Summer Ideas, Tips & Guides

Cucumber Trellis Flop I had high hopes for my cucumbers this year, but my bad luck with growing vegetables continues... Trial and error with cucumbers

7 Ways To Get Rid of Garden Pests without Pesticides Try a few of these no-spray methods to deter bugs in the garden without resorting to harmful pesticides. How to deal with garden pests without chemicals

Charming Shade Container Garden Ideas Need new container ideas for your shade garden? Get inspired by this gardener's collection of planters, featuring lush foliage and even a few perennials from her garden. Summer container garden ideas for shade

At War with Squash Bugs Commiserate with me about how squash bugs are wreaking havoc on my vegetable garden… again! Squash bug takeover

Tips for Growing Peppers Love sweet and hot peppers? Try these tips for growing peppers to get a bumper crop in your garden this year! How to grow peppers

6 Types of Peppers to Grow There's a colorful world of flavors, shapes and sizes to try for sweet and hot peppers! Here are some of my favorite pepper varieties to grow in the garden. Meet some of our favorite types of peppers!

How to Grow Marigold Flowers Marigold flowers are easy to grow and bloom nonstop through summer. Learn how to start these bright blooms from seed and keep them growing all season! Why grow marigold flowers in your garden?

Tips for Growing Mint Mint is an excellent addition to any cocktail garden! Learn the secrets for growing this classic herb and how to keep it from taking over your garden. Add mint to your cocktail garden!

Salad with a Side of Slug Growing lettuce is rewarding but sometimes it comes with more than you bargained for! The joy of growing your own greens

Weed Watch: Pokeweed Learn how to identify and control pokeweed, a toxic native perennial. Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) What does pokeweed look like?

As we enter the summer season, Pinterest’s latest trends report shows evidence for three emerging home decor ideas. Nancy Meyers core, dopamine decor, and eclectic vintage were all called out, with more specific search terms mentioned for each category. The throughline? People want their spaces to have a more personalized, nostalgic, and homey vibe.

Colorful Summer Plantings for Sun and Shade Attract pollinators and wildlife to your garden with these colorful combinations for sun and shade gardens. Dreaming of summer

Summer Perennial Bed with Mighty Chestnut Daylily 'Mighty Chestnut' daylily is a mighty fine addition to summer perennial beds. Add colorful perennials to summer-blooming beds

You've Heard of No-Mow May — Try a Bee Lawn Instead! Maybe you have heard of «No-Mow May», but learn about the long-term benefits of installing a bee lawn from conservation expert, James Wolfin. Is “No-Mow May” a good idea?

Tips for Growing a Rooftop Garden No green space? No problem! Learn how this Chicago gardener created a beautiful rooftop garden in the city. Smart tips for a successful rooftop garden

2024 Container Garden Challenge Winners! Check out these winning designs from our 2024 Container Challenge! We'll share their planting plans and tips to inspire you to grow your best container garden. Our readers' best container garden ideas

How to Create Colorful Flower Borders Learn how Heather Thomas of Cape Cottage Garden keeps her flower borders colorful from spring through fall! Tour Heather Thomas’ colorful flower borders in New Jersey

Cut Flower Garden Plan with Colorful Annuals Grow your own beautiful cut flower garden with this planting plan full of annual blooms perfect for a back bed or border! Grow your own cut flower garden

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

Showy Shade Garden Ideas Create a beautiful shade garden with these plant combinations that showcase foliage and shade-blooming flowers. Planting ideas for your shade garden

Fall Garden Border with ‘Nicholas’ Dahlia Autumn doesn't mean color has to call it quits in your garden! Use mums, dahlias, sedum, salvia and switchgrass to make a splash when temperatures start to cool off. Grow flowers that pop with fall color

‘Nicholas’ Dahlia Want to make your autumn beds and containers shine? Plant 'Nicholas’ dahlia to add color to the season. Add ‘Nicholas’ dahlia to your fall planting

The Tale of Our Harvest Bowl Our harvest bowl started as the perfect popcorn bowl, but then something so heinous happened that changed the trajectory of this bowl’s main purpose forever. The evolution of a popcorn bowl

‘Millenium’ allium has an upright habit that makes it a cinch to tuck in between other summer-blooming plants and creates an interesting contrast to the mounding cushion spurge and snow-in-summer growing nearby in this garden plan. Its ball-shaped blooms stand out among the spiky salvia and domes of euphorbia. And if deer have been browsing your garden, this is one border they'll give a pass — these perennials rarely get nibbled. Growing conditions for this drought-tolerant border Give this drought-tolerant group full sun for the most flowers and best foliage color and well-drained soil to avoid rot. There's no real need to feed this group of plants that

It’s not often that a perennial comes along that can be described (just like Mary Poppins) as practically perfect in every way. But that is a practically perfect description for ‘Millenium’ allium. Close to foolproof, ‘Millenium’ is super drought tolerant and grows from a group of small bulbs packed together in a large clump. Plants have a compact, upright habit with grassy leaves and a profusion of large 2-inch, lavender-pink drumstick flower heads that bloom for up to a month or more in mid- to late summer. ‘Millenium’ allium (Allium hybrid) Type Perennial Blooms Large 2-in. bright rosy-purple rounded clusters in mid- to late summer Light Full sun Soil Well-d

While your baskets are filling with long-awaited tomatoes, zucchini and peppers, you might not be thinking about the months to come. But the garden season doesn’t have to end when the weather cools off. Midsummer is the perfect time to start plants for a second harvest. Here are five crops you can grow right now and enjoy in a couple of months. Happy harvesting! You Might Also Like: Best Places to Buy Garden Seeds OnlineCalculate How Many Vegetables to Plant Cool-Season Vegetables to Plant in Fall

You know by now that it's always good manners to show up to an event with a little trinket for the host in tow. But if you're feeling stumped about what to bring with you to the next summer get together that's on your calendar, we're here to provide you with a whole new list of ideas that are sure to be well received.

First, a word about Summer Fest, which I co-founded in 2008: It’s a giant round-robin of sharing themed to a single garden-fresh ingredient each week. Get all the details and latest links below, just before the comments, and stock up on delicious ideas from around the web—or add your own.I READ UP ON CREAMED CORN this week (as did many of my Summer Fest colleagues—see the links below), and found a lot of variations included cornstarch or flour as thickeners, sugar, and even Parmesan cheese or bacon or any manner of extras. Once I shucked the fresh-picked corn from down the road, I thought: I can’t do that to this beautiful stuff, and went the ultra-simple route. Even adding cream seemed like gilding the lily. But I did.Corn in Historical ImageryMY VINTAGE PITCHER GOT ME THINKING how much a part of our heritage corn has been,

‘Hot Summer’ (a 2010 release, but new to my garden this spring from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm) is one of an impressive selection of recent Echinacea hybrids that seem to be getting better and better, almost insisting that I wake up to coneflowers again and make some room.  It was discovered in the nursery of Marco van Noort, a Dutch breeder, in 2007.The most exciting thing about ‘Hot Summer’ (Zone 4-9; 30-36 inches tall) is that yesterday the flower in the top photo was another fiery shade altogether. Each 4 1/2-inch flower opens yellow-orange and passes through an aging process to deep red, so once you have a lot of flowers you can have the whole fiery spectrum on the plant at once (ca

Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same. (Their names and links will be on each of my posts, and mine on theirs.)The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. Yes, copy and paste them everywhere! That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dia

ICAN’T IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT THEM. The frogs, I mean.

No matter what weed you are facing, if it’s flowering or setting seed now, be sure to behead it: mow it down, harvest the blooms for bouquets, or otherwise prevent a successful sexual reproduction cycle.teri dunn chace’s basic weed strategyFIRST A FAST REVIEW of Teri’s basic strategic weed-fighting plan, since simply pinpointing specific things this time of year isn’t the whole story.  Her plan, she admits: mostly practical and straight-forward.“Although it’s common sense, it’s things we sometimes don’t do,” says Teri, “but if we did it would make a big difference.” Don’t let things get to where you want to turn to the store to buy some chemical to erase your weed woes. Follow her

Carol Gracie, a former longtime educator at the New York Botanical Garden who also worked for The Nature Conservancy, has followed her own intense curiosity to become a leading expert on wildflowers. Now her second book, “Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast: a Natural History” from Princeton University Press (Amazon affiliate link), forms the companion to her earlier spring volume.We talked together about all the insects–not just monarchs–who use the milkweed plant in some way (and what they have in common); about a flowering plant with no chlorophyll at all; and even how experts have trouble keeping track of all the asters and goldenrods.Plus: Enter to win a copy of her book by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the June 9, 2

Zinnias are gorgeous flowering annuals that attract butterflies to the garden and make excellent cut flowers. To keep zinnias blooming all summer long, flowers should be removed as they begin to fade. This is called deadheading, a simple pruning technique that encourages new growth and reblooming. Learn how to deadhead zinnias to keep your plants blooming continuously, summer through fall.

We’re visiting Kristen Rembold’s beautiful garden today.

Brie Williams