Profiles Index

Comfrey: Growing Comfrey - A Useful and Ornamental Herb
Growing comfrey in home gardens is as easy as planting and stepping back. Comfrey grows well in most any sunny spot with a rich soil. Comfrey plants are as useful as they are ornamental. Here are some tips for success in growing comfrey in your garden.

Okra - Growing Okra in the Backyard Vegetable Garden
Okra is grow for its long, pointed seed pods, which are used in gumbos and soups. Okra is a warm season vegetable that can easily be grown in home vegetable gardens. Its flowers resemble hibiscus and okra makes a nice ornamental plant as well.

Radishes - Growing Radishes in the Home Vegetable Garden
Even the humble globe-shaped radish offers a good amount of variety. They can be round or oblong, hot or mild, red, pink, purple, white or bi-colored. Radishes are quick growing and fairly easy, if you follow a few radish growing guidelines.

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.

Bleeding Heart Plants (Dicentra) - Growing Flowering Bleeding Heart in the Garde
Bleeding Heart plants (Dicentra) are spring blooming flowers for a shady part of the garden. Bleeding Hearts are perennial plants with heart shaped pink or white flowers with a tear shaped drop at the bottom. Bleeding Heart can be grown in many areas and will self-sow in cooler climates. Bleeding Heart plants combine beautifully with other spring blooming flowers.

Growing Oregano: An Oregano by Any Other Name, Would Not Taste as Sweet
Growing, harvesting and using oregano is easy, but sometimes confusing. Plants in the genus Origanum are can be perennial ground covers, tender perennials or even small perennial subshrubs. There is much confusion over what type of oregano to use in cooking, but there is no disputing the flavor when you taste it. This Plant Profile of 'Oregano' will help you make sense of which type of oregano to grow for your needs.

Pansies - Growing a Cool Weather Favorite
Pansies are probably the most popularly grown and most recognizable cool season plant. The variety of colors and the cheerfulness of the pansy’s ‘face’ have made them a long standing favorite. And they’re easy and undemanding to grow. Here are some tips to keep your pansies growing and blooming longer.

Lamb's Ears - Growing These Soft, Fuzzy Garden Favorites
Lamb's Ears are popular in gardens because of their soft, inviting texture. They are very easy to grow almost anywhere. This profile of Lamb's Ears, Stachys byzantina, gives you their preferences and recommends varieties for your garden.

Pothos - An Easy to Grow Houseplant, Pothos
Pothos is arguably the easiest houseplant to grow. Pothos is tolerant of low light conditions and erratic watering. Pothos are also high on the list of plants that can help purify indoor air. Here's how to keep your pothos growing.

Growing Sweet Potatoes - How to Grow Sweet Potatoes in the Home Garden
Can you grow sweet potatoes at home? Except for being a long season crop, sweet potatoes are very easy to grow. Even the sweet potato leaves are edible. If you have a small garden, bush sweet potatoes might be a better choice for you. Here are some tips for growing sweet potatoes in any home garden.

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.

Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ - Growing Golden Japanese Forest Grass
With arching gold leaves, striped with bright green, Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' is a unique ornamental grass. But it's a clump forming grass that grows excruciatingly slowly. It will just sit there for a couple of years and only come into its own after about 5 years. It’s worth the expense to get a slightly larger plant. Here's how to get yours growing.

Aloe Vera -Grow Aloe Vera as a Desert Plant, Houseplant or Medicinal Plant.
Aloe vera makes a good starter houseplant. It takes care of itself and thrives on neglect. If you’re luck enough to be able to grow aloe vera outdoors, you’ll be greeted by spiky late spring flowers that grow on tall stalks. But even if your aloe will be housebound, it should be with you for years. Whether you’re just starting with houseplants or want an interesting addition to your collection, try growing aloe vera.

Thyme - How to Grow Fragrant, Flavorful Thyme Plants
Thyme is an extremely easy growing Mediterranean herb that prefers dry, lean growing conditions. In fact, thyme almost grows itself. You can grow thyme in herb gardens, on rock walls, between pavers or even indoors. Here are some tips on growing and using great thyme.

Ornamental Cabbage and Flowering Kale - Pretty Enough to Eat?
Ornamental cabbage and flowering kale are in the same species, Brassica oleracea, as edible cabbages and kale. Although they are still edible, they aren’t as tasty and tender as their cousins. But they're as easy to grow, as shown here.

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.