Gardenig in New York. Tips & Guides

I invited my favorite fruit expert, Lee Reich, author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening” and “The Pruning Book,” to come talk figs on my public-radio show and podcast. (I’m giving away a copy of “Grow Fruit Naturally;” enter by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.)I often refer to Lee as “the unusual fruit guy,” because one of his first books I read was “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention.” Lee lives with blueberries and paw paws and medlars and kiwis and of course figs and more not far from me, across the Hudson in New Paltz, New York, on what he calls his farm-den (as in half-farm, half-garden) loaded with unusual fruits.Learn wh

I PROMISED I WOULDN’T ADD EVEN AN EXTRA TRIP TO THE CURB WITH THE TRASH to my schedule, with all the mowing I have to do, but (big surprise) I layered on a couple of events, and I want to make sure you know about them, in case you are in the Hudson Valley/Berkshires vicinity this summer. Another container-gardening class, a 365-day garden lecture with an extra focus on water gardening and the frogboys, and a tour here in August (that last one you already might know about). Details, details:Sunday July 12, Containing Exuberance, container-gardening workshop, with Bob Hyland at Loomis Creek Nursery, near Hudson, New York, 11 AM to 1 PM, $5.

ONE SQUASH SLEPT ON THE WINDOWSILL, another in the cabinet beneath the sink. Both stayed firm (and presumably delicious) all winter long, and then some—far into the next year. Lia Babitch and Ian Robb, co-managers of Turtle Tree Seed in Copake, New York, may store their ‘Butternut’ differently, but the greater mission they’re part of is the same: to offer biodynamic, open-pollinated seed to gardeners and farmers that’s been selected to be the very best it can…which if you’re a winter squash means sticking around a good long while. Meet these gifted gardeners and more of their very special seed varieties.

WE DO THIS ON FACEBOOK DAILY: I read something that grabs my attention, and pass it on. Easy: I just insert a link and a comment, click, go. But I realize only about 8,000 so far of you “like” the A Way to Garden Facebook page (care to join us there?), and that I must make an effort to share my random “bookmarks” more regularly with the wider group. And so…

So I can invite guest experts to join me as well as share the program with other public-radio stations, we’re pre-taping “A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach” to stand alone, instead of airing live as part of my local station’s morning show, which it has been since March 2010.You can listen in to the first such standalone show here, right now. This week’s topic: When to sow what seeds, with guest Dave Whitinger of All Things Plants in Texas. Next time (February 4), the topic is why I’m going to grow calendul

Out of the leaf litter they ascend.When I purchased this native of woodsy streambanks in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon for my New York garden, it was still called Peltiphyllum peltatum. I have a thing for big-leaved plants (likeAstilboides, its cousinRodgersia, and even thuggishPetasites). I had to tryDarmera, whose leaves can reach 18 in

I’M NOT SET UP QUITE YET at home to ship signed copies of “The Backyard Parables,” but thankfully Oblong Books of Millerton, New York, my neighborhood store, is–at least between now and Sunday, January 20, when I will appear there for an event, and while I’m there can personalize any books you order in time.

Each of her 150 recipes is delightfully prefaced with what amounts to its provenance: a juicy and sometimes hilarious back story that Clark tells in as simple yet deft a fashion as the style of the dish that follows. I sat right down to chapters like “Better Fried” and “It Tastes Like Chicken” and “My Mother’s Sandwich Theory of Life,” the perfect mix of a good read and a good meal.For me—a flavor-fearing kid who rinsed most of her entrees off at the sink conveniently positioned halfway between the Garland range and the family dinner table—Clark’s childhood tales are positively hair-raising: Summer vacations were spent touring France with her psychiatrist parents, gourmands determined to eat at every Michelin-starred restaurant there. Worse yet (or to Clark, more thrilling): Th

MELISSA CLARK IS ONE OF US. The prolific cookbook author and “The New York Times” food columnist has a homegrown Dahlia (her young daughter); knows a rutabaga from a turnip (so many people don’t!), and is intrepid in harvesting year-round farm-and-garden gleanings—if not in her own backyard, then in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market, where she has been a year-round customer for years, come hell or ice age. With her latest, “Cook This Now,” the hard part will be figuring out which of 120 recipes to start with. Win one of two copies I’ve bought to share—and get her recipe for Carroty Mac and Cheese right now.

I just call them all fancy-leaf begonias, but they divide into several structural groups:Fibrous-rooted ones have cane-like stems and often wing-like leaves. Rhizomatous types grow from fleshy, caterpillar-like structures inclined to spread over the pot lips or even stand upward. The extra-flashy Rex begonias, which are a little trickier if you get too cool or too hot since they may defoliate in protest, are rhizomatous. I fail with them; my conditions are not to their liking. There are also semi-tuberous and tuberous begonias, with swollen bases, but my collection doesn’t include any

DID YOU KNOW that robins can count, or that food (not paper or plastic) is the biggest single source of fodder for U.S. landfills? Those stories, and more, are among the latest links.

These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.

IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MEET NEW READERS, which in this digital world often happens when you least expect it–as if someone you barely know plans a surprise party at your house. But the result–unlike that scenario’s–is a lot of fun.

I paid a visit this summer to historic Beekman 1802, the rural residence of my ex-Martha Stewart colleague Brent Ridge and his partner Josh Kilmer-Purcell, also known as “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” from the Planet Green reality show and from the popular memoir “The Bucolic Plague” that Josh published last year about their city-to-country transition.For the Beekman Boys’ latest project (do theyever stop?), the cookbook team included another old friend, Sandy Gluck, former food editor of Martha’s “Everyday Food” magazine and one of the smartest cooks I know. The result: a happy combination of fresh-from-the-garden ingredients, including many heirlooms, that Brent and Josh grow at their Sharon Springs, New York, farm or purchase nearby, combined into well-written, practical recipes that invite me to try them. No crazy-long lists of ingredients; no daunting step-by-steps, thank you.

By choosing seed farmed in conditions like my own–without chemicals, and if possible, in a geographically similar environment–I can contribute less to the pollution caused by conventional seed growing, and also make a happy “match” between the seeds and my garden. Read the “New York Times” story, and if you feel inclined, share it. My latest public-radio show, produced with Robin Hood Radio, digs into the subject, too.Categoriesedible plants from seed organics vegetables.

LATEST LINKS: Too-hot-to-handle weather has had me indoors for a broad swath of each recent day, and that means more than the usual dose of web browsing—and a couple of new links to share. One (a video) is an extraordinary take on dragonflies; the other a moving essay on what I think is the garden’s most important and insistent message: that nothing lasts. The latter is delivered not by a gardener at all, but by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. Some decidedly non-horticultural but ever-so-moving links I think you’ll like:

I mean, it doesn’t close up shop or shut it doors on me or to visual enjoyment. The garden centers may need to stand idle a portion of each year, but not the landscape itself. And so, stubbornly and defiantly over a period of 25 years, at first accidentally and lately more intentionally as my knowledge has grown, I suppose I have made a garden for 365 days. Good thing I did, since I now live in it year-round, having left my career and the city in late 2007 after more than 20 years as a weekender in the Hudson Valley-Berkshires area of New York and Massachusetts.TO MAKE A YEAR-ROUND GARDEN was not my plan, or at least not a conscious one I could have explained when I began digging holes on an overgrown, bramble-infested bit of Columbia County, New York, land with little more to recommend it horticulturally beyond a half-dozen very old apples and a pair of ancient lilacs. My 365-day garden style was actually a happy side effect—a total serendipity—precipitated by my love of birds.Because birds’ needs vary at different times

Its native range, says the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, is New York and southern Ontario to Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa to Maryland, also appearing in the mountains from Georgia to Tennessee.  Depending whom you ask, twinleaf is hardy in Zone 4 or 5 to 7 or 8.The New England Wildflower Society’s Garden in the Woods, in Framingham, Massachusetts, was the first place I saw it in profusion, though it is apparently not technically a

Research from the nearby Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, reveals how acorns initiate a complex series of ecological chain reactions. And not just the obvious ways, like feeding turkeys or chipmunks or deer, but in influencing Gypsy moth outbreaks and tick-borne disease risk, and even the reproductive success of ground-nesting songbirds.Dr. Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist from Cary Institute, helped me understand what–both seen and unseen–is going on with those tiny acorns and their mighty, wide-ranging influences. Read along as you listen to the Oct. 19, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my q&a on acorns’

You may recall my previous conversations with Thomas, the co-author with Claudia West of the provocative 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” Even though we both have worked around plants for many years, it’s as if Thomas sees them differently from the way I do, in a sort of super-savvy botanical 3-D. He doesn’t see them as mere decorative objects, but astutely reads their body language for clues to who they want to grow with (or not) and how to put them all together successfully.I love how he sees, and thinks, as you can glean from our lively Q&A, where he says things like this:And this:Though not intentionally so, the Times article turns out to be especially timely—and not just because it’s early spring, and we gardeners need to make smarter choices

I got to know Franca this year when she opened an actual shop for Boxwood Linen in the next town, Hillsdale, New York, at the historic Hillsdale General Store, which was recently renovated. Franca grew up on a farm in Ontario, the daughter of parents born in Scanno, Abruzzo, so she is no stranger to the ways of the garden and kitchen.“We had a cellar, a cantina, at the old farm in Canada,” Franca recalls, “where we’d store not just canned goods but cheese and prosciutto and sausage—but no more!”Now Aida, Franca’s mother (above), visits her daughter’s Hudson Valley, New York-based home from Toronto each late-summer-into-fall, when the garden is offering up its best and there’s work to be done. Together, Franca and Aida continue the old traditions, but in a new location. They do hot-packed tomatoes two ways: chunky, and also as a puree. Aida used to use a motorized mach

IWANTED TO MAKE SURE YOU SAW this lovely New York Times piece on NPR’s “minnow,” WHDD from Sharon, Connecticut, the station I’ve been doing my weekly A Way to Garden podcast with for more than a year. Robin Hood Radio, as my nearest public-radio station is known, is NPR’s tiniest affiliate and its newest, a quirky mix of programs from the public radio A-list like “All Things Considered” to a local farm report, and shows like mine somewhere between. Have a read, and then why not have a browse through all the other podcasts my favorite minnow is offering, in case you’re not right here in the ‘hood? (My latest show, on hellebores, is here.)

I’ve started to compile the 2013 events calendar…and it includes lots of book-related events, too (no walking involved in those!). Lots more workshops and details to be added, but it’s a start…more events, and more walks, to come.To places like Bash Bish Falls, technically in Massachusetts, but a very short way up the road from my house (below), andRoeliff-Jansen Park on the Hillsdale-Copake, New York, border (above). I’ll take my real camera along sometime–these were taken impromptu by me and my friend Jay with our phones.CategoriesNature

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

Kate Spring, and her husband, Edge Fuentes, founded Good Heart Farmstead in Vermont in 2013, which serves up to 100 customers each season who subscribe to their CSA share program. Their farm is a hybrid business structure called an L3C, a low-profit, limited-liability company, where part of the mission is to support Vermonters in need of food access.Kate’s also a writer and the only person I know with her very own brand new yurt, which I couldn’t wait to hear about after having seen it be constructed on her Instagram.Read along as you listen to the December 14, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).mastering microgree

MORE MUSHROOMS–ON THE GROUND HERE in the garden, and on the blog, too. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who noticed what all the rains have brought.

Yes, you could simply separate seeds from the pulp and skip the smelly-gooey-gross part of the process. But that part–the natural act of fermentation that’s happening in the jars in the photo below–helps break down germination-inhibiting compounds such as the gel sac around tomato seeds, and can also reduce some seed-specific diseases.let’s save some tomato seeds:Select a few of your best-looking mature fruits from each of your healthiest-looking plants. The variety must be

WITH A NEW BOOK TO SHARE, my traditional winter event season kicks off with extra vigor—just as I hope the garden will in its time. I’ll be in Darien, Connecticut (January 8th); Madison, Connecticut (the 19th); Millerton, New York (the 20th); Manchester, Vermont (the 26th); Cohasset, Massachusetts (the 27th) and Newton Highlands, Massachusetts (the 30th).

September is the new January, says Gretchen, so “Happier at Home” chronicles a series of experiments and adjustments to her life that took place from September to May. (In Gretchen’s smart, not-preachy school of self-improvement, we happily get the summers off apparently!)“To feel more at home at home, I had to know myself, and face myself,” she writes, and her curriculum starts with a hard look at topics like Possessions (the September chapter), Body, Marriage, Parenthood and even Time (that devilish one), among others.  As different as she and I are–Gretchen, a former attorney, is a mother to two small girls, an urban dweller, a wife–I found something thought-provoking in every section of “Happier at Home.”Gretchen doesn’t garden, or want to garden, but on her blog recently she posted this footnote to a story she wrote: She can tell gardening makes me happy, I think. For me, of course, home is everything—because it i

First, event details: Join me and my beloved neighbors and friends from Turtle Tree for this special opportunity to visit their charming and inspiring headquarters at Camphill Village and learn by doing how to successfully grow from seed.Camphill Village is a community of people, some with special needs, who live and work together caring for each other and the Earth, following practices inspired by the teachings of Rudolf Steiner.Each attendee will go home with a flat of sown seeds.more march 25 event detailsYou’ll also have a chance to shop from all 350 Turtle Tree seed varieties with expert staffe

First, some background: Great Lakes Worm Watch is a citizen-science outreach organization, working to map the state of the earthworms—and the habitats they’re living in.“We want to know where earthworms are across the landscape,” says Ryan—and that means even beyond the Great Lakes area, where the project began.  (There is a Canada Worm Watch, too, for those across the border; researchers at the University of Vermont, at the Cary Institute in Millbrook, New York, and elsewhere are likewise studying earthworm invasion.)Individuals, schools or garden groups can sign on help collect data on what worms are fou

Los Angeles-based Shulman is not a vegetarian, she says, but finds herself eating that way a lot–which may sound familiar to others, especially with the farm market and garden harvest season just getting into high gear.“I realized that people have problems with the concept of the vegetarian main dish. There’s really no lexicon for it. If you eat meat, you can ask, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and you can say, ‘Chicken,’ and that’s a good enough answer.“In my house, I do have one-word answers. When my son says, ‘What’s for dinner?’ I can say, ‘Frittata,’ or ‘Gratin,’ or ‘Pasta,’ and his only question will be, ‘With what?’ And

A recent interview with ethnobotanist and author Mike Balick of the New York Botanical Garden got me thinking about jewelweed—and then a shady front-yard bed under an old Eastern red cedar did, when the “weed” grew overnight from almost-unnoticeable volunteers to nearly knee-high (below) in the first spurt of steady warmth.“Growing up in the Northeast,” said Balick, author of “Rodale’s 21st Century Herbal,” “when I’d get stung by nettles, the jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) is always growing nearby. What I do, since it’s only available for two or three months: I grind it up in the blender and put it in an ice-cube tray, and have some ice-cubed jewelweed to rub on my skin for rashes or irritations at other times.”So there’s a reason to let some grow this year: to make an effective,

Balick has spent more than 30 years learning how indigenous and ancient cultures have used herbs in health and healing, and the book’s subtitle, “A Practical Guide for Healthy Living Using Nature’s Most Powerful Plants,” speaks to that, as does the foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil. But it is also a book on how to identify, grow and even cook with them.Balick is an ethnobotanist (“a person who studies the relationship between plants, people and culture”). He is also Vice President for Botanical Science at The New York Botanical Garden, and has undertaken more than 75 expeditions as diverse as Micronesia, Belize and the Bronx, where he also directs a research program, studying traditional healing practices in ethnic urban communities.“I trade in my passport for a subway token, and go into the markets of New Yor

A LEADING EXPERT ON LYME disease ecology sets the record straight in this short but relevation-loaded podcast, explaining how mice even more than deer are major players in the chain of transmission. Don’t miss this one, from a scientist at the Institute from Ecosystems Studies in nearby Millbrook, New York.EPA Fails to Ban Bee-Killing PesticideTHE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY declined a petition to ban clothianidin, a synthetic nicotine that is acutely lethal to bees, despite sharp declines in bee populations (and a recent ruling in France to ban a similar chemical).Welcome to Amphibian Number 7,000IN PERU, the discovery of Centrolene sabini (a kind of glass frog) marked 7,000 known amphibian species on the planet, where most of the news about these creatures is more that of decline.  And if you’re

I KNOW: This week’s reading list is heavy on news of the natural world, because that’s where my mind is: outdoors. Snow is shrinking fast in these first few sunny, above-freezing days–so stories of birds, butterflies, toads and even the planets caught my attention. The links: