Honey, I Shrunk the Garden

Season 5, Episode 27, May 17, 2023

The Gardenangelists

and

Carol Michel

May 16, 2023

A little Monarda, bee balm, that is only a foot tall!

On this week’s episode, we chose miniature plants as our theme so we could use the title “Honey, I shrunk the garden.”

Kidding.

We picked the theme because sometimes you need smaller plants in a garden.

Originally, I thought we would talk about fairy gardens and garden fairies. But we didn’t mention garden fairies at all, not even once. My garden fairies aren’t going to like that one bit, but such is how it goes. I just hope they don’t retaliate by hiding my digging knife again. I am busy planting. I need it!

Anyway, as you’ll hear when you listen to this episode, Dee went on a river cruise for her anniversary, so we recorded this episode before she left. (She’s back now! Welcome back, Dee! By the way, in case you didn’t see it, Dee also spiffed up her blog website earlier this spring. I love how it looks.)

Back to the podcast….

Because we actually recorded this episode on May 1st, we had to do a bit of guessing about what we did in our gardens last week and what we will do in our gardens this week. (Because we didn’t have enough sense to just skip the garden updates and garden commissions for the week.)

If you want to guess along with us… planting and weeding would be two great guesses. I bet that’s what most of you are doing now too. And maybe you’re also harvesting lettuce, kale, spinach, and radishes, which I’m now doing. I love to be eating fresh food from the garden again!

And while I’m now frost-free for the season here in Indianapolis, I’m not thrilled to see a nighttime low of 45F in the forecast for Tuesday into Wednesday and a 49F in the forecast for next Monday. But I’m happy we’ve had some rain.

But that’s enough about the weather…

How about some questions, all answered in this episode?

Who needs smaller perennials?

What is Dee’s granddaughter’s favorite vegetable to grow and eat?

What special tomato does Carol start from seed for her great-nieces and great-nephew?

How many roses is Dee going to grow? (Or rather, not grow?)

Ready for some links? (So many questions today!)

For smaller perennial flowers, we found Monarda ‘Petite Delight’, ‘Tweety’ Coneflower, and ‘Snowcap’ Shasta Daisy.

There are all kinds of mini vegetables you can grow these days. We talked about Baby Bubba Okra from Burpee, On Deck Sweet Corn from Burpee, and Masterpiece Peas from Burpee. Check out my Family Handyman article for more ideas of mini vegetables you can grow.

On the bookshelf, Dee talked about a a new book, The Color of Roses: A Curated Spectrum of 300 Blooms by Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn (Amazon link) and how she would use this book to plan a rose garden.

Down in our rabbit holes, Dee talked about potting soils with less peat. She promised a link to information about testing done on various potting soils by Oklahoma Gardening. —> Potting Soil Test video by Oklahoma Gardening.

Promises made, promises kept!

In my rabbit hole, I read a post about an “unnecessary ranking” of books by Elizabeth Von Arnim from a blog called “Stuck in a Book.” Von Arnim is the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden. I’ve decided to read a few more of her books this summer, starting with Christopher and Columbus.

And earlier in the podcast, Dee held up some old pictures for me to see and said I could put that segment in a video clip on YouTube. But it’s May… no time for that! Here’s one of those pictures:

That’s her garden a long, long time ago. We’ll talk more about it next week!

In the meantime, if you have suggestions for smaller perennials or mini vegetables, let us know via a comment!

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