Grimm's Garden Talk

  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden August-September

    Part 3 of my gardens. The saga continues…. This is the Monarch Waystation in late summer, full of rudbeckias and garden phlox and grasses. The double-flowered rudbeckia variety is ‘Hortensia’ from my grandmother’s garden in Cloud County, KS. The tallest grass in the middle is switchgrass ‘Dallas Blues’, one of the first things I ever [...]

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  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden June-July

    Here is the second part to the garden tour. enjoy the photos and comments!   Above you can see my driveway Border Garden. I had to put in this fence to keep visitors from parking too close to the edge of the drop off where the culvert it. I added some of my favorite rustic [...]

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  • Kansas Gardener’s Garden April-May

    This year, my garden did so well that I had to break my tour of it into 4 separate posts. Up first is April through May. I cannot remember a wetter May than what we had this year – 26 inches of rain! Most of the plants handled it by putting on tons of lush, [...]

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  • DIY Holiday Wreaths by The Kansas Gardener

    With Thanksgiving over and less than 5 weeks until Christmas, I like to finish my outdoor decorations off with a few wreaths. And since I am the Kansas Gardener, I love to use whatever materials I can find around me. In other words, no fake greens, berries, or seedheads, it is the real stuff for [...]

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  • Year in Review – Insects of 2019

    Although 2019 is not quite over yet, with the early snow and extreme temperature changes, the majority of insects have begun their hibernation periods and so we can discuss this year’s populations. With the advent of extremely wet weather ( over 70 inches of rain in Northeast Kansas) we have seen a population explosion in [...]

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  • 5 To-Do’s for Fall in the Garden

    Now that we have had our first snowfall (just in time for Halloween), we can be sure that true winter is looming around the corner. As we prepare for the colder months of the year, we need to think about some final things to do in the garden before we hang up our gloves and [...]

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  • Creating Homemade Holiday Decor

    Christmas is right around the corner and my wife is already starting to get the boxes of Christmas decorations from the garage. With just 2 weeks until Thanksgiving, I am beginning to gather materials for our annual Holiday Creations – setting up outdoor decor for businesses and some homeowners. I try to use primarily locally [...]

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  • Beautiful Beneficials: Parasitic Wasps

    I have discussed wasps with you before, now let us look a little closer at parasitic wasps. Parasitic wasps are those whose larval stages eat or live in the different stages of other insects. Many of these wasps parasitize caterpillars, while other may parasitize a number of insects, including beetle larvae, sawfly larvae, galls, beetles, [...]

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  • Can You Predict the Weather by Woolly Bear Caterpillars?

    With our first hard freeze and snowfall having borne down upon us this week, many folks are starting to “guess” the weather by the colors of the woolly bear caterpillar. I say guess, because that is all it is, guessing. There is no scientific research to back up claims that you can predict the weather [...]

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