Gardenig in state New Hampshire. Tips & Guides

When the air gets cooler and you are finding you need an extra sweater more than not, it can be easy to want to prune all of your plants and flowers to get ready for the upcoming season.

Considering onions are a staple ingredient in kitchens around the world, I’m surprised that more of us aren’t planting onions in the fall. Onions are most often planted in spring, but planting onions in the fall gives you a jump on an onion harvest and keeps your garden productive throughout the year. Planting onions in the fall is easier in some regions than others, of course, but you can make a plan to put your seeds or sets in the ground as the weather cools, even as far north as New Hampshire. In this article, I’ll cover the details of fall-planting these alliums, from the basics of onion growth to the best types of onions, garden preparation, and what to expect come springtime. Getting a head start on next year While I might like the idea of keeping my garden active year-round, selfishly, my top reason fo

Catalpa trees, with two species native to the United States, are known for their beautiful and plentiful blooms and for being the sole source of food for catalpa worms—caterpillars that strip the tree of its foliage and eventually become the catalpa sphinx moth.

Hey GPODers! No preamble from me today, Stephanie included a beautiful description with her submission so we’re jumping right in:

There are lots of signs that summer has arrived—children get out of school, otherwise normal men get out of regular clothes and into lime green golf pants, and, in many gardens, the weeds get out of hand.

Whether you’re house hunting, looking for a new apartment, or considering a move, Zillow surfing is one of the most lovely experiences you can have online. There’s no comment section or social media aspect to it; it’s simply a tool for exploration and fun, and, boy, did we take advantage of that this year.

Moss campion plant (Silene acaulis) is a rock garden plant native to the Arctic tundra and high mountains of Europe and North America. In the U.S., it is confined to the Western mountains and New England, particularly Maine and New Hampshire. Its mat-forming, evergreen foliage is found tucked away in elevations too high for trees to grow, with harsh winters and short summers. While it cannot survive in the shade, it prefers moist soil.

Fall is a beautiful time to explore Bedrock Gardens in Lee, New Hampshire, one of New England’s newest public gardens. The 30-acre property was historically a farm and more recently the home garden of artist Jill Nooney and her husband, Bob Munger. Over the course of three decades the couple built trails, garden rooms, water features, and structures that provide visitors with a unique and immersive woodland adventure. With sculptural elements and installations sited throughout the landscape, there are surprises at every turn.  

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.

I’ll be roaming the Northeast in the early going, in places as close to home as the Berkshires of Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley of New York, but also across Massachusetts and as far as New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey and coastal Connecticut. Events here in the garden will begin again in April; stay tuned for a fuller schedule of those, with just the first couple mentioned below.What’s planned already:Saturday, February 19, 2 PM: Lecture to benefit Berkshire Botanical Garden, Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA.Thursday, March 3, 7 PM: R.J. Ju

Matching the specific variety of edible to its intended use just makes sense, especially if putting up some of the harvest is in your plans. It has always been in Carol’s.“I was born into a family that grew its own food,” says Carol. “My Swedish grandmother planted a garden every summer that was counted on to feed the whole family–my grandparents, their five children, spouses, and grandchildren.”And that meant food year-round, much of it canned over a woodstove in a New Hampshire house that had no running water or electricity. From a young age, she helped carry water from the well 200 yards uphill in a pair of buckets on a wooden yoke over her shoulders at food-preserving time, to get the water baths going.A “rock-reinforced hole in the ground” was their root cellar

Katrina lives, and gardens, in New Hampshire (that’s the gate to her place, above), and is the author of “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” and “Magical Journey,” and now she has created a brand new book, called “Moments of Seeing: Reflections from an Ordinary Life.”As I was reading through the essays in it last week, one really got to me–speaking of the subject of friends and family. I thought it’s time for you to meet Katrina in person, too.We compared notes on our gardens (and the lessons therein), on the influence of our grandmothers, and Katrina even shared her Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread recipe, just in time for the festive season.

Background: My keenest gardening friends–some really tough customers–make annual pilgrimages across Massachusetts to Dartmouth (not to be confused with the college in New Hampshire, but under an hour from Newport, and just a bit farther from Boston). They’d come back from Avant Gardens having outspent their budgets, with one gem after another packed into their cars.I eventually called owners Katherine and Chris Tracey, plant collectors since the 1980s (who have in recent years become seasonal sponsors on A Way to Garden, too). Katherine says the nursery was born “when it really got out of control with our hobby.”  They’ve got 25 years of nursery experience–selling both retail and mail-order—and a particular passion for foliage and especially succulents, two big loves of mine.Listen to our entire conversation on my public-r

Don’t worry: There won’t be a quiz at the end, where instead you can also share any tomato wisdoms of your own for our collective benefit.my 16 bits of tomato wisdom1. Start with a homegrown seedling (grow it like this) or a locally raised one—not a big-box-store seedling that may have been shipped in from warmer zones, where more tomato diseases are endemic and overwinter. (That logic isn’t tomato-specific; I buy local seedlings or g

You many know Katrina Kenison as author of several books (Amazon affiliate link), including “The Gift of an Ordinary Day,” and “Magical Journey” and “Moments of Seeing.” She’s a former literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, where she was series editor for “The Best American Short Stories” for 16 years and co-edited, with John Updike, “The Best American Short Stories of the Century.” Katrina’s also a yoga teacher and an increasingly keen gardener in her own New Hampshire backyard.Read along as you listen to the November 23, 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).Plus: Enter in the comments box at the botto

John Forti is a garden historian and heirloom specialist and ethnobotanist, and a longtime leader in the slow-foods movement. He’s currently the executive director of Bedrock Gardens landscape and sculpture garden in New Hampshire.We talked about a range of topics including a new generation of chestnuts; what the difference between the words “yard” and “garden” is; the impressive properties of yarrow, and how Queen Anne’s lace is “the ancient queen of all carrots.”Read along as you listen to the November 1, 2021 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe t

*Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Blue Ridge Tools.*

Jet Star Tomato is highly versatile and suitable for various culinary applications. It is excellent for fresh eating in salads, sandwiches, or sliced on its own. Let’s have a look at how to grow it.

It recently came into news and attracted the attention of environmentalists and biologists. According to the Fox News–“In brief, the sap prevents your skin from protecting itself from sunlight, which leads to a very bad sunburn.”

Dame’s rocket, Hesperis matronalis, is a fragrant, edible member of the Brassicaceae family of plants, which includes arugula, broccoli, and mustard.Native to Europe and Asia, it was originally brought to