Nanna’s Garden

05/25/2026

Irises are beautiful, but timing matters when it comes to cleanup 💜 Cutting the leaves too soon can weaken the plant.

05/25/2026

Letting every leaf grow might seem like the natural approach, but many fruiting vegetables actually perform better with strategic pruning. Trimming excess growth redirects the plant’s energy toward fruit production, improves airflow, and lowers the risk of disease — often giving you bigger, better harvests in the same space.

🍅 Vegetables That Thrive with Firm Pruning:

• Tomatoes — Limiting plants to 1–2 main stems and removing suckers helps produce larger fruits, speeds up harvest time, and reduces fungal problems
• Peppers — Removing early flowers and thinning lower growth builds stronger plants and boosts later yields
• Cucumbers — Pruning side shoots on trellised vines improves air circulation and results in straighter, higher-quality cucumbers
• Summer Squash — Regularly removing older leaves lowers mildew risk and keeps plants producing consistently
• Melons — Restricting each vine to a few fruits leads to sweeter, fully developed melons instead of many bland ones
• Eggplant — Training plants to 5–6 solid branches produces fewer but noticeably larger, premium-quality fruits

Pruning helps rebalance the plant’s energy use — less focus on excess leaves means more resources go into fruit size, flavor, and overall quality.

03/12/2026

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The hydrangea does not need luck — it needs you to understand WHEN it forms its flower buds. 💙

This post applies to bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla — the classic mophead and lacecap types) and mountain hydrangeas (H. serrata). These bloom on old wood. Skip to the bottom if you have a Limelight, Annabelle, or Incrediball — they follow different rules.

Most bigleaf hydrangeas form next year's flower buds on this year's stems during summer. If you prune in fall or winter, you remove every future flower.

Summer pruning (July to August) immediately after flowers fade is the safe window. Cut only the spent flower head down to the first pair of healthy green buds. Those buds are already programmed for next year's flowers.

In September, remove from the base only the oldest stems — three or more years old, with dark thick woody growth — to renew the plant's structure. Never cut the young green stems. Each one carries five to seven flowers for next season.

In spring (March), remove only frost-damaged tips. If you cut healthy stems in March, you are cutting the flowers that would have opened in July.

The rule: if your hydrangea leafs out but does not flower, you pruned too late the previous year.

Note for US gardeners: Hydrangea paniculata (Limelight, Quick Fire, Tardiva) and Hydrangea arborescens (Annabelle, Incrediball, Strong Annabelle) bloom on new wood — they are cut back hard in late winter or early spring and flower reliably regardless of when you prune. The timing above applies only to H. macrophylla and H. serrata. If you are not certain which type you have, do not prune until after it flowers and you can observe the bloom time and head shape.

💙 Old wood blooms on last year's stems. New wood blooms on this year's. Know which you have.

02/06/2026

When you get three inches of snow in two hours you clear off the important things. It’s almost time to get this old girl loaded up and ready to go so gotta keep the snow from crushing it.

01/08/2026

My sweet friend Tammy Bartlett Crossen from Crossen Crops in Arkansas always feeds into my addiction for growing things, even in the middle of January. This beautiful Aero garden was a Christmas gift from Tammy and it is now growing cucumbers, peppers, dwarf tomatoes, Basil and cilantro. Hopefully this is a successful experiment that will provide not only a learning experience but fresh produce even when the snow starts falling.

01/08/2026

If you are growing fall fruiting raspberries in your garden, January is the time to prune them. Raspberries fruit on this years canes so all those old canes can be pruned way back to keep your vines neat and manageable.

01/08/2026

It’s that time of year for early seed starting. In the next couple of weeks I will be starting some of the plants for early spring planting. If there is anything anyone is interested in growing this year let me know. I will be selling plants this year and if I have seeds for what you want to grow I can start them in the next few weeks.