General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
All of the books will tell you (even my own), that you should not allow your garlic plants to produce full flowers. Cut them off when they’re still closed (called scapes). And it’s true. If you want to grow big, juicy garlic bulbs you’ll need to cut off the scapes as they emerge in early …
Many of the flowers on this plate have come from early spring veggies and greens that are bolting in the early summer heat. All of them make for good eating, and the pollinators and beneficial insects like them, too. Allow the plants to mature and you’ll have free seed to sow in the late summer/early …
Do you love tomatoes, want to grow tomatoes, or want some advice on new varieties to try? My guest this week is tomato crazy gardener, Kelly Gilliam. Kelly was a regular of the now defunct You Grow Girl forums way back in the day. Back then she was gardening in zone 8b out on the …
Like everything this year, the garden has been a little slow in producing spring salads fixings. Salad greens and sundry, i.e spinach, mustard greens, cress, lettuce, and radishes, to name just a few — are some of the first crops that I sow directly outdoors each spring. As soon as the soil is workable (meaning …
Big life changes are in motion. My friend Barry Parker has sold his house and is moving away from his garden of 27 odd years. He recently had a sale to raise funds for the move. Barry has gifted me several plants over the years, and my garden holds many reminders of our friendship and …
Oh hello there! Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here plucking baby shiso plants from this raised bed for the next 100 years. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the raised bed with your progeny and govern it. Spill your seed over a 4 foot radius and push out every other seedling that dare try …
This past winter was a particularly cold and difficult one. I lost a number of plants and there are several others that have come out of dormancy looking shaken and forlorn. It’s frustrating, but I’m also trying to see the positive in this. Holes in the garden offer the opportunity to try something new or …
I love to buy, collect, save, and trade seed, but I have to admit that I do not go about it in a particularly organized fashion. While I am careful about where and how I store my seeds and I do have my own “it’s all in my head” system, it doesn’t exactly compare to …
The weather over the weekend was glorious and full of spring’s promise. As previously mentioned, I took advantage and dove headlong into my early spring to-do list. In a typical spring I charge straight into these chores and make mention of them in passing, but rarely get into the nity-gritty of my process here. This …
My gluttonous seed-hoarding habits seem to be behind me now, or have at least calmed for a spell. This year I have abstained from impulse buys from swollen turnstile racks and I only placed one mail order this season. Of course, I say this having bought 40 packets of seed in Tucson, Arizona last June. …
I like salvias. I like any and all salvias; from the delicious, culinary sages to the nectar-rich, super smellerific and sticky sweet types that aren’t hardy in my region. I even like the ones that aren’t edible or aromatic. I’m not sure what it is about this genus. Is it their drought tolerance? Their snapdragon-like …
I usually avoid republishing images that were recently posted to one of my social media accounts, but when you consider how hard won this spring feels and the fact that this little flower was trapped underneath a deep lake of ice less than a week ago… I think it begs repeating here. And now, we …