Profiles Index

Potatoes - Growing Potatoes in the Home Garden
Growing potatoes in the home garden can be easy, if you learn to avoid the pest and disease problems. Potatoes are one of those mystery crops that develop out of sight, underground. You never really know how you’re doing until you harvest - and then it’s too late. Here are the basics on how to grow potatoes.

Marigolds - Growing Marigolds, a Classic Bedding Plant
Marigolds are a popular,easy to grow bedding plant. Marigolds are cheerful, compact yellow, orange and burgundy annual flowers with flower shapes that can resemble daisies, coreopsis and carnations.

Gourds - Growing a Variety of Ornamental Gourds
Growing gourds is easy and extremely rewarding. By drying ornamental gourds, you can keep them intact indefinitely and use them to make bird houses, containers, pots and silly, whimsical decorations. However gourds will require a good amount of space to run and they will probably take the entire growing season to mature. But growing gourds is something that the entire family can take part in and enjoy. Here’s how easy it is.

Prickly Pear - Growing the Hardy Cactus Opuntia compressa - Eastern Prickly Pear
What’s more surprising, that a cactus is hardy enough to grow in USDA Zone 4 or that it should have such a pretty flower? Eastern prickly pear doesn’t have the stature of it’s dessert cousin, the larger prickly pear, Opuntia ficus-indica, which can top 15'. Bbut this smaller prickly pear adds a touch of the mid-west to cooler climates and makes up for its diminutive size with its hardiness. And being a cactus, prickly pear is incredibly easy to grow.

Obedient Plant
Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana) got its common name because you can bend the individual flowers in any direction you like - a nice feature for floral displays. Unfortunately obedient plants are not so obedient in the garden, where some varieties can spread to the point of nuisance. However, obedient plant provides a nice splash of pale colors in the fall garden and growing obedient plant is easy.

Growing Hibiscus acetosella - A Hibiscus with Dazzling Foliage?
Hibiscus acetosella isn’t like most of the tropical flowered hibiscus you’re used to seeing in gardens. Hibiscus acetosella is grown mainly for its stunning foliage, which can be so finely cut and deeply red colored you’ll think it’s a Japanese maple. Hibiscus acetosella makes an excellent focal point in the garden or in a container planting.

Abutilon - The Flowering or Parlor Maple Will Bloom Almost Non-Stop
Abutilon has the unfortunate common name of the ‘Parlor Maple’, making it seem like a stuffy, Victorian conservatory plant. But much like the coleus, Abutilon just needs to be allowed to shine as an unfussy garden plant. Abutilon is happy to flower almost continually and can be trained into standards and shapes or allowed to arch and shade an entryway. They’re so easy to grow and so willing to bloom, everyone should grow Abutilon.

Mint - Growing and Using the Fragrant Herb Mint
Plants in the mint family are very hardy perennials with vigorous growth habits. Mint, left to its own devices, will spread quickly and become a nuisance. However, it is very popular as a flavorful herb and the plants can be grown easily. Just try to chose a spot where you won’t mind the rampant growth or grow it in a confined space.

Growing Hot Peppers - Turn Up the Heat in the Vegetable Garden
Chili peppers have the distinction of being welcome I both vegetable gardens and flower borders. While hot peppers may seem exotic, they are very easy to grow almost anywhere, even indoors. The assortment of hot peppers, whether Jalapeno, Serrano, Cayenne, Habanero or Thai, offers something for every garden and every pallette.

Echinacea - Coneflowers are Garden Favorites
Echinacea profile. Echinacea or coneflower is an old fashioned prairie plant. Echinacea are hardy, adaptable and reliable repeat bloomers and are expecially popular with gardeners for good reason.

Achillea - Growing Yarrow in the Perennial Garden
Achillea often get taken for granted because they are such a dependable, low maintenance perennial plant. There are many varieties of Yarrow and there is sure to be one or two suited to growing in your garden.

Growing Cannas - Dramatic, Tropical Perennials for Any Flower Garden
Cannas are tropical and subtropical flowering plants with large, banana like leaves. Cannas can be grown as annuals in cooler regions, where they add an instant touch of the tropics to flower gardens. Easy care and dramatic effect make planting cannas worthwhile for any garden border. They can even be grown in pots and

Borage - Growing and Using the Herb Borage
Borage is a freely seeding, easy growing annual plant with vivid blue flowers and leaves with the flavor of cucumbers. Borage is actually a somewhat gangly plant, but you barely notice it because the star-shaped flowers are so vibrant. They’re a true blue, hanging in downward facing clusters. Even the fussy white buds are attractive. Both the flowers and the leaves are edible, with a cucumber-like flavor. Here are some tips for growing borage.

Nigella damascena - Growing Love-in-a-Mist in Your Garden
Nigella earns its common name of Love-in-a-Mist with a tangle of ferny, fennel like foliage that form a mist around the flowers. I'm not sure why anyone would call Nigella Devil in the Bush. Nigella flowers start off as interesting puffs, open into rich toned, straw-flower like blossoms and change into equally attractive seed pods. Here are some tips for growing Nigella in your garden.

Solomon's Seal - Growing the Elegant Shade Perennial Polygonatum
Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum) is an elegant Native American woodland plant. The small, tubular white flowers of Polygonatum dangle underneath the leaves. But it's the plant form that makes Solomon's Seal such an interesting plant. Once established, Polygonatum slowly spreads out and creates a nodding blanket of foliage that turns a golden yellow in autumn. Here are some tips on getting Solomon’s Seal to grow in your garden.

Parsley - An Easy Growing, Under Appreciated Herb
For years, all we knew about parsley was that curly, bitter sprig at the side of our food in restaurants. Parsley is a leafy herb that adds more freshness than flavor to dishes. It’s extremely easy to grow and keep on hand and an attractive plant in the garden.

Chamomile - A Delicate but Tough Herb for the Garden and the Kitchen
German chamomile is a delicate looking plant that is surprisingly tough. The ferny foliage tends to flop over and the tiny flowers look like miniature daisies. Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) is often used as a groundcover or creeping plant used to soften the edges of a stone wall or walkway. Roman chamomile is a perennial. The German chamomile used for making tea. Both are easy to grow and great additions to the garden.

Primula - The Primrose is No Shy Wallflower
Primroses are unusually vivid spring blooming perennial flowers. Unlike the subtle pastels associated with spring, primroses shout out in bold yellows, reds, pinks and blues, making them ideal for brightening the spring garden. Primroses look their best in mass. These easy care perennials are profiled here.

Calendula - Growing and Using the Flowering Herb Calendula or Pot Marigold
Calendula, or "Pot Marigolds", are known for their cheery bright flowers and profuse blooming. They are most commonly thought of as yellow and orange, but there are more subtle pink and cream varieties of Calendula. Calendula is often used in cooking and herbal medicine, although the bright petals of pot marigold add more color than flavor. Here's how to grow you own Calendula.

Rudbeckia - Choosing and Growing Black-Eyed Susans
Rudbeckia are easy to establish, naturalize well and require little maintenance other than deadheading. Black-eyed Susan's come in a rich array of yellows, golds, oranges and russets. For a dependable, long season bloomer that brings a smile to faces, you can’t go wrong with Rudbeckia. Here are some tips for choosing and growing Black-eyed Susans, Brown-eyed Susans and all the Gloriosa Daisies in between.

Sunflowers - Growing a Banner of Summer, the Sunflower
Sunflowers make any day feel like a summer's day. They make look exotic, but sunflowers are extremely easy to grow. You can choose traditional yellow sunflowers or maybe try growing sunflowers in rich rusts and burgundies. Here are some tips for growing your own sunflowers.

Green Beans - Quick Guide to Growing Green Beans in Your Garden
Often called green beans or string beans, the common garden bean can be both stringless and colors other than green. But it’s the green bean that everyone recognizes as one of the most frequently prepared vegetables. Hot, cold, even raw, string beans are versatile in the kitchen and very prolific producers in the garden. They are also easy to grow. Here are some tips.

Phormium - Growing the Spiky, Spectacular New Zealand Flax
Phormium is a spiky, sword-leafed evergreen perennial that is used as a garden focal point or specimen plant. Some are small enough to use in containers, others can reach several feet in diameter and 7+ feet tall. Phormium aren’t hardy in many areas, but can be brought indoors for the winter. Growing Phormium is easy, if you give the plants what they want.

Growing Sage - A Wise Choice for the Herb or Flower Garden
Sage is one of those wonderful Mediterranean herbs that only asks for sun and warmth and then takes care of itself. Being an evergreen, even northern gardeners are able to harvest fresh sage leaves at Thanksgiving. And it's beautiful enough not to have on display in the herb garden or the perennial bed. Here are some tips for growing great sage.

True Geraniums - How to Grow Hardy, Perennial Geraniums
The term geranium is confusing. The first geranium most gardeners encounter is not a geranium at all, but Pelargonium, a relative of the perennial geranium. True or hardy or perennial geraniums belong to the genus Geranium. You will sometimes see them referred to as cranesbill geraniums, because their seed pods do somewhat resemble a crane’s bill. The flowers, in shades of white, pink, magenta, purples and blues, are long blooming. As you see here, geraniums are easy care.