Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love the smell of the fresh Christmas tree and the aroma of cookies baking, the sight of kids anticipating what might be behind the wrapping paper and the sounds of Christmas music coming through the stereo. ‘The Christmas Collection’ by Frank Sinatra, ‘Merry Christmas’ by Bing Crosby, ‘A Swingin’ Christmas’ by Tony Bennett, ‘The Andy Williams Christmas Album’ and ‘The Joy of Christmas’ by Leonard Bernstein, have been on constant rotation in my home since Thanksgiving. The Pettis Family Christmas tree this year came from Greenbriar Creek Tree Farm on …

The sun sets early in the woods this time of year. Where it is daylight until 6 p.m. out in the open, the light starts to fade at 5 p.m. under the canopy of a forest. This is the best time of day to find edible mushrooms. The fading evening sun illuminates the usually light colored flesh of forest fungi contrasting them against the usually dark forest floor and tree trunks. Most of these mushrooms ‘flower’ or ‘fruit’ in the cooler, milder and wetter months of fall and winter. So if you take an evening walk through a favorite forest in December, you may likely find many mushrooms. Of course …

Fortunately for me and my close relations, my wife is an artisanal bread baker. Every couple of weeks or so she is overcome by an urge to create sumptuous loaves that leave the house and the neighborhood scented with the familial smell of fresh baked goods. She is always generous with her creations and our family and friends often get treated to warm bread wrapped tightly in a paper sack right out of the oven. Her knead, I mean need to bake comes over her usually on weekends. Some weekend mornings my son and I are treated to fresh baked 'cathead' biscuits. Other mornings it is homemade whole …

I am glad that it has finally gotten cold. After what seemed like an early start to our winter way back in October, the warm November was a real bummer. The warm harvest month suppressed the growth of my cool season garden crops such as spinach, lettuce and kale. It also slowed down the annual ryegrass that I over-seeded in my lawn. Even my pansies look a little put out. My koi didn’t mind though. They spent the Thanksgiving Holiday swimming around my pond as happily as ever. They like the mild temperatures. The low angle of the sunlight streaming through the leafless oak canopy sparkled on …

When I was a boy, my grandmother took care of my brother and me while my mom was at work. Invariably one of us would injure the other. My grandma would rush to the scene of the accident and begin discussing the herbal remedy that she was going to employ to treat her ailing grandson. I come from a long line of Middle Georgia country folk; herbal remedies and homemade concoctions were a part of life for our family. If you had a headache, you would have to chew Yellow Root that my old Uncle Joe would dig up down at the creek. If you stubbed your toe on an old oak stump, you would get your digit …

Can you believe it is nearly Thanksgiving? The years are sure flying by; sometimes it makes me dizzy the year zooms past so quickly. It seems like just yesterday my mouth was watering in anticipation of Thanksgiving 2010. So, here we are a week before Thanksgiving 2011. Cornucopias, the horn shaped wicker baskets that come to us from Greek mythology, represent plenty and celebrate the bounty of the fall harvest. These baskets adorn many a table now and they are filled with fall goodness. Warty looking, multi-colored gourds --which often are the result of an heirloom variety-- and mini …

Every fall people waste millions of man-hours and untold amounts of money throwing away leaves. For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone would burn or throw away something as valuable as leaves. Leaves contain nutrients and organic matter, which improves soil. Leaves act as mulch, and help to hold soil moisture and keep soil cool. People pay big bucks for fertilizers, mulches and soil conditioners at garden centers, while others throw away perfectly good foliage. Throwing away leaves is tantamount to throwing away money. I know some folks are simply closet pyromaniacs. The fall is …

Joey Allen, Town of Bishop Town Councilman, is a man of many parts. He is a dedicated father, public servant and professional gardener. Joey, his wife and I all hail from the same hometown in Upson County, Ga. and we are friends. Joey and I also have a love for gardening in common and are both professional plantsmen based in Oconee County. I asked Mr. Allen if he wouldn't mind sitting down to an interview with me in my capacity as the Oconee Patch gardening columnist ,and he has graciously obliged. Q. Joey, how would you describe the services your company offers? A. At Land Solutions, we …

Some plants are just plain hard to grow in some landscapes. The property where I garden is high and dry and overrun with deer. In my situation, there are some plants that either need too much care or are the favorite foods of four legged herbivores. I gave up on water dependent hostas and have had to relegate deer favorites like daylilies into my fenced back yard. There are some plants that I have had great success with though. These trees, shrubs, perennials, vines and annuals are tough and need little care. Here is a quick list of the real ‘doers’ in my yard for 2011: Shrubs - Gardenias, …

This week there is a touch of fall in the air. The rains and lower temperatures we have been experiencing over the last couple of days hopefully mean the summer is over. Thank the Maker; I am ready for cooler weather. This week saw two major events in my garden. Firstly, I took delivery of a big load of really nice composted wood chips. Secondly, I planted annual ryegrass in my lawn areas. The mulch came from an area tree care company, Chestnut Tree Service. This company chips and composts the wood generated from its tree care operation. They then sell it by the yard. I have used the …

One of the great joys our wooded Oconee County garden provides is the opportunity to watch birds. We have a couple of bird feeders hanging off of our deck that are filled with seed. These attract numerous species of songbirds. We enjoy sitting at our kitchen table during meals looking out the bay window at the menagerie. As pretty as gold finches, sparrows, chickadees and titmice are, nothing is more engaging than the incessant goings on of hummingbirds. Hummers are comical and thrilling to watch. They fight all day long for dominance of the feeders in a sort of aerial king-of-the-hill match …

In an earlier column I wrote about my fondness for fall pansies. The cool season annual , a hybrid descended from violas, is widely available at local retailers this time of year. Coming in multiple colors and sizes, the little flowers make a huge impact in any container or flower bed. Personally, these are my favorite flowers because they are often the only cheerful color in otherwise drab winter gardens. There are other fall annuals as well such as the many ‘cole crop’ (Brassica family) annuals available today for use as ornamental winter foliage. Winter cabbages form rounded heads with …

Fall is the time for planting trees and shrubs. This is the peak season for plant nursery sales with many retailers boosting their inventories after the slow sales months of summer. Also, the ground tends to be a little softer…no wait, maybe it only seems that way since it isn’t so danged hot. The main reason for planting in the fall is that nearly dormant trees do not use much water. Woody plants are shutting down their leaves for the winter in October and November. However, their roots and stems continue to grow until the soil gets cold. There is an old saying; “A tree grows as it is …

Each fall my sun-dried gardening mojo is rekindled with coming of cooler weather and pansy planting season. I buy at least 5 trays of the small winter annual flower each year. My wife, son and I plant the diminutive flower in every flower bed and container in the yard in October. The pansies that end up in the shaded areas of our yard are still with us in May of the next year. When I was in horticulture school at UGA, the pansy flower was derided by some of my fellow students as an "industrial" flower. Nobody wanted to work on one of these factory farms because they seemed to hold no charm …

This year's garden on the whole was nothing to brag about. It was really dry and hot. All of my plants look like they just ran a marathon and somebody forgot the Gatorade. There are big patches of bare soil in my lawn and the grass that is left looks as if it wishes a cow would graze over it and put it out of its misery.The one bright spot in our garden this year was a little bed of zinnias my wife planted from seed. “I've come to the conclusion after this summer that every gardener with a sunny spot should grow zinnias,” she told me just this past week. “When everything else in the yard was …

Well, it looks like a drought is on...again. Just when we thought our lives were going to get back to normal in the garden we are being faced with looming water restrictions. We gardeners had better get used to the fact that outdoor watering is going to be an issue forever. With an ever increasing population straining our limited water supply and hotter, dryer weather now the norm, water restrictions are going to be a fact of life. Gardeners are pragmatists generally so we will deal with the new reality. Like my Drill Instructor on Parris Island always said, "we improvise, adapt and overcome…

This summer has given us all several great reasons to just up and quit vegetable gardening. Brutal, unrelenting heat and drought from the spring until now are worthy excuses to just throw up your hands and say, “Enough!” No one would blame you for giving up gardening for some other more weather appropriate hobby like camel racing or cactus throwing. I know I wouldn’t. Logic would demand it. But, the thing is, we gardeners are all addicts. No matter how bad an experience we have with our vice we just keep coming back for more. It can be 100 degrees and dry in early June and what do us …

My wife and I moved into our home in the riverside hills of Oconee County several years ago. We left our starter home behind in east Athens because we needed more space and because we loved the rural character and wonderful people of Oconee. We loaded our last haul of stuff from the old house in the dark and in the rain after an all day moving marathon. That last truck and trailer load of stuff included our garden furniture, gardening supplies and decorations. I remember stumbling around in the dark looking for the "found items" (junk as my wife calls them) that I cannot help to obtain in my …

It happens every year, usually on one chilly, rainy day in early spring.  I gaze dolefully into the pantry and painfully realize that we have used up the last of the tomatoes we canned during peak harvest the previous summer. This experience falls particularly hard if the dreaded day comes before the winter is even over. I’m still scarred by the incident about ten years ago when I had a particular hankering for a pot of my wife’s homemade spaghetti sauce made from homegrown tomatoes. It was the dead of winter and the day dreary and gray. All day long at work I had been dreaming of the smell …

Lately I have been gardening first thing in the morning because of the heat. The mornings were hot and muggy the last couple of weeks and I considered being a wimp and giving up the garden. Somehow I persevered and now the humidity is going down and the early mornings feel really nice at 68 degrees.   Interestingly, I noticed the plants seem to like the early morning better, too. In the evenings after a near 100 degree day all of the plants in the garden seem to droop a little as do I. In the early morning, the plants all look fresh and happy much like this old gardener does after his third …