Articles by Katie Elzer-Peters
Katie Elzer-Peters is a professional horticulturalist and member of the Garden Writers Association of America. She has extensive experience operating public gardens, including serving as Curator of Landscape with the King’s Garden at Fort Ticonderoga and Assistant Director of Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina. She has a bachelor's degree from Purdue and a Master's from the University of Delaware Longwood Graduate Program, both in Public Horticulture.
I enjoyed pilfering from the publishing table at Garden Writers this year. However, I always review books, often on multiple sites, so I feel less guilty, sort of. The book Don't Throw it, GROW IT! is an adorable little gem, re-published in 2008 by Storey ...
Posted in Organic Book Reviews | No Comments »
Wicked Plants, by Amy Stewart, was published this spring or summer. I already forget when, because it feels like we've had this book around forever, or at least had Amy around forever doing PR for it. Her PR guy is a genius! If you've seen ...
Posted in Organic Book Reviews | No Comments »
[caption id="attachment_2028" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Best laid plans. . . "][/caption]
If you read my blog posts early in the spring (around March/April), you saw that I was SUPER EXCITED to have my own vegetable garden again. My husband and I embarked on a gigantic re-purposing of our back landscape beds for vegetables. We put in edging, compost, and tons of veggie seeds. We moved ...
Posted in Fruits, Veggies and Herbs | No Comments »
If the ground isn't frozen solid where you live yet (SORRY CHRIS!), fall is a good time to nab some perennials on sale to fill out the garden and get a jump-start on spring. While at the Garden Writer's Symposium I picked up the new book Perennial Companions by Tom Fischer with photos by Richard and Adrian Bloom. It is totally inspiring. (FTC disclosure: I guess I was "given" this book for free. If by ...
Posted in Annuals and Perennials | No Comments »
Halloween is coming! Fortunately for us gardeners, Mother Nature has several scary plant species worthy of boos and scares. From flowers shaped like eyeballs to grass stained with blood, you're sure to find a frightful plant to set the tone of Halloween.
Are you ready? Here’s a little garden’s worth of spooky delights to showcase for your trick or treaters!
Spiderflower
Spiderflower, or Cleome, is a perfect start to the Halloween garden. What’s Halloween without spooky ...
Posted in Annuals and Perennials | 2 Comments »
Fall in the garden is a time of over-ripe, worn-out, raggedy plants. It is also a time when plants from tiny perennials to giant trees put on a spectacular show of fantastical fruits. No matter where you live, there are native and exotic ornamental plants that put on a pretty show of berries that feed wildlife and are easy on gardeners' eyes. If you're going to plant berry-bearing trees and shrubs, check ...
Posted in Trees and Shrubs | No Comments »
I'm back from the Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, NC. It was, as per usual, a great time! This year, in particular, I talked with a wider cross-section of garden professionals including writers, lecturers, photographers, illustrators, retail owners, plant breeders, tv personalities, publishers, and so on and so forth.
Here's Where I Play Eye Doctor
I went to the eye doctor a few weeks ago so that I could order some surfing sunglasses. When you go to ...
Posted in Annuals and Perennials | 1 Comment »
I've been reading and reading and reading this summer, into fall. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Food Matters, by Mark Bittman. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I finally got to the big one: ...
Posted in Organic Book Reviews | 1 Comment »
Using a pre-emergence herbicide in the fall can drastically cut down your weed problems in the spring. Luckily, organic gardeners practicing natural lawn care techniques do have a commercially available pre-emergence herbicide at their disposal: corn gluten.
You can’t just go to the grocery and buy corn gluten. As with other garden remedies, corn gluten is commercially available from garden supply companies. It can still be a little tricky to find these ...
Posted in Weed Control | No Comments »
September and October are the months to prepare your garden for the winter. In warmer areas, the fall is the time to plant cool-season vegetables. In colder climates, gardeners need to "put the garden to bed." Here are the main fall gardening chores for the fall, including warmer and cooler climates.
Cool Climates (Pennsylvania and north)
Remove dead flower stalks (example: daylily flower stalks), dead leaves, flowers and debris, but wait until perennials are ...
Posted in Seasonal Garden Maintenance | 1 Comment »
