilies: 8 beautiful choices for the garden

Lilies are among the most recognizable of all summer garden flowers. Their large, bright flowers suit all types of gardens, whether classically designed, rustic, cottage-style or contemporary. While some folks might think lilies are too old-fashioned for today’s gardens, the truth is that there are dozens of modern hybrid varieties of lilies that offer color, [&hellip

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Container plants for full sun: Choices for colour, foliage, and texture in your summer pots

Each spring, I collect annuals from a variety of sources. I like to amass a whole bunch of plants with various textures, blooms, and foliage before figuring out what will go in each container arrangement. I’ll visit nurseries, my local grocery store’s garden centre, and plant sales. I grow some annuals from seed, depending on [&hellip

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Growing green beans: learn how to plant, grow, and harvest a bumper crop of green beans

I’ve been growing green beans since I was just a kid. In fact, it was my love of green and yellow beans that inspired me to start gardening. Today, green beans remain one of my favorite crops to grow and eat. I grow both bush and pole types for the longest harvest season, planting them [&hellip

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Purple perennial flowers: 24 brilliant choices for big and small gardens

Purple is a powerful color. When the Pantone Color Institute declared a shade of purple named Ultra Violet to be the Color of the Year, they called it “complex and contemplative,” noting that purple has long been “symbolic of unconventionality and artistic brilliance.” While I don’t know much about using purple for interior design, art, [&hellip

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