Gardenig in state Minnesota. Tips & Guides

Maximize Your Vegetable Harvest with Succession Planting Learn the secrets to extending your vegetable harvest through succession planting from Minnesota gardener Meg Cowden. 4 ways to get the most out of your vegetable garden

Last month, the job listings page for the American Climate Corps went live. The ACC is a new program developed by the Biden administration that plans to mobilize young people into careers fighting climate change and environmental injustice. These roles span the country and both private and public sectors. Like other corps-type jobs, these roles will be term limited.

Favorite Vegetables to Grow & Preserve Meg Cowden shares her favorite vegetables to grow, eat & preserve to extend her garden harvest each year. Grow vegetables you can also preserve

Tips for Growing Saskatoon Serviceberries Amelanchier alnifolia

Reports show that the population of bees has continued to fall, putting food security at risk as they play a crucial role in pollination. The fast population decline can be attributed to the continued use of agricultural chemicals, climate change, and other factors such as urban development.

Today we’re visiting with Marty Whalen.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get outside and get my hands into the warm dirt. Gardening season can’t come soon enough this year. In the meantime, I will have to scratch that itch in other ways (starting seeds) and, of course, dream about what I am going to do to improve my garden this year. The list below features products and plants that would be wonderful additions to any garden. Find inspiration and items that will take your garden to the next level, make your work easier, and add the color or interest you want.

On October 9, 2023, Travis Gienger from Anoka, Minnesota, set the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, weighing 2749 pounds. The record was previously held by Stefano Cutrupi with a pumpkin weighing 2708.8 lbs. Gienger had already established the U.S. record in the previous year with a 2560-pounder and in 2020 with one weighing 2350 pounds.

When I moved to Michigan 13 years ago, I was ­excited by the endless plant possibilities afforded by my new Zone 6 location. Compared to the secluded 5-acre garden I had left behind in southern Minnesota, however, my newly purchased corner lot surrounded by houses and neighbors felt like a fishbowl.

In Deep Borders Let You Have It All, Hans Hansen writes, “When I moved to Michigan 13 years ago, I was excited by the endless plant possibilities afforded by my new Zone 6 location. Compared to the secluded 5-acre garden I had left behind in southern Minnesota, however, my newly purchased corner lot surrounded by houses and neighbors felt like a fishbowl.

We’re visiting with Marilyn Regnier today. We’ve visited her garden before (Marilyn’s Missouri-Inspired Garden in Minnesota), and today she’s joining in the fun of looking back and sharing the highlights of her 2023 gardening season.

With advancements in plant breeding techniques, an increasing number of plant varieties have been developed that are covered by intellectual property rights. These may be subject to various legal protections like Patents, Variety Protection Certificates, and sometimes even Utility Patents. Let’s have a detailed look at the Plants that are Illegal to Propagate on a Large Scale.

Landscape plants in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan are plentiful. Choosing the best shrubs, trees, and perennials can be overwhelming. Here are some of the best options for upper Midwest gardens based on attractiveness, ease of maintenance and appropriateness for the climate.

Dazzled by the big, bold inflorescences of pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana and cvs., Zones 5–11) but not the invasiveness? Check out Golden Sunset® yellow prairie grass. This native, selected by the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, will knock your socks off with its large, golden, featherlike plumes that appear in late summer and remain attractive through winter. Unlike other yellow prairie grasses, this sturdy, upright cultivar is no floppy pushover. It is an excellent choice for screening and creating dramatic sweeps of interest in the landscape.

Today’s photos are from Bill Ziebarth.

Header image: TheOldBarnDoor/Shutterstock.com

Kindra Clineff

geistreiches / Getty Images

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

100 Great Plants: From the English newspaper The Telegraph, a list of 100 great garden plants. (An aside: Why don’t our newspapers have garden sections like this one?)The Ambergate Lists: From Ambergate Gardens, Mike and Jean Heger’s nursery in Minnesota, a series of great lists covering topics from plants for deep shade to plants that don’t require frequent division.Vinnie Simeone’s Lists: Vinnie manages historic Planting Fields Arboretum on Long Island, my old stomping grounds, and has taught me many things. His personal website includes links up top to lists as desired as deer-resistant plants and plants for

I SAID IT A FEW WEEKS AGO, when I saw a change of the guard at my feeders a couple of weeks ahead of “normal”–do the birds know something I don’t yet? Seemed to me then that winter’s first teases must be close at hand. And now the National Weather Service says it may drop to 33 one night this week, slightly higher the others (not as scary as parts of Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, where I see–egads!–winter weather advisories and freeze watches and warnings).

“Last year [2012] at the overwintering sites, the area occupied was at only 60 percent of its previous low,” she says. “It had been declining, but that was astonishingly low.”The migration-monitoring program Journey North also reported lower stats in 2013’s cold spring. And though the numbers were only preliminary when we spoke that fall, University of Minnesota’s Monarch Larva Monitoring Program seems to indicate that “we’re at about 20 to 30 percent of our average,” Oberhauser says, acknowledging that these drastically lower numbers might be a “new normal.” But she’s not sounding defeated, by any means.A big positive: A lot of people are interested in monarchs. “Though it will be difficult to make up for all the habitat we’ve lost, we can make that ‘new normal’ as good as we can.”  (Ways to help are father down this page.)what going wrong for monarchs?MONARCH

Native bees species (like the mining bee above on the wildflower boneset) don’t get as much attention, and other insect pollinators even less, but without our wild pollinators we’d enjoy far less biodiversity, both in plants and animals—because they’re key to the food web, which would otherwise break down. To get to know some of these unsung heroes and the critical roles they play, I spoke with Heather Holm, author of the book “Pollinators of Native Plants,” which teaches us how to identify and attract and appreciate them in our gardens and beyond. (Enter to wi

The clove currant, which in some references is listed as synonymous with Ribes aureum var. villosum, is native to the central United States, specifically “Minnesota and South Dakota, south to Arkansas and Texas,” reports “Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs.” My friend and fruit expert Lee Reich points out that odoratum and aureum are two distinct species, and grows both (you can see his comment below).I first smelled the plant in my friend Bob Hyland’s ga

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

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:

The latest longing for a way to store my garden produce properly overtook me last week, when I was looking for images of roots (as in those ant-farm-like diagrams of a cross-section beneath the soil surface of the prairie).  One of the “autofill” suggestions that appeared when I started typing r-o-o-t into a Library of Congress photo-archive search was the phrase “root cellar,” and I could not resist.Suddenly, down the rabbit hole into underground repositories of yesteryear I went, touring historic root cellars around the United States that had been surveyed as part of a Histori

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center says Mertensia is native from southern Ontario to eastern Minnesota, down to North Carolina, Arkansas and eastern Kansas, and “naturalized northeastward.” I have never seen it in the wild, but even a grouping of five or so plants can be dramatic in the early spring home garden.Virginia bluebells (Zones 4-7, maybe warmer) is summer-dormant, but before its long late-June-to-April nap, it shows off bigtime. A beautiful clump of foliage comes first—tender looking, with a blue-green cast. Then come the flower stems (temporarily making the plant not just a foot tall but almost tw

A candid head’s up: Like Jeff, I am less-than-enthusiastic about the seemingly widespread desire among gardeners to shop their way out of issues with pests, disease, or soil imbalances. I buy a lot of seeds and bulbs and plants–but not a lot of “stuff.”Jeff and I had a funny email exchange, when I invited him to join me on the radio show and podcast, and asked about what topics he’d most like to cover together.“The topics that I speak on most frequently are garden remedies and thoughtful organic gardening,” Jeff replied. When I read that, my slightly dark humor zoomed in on the phrase “thoughtful organic gardening.”Except I thought he said, “thoughtless organic gardening.” I g

[podcast url=” http://podcasts.am1020whdd.com/~am1020wh/shows/mp3/A_Way_To_Garden-December_9_Lia_Babitch_Turtle_Tree_Seeds.mp3″]I PROMISED Lia I wouldn’t make her try to explain the entire system of biodynamics on the air–but in very short: It’s a system of agriculture that incorporates the power of all the dynamic, subtle forces of nature and does not incorporate any synthetic inputs like chemicals. Ever.“We don’t do any of the bad stuff that ‘certified organic’ doesn’t let you do,” says Lia, “but we also do a bunch of good stuff that helps the soil and the ecosystem.” (You can read more about it here.)my q&a with lia babitch of turtle treeQ: First: Let’s get a little background on the Turtle Tree seed company, Lia.

Organic seed commands a premium price, and limits my choices of vegetable varieties, but as regular readers know, I prefer it. I believe seed bred and raised under organic conditions is the best match for my organic garden’s conditions, and also want to vote with my dollars of demand to help create supply.Having the right seed can provide farmers with the genetic tools to confront day-to-day challenges in the field, so to organic farmers, limited selection and higher prices in organic seed represent a far greater obstacle than to a gardener. Despite the phenomenal growth of the org

I’m a longtime organic gardener, meaning no lover of chemical “answers” to problems, but I’m also no lover of the endless and often-wacky home remedies that I read about year after year.Some home remedies do work, but some are not just ineffective, but also dangerous, sometimes as dangerous as chemicals.I was interested to read an open letter in summer 2015 to “Consumer Reports” written by Jeff, a former Associate Professor of Horticultural Science at University of Minnesota, who has a masters in entomology and PhD in horticulture, plus 20 years of practical and research experience with plants. He’s the author of “The Truth About

I had never heard of Paeonia ostii, which a mutual friend, nurseryman and longtime peony expert Roy Klehm, had alerted Tony to, meaning it had to be good. One of the last tree species to come into cultivation, in the early 1990s, P. ostii is from China, where it is endangered in the wild—but will grow as well in the Southeast as it will in Minnesota (from Zones 4a to 8b at least).My plant was young but blooming-size when it arrived in 2012, was thigh-high by 2015 with a dozen flowers—fast-growing for a tree peony—and as of bloom season 22 is well past my waist with even more. It seems to ask for nothing but a spot in the sun, and every part of the plant is beautiful, from the fine-textured leaves to the flower buds (all with delicate hin

My annual Seed Series continues with this seed source that is all new to me, including many unusual varieties available nowhere else but Experimental Farm Network dot org, the nonprofit cooperative whose co-founder, Nate Kleinman, was my latest radio/podcast guest. We talked about the EFN mission and the fascinating assortment of goodies they offer, including a whole stash of perennial edibles in their 2020 online catalog.A core belief at EFN: that agriculture can and should be used to help build a better world, not help destroy it. Co-founders Nate Kleinman (in New Jersey) and Dusty Hinz (in Minnesota) grow most of EFN’s seeds. Each year they’re adding more growers to their roster, including inspiring plant breeders who often wor

I didn’t even remember the botanical Latin name for the ubiquitous dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, below, until I became a regular on the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station “weed gallery” recently. The Rutgers weed tool is generally appropriate for my region, and  I can browse by common names or by thumbnail photos (or by Latin names if I ever know one). The University of Minnesota’s “Is This Plant a Weed?” tool is another place you’ll find me, narrowing the field of possibilities until I get an ID by clicking through a series of photo-based prompts (such as grass or broadleaf….upright or creeping…and so on). It almost makes weeds fun. (Note the almost.)Steve Brill, the so-called “Wildman” forager who teaches in Central Park in New York City and elsewhere, has p

It also takes some experimentation, since our modern homes tend to lack just the perfect place. (Oh, to have a root cellar!) But knowing the basics helps us do the best job we can–and also to grow crops we are capable of storing, or only to grow enough for a shorter period in storage. How to stash homegrown garden vegetables (and which ones, including winter squash, to cure first in a warmer spot for best results):temperature and humidityMANY VEGETABLES prefer to be stored surprisingly cold, at 32 to 38 degrees F.  Notable exceptions: sweet potatoes (55-60 degrees), and pumpkins and winter squash (50-55, after a week or two curing even warmer).Many also like it humid (root vegetables and potatoes, for instance—like 90 percent or thereabouts), b