Are you ready to be converted to living a gardening life? Each week, join Carol Michel and Dee Nash, both passionate gardeners, authors, and long-time bloggers, as they chat over the garden fence about flowers, veggies, and all the best dirt on gardening. Carol and Dee have the audacity to call themselves gardenangelists, evangelists for gardening, and want everyone to dig in the dirt, sow a few seeds, and enjoy the simple pleasures and even a few pitfalls of a gardening life. If you are ready to live a gardening life or already live one this is one podcast you don’t want to miss.
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Dee and Carol talk through some questions about choosing flowers for the garden and saving seeds, then discuss a book on native plants and other topics.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or send us a text!
From a listener: a question for Dee and Carol. Is there any way to kill Canadian thistle without wiping out all my landscaping? My landscaper says pre-emergent chemicals won’t work on it.Thank you for your help. Linda Granat
He’s right, pre-emergents don’t work well. Carol has used carbolic acid spray (Captain Jack’s Deadweed Brew) on hers and it knocks it back, but she still just pulls them when she sees them. Plus that is nasty stuff the kills any plant in touches so be careful!
Insect of the Week:
Insects that like to come inside when it gets colder: lady bugs, squash bugs, spiders, etc. What do you do about them? (Carol kills them.)
“There is magic in the night when pumpkins glow by moonlight.” Anonymous
Flowers:
Let’s revisit the concept of Perpetual Spring as Dee plans more of her gardens.
Something blooming in every season.
Popularized by: Elizabeth Lawrence, Canon Henry Ellacombe, Sir Francis Bacon
The basic idea is to always have something in bloom.
Fall is for Refreshed Containers, Pumpkins and More
If you’d prefer to watch us on YouTube, click here.
Insect of the Week:
We decided to feature milkweed bugs, and other insects you’ll find on your milkweed especially this time of year. Find out more from the Univ. of Illinois extension.
Flowers:
What would we put in a fall container? We have quite the list, or rather Dee does. I offered. few plants she forgot. Do you have a special fall combo for your containers? Tell us about it in the comments!
Vegetables:
We talked about how to care for pumpkins on the porch so they won’t rot out before Halloween. What do you do to keep your pumpkins from rotting out too early or becoming a critter’s dinner?
Also, check out the new world record for a giant pumpkin, on Instagram
On the Bookshelf:
More Than Just a Plant: How to Care for Your Plants as They Care For You by Krystal Duran, Creator of PlantswithKrystal (Amazon, Bookshop). The author is on with 1.1 million followers! Thank you to Quarto for review copies.
This week, we talked about theme gardens, assessing your vegetable garden at the end of the season, a new book featuring Beatrix Potter’s plants and drawings, and more.
Dee’s greenhouse is finished! Of course that would be her favorite this week. For me it’s the combination of Verbena bonariensis and Signet marigolds around my mailbox.
Would a theme garden help you out as you decide what to plant in your garden? It might. Also, check out Theme Gardens by Barbara Damrosch. (Amazon)
Vegetables:
It’s fall, so time to assess what went well and what didn’t go well in your vegetable garden this season. What will you change for next year? Tell us about it in the comments.
On the Bookshelf:
We were delighted to get review copies of Beatrix Potter’s Botanical: The Art of Flowers and Fungiby Marta McDowell ( , ), which is coming out October 13th.
Carol: Rachel Peden, the latest Lost Lady of Garden Writing, (check out her books on Amazon, Bookshop) plus Wendell Berry. Check out the , where you can buy the 50th anniversary edition of . And by Jennifer Ackerman (, )
What’s really wrong with Carol’s Black-eyed Susans?
Septoria leaf spot, most likely. And particularly susceptible is ‘Goldsturm.’ Listen to Hans Hansen talk about it on Instagram.
Insect of the Week
Butterflies, and how now is a great time to see them in your garden. The adults are flitting and mating and moving on.
Flowers:
Bulbs.
Vegetables:
Garlic
On the Bookshelf:
The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Insect by Wendy Williams (Amazon, Bookshop)
Seek out flowers that will bloom during those times
Plant those flowers
Favorite winter flowers:
Snowdrops (not for Dee, however)
Christmas rose - Helleborus niger
Reticulated irises
Japanese anemones
Fall-blooming crocuses, and really early spring-flowering crocuses
Early blooming witch-hazels - often blooming in February for Carol
“All plants are edible. Some only once.” — Gothic / Dark Botanical Saying
Vegetables:
Spooky Vegetable Decor and Snacks
“A pumpkin in pies we all of us prize; And surely no pumpkin a boy would affright. But a jack-lantern light is a terrible sight. And scares all the children that walk out at night. ~L. Frank Baum, Father Goose, His Book, 1899
On the Bookshelf:
The Cozy Commonplace Book by Miranda Mills (Amazon,Bookshop)
“When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling; When wild, ugly faces we carved on its skin, Glaring out through the dark, with a candle within...” — John Greenleaf Whittier (”The Pumpkin”)
Dirt:
Cutting up butternut squash. Be careful! If we looked hard enough, we could probably find statistics about how many people go to the ER after injuring themselves trying to cut a butternut squash open.
“Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.” — George Meredith
Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document the World by Betsy Rubiner (Amazon, Bookshop)
Purdue’s expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s plane! I won’t tell the ending, you can look online for the info.
A Garden to Visit:
Continuing with our cemetery theme: The Secret Life of a Cemetery by Benoît Gallot (Author), Daniel Casanave (Illustrator), Arielle Aaronson (Translator) (Amazon, Bookshop)
Carol has been reading books including some that take place after World War II, including Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson and The Dancing Bear by Frances Faviell (1954).
A Garden to Visit:
Visit an arboretum that people are dying to get into… cemeteries! Many of them are listed as arboretums because of their beautiful trees, including Cave Hill in Louisville, Spring Grove in Cincinnati, Crown Hill in Indianapolis, etc. Is there a cemetery arboretum around you?
Thank You!
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
We also think you might enjoy Marta’s other book from 2013: Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales (Amazon, Bookshop)
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.
And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.
Details about The Gardenangelists: Flowers, Veggies, and All the Best Dirt, a podcast by Carol Michel, Dee Nash
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