Free Garden Planning Tool check out This

Read any newspaper these days, and you may be surprised to see our humble hobby making headlines. Unprecedented numbers of people are starting their very first veggie garden this year, and the media has finally picked up on what gardeners have known for years: Growing your own food is healthy, cheap, and fun!

If the statistics are true, you probably have friends, neighbors, or family members who like the idea of a vegetable garden but don't know where to start. You can't play consultant to each and every one of these novice gardeners, but you can point them to a cool new online planning tool for kitchen gardens.

Don't know how many veggies will fit into your space? No problem—the tool lets you drag and drop veggies into your online garden so you can see how many you need. Wondering how much soil to put in a raised bed? The tool will calculate that for you, too.

The best part is that it's free from Gardener's Supply . Help your friends learn the joys of growing edibles—and use it to expand your own veggie garden while you're at it!

Perennials club's favorite plants

Plant Type Location Conditions Deer resistant
bleeding heart
brugmansia
cranes bill geranium
day lily ruby spider
dianthus ground
dicentra ivory heart shade
eastern maiden hair fern shade dry
European ginger shade deer resistant
forget me not ground shade
foxglove sun/shade poor soil deer resistant
gigantucus elephant ears
hacky nacky yellow grass
helleborous foetidus shade/sun dry soil
helleborus winter rose deer resistant
heuchera coral bells sun
iris
iris kristada sun
jack in the pulpit
lambs ear deer resistant
lamium ground sun/shade
Lantania
lemon balm deer resistant
lily of the valley

Hummingbirds

This is something I have never even heard of or seen before. This woman lives in a Hummingbird fly zone. As they migrated, about 20 of them were in her yard. She took the little red dish, filled it with sugar water and this is the result.
The woman is Abagail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana - she had been studying them daily and one morning put the cup from the feeder (with water in it) into her hand. Since they had gotten used to her standing by the feeder they came over to her hand.
She says in touching they are as light as a feather. Abagail also said, 'if she had known her husband was taking pictures she would have put on makeup.'