St. Louis Style

Free Garden Classes @ Bowoods Farms- CWE

4605 Olive Street
Saint Louis, Missouri 63108

314 · 454 · 6868

March Calendar

Un-Mole Your Garden with Stewart Clark! Saturday, March 6 2:00 pm, FREE The first expert in our Gardening Gurus Series is St. Louis' own mole man, Stewart Clark, an expert in techniques for deterring moles from coming into yards. The New York Times has written him up. His "I Hate Moles Because..." essay contest is a popular annual event and selling tool for his St. Louis based line of Sweeney's mole-and-gopher repellent products. Stewart will come, with live mole in hand, to talk about techniques for un-moling your own garden! Ask him about other pests too; he has a technique or product for nearly everything!

Best Fruits for Your Home Garden with Alan Branhagen! Wednesday, March 10 6:00 pm, FREE The second expert in our Gardening Gurus Series is the Missouri man whose garden of apples, peaches, cherries, lemons, limes, figs and other fruits prompted garden author Rosalind Creasy to dub it "the largest edible landscape in the country". Making his first appearance in St. Louis, Alan Branhagen, horticulture director at the new 12-acre Heartland Harvest Garden - part of Kansas City's botanical gem, Powell Gardens - will show images of all manner of fruit plants and talk about how to grow them here in Missouri. Companion plantings and the best vegetables and herbs will also be discussed. Available for purchase, this night only, will be special bare-root fruit trees featured in the talk!

Best Flowering Plants for Your Cutting Garden with Mimo Davis! Saturday, March 20 2:00 pm, FREE The third and final expert in our Gardening Gurus Series is St. Louis Farmers' Market's popular cut-flower grower, Karen "Mimo" Davis, now back in St. Louis working as Lincoln University's Horticulture Regional Educator. She'll talk on the best perennials and annuals for growing to bring cut flowers into your house! Find out about her years of producing specialty cut flowers from her Wild Thang Farm near Ashland, MO and her current favorites for great cut-flower displays!

Spring Is Coming!

Days are longer and it is bright at 5 PM!  Even the daffodils are beginning to emerge.  Could Spring be coming?

Forcing Branches

If you need a little Springtime....right this very moment....well at least in a couple weeks...try forcing some spring-blooming branches.  Go into the yard and clip some forsythia, pussy willow or red-twigged dogwood branches and put them in water.  The results may be just what you need to get you through the last weeks of winter.

Witch Hazel

It is about this time of the year that I really need a break from winter. I know in just one month, the grass will start to green, daffodils will be coming up and maybe a 60 degree day will grace us.  I saw Easter stuff out at Schnuck's.....I am always happy to see this.  Oh well, every year around this time I wish I planted Witch Hazel in the garden.  It is the first thing to bloom in the Spring with the crocuses and snow whites.

Driveable Grass

The world does not need anymore asphalt.  I think that this is a great solution to eliminate water run-off and it looks nice.  I wonder if you could use some low sedums as a filler also?  Find out more HERE.

Winter Garden

Winter does not need to be a bleak time in the garden.  I sometimes like the break winter gives you from pulling weeds, watering, mowing and pruning.  When planning on your Spring landscaping projects, think of plants that look good in the winter: evergreens, red-twigged specimens, seed pods, grasses and bamboos. Here are some scenes from my garden this morning.

(Coral Bark Japanese Maple)

 

(Silver Sedum)

(Yellow-grove Bamboo)

 

(Oat Grass)

Paperwhites and Alcohol

Paperwhites and Alcohol sounds like a title of a great book, though it is a winter gardening secret.  These are my paperwhites that I started Christmas Eve....they are almost blooming!  So that you do not have paperwhites that get too tall and lanky, make 5% of their water clear alcohol.  I used gin since I like my vodka too much.

Paperwhites

Have you started your paperwhites yet?  I have not and I think it is a priority next week!  I would hate to miss out on their scent on a cold winter day.

Holiday Wreath

Yesterday I decided to make a wreath out of things from my garden.  All I did was take a grapevine wreath and wove things into it.  Although not perfect....it is free, fresh and me!

Green Wall- PNC, Pittsburgh, PA

Check this out......we need a corporation in St. Louis to do this here!  See on this BLOG.