For beginners Ideas, Tips & Guides

As far as I can tell, only the catalogs of Van Engelen and John Scheepers (two related companies, the former selling large quantities and the latter smaller ones) maintain a whole category of these wonderful tulips, which aren’t a class in themselves technically but more a habit of blooming that is found within various official tulip classes. That’s why they’re hard to find–you have to search for “bouquet tulips” or “bunching tulips” or “multi-flowering tulips” (and the variations of that last one like without the hyphen, or with -flowered as the suffix). They range in color:‘Red Bouquet’ (top photo) has a yellow throat and is simply stunning (I used to see ‘Orange Bouquet’ and ‘White Bouquet’ for sale, too, but don’t lately). ‘Florette’ is a daring bicolor of yellow with red edges. ‘Antoinette’ opens yellow, developing pink edges and fading to salmon. ‘Happy Family’ is purplish-pink Triumph type. Want the multi-flowering habit on a smaller-stature plant? Look at the variety called praestans ‘Unicum’ (a sport of the better-known praestans ‘Fusilier,’ maybe 10-12 inch

Even in the week of July 7, Ken says, he notes 15 or 16 options on his sowing calendar, and that’s in our shared USDA Zone 5B, where frost can arrive around the start of October. Gardeners in zones with longer frost-free seasons have even more time, and opportunities.  Admittedly Ken starts fewer things each week now, but even through September, he’s starting multiple new plantings—and he makes November sowings of spinach and mache for extra-early spring harvest.“Sow now what?” as Ken asks (tee hee). The list is long, including peas, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, mibuna and mizuna, tatsoi, kale, collards, cauliflower, kohlrabi, swiss chard, scallions and more. You can even sow more bush zucchini (especially if your early crop is looking tattered or mildewed from tough weather); ditto with cucumbers. Bush beans are high on Ken’s list. It’s a great moment for bush types for dry beans, he says, which benefit from generally drier fall weather at their harvest ti

That’s Lee with his trusty scythe, above, which doesn’t figure into composting, but into how he cuts his meadow-like fields. Impressive, and mesmerizing! I’ve included a couple of his great how-to videos on composting and no-till soil preparation, along with links to the audio of our entire conversation.I was especially excited to visit Lee Reich’s New Paltz, New York, “farmden”–that’s half garden, half farm–since it’s fruit harvest time. Lee is a longtime friend and author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening,” and “The Pruning Book,” among others.Read the show notes from our discussion on the October 21,

KEN CALLS HIMSELF “a slob,” and I call myself a “spot cleaner,” meaning at cleanup time, neither one of us treats the garden like a living room that we’re vacuuming. We don’t go wall-to-wall, but rather pick it apart slowly, with a method to our madness:Leave especially ornamental or wildlife-friendly plants standing: “Some things are pretty,” says Ken, “and some provide cover for animals and insects—hopefully the animals and insects you want to encourage, but of course you can’t choose.”  Save what looks good—to you or the birds—as long as you can, particularly seed-laden ones (assuming they are not the weeds you’re trying to combat—more on t

‘MOW MORE CREATIVELY,’ I wrote in my recent resolutions.  A dry summer reminded me of this, when rather than risk the steep hilly part above the house burning off, I just let it grow from high summer on. Insects and birds were happy I did–more pollen, more seeds, more habitat–and I enjoyed the change in texture and color, too, as I will all winter. (That’s the area in the top photo, seen through the window screen. You can see the immediate back yard is traditional short lawn grass, and uphill is coarser, including the start of an island of uncut grass below the tall ornamental grasses up the hill, encircling it, and also in the photo below.)Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) was part of the jumble up there when I got here, and I used to let it flourish, mowing just once in late April or early May. Eventually woody things started to take over, so I started mowing it short, like lawn, to eradicate them, until this dry summer. Up popped the bluestem again, and I’m going to mow around the densest stands of this bunchgrass to cultivate it again.You might add some grasses or flowering

Don’t know Ruth Stout? As I have written before: Long before phrases like “lasagna garden” were making the rounds of the as-yet-uninvented internet, Stout was layering all her organic materials (chopped up cornstalks, fallen leaves and such) on top of her Connecticut garden soil. The idea behind her sheet composting, as it might be called, was to thwart weeds, reduce the need for fertilizers, conserve moisture and spare herself the work of composting in a conventional heap with all the toting and turning of materials.Her no-till approach rests on the foundational principle of applying mulch, mulch and more mulch, and then simply moving it back a tiny bit each year a bit to make room for a row of seeds or seedlings. (Less soil-turning equals fewer weed seeds

AN ARTICLE about soil solarization for weed control, the practice of covering beds or fields with plastic to keep down unwanted plants, caught my attention in the summer of 2018. It was published on the Cooperative Extension’s online home called eXtension.org and was written by University of Maine doctoral candidate, and she was my guest that winter on my radio show and podcast.

By the time I met the Chuck, Matt and Joe Heidgen 17-plus years ago, when we were  working on the former Martha Stewart garden line at K-Mart, I at least already knew that when I said Geranium that I actually meant Pelargonium, because that’s the genus our annual geraniums actually are in. But I didn’t know that one could look, and smell, nothing like Grandma’s old standards, and perform roles in the garden she’d never imagined.Today Joe Heidgen, with his brother Matt, runs the business called Shady Hill Gardens—both garden center (below) and mail-order specialists–that their father founded in Batavia 40 years ago. It’s now in Elburn, Illinois (an hour or so west of Chicago). For more than 30 years, Shady Hill has gained a national reputation as Pelargonium specialists, breeding and propagating every color, shape, size and scent imaginable (and then some). And good news: they sell them mail-order, too.Li

We need to wake up before the plants do, and think about the garden we’re going to make. Ready to get smarter about every action you take, and every area of the landscape? Before we get to the self-test on our own gardens, I started by asking Vincent for a quick 101 on sustainability. My question, and his answer:Q. What does sustainable mean in the garden?A. The key is to think about the long term—as in the longterm care of the garden, or the environment around you.We’re too infatuated with the now, and we don’t think about the future. Unfortunately, we see a lot of “disposable landscapes” going in, where if we get a couple of years out of

TORONTO-BASED Gayla Trail was a rooftop gardener for many years, so growing things in pots was her norm (proof is in the photo below). But many of the commercial varieties of container and hanging-basket tomatoes, she says, don’t taste too good—they’re bland, and often tough-skinned. Long ago she started on the hunt for ones that are better.Now Gayla has a real backyard (“like a bowling alley,” she says), but she still likes the dwarf types for other reasons: They’re small plants and reach maturity early (60-ish days, versus closer to 80 for a beefsteak type). That means she can extend her tomato-harvest backwards into June (again, even in Toronto!).Other features she favors of these smallest of the tomato-plant world:“Dwarf types tend to have ruffled leaves,” she says, technically called rugose, which are handsome-looking, and some plants are “tumbling types” that are especially suited to making

Tovah is the author of more than a dozen garden books including “Tasha Tudor’s Garden” and “The New Terrarium” and the “The Unexpected Houseplant,” and her newest, “The Indestructible Houseplant” (Amazon affiliate links).Besides our love of begonias, Tovah (find her at her Plantswise Facebook page) and I share a commitment to organic garden practices, indoors and out,. And we are near-neighbors in the corner of the world where Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York’s borders come together.Tovah says she emerged from 25 years work

QUICK, BEFORE THE FROST gets hold of the ground for good, do it: Take a soil test, to send off to the lab. Host Joe Lamp’l of the award-winning public television program “Growing a Greener World” says this simple practice is a foundational tactic of garden success, and shares other insights into building and maintaining healthy garden soil.

I’ve worn out a number of tip bags in my time, but generally speaking they’re pretty resilient creatures. I like the size-XL wide-mouth types, but you can get them smaller, more upright (like a giant beer can), or square, or even one that you wear. No kidding. Good if you are up on a ladder, for instance.I even turned some fabric nursery “pots” with handles into smaller tip bags, when I wasn’t happy with them for growing things.Most tip bags come with stiffening rings that you insert into the top lip, so the bag stays open. But as you can see from my photo, my tip bag’s usually at half mast, because I skip that feature. Just a quirk. Floppy is fine with me.I’ll admit I still feel sentimental about the bushel baskets—a.k.a., fruit baskets—that I used to be able to score at curbside outside the green grocer on trash nights. I loved getting them for free. (You can buy them by the dozen—but I don’t need a dozen;

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

The casualties on Night 1 were pots I’d prepped by the barn, to eventually be moved into the garden once they’d filled in. Yikes (but maybe they just wanted to make sure you knew my tip on recycling those pots and cellpacks by making a “false bottom” in the pot, like this).After repotting, we decided some botanical body armor was called for, though I have to say, I hate doing things like this (a mix of tomato cages, netting and clothespins):The 30-inch-wide bowl in the photo up top was the Night 2 battlefield.The skunks don’t seem to root around and disturb the cardboard “mulch” I’m using here and there to prep some beds quickly and easily. (Here’s how to make a garden bed with cardboard or newsprint, if you need a refresher.) Every local animal makes an occasional pit stop in my big compost heap, though–which I don’t mind at all. My page of composting questions and answers can help get yours cooking along. Now if I only had the answer on how to get the

I’m feeling daring, so I specifically called Timothy Tilghman, a former colleague at Martha Stewart Living, who is now horticulturist at the much-heralded Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, New York, just minutes north of New York City. The property has quickly become a destination for gardeners, a getaway where visitors are wowed by bold, contemporary plantings—including ones in containers—in a dramatic, historic setting.A century ago, in 1915, Samuel Untermyer hired William Welles Bosworth, an Ecole des Beaux Arts-trained architect and landscape designer who designed Kykuit for the Rockefellers, to create the “greatest gardens in the world.” Soon after, they began exe

Staked plants will ripen faster crops of generally larger fruit. Stakes must be at least 1 inch thick and 6 feet high, inserted a foot into the ground.  Adding supporting twine between stakes (as in the photo above) helps add stability; some gardeners lash horizontal cross-pieces of bamboo between stakes instead. Either way, as the plant grows you continue to tie it to the support with twine or twist-ties.Remember: Staked plants require a commitment to ongoing pruning, keeping the plant to one or two main stems of vine-like, not bush, habit. All small suckers that develop in the crotches between the leaves and the main stem must be removed.good ‘tomato hygiene’WHAT’S MOST APPEALING to me is that staking can help with disease prevention, which actually begins with selecting an appropriately disease-resistant variety (Cornell has a list of what variety resists what).Certain fungal pathogens, such as septor

And that’s where the seed for ‘Liebesapfel’—the pepper that began Sarah Kleeger and Andrew Still’s fast-growing Capsicum annuum collection—arrived from, or more specifically, Germany via Denmark.On their first Seed Ambassadors trip to search out potentially Northern-adapted seed from Europe in 2006, Sarah and Andrew carried ‘Liebesapfel’ (left) back to the New World themselves—tho

Spinach has come a long way from its point of origin literally and also genetically, but which of the many varieties available today is for you, and when and how can you plant this nourishing green for best success?I invited Tom Stearns, longtime organic seed farmer and founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, to help me become a better spinach grower—and find my way through the many choices of spinach leaf types, and varieties from heirloom to hybrid. We talked about the oddball reproductive system that makes spinach bolt and other insights, like how among all the vegetable cro

Some background: The Stella Natura calendar has been published since 1978 by Camphill Village, Kimberton Hills, in Pennsylvania, and edited by Sherry Wildfeuer. Turtle Tree Seed, where Lia is co-manager, is located at another Camphill Village, in Copake, New York. Camphill Village is a biodynamic intentional community engaged in farming, gardening and handcrafting, that includes adults with developmental disabilities; a portion of each calendar sale goes to support Camphill.The 40-page Stella Natura calendar includes astronomy basics, a constellation chart, and many philosophical articles—besides the calendar itself. But it’s not a “calendar” such as you might pencil in your dentist appointment or kids’ soccer practice on; it’s a reference guide and tool (that’s a page from a recent edition, above). How it works is ex

As Propagation and Plant Development Manager at Broken Arrow Nursery in Connecticut, Adam Wheeler has to know which ones have built-in deer resistance, because most customers aren’t living behind 8-foot protection (which by the way, doesn’t deter woodchucks and rabbits, so I am not off the pest-control hook).I called Adam for advice about a hugely popular subject that he calls:Read along as you listen to the May 30, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below, and learn about some of Adam’s favorite conifers, small trees,

“Extension is that part of academia tasked with delivering research based information to those who can use it,” Jeff Gillman, who was an Extension specialist for 15 years, writes in “Some Thoughts About Extension” on the Garden Professors blog at Extension.org.It’s an important function, he adds, “because it provides a link between us and the people who do research that impacts us.”Now here’s the big-deal part, again in Gillman’s words:“Extension personnel are usually non-biased individuals who deliver research-based information…. If you aren’t getting your information from someone in Extension, then you’re probably getting it from someone who stands to profit from whatever information they provide. This alone makes Extension impo

THE EXPRESSION ‘BIRDBRAIN’ is a disparaging one, but I beg to differ: I’m grateful that I had birds on my mind when I started making a garden. The result—a year-round landscape—seems positively brilliant to me and my feathered friends.

Lee is the author of so many books, including, “A Northeast Gardener’s Year,” “The Pruning Book,” “Weedless Gardening,” (enter to win a copy below) “Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden,” “Landscaping with Fruit,” and “Grow Fruit Naturally.”  He is also an exceptional vegetable gardener, so I was pleased to get his advice to get started with some new crops, and with some new tricks with familiar crops. He also shared a helpful seed-starting video, which is partway through the transcript below.Read along as you listen to the Feb. 8, 2016 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 seed-starting q&a with lee reichQ. I guess I have to ask: Have you ordered all your seed?A. I have, actually. I try to get them all ordered before the end of the year.

The other day, I had to finally reckon with a 40-foot-tall old, twin-trunk birch that was in decline, and dropping massive portions of its crown on two small outbuildings. To the arborist crew’s surprise, I didn’t let them take it all down, or even cart away most of what had to be cut. Here’s why:Biomass.Removing all that living or recently living mass of organic material would be a big loss, biologically speaking, for the complex organism I call my Northeastern garden, the one corner of the world I am completely responsible for.“By some estimates,” the National Wildlife Fe

Susan Morrison is based in the Bay Area of California and known especially for her experience on solving the puzzle that small-space gardens can pose. Her own backyard is just 30 by 60 feet, though anything but boring.The subtitle of her new book, “The Less Is More Garden,” is “Big Ideas for Designing Your Small Yard,” but even big-yard types like myself have plenty to learn from Susan’s ideas. We talked about how each of us can look at our own spaces with a designer’s eye, about breaking up too-boxy rectangular spaces to bring life into them, about use of color and other elements, and

For the timing, consult my Seed-Starting Calculator, customizable to your own location according to final frost date. But first…I recommend investing in a reflective hood that houses high-output fluorescent tubes called T5’s, or T5 HO’s. I can’t wait until LEDs for seed-starting get a little farther along in development, and

I think that’s one big area that stymies a lot of gardeners, myself included, and I looked back on highlights of what I learned from interviews on the show in 2018. Where to put what–a bed, a border, a patio, or even several different plants in relationship to one another—can be elusive, to say the least.I rounded up some favorite advice into the latest radio segment (and if you missed the full conversations with the designers quoted here, the links to those are at the bottom of the page and offer loads more design advice).Read along as you listen to the Dec. 24, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscrib

A COUPLE OF YOU COMMENTED when I posted a spring “walk in the garden” story years back, asking for help with the subject of underplanting trees and shrubs (including my oldest magnolia, below). True confession: I have come very slowly and painfully to this lesson, dragged by some much more talented friends, Glenn Withey and Charles Price of Seattle.

(Spoiler alert: probably not the sexiest stuff, but it’s what we really rely on.)Garden writer Ken Druse is author most recently of “The Scentual Garden,” a big, beautiful book about fragrant plants. Besides top tools, we also gave a sneak peek about some of the promises we made to ourselves as we put the garden to bed—what we’ll do differently next year, our early resolutions.Read along as you listen to the December 9, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast usi

The subject is succession sowings, which to do and when and how, with help from Niki Jabbour, a resident of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and an award-winning author and popular lecturer, who also hosts “The Weekend Gardener” radio show. Her recent book, “Veggie Garden Remix,” celebrating unusual edibles we can and should grow, just won a 2019 American Horticultural Society book award. (I’ll give away a copy; enter by commenting at the very bottom of the page.)Niki shared all her tactical advice for keeping the harvest coming.Read along as you listen to the May 13, 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).succession sowing for nonstop harvest, with n

Squash pests and diseases—from squash bugs, vine borers and cucumber beetles, to powdery and downy mildews and bacterial wilts—can make it all sound like just too much. But as a seed farmer, High Mowing Organic Seeds founder Stearns has to harvest lots of extra-ripe fruit to get his hidden-inside crop. He gets to the finish line by working to avoid any preventable setbacks, first and foremost, always keeping in mind the three key things about being a cucurbit:You love heat. You’re thirsty (but your shallow root system means you depend on the immediate area for water resources). You love to eat. Oh, and the aforementioned “issues” love you—some more or less depending on species and varie

ELLEN OGDEN and I talked salads on my public-radio show and podcast. The highlights of our conversation:salad-lover’s garden tips from ellen ogdenDirect sow your salad greens, says Ellen. It’s easier than sowing indoors and transplanting, and “they pop up fast, and are fast to produce—in just a few weeks.” Re-sow small amounts right through into August in the North.  “That’s really the key. I start my greens every two weeks–small, short rows of maybe 5 feet long.” Succession sowings can continue slightly longer if salads are grown under cover—and of course in warmer zones, the timing shifts with the later frost dates. Be opportunistic. “Stick the rows everywhere,” says Ellen, including between other plants.

No problem, I said, we’ll just call Craig LeHoullier—who some of you will recognize as the author of the hit book “Epic Tomatoes” and breeder of dwarf tomatoes, in particular, whose first book was actually a little how-to guide called “Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales.”I invited him back to my public-radio show and podcast from his home and garden in North Carolina to talk about the straw bale gardening how-to’s: how to prep and care for the bales, what crops are adapted to such conditions, and more.Read along as you listen to the February

HOW DO YOU GET your garden soil ready for growing things each spring? Do you till to prepare your beds, or double-dig them, or roughly turn in compost—or are you a no-till type who uses some passive tactic?

I talked about watering best practices with New York Botanical Garden instructor Daryl Beyers, author of “The New Gardener’s Handbook” (affiliate link). The popular course that Daryl teaches at NYBG is called Fundamentals of Gardening. And now Daryl, who has more than 25 years’ professional landscaping experience besides his teaching role, has put all the fundamentals into “The New Gardener’s Handbook.”Read along as you listen to the June 29, 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 to win Daryl’s new book by commenting in the box at the b