9 of the Best Companion Plants for Broccoli

Never underestimate the power of a little bit of year-round greenery. It can truly do wonders for walkways – and for your mind.When I lived in Oklahoma for two years, wintertime was difficult. There were few e

When I first moved to southern California from Montana to attend university, I was amazed by the diverse array of stunning plants: the pink sprays of bougainvillea, the purple flush of jacaranda trees, the orange-tufted, sharp-beaked birds of paradise.It’s uncanny how much this flower resem

A certain family member of mine insists that only the tuberous root veggies with cream-colored flesh are real sweet potatoes. The orange things, she says, are yams.Friends, my dear family member is wrong. Just about

Foxgloves are one of my top five favorite flowers. There’s nothing quite like the sight of tall spikes packed with long, tubular, brightly colored blooms with speckled throats.The common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, is the

I’ve never forgotten the joy of seeing tiny purple, white, and yellow ‘Johnny-jump-ups’ popping up through the soil in the springtime.We had a clump of pansies in

Lacking the sharpness of onion or the aromatic spice of garlic, the shallot somehow takes the best of both of those beloved alliums and blends them into one beautiful, sweet yet savory flavor.This unassuming bulb is used in a variety of cuisines around the world.

The biggest pumpkins make for the best pie, right?Well… maybe not.Most cultivars are edible, and you can m

Homegrown celery, Apium graveolens, is delicious. It’s nothing like the stringy, tasteless stalks you buy in the grocery store. But did you know there are a number of different cultivars available?I wouldn’t blame someone for thinking that t

When I was a kid, my mom turned our front yard, in Reno, Nevada, into a garden. I remember walking through rows of tall corn stalks that felt like an enchanted forest.I tried growing corn last year, but I started

I first met arugula, Eruca sativa, when I made a spring panzanella salad several years ago. I’d never used the leafy green before, but I was hooked from the first peppery bite.And when I started shopping for seeds to grow my own,

Every spring, I hold my breath and watch the flower beds at the front of the house.The first year that I lived in my little red Alaska home

I’m here to make a confession: when I first started gardening, I planted four broccoli seedlings in a container, I grossly underestimated how big they would get.They started from such tiny s