Niki Jabbour's Blog, page 64

How to divide irises

The front garden in my first home featured huge, gorgeous bearded irises that framed both sides of the front door. The massive blooms were a deep purple hue, and you had to be careful not to brush them with your clothes as you went into the house. Sadly, that house and garden were torn down [&hellip

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When to harvest potatoes in garden beds and containers

Potatoes are one of the easiest crops to grow producing a bounty of tasty tubers when planted in garden beds and containers. Plus, there’s so many awesome potato varieties to grow – from fingerlings to russets – in a rainbow of colors. But as the crop is produced below ground, it’s hard to tell when the tubers [&hellip

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How to get rid of slugs in the garden: 8 organic control methods

Slugs are one of the most common garden pests, though unlike most other leaf-munching critters you find in your garden, they aren’t insects. Instead, slugs are land-dwelling mollusks that are more closely related to clams than beetles or caterpillars. Facing a slug infestation is serious business, filled with slime trails, damaged leaves, and missing seedlings. [&hellip

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Growing cucamelons in a garden

What’s the most popular crop in our vegetable garden? Easy! It’s cucamelon. The fruits, which look exactly like tiny watermelons, rarely make it into the kitchen; instead, we gobble them up by the handful, straight from the vines. The plant is a distant relative of cucumbers, and these inch-long fruits do have a cucumber-like flavor [&hellip

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Dwarf flowering shrubs for small gardens and landscapes

Gardens in suburbia seem to be shrinking. As houses grow bigger, yards grow smaller and there’s less and less room to garden. Combine that limited space with shrinking free time and narrowing gardening budgets, and you have the perfect recipe for an overgrown landscape. Smaller gardens quickly become overrun by full-size shrubs when the homeowner [&hellip

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Tips for pruning lilacs

A few years ago, when I went to grab the hose, I noticed a ton of branches had been torn off my lilac bush. I accused my poor husband of getting overzealous with the pruners. However, I soon discovered that the hack job was the work of a mother squirrel that was meticulously building her [&hellip

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Shrubs for pollinators: 5 bloom-filled choices for bees and butterflies

Pollinator gardening is powerful stuff. While natural pollinator habitat diminishes and the effects of pesticide exposure take their toll on many species of bees and butterflies, backyard gardeners are making a positive difference in the lives of these insects. Pollinator gardens, both large and small, are collectively helping to fill the void by providing nectar [&hellip

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Shade-loving perennial flowers: 15 beautiful choices

While shade may feel like a limiting factor when it comes to colorful garden plants, it simply isn’t. Yes, your plant palette may not be quite as full as it is in a sunny garden, but there are scores of excellent shade-loving perennial flowers that produce bright blooms all season long. Shade gardeners are often [&hellip

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Vegepods: Easy raised bed gardens where anyone can grow edibles

Whether you’re growing food, flowers, or (like me!) a mixture of both, Vegepods are an easy and low maintenance way to garden. I’ve been gardening in a Vegepod for over a year and it’s become my miniature food factory, conveniently located just outside my kitchen door. Self-watering, raised bed planters like Vegepods allow you to [&hellip

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How to grow SunPatiens, a hybrid variety of impatiens resistant to downy mildew

For many home gardeners and landscape professionals, common garden impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) used to be a go-to pick at the garden center. They were an easy choice for shade gardens, as the plants filled in nicely over the season. They worked both in colorful borders or as groundcover in large swaths of a garden. That [&hellip

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