Get into S’mores Summer with These Viral Brownie and Cookie Recipes

Like all of Ken’s 18 books (!!!), “Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagation” is rich in instruction, but also visually arresting, since he’s an award-winning photographer, too.  It covers the botany of propagation—the why’s behind how you can make more plants of a particular species sexually or asexually or both—because as Ken says:“It is not essential to learn about botany to garden well; it’s inevitable.”Then in words and intimate pictures he covers virtually every tactic for doing so, from seed-sowing to leaf and root cuttings, to layering, grafting, division and more.  The photos are so beautiful, and Ken’s obvious enthusiasm so evident on every page, that I want to try everything. (Just what I nee

EXPLODING Eremurus, why vulnerability is good for us, and the answer to why bird poop is white—all, and more, in the latest collections of links I’ve loved lately while staring into my computer screen (which I alternately do between long gazes out the window). Five links worth exploring:

I want to introduce some oddball varieties I like to grow (like ‘Chinese Red Noodle’ and ‘Scarlet Runner,’ both shown above), and tell you what I’m planning to do with that Hefty-bagful of the more typical green bean types that I just harvested. (No, not 10 Pyrex baking dishes full of Grandma’s Green Bean Casserole with cream of mushroom soup, sour cream and butter-soaked Saltine crumbs and melted cheddar, though I am definitely tempted.)Do you grow beans like ‘Royalty Purple Pod’ that are easy to spot on the vine when harvesting, but cook up green? Or slender filet beans, the haricot verts or filet beans of French cooker

IT’S NO NEWS TO YOU THAT I’M A BIRD PERSON (and often described as “birdlike”); to me birds and gardening are inseparable notions. As close as I feel to my feathered companions, I can’t say I’ve ever been as intimate as zoologist Mark Carwardine in the video above. Unbelievable. More bits about birds from my recent travels around the digital realm:

BEST BIRDS PHOTOS: Never mind its name (which is not G-rated, but what the fu-k?). This wonderful site powered by Tumblr blog technology is packed with photos of birds I could just spend all day looking at. And sometimes do. I hope you enjoy Fu-k Yeah Birdwatching (as in: yup, I’m a bird watcher) as much as I do.WATCHING WITHOUT INFERENCE: I just completed an online bird-behavior course with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called “Rivalry and Courtship in Birds,” taught by the noted ornithologist Ken McGowan (his world-class work on crows is ongoing since 1988). Amazing videos from the Lab’s unrivaled collection

‘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

I almost went for Nigel Slater‘s baked onions with Parmesan and cream, and oh, the chickpea and sweet potato curry called out, too (it calls for pumpkin and onions both).“The Kitchen Diaries” is a book about “right food, right place, right time,” in Slater’s words, and though the precise diary days he fills in this delicious year may not match mine, exactly—Slater is in England—they unfold in similar order.  “Learning to eat with the ebb and flow of the seasons is the single thing that has made my eating more enjoyable,” he writes, eschewing the modern-day supermarket’s all-possibilities-all-the-time approach.Slater’s kitchen doors open onto a small urban London garden, and as I read the recipes and other musings on the weeks and months in the year, I can imagine him moving in and o

I called Dennis in late September, as my Zone 5B weather threatened to frost, because he has more experience with carrying over stock of tropicals and sub-tropicals than anyone else I know, after operating Landcraft Environments, a specialist in unusual tender things, since 1992. (Our conversation was the Sept. 23, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, and is summed up below with all his advice.)The to-the-trade business, located on the North Fork of Long Island in Mattituck, resulted from what Dennis calls, “a hobby that went wild,” a love of houseplants that led him to school for landscape design and nursery/greenhouse management, and eventually to start a design business and then the wholesale operation with his partner, Dennis Smith. Bold, colorful foliage is a signature of the Landcraft online catalog (which you can use as an inspirational encyclopedia of plants worth lusting over, even if you can’t shop there directly).“We’re kind of foliage-driven,” says Dennis, “a

Mission accomplished, I can say after sampling the result—especially a four-ingredient cookie of almond flour, maple syrup, baking powder and vanilla extract that took about 3 minutes to prep (recipe below, plus a recipe for homemade baking powder, since commercial brands generally contain grain, I learned).I don’t have to follow a restricted diet, but the widening shelf of ingredients at the local food coop like almond and coconut flours (not to mention all the other-than-wheat grain flours, and ones from beans and such) has caught my attention. Out of curiosity, I went to a book signing and baking demonstration by Elizabeth at Hillsdale Home Chef, a nearby

Coauthor Joan Maloof is founder of the Old Growth Forest Network, aimed to preserve, protect and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old growth forest, and she’s a professor emeritus at Salisbury University in Maryland. She joined me to talk about complex the organism that is the forest, and I learned how almost half of all our rain is dependent on the forest’s “exhale” of water, how the trees with all their light-detecting cells can “see” different colors and intensities of light and respond accordingly, and much more.Read along as you listen to the Nov. 27, 2017 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). Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book by commenting at the very bottom of the page. (Below, co-authors Llewel

Its story – how it got here, and what it’s doing and what is being done about it — is also the story of the unwelcome arrival of other invasive exotic organisms that have come to our shores unexpectedly, and found no natural predators or other mechanisms to keep them in check.I got a 101 on the beetle from Lisa Tewksbury, manager of the University of Rhode Island’s Biological Control Lab in Kingston, where she coordinates research on the lily leaf beetle among other invasives. Learn what’s being done by scientists seeking solutions other than chem

Susan is intimately familiar with poison ivy and its relatives, because she has for years studied them right down to the molecular level. She is Science and Public Programs Manager at the historic United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., a fellow of the National Science Foundation, and former Director of Science at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.But I invited Susan to my public-radio show and podcast in this reprise episode for another reason that she states on her LinkedIn profile, alongside all those impressive scientific credentials: because, she says, she loves to show people “the coolness of plants.”So keep an open mind, gardeners, as we explore the “cool” of poison ivy—and of course practical, more obvious matters like what to do to avoid that damn rash. Read along as you listen to the June 22, 2015 edition of my public-r