How to Grow Your Own Swede

The wide world of plants is fascinating and diverse. One interesting thing that some plants do is mimic the shape, color, and general appearance of something else. Plants that look like other things are sometimes random and coincidental, but others have resulted from evolution to get an advantage. Regardless of the cause or reason, these whimsical plants are fun to grow indoors as houseplants or in the garden.

The sunflower is one of the nation’s best-loved flowers. Although most sunflower varieties have yellow flowers, you can grow varieties with rusty red, green and even white flowers.

Vacuum cleaners may seem like magic, but they're not designed to do it all. Most standard vacuums excel at cleaning up everyday dirt including dust, cobwebs, and crumbs, but they struggle against bigger messes that could clog their critical inner workings.

Watering Thanksgiving cactus correctly is key to maintaining your plant and keeping it healthy and looking beautiful.

Have you always longed to make wine from tasty sun-warmed grapes gathered from your own backyard? While I live in the ideal wine-growing region (USDA Zone 9b) near the well-known Napa Valley, you’ll be amazed to learn that backyard viticulture is entirely possible anywhere within USDA Zones 4 through 10. Growing wine grapes isn’t hard, but there are a number of key requirements that guarantee success, beginning with growing the wine you love! If you adore a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon at the end of the day, plant Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. When Chardonnay is your preference, you’ll need to grow grapes that produce a full-bodied Chardonnay. The following are some viticulture tips for planning and planting your own personal vineyard.

When my budding interests in horticulture started developing in junior high school, I came across Hortus Third, an encyclopedic tome of horticulture compiled in the 1970s. Learning about plants from my dad while working on landscape installations, and then looking them up in Hortus Third after hours, I developed a sense of wonder about plant diversity both in the natural world and in cultivation in our gardens and landscapes. How could a genus described in Hortus Third such as Michelia (later reclassified as Magnolia) have “about 50 species of evergreen trees and shrubs” but only eight listed? What about the other 42 species? Were they unworthy of cultivation, or had we simply not tried the other ones yet? With many genera, the latter often proves to be the case. It turns out that the world of horticulture often overlooks many worthy plants.

The Rocky Mountain Region is stretched over 10,000 feet in elevation change and nearly over the full longitude of the Continental United States. Within this massive spread fit more than six biomes, ranging from the grasslands and prairie edges of northern New Mexico to the alpine of Montana. Despite the impressive diversity in soil and climate, many people in the area garden on our region’s namesake: rocks.

Reblooming Christmas cactus is much easier than you may think, and in this post I’m going to explain how to encourage yours to flower again year after year.

How to Grow and Care for Red Oak Trees Quercus rubra

Butterfly weed is easy to care for, low maintenance, and also grows very quickly.

Tips for Growing ‘Crimson Queen’ Japanese Maple Trees Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Crimson Queen’

I first learned the fundamentals of kitchen gardening from my mother, who learned it from her father, a passing-on of traditional skills repeated down through countless generations.