Protect Plants from Cold Without Trashing the Yard

So, you planted too early?  Now it's time to think about serious protection for plants.  Unfortunately, plant covers cost money and are typically kind of ugly.  Home made solutions make the garden look like a tornado's just strewn the contents of your laundry room or recycling bin across the garden.  And, in my case, when that garden is also the "decorative" front lawn in military housing, it is cause for annoyed neighbors and violation warnings.  Fortunately, there are ways to protect delicate plants from the cold without looking like you're also running the worlds trashiest yard sale.

What Can & Can't be Composted

As I look into restarting composting, it seems like a great time to post a list of what can and can't be composted.  When I used to compost, I was a vegetarian, so it was super easy to know what to compost:  leftovers.  Done.  Now that we eat omnivorously (yum!) it's a little more complicated.  so. . .here we go.
As always, chop everything down to large diced size to get it to compost faster. Big stuff takes forever, little stuff is surprisingly fast, so make everything really small.

What to Prune in Early Spring

One of the challenges all gardeners face who've inherited decorative shrubs when they moved or who have planted them and now run the risk of a garden takeover years later is when to prune.  So, here's my quick and dirty list of what to prune in late winter/early spring:

• Plants that bloom in the summer
• Hedges that need shaping
• Evergreens that aren't pines

(A more detailed explanation/list is after the jump)

35 Surprising things you can Compost

Composting yard waste and vegetable leftovers makes sense, but did you know you can compost dryer lint?  Crazy, right?  It turns out there are a ton of things that you can compost that might surprise you.

Check them out in the list below.

Coastal Virginia's 3 Growing Seasons

Yesterday, I was talking about gardening with a good friend, with whom I'm staying while living away from home this month in order to work.  She was asking about how to set up a garden, and I explained square foot gardening (my favorite kind), and what I would do if I were living there longer in order to set up a garden for spring.  She lives in Virginia, which spans four planting zones, and includes coastal southern Virginia, which has a great growing season--or 3 growing seasons as I like to think.