8 Most Important Tips to Follow When Growing Vines and Climbers

Common Names: Spath, White sails, Spathe flower, Cobra plant

The Amazons of the summer border, hollyhocks tower on 1.5 to 2.5-metre stems from June to August. Their funnel-shaped blooms, which open in shades of ivory, lemon, pink, red, and plum, can often be seen peeping over a garden wall, basking in the sun. Bumblebees love to sup the nectar, and, as they do, become covered in a dusting of the flowers’ plentiful creamy pollen.

When it comes totrailing houseplants, people always go for the most usual ones like pothos and philodendrons, not realizing that they are missing out on some species that are not really popular. Here’s one such list of 8 Cool Indoor Vines People Usually Don’t Grow, but you can try if you’re looking for alternatives.

The pre-Columbian Indians of the Andes domesticated more starchy root crops than any other culture, but only the potato caught on as a staple worldwide.“The others have seldom been tried outside South America, yet they are still found in the Andes and represent some of the most interesting of all root crops.…” said a 1989 report called “Lost Crops of the Incas: Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation” from the National Research Council.“They come in myriad colors, shapes, and sizes,” the report added. “T

WHATEVER POTATO YOU SAY, SWEET OR WHITE, and however you pronounce it, the important thing is this: Are you making plans to grow these two cooperative, prolific crops in your home garden this year? The process begins now with starting or ordering slips (for sweet potatoes) and ordering seed potatoes (for white ones). My instructions for raising and storing a year of white potatoes, and a year of sweets.

Background: Barry Glick–a serious plantaholic who’s even a vegan and is sometimes also referred to in mock botanical Latin as the Glicksterus maximus–is a native of the Philadelphia area, and has been gardening since childhood.  In 1972, he purchased 60 acres of a 3,650-foot-high mountaintop in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, that became Sunshine Farm and Gardens (which you can stroll though and shop from at sunfarm.com).  Barry’s a garden writer and a longtime lecturer—but most of all I love how he was described in one magazine article I read recently:“The Flower Child Who Became the Flower King.”snippets from my q&a with barry glickIN THE TEXT BELOW, I harvested just the briefest details from conversations with Barry before, after and during the show taping, so be sure to listen in as well as read (the podcast player is just above), for extra unexpected goodies. Examples: the fact that a Number 8 “camel-hair” brush—which Barry uses for hand-pollination of hellebores—is actually made fro

Timing: Sometime in the second half of October, ideally about five weeks before frost is in the ground, I plant the biggest cloves from the biggest heads of my July-harvested crop.  (I eat the rest, whether while cooking up easy soups and tomato sauce to freeze in the late summer and fall, or through the winter from heads hung in net bags in my 45ish-degree barn loft, with some of the harvest peeled and frozen right now like this to use next spring and summer, when even the best-stored heads would have sprouted otherwise.)An expert 101 on how to plant garlic, and which type is best for your area. How deep? I poke the cloves, pointy side up, so that the tip is about 2 inches below the surface of the soil in my raised beds.  Mulching at planting time in areas with cold winters is recommended, so I simply layer on some leaf mold or composted stable bedding, which also helps come spring in weed control (it’s essential to keep garlic beds weed-free!).How far apart? Spacing is

In Part 2 (transcript at this link coming shortly) we tackled powdery mildew prevention and aftercare, and what to do when an abundance of roly-poly or sowbugs and pillbugs has descended on the garden. Should you use copper-based fungicides against tomato blight—and what to do after an infestation by the garlic bloat nematode?Ken, of Ken Druse dot com, is a longtime garden writer, author and photographer and all-around great gardener—and great friend. If you have a question for a future show, you can submit it in the comments on either of our websites, or use the contact form to send us an email from either site, or ask us on

Craig is known to many as the NC Tomato Man and to others as the straw-bale gardening guy. But besides his expertise in both breeding tomatoes and writing a book about them—enter to win a copy of “Epic Tomatoes” in the comment box below—Craig also has an epic collection of seeds of heirloom eggplants and peppers. Shop the catalogs with us, from some new developments in greens, plus learn to grow beets unexpectedly from indoor sowings, and to succeed with eggplants and peppers, too. Craig shares his over-the-top dense planting method for seeds, and other tricks.Note about the audio: An undetected electrical short in the studio computer system caused background noise to be recorded along with our conversation, as if a radio was on in the distant background in places, and we apologize.Read along as you listen to the Jan. 8, 2018 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).seed shopping, plus growing eggplants and peppers,with craig lehoullierQ. Welcome back, Craig.A. It’s

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

Kevin’s new book, “Urban Gardening: How to Grow More Plants No Matter Where You Live,” includes many raised-bed construction styles to consider, some impromptu and others more permanent, and his tips for success growing in them.Kevin’s garden [above] couldn’t be much more different from mine. He’s in urban San Diego Zone 10B; I’m rural New York Zone 5B. Most of his garden is in raised beds and other containers, and mine is mostly in the ground, but we have lots in common, too. We talked about successful above-ground growing methods and more, how he plants intensi

Succulents are forgiving plants when it comes to growing conditions. Their ability to store water makes them one of the best drought-tolerant plants. But is it possible to grow them in just sand? Find out!