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Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) is native to parts of North America, including Ontario, the province where I live. It is also widespread across other areas of southern Canada, and the central and northern United States. Hardy down to USDA zone 3, drought tolerant, and low maintenance, prairie smoke is deer and rabbit resistant (perfect for my garden). In the wild, plants grow in prairie settings, fields, and open areas, and are among the first prairie plants to bloom....

Meet the blue star fern While you might think ferns are nothing more than a simple plant with a feather-like leaf structure, nothing could be further from the truth. Ferns are among the oldest living plants in the world. They evolved hundreds of millions of years ago (eons before the dinosaurs) and continue to thrive here today. Unlike flowering plants, ferns reproduce by spores, not seeds, and they have a very complex lifecycle....

5 ways to success with vegetable container gardening: Let the sun shine. Most vegetables and herbs grow best with at least 8 hours of sunshine. Trying to grow sun-loving vegetables in low light will result in disappointing yields and unhealthy plants. Instead, find a site that offers plenty of direct sun for your potted crops. Got less light? Try growing shade-tolerant veggies. 2) Pick the right pot. This may sound rather obvious, but container selection can make a huge difference in the success of your container veggie gardens....

Deadheading basics: I did a quick demo on her petunias to show her the right technique. The key is to remove the whole flower stem and not just the dead flower. In the below photo, I’m only pulling out the flower – this is the incorrect way to deadhead. In the next photo, I use my fingers to snap the flower stem back to a fresh flush of growth. This is the correct way to deadhead – see that tiny new shoot just below my fingers?...

The Longest Flowering Perennials When planning a garden with long-blooming perennials, the same basic rules of design apply; choose a mixture of early, mid-season, and late-flowering plants. Of course, you can also affect both the bloom time and length of the flowering period with pruning practices; pinching, deadheading, and shearing. Read on to discover how to encourage months of blooms by combining clever pruning with the longest flowering perennials. The Early Bloomers: Catmint ‘Walker’s Low’ (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’, zones 3 to 9)....

What is a string of dolphins plant? In the genus Curio, there are several different houseplants that have “string of” at the beginning of their common name. The most common are: bananas, fish hooks, pearls, tears (sometimes also called watermelons), and dolphins. All of them are adorable, but if I had to choose a favorite, it would be string of dolphins (Curio x peregrinus). As you can see from the photos, the common name is spot-on....

We’ve teamed up with SunPatiens® to give you some colorful inspiration for “wrapping” annuals in creative containers. They’re all pretty easy to put together and can be gifted for Mother’s Day, a teacher’s gift, your favorite summer barbecue host, etc. Speaking of SunPatiens®, I discovered these abundant bloomers at the brand’s parent company, Sakata, during the California Spring Trials as one of the National Garden Bureau’s #ngbplantnerds. These low-maintenance plants are downy mildew resistant, and they bloom from spring through fall, thrive in the heat, and do well in both sun and shade....

Related post: Jess’s favorite cherry tomatoes This year my tomatoes were particularly colorful. Colorful enough to make me take my very first tomato selfie (See that happy face in the featured picture? That’s me after working in the garden!). Now it’s your turn – show us your tomatoes! We wanna see them and hear about your favorite varieties. Come on, let’s see those heirloom tomatoes. Add your pictures to the comment section at the bottom of this post....

The best gardening tools you didn’t know you needed: Row cover – Row cover may sound like an odd choice for a must-have tool, but it’s essential in my garden. These are lightweight, semi-transparent fabrics laid directly on top of crops or floated above on hoops or other supports. I use row covers year-round to protect my crops from bad weather, intense sun, or animals. In spring and autumn, row covers shield my vegetables from frost....

When to harvest potatoes? Harvesting potatoes is so much fun, even the kids will want to help. It’s like digging for buried treasure – treasure you can eat! There are two main types of potatoes: new potatoes and storage potatoes, and both harvesting time and techniques differ between the two types. Because I want both new potatoes for summer cooking and storage potatoes for fall and winter, I plant at least one bed of each....

What are perennial onions? Regular onions, also called common onions (Allium cepa), are biennial plants that produce leaves the first year followed by flowers and seeds the second year. Gardeners treat common onions as annual vegetables however, and pull the bulbs at the end of the first growing season. Perennial onions, on the other hand, are plants that self-multiply and can be left in the garden for many years. There are numerous types of perennial onions you can grow offering a variety of edible parts and flavors....

EFN is an important source of carbohydrates for many insects, including numerous pest-munching beneficials who, in exchange for this sugar-rich nectar, help protect the sunflower from pests. Because sunflowers are frost sensitive, it is best to wait to start seeds in the garden until after the danger of frost has passed. Protect young seedlings from slugs with a ring of copper tape or organic iron phosphate-based slug baits. Sunflowers come in a tremendous range of petal colors and plant forms....

When creating your own planted space, the shape and size of the garden will help determine where your plants are placed. You don’t want to choose a gorgeous ornamental grass that reaches three feet tall and have it overshadow a sweet clump of sea thrift behind it. But, if you choose several heights of plants and dig them in strategically, you’ll create depth and interest. In this article, I share some of my favorite low growing perennials....

Deciding what to plant in a small vegetable garden layout I like to recommend starting with your grocery list. What items show up week after week? For me, that means lettuce and other greens, like spinach, Swiss chard, kale, and baby bok choy, cucumbers, onions, a variety of herbs, peppers (I usually plant at least one hot pepper to make habanero jelly, and a variety of other sweet peppers), the odd root veggie, like beets and carrots....

I also use the greenhouse to extend the fall harvest, start seeds for the main garden, harden off transplants, and get a jump on spring. And when the weather warms up in late spring, the raised beds inside are planted with heat-loving crops like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers to provide an extra-early harvest. Just because I use a winter greenhouse doesn’t mean that I don’t use other winter structures in my garden....

Tips for pruning lilacs Trimming off lilac flowers Pruning lilac shrubs Removing lilac suckers Removing the dead flowers from your lilac bush will encourage more blooms the following year. The important thing when trimming off your flowers is that you simply cut off the spent flowers—don’t worry about any surrounding stems. If you can see next year’s blooms forming (two new shoots coming from the stem), simply focus on the spent bloom’s stem....

There are 3,600 known species of bees alone in the United States and Canada. And the term pollinators doesn’t just refer to the bee populations, there are also hundreds of species of butterflies, birds, moths, and flies to provide habitat and forage for, too. The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening by Kim Eierman shares tips on how home gardeners can use ecological landscaping and native plants to benefit pollinators and nurture a healthy ecosystem in your garden....

Where to grow basil Before we dive into watering tips for basil, I’d like to quickly go over the best conditions for basil growth. This is important because if you aren’t growing this herb in ideal conditions, whether or not you water properly isn’t really going to matter. If basil doesn’t have the conditions it needs to survive, no amount of water is going to make a difference. Here’s a quick Basil 101....

This may seem so elementary, but for me it was super helpful at home. I’ve always used tweezers to pull out seedlings and then discarded them. But you don’t have to let all those extra seedlings go to waste. You can transplant them all into their own pots, which is what we did in the greenhouse as we prepped for a plant sale. This is especially helpful for tiny flower seeds that are hard to see....

Planning a new vegetable garden Beginners take note! When planning a new vegetable garden from scratch, start off right by picking a site that offers plenty of light. Most vegetables need at least eight hours of full sunlight to support healthy growth and maximize production. This is especially important for crops like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers that bear fruits. Leafy greens are more tolerant of less light, so if finding a garden space with full sun is a struggle, stick to these vegetables....