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Build Your Soil & Soul with Late Summer Cover Crops
Once I considered writing a book called Farm, Yard, Garden. The premise would be that farming and horticulture are based on the same science but used for different goals. What a mistake that would have been. Big agriculture and my farm, yard, or garden have almost nothing in common. Being a part of, a…
Read MoreEryngium pandanifolium Needs a Better Name & It Oughta Mention Tree Frogs
Like the best of “exclamation point” plants, giant eryngium adds evergreen structure to a garden. But like, drought-tolerant plants, the leaves look stiff and foreboding to some people. One garden client used to constantly tell me to leave my ‘pokey and prickly’ plants out of her designs! Some of those things can be hell to…
Read MoreCrinum List for AZH
C. x eboracii in graveyard C. x herbertii (Tulsa Collection) in field. Milk and Wine Lily Crinum ‘Bradley’ C. species in Madagascar swamp C. Bradley close up & in meadow C. procerum C. asiaticum C. ‘Queen Emma’ purple leaf with Tom, in container & wrapped for winter. PROPAGATION C. bulbispermum seed C. americanum seed floating…
Read MorePlant Sale For Crinum Farm Field Day
Leonotis menthifolia ‘Savannah Sunset’ Bright orange, fuzzy flowers in a perfect whorl around the stems. Loves hot dry places and flowers all summer. Perennial in warm parts of zone; great annual in other parts. $10 Crinum ‘Bradley Giant’ This is a big growing lily, reaching 4 feet tall…
Read MoreWinter Garden & The VERY First Plant Books
In five inches of snow, with hand warming chemical packs in my pocket, I saw 90 different varieties of witch hazel sparkle. The Missouri Botanical Garden staff horticulturist Sara Murphy cares for this huge planting. They were in full flower, in the snow, in February in St. Louis. Sara knows how to make them look…
Read MoreGardening as Art.
This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for a subscription, paper only magazine last year. The whole thing addressed in personal terms how gardening is art. This is a more succinct side bar…. It Is Art I can only speak for me. Garden design is sometimes industry, sometimes hobby, sometimes art. I engage…
Read MoreTwo Tours, One List of Plants
Monday was my first official day at the farm, and so far we’ve visited clients and explored in Augusta and given two tours. It doesn’t really sound like much, but given the heat and dryness of the past few days, it’s a relief today to be enjoying the indoors of Starbucks. On our tours, one…
Read MoreAdapting Family Farms for a New Ecomony
I met about 150 women yesterday at a collective meeting of all the garden clubs around Concord, NC. The day was a filled with real plant lovers. Not only did they buy up a ton of crinum bulbs but more importantly, this group of women have collectively raised and distributed over $50,000 in the past…
Read MoreSleeping Students, Dog Penis Fungi & More from Intern Isaac
I was teaching a college level class the other day when one fella rolled up his jacket, made a pillow, took some sleep supplements, and went right to sleep. I thought, ‘Son; do you know what an ego blow that is to a teacher?’ But I did something else of course. For five weeks I’m…
Read MoreIsaac Introduces Himself….
So I guess I should get on it and go ahead and do this blog post. Let’s start off with an introduction. Hi, I’m Isaac Kirwan and I’m the first intern for the crinum lilies. I’m 19, live in Greenville, and I go to Spartanburg Community College for Horticulture. Now most people I talk to…
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