Shooting Ideas, Tips & Guides

Weeds can rapidly multiply through runners, seeds, offsets, and cuttings, taking up space and resources required by important plants planted around them.

Lavender is a Mediterranean evergreen shrub, grown for its fragrant leaves and bee-friendly flowers. There are hardy, half-hardy and tender species of lavender to choose from.

It’s often challenging to get some seeds even to sprout, if not quickly. But with our list of plants that grow from softwood cuttings, you’ll have clones packing up your garden in no time!

Humans, animals, and plants–we all need calcium for healthy growth. There are tell-tale signs that pinpoint the lack of this essential mineral. It could be a deficit in the soil or the plant’s inability to absorb calcium, both leading to a series of physical malfunctions. Whatever it is, it’s very important to identify and recognize the signs that your plants need calcium and that’s what is shared below!

You don’t always need a big garden for greens – a space for a medium-sized pot indoors will be more than enough for these edible vines!

Pruning fruit trees encourages a good size and shape, keeps the tree productive and helps remove dead and damaged wood. Many fruit trees, such as apples and pears, are pruned in winter, but plum trees can be susceptible to silver leaf disease if pruned at this time. Plum trees are therefore best pruned in spring or summer.

Has your vibrant coleus turned dull, sparse, and leggy? Don’t worry–it’s not time to toss it out yet! It just needs a little trim. Pruning coleus is an easy and effective way to get it to grow quicker and better. We show you all the reasons why and how to cut your coleus.

Say you’re done making your favorite recipe, and run to your herb garden for some home-grown seasoning. But all you find are leggy shadows of a once-robust plant! Well, you can avoid this picture if you gently top your herb when it’s young with sets of true leaves and even after.

Want your backyard to be a personalized fruit market? Then, prune your favorite established fruit plant, gather its cuttings, and start multiplying.

Stuck looking at a boring wall? Or running low on floor space? These clinging vines are climbing ninjas that use sticky tendrils or disks to conquer any surface. Let’s go!

After all that hard work, a bad harvest can spoil your mood. Not anymore, though; with these tips and tricks on pruning cucumbers for a juicy harvest, you’ll have plenty of these veggies, and that too, really good ones!

On a trip through Germany in 1971, I took a train from Frankfurt to Munich. The train was half-empty, and I looked around for a while before finding a friendly face. He was a factory worker in Germany but was originally from Italy. I don’t think we had talked more than three minutes before we were on the subject of food. He asked me if I had tasted pasta with broccoletti di rape. I assured him that I had, and he clasped his hands, rolled his eyes, and exclaimed in his beautiful dialect, “It’s so good it hurts!” What he called broccoletti di rape, or rape (pronounced rah-PAY) for short, is better known in this country as broccoli rabe. However you pronounce it or spell it, this marvelous cool-weather vegetable is a joy to grow and to cook with. Learn how to grow your own broccoli rabe from seed, and take advantage of this versatile green.

Q: We have anemone in our front garden. It has spread uncontrollably, and we want to get rid of it. We have tried digging it up, pulling the new shoots and spraying Roundup, all to no avail. What do you suggest? RK, Co Dublin

Want to savor fresh garlic greens in soups, stir-fries, omelets, and salads all year round? This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to grow garlic greens right in your home without having a garden.

What Is a Flowering Flush? All About Plant Bloom Cycles

Do you have a pepper plant with lush leafy growth but barely any peppers? Pruning, as we suggest in this article, helps. It’s like giving your plant a much-needed haircut to encourage it to grow more peppers.

Bloom of the moment here is undoubtedly the delphinium, displaying its stunning deep blue spires in the blue & white border. I have had this plant many years and although it lost its label it may be ‘King Arthur’; it was moved from its original position about 3 or 4 years ago and has done even better since – so much so that it was split and part of it moved to one of the bold borders where sadly it declined to return after its second season. Although it does have side shoots, it never really reflowers to the same extent later in the season as perceived wisdom suggests it might.

Left: Martin Zaiser / Getty Images; Right: ziprashantzi / Getty Images

There’s no need to wait months to enjoy the delicious flavor of homegrown peas as you can grow pea sprouts and shoots year-round inside your home. These nutrient dense foods are quick and easy to grow and you don’t need fancy equipment to produce a bumper crop of sweet, tender pea sprouts and shoots. In this article you’ll learn the difference between sprouts and shoots, discover how to plant each type, get growing tips, and find out when to harvest. Pea sprouts and pea shoots You may have noticed there are a lot of terms used for describing immature pea plants: sprouts, microg

How to Grow and Harvest Pea Shoots

Introducing Roots, Shoots, and Share: A Green Revolution for Gardeners

Jay Wilde

The best thing about early spring is seeing something new daily in the garden. Of course, the pundits would say that if you have done your garden properly, you should see something new every day of the gardening season, but that is another issue. In spring the pace of growth accelerates, and the plants almost seem to be in a competition to see who sends up the first shoots. Last week I couldn’t find a trace of any of my many hostas. Today, when I took my daily inspection tour, I found that most of them were at least an inch out of the ground.

Pinching is an art of stimulating new growth in plants by pressing and removing the ends of the stems. Let’s have a deeper understanding of the ones that benefit the most from it.

Why Is My Asparagus Thin? Tips for Growing Thick Spears

How to Grow Napini Kale

When and How to Harvest Broccoli

What if you have the best of both worlds – a classy foliage plant that you can also add to your platter! Sounds delicious? Keep reading!

Mostly evergreen shrubs, chiefly from tropical America, belonging to the Pea family, Leguminosae. They grow from 6-50 ft. in height, have pinnate, dark green, glossy leaves, and bear golden-yellow flowers in terminal clusters in summer. Cassia is from the original Greek name Kasia.

(Deut’zia). A group of leaf-losing shrubs that are beautiful in bloom but are otherwise undistinguished. The flowers are produced from the side buds of the previous year’s growth. Many kinds are known, chiefly natives of China, Japan and the Himalayas. The majority are not perfectly hardy in the North against winter cold and should be given sheltered positions even in the climate of New York City and its environs. The Deutzias are closely related to the Mock Orange, or Philadelphus; they belong to the Saxifrage family, Saxifragaceae. The name Deutzia was given in honor of John van der Deutz, a patron of botany and at one time Sheriff of Amsterdam.

Small, hardy, evergreen shrubs which grow wild in many parts of Europe and in a few localities in North America. They belong to the Heath family, Ericaceae. The name is derived from kallunein, to sweep. Branches are used as brooms. Only one species. is known, Callunas vulgaris, the common Heather or Scotch Heather, but it has many varieties which differ widely in stature, the color of flowers and color of leaves.

Of these two shoots pruned from a blueberry plant, which would have produced larger, higher quality berries?

It is best to chit seed potatoes six weeks before planting time. Early potato varieties grown for new potatoes such as ‘Rocket’ and ‘Swift’ are the first ones to chit, ready for planting in late March.

This is another variety, italica, of Brassica oleracea. Both purple and white sprouting produce a profusion of young shoots invaluable for prolonging the supplies of winter greens. Purple sprouting is the most hardy and will safely overwinter in most open situations.

When you see a shooting star, it's not really a star but a fast-moving rock from space. People from different cultures think it brings good luck, and some make wishes when they see one. But in some beliefs, it can also mean a big change or even predict bad things. Find out more below.