Happy Thursday! Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on Chris’ speaking engagements that are open to the public this month!  – Saturday, September 14, 10:00AM Tomball, TX– Bulbs and Buddies – The Arbor Gate The Arbor Gate’s Bulbs and buddies event kicks off at 10AM with a seminar presented by Chris and Heidi Sheesley […]

The rain really has the crinums blooming on the farm for another spectacular round. We haven’t seen a great second bloom out of Crinum ‘Bradley’ but the milk and wine lilies (Crinum x herbertii) and ‘Carol Abbott’ bulbs are all on their 3rd bloom! Of course, the ‘Ellen Bosanquet’ bulbs, which are in their prime […]

How many grasshoppers can you count on this one stalk of crinum blooms?! Our milk and wine lilies continue to bloom, but the grasshoppers are starting to have a field day with the blooms. Does anybody have a suggestion for controlling grasshoppers?

We’ve begun to harvest our main rows of oxblood lilies and the crop is really looking great. Most of them were up by the morning. It’s getting to be the time of year where a bulb exposed in the direct sun for more than an hour can cook it right away. Oxbloods can be especially […]

Another day on the farm is done! I’ve realized, many times have I realized this, that work on a farm is never over. We had some old junk metal that I hauled to the scrap yard. Have you ever been to the scrap yard? It’s a place you can take any metal and walk away […]

Adelaide, if your reading this, we should go walk the Trinity River trail and look for blooms of the Cooperia drumondii we planted 3 years ago. Mine are just now blooming! This is a native rain lily in Texas discovered by none other than the famous plantsman Thomas Drummond who explored across Louisiana and Texas […]

Today we divided and replanted our white rain lilies. I used to have the hardest time growing them in my rows. They would always die out on me. Ironically, it wasn’t until I went to a garden writer’s conference in Philadelphia that I learned something about Southern bulbs. At Longwood Gardens I noticed they had […]

I really need to find time to write more about this prickly pear cactus found all over Texas. Early Spanish explorers thought this particular plant was going to revolutionize the world with it’s various uses for human consumption and the die that could be made from it’s fruit. Texas A&M has a great write up […]

Congratulations, Devon! Through random selection you have won the $25.00 Southern Bulb gift certificate! We’ll be e-mailing you shortly! Devon April 26, 13 at 12:59 PM # Edit Hopefully after we finish with all of the kids’ games, I wll have time to put down all of the bags of mulch I just bought! Thank […]

There is still one more Narcissus blooming! It blooms so late, that it is blooming now with all of the spring blooming crinums. It is some times called “April beauty” for this very reason, but we commonly refer to it as “twin sisters” because of the double blooming habit. Scientifically it is known as Narcissus