How to Grow Houseplants in a Room with Zero Light (Window-less Room Plants)

If you have an unused room in your home that's mainly being used to store items or it's completely empty, it's time to repurpose it so it can transform into a place that serves your lifestyle and needs well.

If you want a plant for your home that doesn’t grow wide and takes a little space, then you must try Straight Growing Houseplants. They are perfect for urban homes and add color to the decor without asking for too much room.

I got my first glimpse of what have become my seasonal favorites almost 25 years ago, in the Connecticut garden of Marilyn Barlow, when she was starting Select Seeds (which I’m proud is an occasional advertiser on A Way to Garden). Then, the “nursery” was Marilyn’s yard, and the “office” was her kitchen table. And then, I hardly knew any of the vintage plants, climbing or otherwise, that Marilyn was collecting.Though Select Seeds’ focus is on oldtime plants or ones with an oldtime look, the nursery has taken an increasingly forward-looking approach to environmental practices.On the path toward organic growing, says Marilyn, use of neonicotinoids and other systemic chemicals has been completely eliminated. “Right now we’re growing naturally, with the plants and with the seeds that we do grow here,” she explains. “We use predator insects as the main

While browsing the seed catalogs, I fell into a motherlode at Adaptive Seeds out in Sweet Home, Oregon, plus a comprehensive how-to article on the topic, by Adaptive’s co-founder Sarah Kleeger, all the way down to an analysis on a farm scale of how much it cost in manpower hours and supplies to grow them.Last year I intentionally grew dry beans for the first time in any semi-serious way, and it was so rewarding that this year the garden plan calls for more, more, more. Maybe you’ve been an accidental dry-bean grower like I had till then, leaving a tower of ‘Scarlet Runner’ standing until the big fat seeds spill

THE ALLIUMS WERE OFF THIS YEAR HERE (too wet last summer and fall when many summer-dormant kinds want to be dry), but I’m having a good peony crop in 2012.

Few people have a more practiced eye about ferns than Judith, a.k.a. The Fern Madame, who joined me from Fancy Fronds in the State of Washington to introduce us to some distinctive favorites from among her vast collection: ferns with pink-to-bronze early color, with glossy foliage, with forked, divisifine-textured cresting (like the crested uniform wood fern, above).Read along as you listen to the March 5, 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).fern q&a with fancy fronds’ judith jonesQ. I’ve known about you and your catalo

Q. The subheadline of your edible landscaping book is “With a Permaculture Twist.” What’s that about?A. Permaculture is a holistic landscape design technique that was born in the late 70s. A Tasmanian woodsman-cum-professor and one of his students, Bill Mollison and David Holgrem, generated the design of what permaculture is.It’s ecological design in that it observes natural ecological patterns, and then imitates those in ways to create human-centered habitats.It combines form, function and production—and also includes all the elements of alternative energy, sustainable forestry, of course your market gardening, and all the social dynamics. So it doesn’t isolate any one design element; it puts them all

FULL SUN (or light shade in hotter zones), and well-drained soil that’s high in organic matter is the basic regimen (though the sweetbay magnolia, M. virginiana, can also take a wet spot). Give the others those requirements, plus a light layer of aged organic mulch, and they generally will thrive. Fertilizing isn’t needed, says Andrew. (At Scott they only mulch the circles of trees in lawn areas, using a combination of leaf compost and one-year-old composted wood chips.)Magnolias are not the easiest to plant under, however, because of their fleshy, moisture-hogging root systems.  “Some plants that can take dry shade will make a go of it,” he says, suggesting Epimedium, or Asarum, or Christmas fern. Among bulbs, try Scilla, or Chionodoxa, or even toadlilies (Tricyrtis), he recommends.Magnolia grandiflora, the so-called Southern magnol

I’m always happy to see any poppy, anywhere, in all their flouncy forms like old-fashioned party dresses, in a range of colors from delightfully, shockingly bright orange and reds to the palest Victorian-style pastels, and even white.I was thinking of growing more poppies, so I called Marilyn Barlow of Select Seeds, who has tried her hand at more than anyone else I know.I realized that Marilyn and I were sort of h

Dianna Gibson of B&D Lilies, in Port Townsend, Washington, took the time away from tree-felling and bulb-harvesting and all the rest of her giant to-do list on the farm to answer my questions this week. Dianna, a longtime source for American-grown lily bulbs and keen gardener herself, has a large selection of martagons, among other goodies.The so-called martagons—which can loosely refer to the actual species Lilium martagon, or to hybrids of martagon and other species including L. hansonii—bloom just before and with the Asiatic lilies, says Dianna. She calls them, “classic choices for old-style gardens.” The species originated in Europe, and is hardy down to Zone 3, but on the other end of hardiness, “they need some winter chill,” says Dianna, “so Zone 9 works in gardens if they are on the ‘cold side’ of the house and in shade, but not on a south-facing, white house, with a sidewalk.” Zone 8 is safer, and again: don’t bake the

She doesn’t have greenhouses or even a giant garden, but Toronto-based Gayla has plenty of homegrown leafy greens to eat over a very long season—including some wild varieties I bet you’ve never tried. Last time I checked, Gayla was harvesting basketful Number 50-something of the season (above) with more to come.Learn about being “moreganic” plus her favorite greens and best growing tips and who knows what else, because when Gayla and I get to talking…well, you know.Read along as you listen to the Sept. 3, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the

If you want to learn to grow any crop to perfection, call a person who grows them for a living, I figure, and better yet someone who does that in formal trials, where every last detail is recorded and evaluated.Daniel Yoder (above), a research product technician at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, has a specialty in the world of root vegetables, and we talked about prepping the bed to reduce weeds before sowing roots crops; how to space and when to thin the seedlings; keeping them well-watered so they