Gardenig in state New York. Tips & Guides

The first installment appeared April 20, 2020. On March 31, 2021, the paper ran a Q&A with me to kick off Year 2 of the series.The topics I’ve covered so far:Where to begin your spring cleanup in a chaotic season. Bed-prep using cardboard, newsprint and sometimes plastic sheeting. Shopping in your own garden for “free” plants. How to make a late-start flower garden of “annuals,” including many to direct-sow. Pruning Q&A with Jeff Jabco of Swarthmore’s Sco

John (with cultivated shiitake, above) is a self-described “mushroom guy” and has studied fungi with some of the country’s top mycologists. On his family farm in Big Indian, New York, he cultivates indoor and outdoor mushrooms, and provides guided mushroom classes, cultivation courses, private consultations, and even creates mushroom health extracts. John is also part of the Amazon Mycorenewal Project (CoRenewal), researching the utilization of fungi to remediate oil spills in the Amazon Rain Forest.Read along as you listen to the April 1, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).how mushrooms grow, with john michelottiQ. I’m just going to ask you: I know it’s like a po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe thing, but I always worry when I say fungi. Is it supp

WE OLDER HUMAN TYPES sometimes kid that we are 29 (as in years old), but I’ll tell you what: 29 (as in F degrees) looks like shit on a garden in May. And yes, I said shit.

Kim is also founder of the garden business called EcoBeneficial, consulting on ecological landscaping and design, based in Westchester County, New York. She speaks nationwide to spread her passion for habitat-style plantings, and creates an occasional podcast series on the subject, and teaches at New York Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Native Plant Center.Read along as you listen to the March 9, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Plus: Enter to win a copy of “The Pollinator Victory Garden” (affiliate link) by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.creating pollinator gardens, with kim eiermanMargaret: Welcome, Kim. I think we a

We even had a question about something you may have seen and wondered about, as one reader did: photos (perhaps from English garden books or magazines) of terra cotta pots placed upside-down on the tops of garden stakes. But why? (Our listeners helped answer his one.)Ken, whose 20th book called “The Scentual Garden” is due out October 15th, 2019, is a longtime garden writer and photographer and friend. That’s Ken’s photo of osage orange fruit, above.Read along as you listen to the September 30

Well, the new piece of land turned out to be bigger than the last, and it has fostered in Page a whole new relationship to gardening—especially, a more intimate connection to nature and the property’s wild-ish areas.Starting over, and the surprises along the way, are the subject of Page’s new book, called “Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again” (affiliate link). Page Dickey is a popular garden writer and author of numerou

Toshi is in his third year as director of horticulture at the former estate called Wethersfield garden in Dutchess County, New York, with its 3-acre formal gardens plus 7 acres of wilderness garden and commanding views of the Catskills and Berkshire Mountains.Toshi and his team are bringing the gardens back to life, and he told me about the place, and specifically about the tasks of editing and dividing that every perennial gardener needs to do, whatever their garden scale. (Above, a tangle in one of the Wethersfleid cutting garden’s annual beds, with Gladiolus ‘Wine and Roses,’ Zinnia ‘Benary’s Giant Lime,’ Rudbeckia hirta ‘Indian Summer,’

Lee Reich has degrees in horticulture, soil science and chemistry, and is the author of many books, including the just out one called “Growing Figs in Cold Climates” (affiliate link). He’s a long time no-till organic gardener, and an expert pruner, and a grower of many unusual fruits, and someone I’ve turned to for advice for my own garden countless times over many years. He offered some tips to help us tuck in smarter–and also some  on mixing your own potting soil, if you are seeking alternatives to peat-based mixes. Plus: Enter to win a copy of Lee’s new book by commenting in the box farther down the page.Read along as you listen to the Oct. 25, 2021 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).fall tips for cleanup and overwintering figs, with lee

Cary Oshins is a life-long backyard composter, besides his day job at the composting industry group that was founded in 1990 to promote compost utilization and recycling of organic materials to benefit its members, society, and the environment.He lent some of his insights at this key moment in our composting year.Read along as you listen to the Oct. 11, 2021 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).composting advice, with cary oshinsMargaret Roach: Hi, Cary. How are

In a world where we often focus on what product we can add, as if there is an instant solution, Annie says this: “If you take a step back and think about how the natural world works without your influence, and then as many lessons as you can derive from that toward your own practices in your garden, you’re going to be a much better gardener.”Less is often more.Annie is also founder and director of Growing Chefs, a field-to-fork food education program, and co-founder of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Plus, she wrote “The Rooftop Growing Guide” (affiliate link).Annie will be one of the expert presenters at the upcoming Workshop Experience W

All in time for World Carnivorous Plant Day on Wednesday, May 4th, we’re also going to learn about the plight of carnivorous plants in the wild, where they’re disproportionately endangered.Kenny Coogan is a board member and education director for the International Carnivorous Plant Society (which also has a popular group on Facebook). Kenny’s also author of the recent book “Florida’s Carnivorous Plants,” and he operates a carnivorous plant nursery there

One of the couple’s passions is unusual edibles, and now they’ve written a book about their favorites.“Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts” (affiliate link) profiles 50 easy-to-grow selections, and we talked recently about a few of those that are also native plants (including pawpaw, above, persimmon, Aralia, Aronia and more).Allyson and Sc

Things like how we’ve both shifted our handling of fallen leaves to support the environment, or how Joe’s growing more in straw bales and grow bags to rest his raised-bed soil and allow for crop rotations. How we’re both investigating what really works instead of peat moss, a non-renewable resource, as a medium for seed-starting. And much more. Joe Lamp’l is the longtime creator and host of the public-television program “Growing A Greener World” and also of the “Joe Gardener Podcast”. As if he needed more to do, in recent years, he’s created something else, the Joe Gardener Online Gardening Academy, a curriculum of virtual courses on topics from seeds to tomato, pests and weeds, to soil science and lots more.Read along as you listen to the December 20, 2021 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe t

What they’ve learned so far can help us prepare.Sonja Skelly is Director of Education for the Cornell Botanic Gardens and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture there. She gave me a virtual tour of Cornell’s Climate Change Demonstration Garden, and some of the takeaways from their work so far that we can use to make our own gardens more resilient in the face of a shifting landscape.Read along as you listen to the Sept. 12, 2022 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future

In the well-to-do town of Bedford, New York, there are a few givens: there are apple orchards and quaint bed and breakfasts, cute bakeries and amazing antiques shops and, of course, many grand estates complete with rolling green lawns and well-hedged gardens. Perhaps most impressive of the latter belongs to the doyenne of the domestic, Martha Stewart.

When it comes to creating unique cocktails, mixologists seem to have no trouble conjuring up their next unexpected star ingredient. From chia seeds to kombucha, squid ink to barbecue sauce, there’s really no shortage of unexpected boozy beverage additions. The latest ingredient on that list of surprising mix-ins is here, and it’s burrata water—and that’s not a typo. What is burrata water, you ask, and why would you ever add it to a cocktail? Let’s find out.

Here at my Copake Falls garden all day with a truckload of irresistible botanical goodies will be Broken Arrow Nursery. They will be accepting advance phone orders, too, between now and Wednesday, May 31, if there is something special you simply must have. Their website; phone is (203) 288-1026.All ticket sales from my garden will be donated to two local nonprofits I love: the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program in nearby Ghent, N.Y., and Turtle Tree Seed in Copake.And there’s much more:Those of you who r

HGTV

John Bessler

Ridofranz / Getty Images; Design: Better Homes & Gardens

Though often typecast as a mere Thanksgiving pie ingredient, pecans are more than deserving of a spot in your pantry (or freezer) all year long. That’s because beyond their delicious taste, these crunchy favorites are also packed to the brim with nutrition. Read on to find out just what makes pecans such a healthy addition to your lifestyle as well as some tasty pecan recipes to get started.