"Tomatoes" yards, pictures, and ideas...
Giving Back With Community Gardens
Having your own garden is a richly rewarding experience; but there’s something even more enjoyable about introducing your friends and neighbors to the joys of landscaping. In the true spirit of YardSharing, some of our members are involved in creating and maintaining community gardening areas....
What are Potager Gardens?
I love potager gardens! What are potager gardens, you ask? A potager garden is a vegetable garden that focuses on looks as much as taste. These quaint 16th-century French-style gardens have very recently become popular, and it’s easy to see why. ...
Five More Tips for Terrific Tomatoes
Okay, so now you know to heat your soil, pluck suckers, prune, bury deep, and fan your stems. What else could there be? Here are five more tips. ...
Five Foolproof Tomato Growing Tips
Growing tomatoes is easy, but growing the picture-perfect tomatoes we all want isn’t. I remember when I began growing vegetables; I had visions of big, shiny, juicy, red tomatoes. Unfortunately, the tomatoes I grew didn’t measure up to this ideal....
Ornamental Potager Garden: The Artistry of Growing Vegetables, Herbs and Flowers
The ornamental potager garden is an attractive mix of vegetables, herbs and flowers growing together in raised beds. Initially developed by French monks, the potager kitchen garden (pronounced poe-ta-zhay) became popular in the 16th century in France....
Give Your Flowers Some Companions, Part 2
There are just too many flowers that help other plants – companion plants, we call them. Either that, or these columns are too short. In any case, I find myself compelled to write about some more helpful flowers that are wonderful companions to their friends....
Give Your Flowers Some Companions, Part 1
There are some people I just love to work with. No matter what we're doing, I always do better work when I'm with them. I'm sure you know how that works. And then there are some people who make all my ideas shrivel up and die. Plants are the same way....
Container Gardening: Not Just for African Violets Any More
Let's face it. There are times when you've just got to have a container for your precious plants. Some of us use them in an attempt to keep invasive (but attractive) alien plants in check; some of us turn to containers from lack of space or ground; and some of us just plain make container gardening glamorous....
Keeping the Kids in Mind
I grew up next door to a vacant lot. On any given weekend, it was a football/kickball/wiffle ball field, home to dawn-to-dusk “capture the flag” marathons, a BMX test track, an obstacle course, hide-and-seek homebase, or the site of our neighborhood Olympics. Maybe vacant lots are just rare these days… or maybe today’s kids demand more than an abandoned field to play in. Whatever the reason, more and more folks are dedicating parts of their yard to the smallest members of the family....
Make the Most of Your Small Space
Letting your landscape creativity run wild is easy when you have a sprawling piece of property to work with: a big, blank canvas ready and waiting for whatever your imagination dreams up. But what about when space is at a real premium, as in: you don’t have any? If your “yard” is a high-rise balcony twenty stories off the ground, does that mean you’re simply out of luck when it comes to creating a garden to call your own? ...
