Invest in a “Transplant Producing Machine”

Flowers are usually the first things that grab our attention when we are selecting plants to add to our landscapes. However, most plants only flower for a short period of time, so it behooves us to consider plants’ other attributes—and there are many! Sometimes the same flowers that seduced us into opening our wallets are replaced with an amazing fruit display. Colorful fruits of all shapes and sizes can add drama to our landscapes throughout the year. In addition to their visual beauty, many fruits are important sources of nutrition for wildlife, particularly birds. Here are a few examples of awesome plants whose fruit shines in the garden in summer, fall, and winter.

Homegrown tomatoes taste heavenly when they are sweet with a hint of tart, acidic flavor. If you want to grow the same, there is a science behind it. Learn the Number One Technique to Produce Sweeter Tomatoes to enjoy a sweet summer harvest!

You don’t have to buy baby food. You can make, and even grow, your own. With a home vegetable garden and some fruits, it’s possible to make delicious, nutritious, and safe baby food at home.

Including more whole foods in your diet, such as fruits and vegetables, can keep your body healthy and functioning at its best. Fruits and vegetables contain high amounts of essential nutrients like fiber, vitamins, and minerals necessary for your body’s health and maintenance. People who eat more fruits and vegetables as part of an overall healthy diet are also likely to have reduced risks for some chronic diseases.

First off, Happy National Nutrition Month! Every year, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics hosts National Nutrition Month and offers education on nutrition and making better food choices. Each year has a theme, and since National Nutrition Month is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the theme is “Fuel for the Future.” Looking into the future, we want to eat with each phase of life in mind and incorporate ways to help protect the environment.

TODAY DWARF AND SEMI-DWARF varieties of apples and other fruit trees are the norm, but when the half-dozen or so apple trees that remain from the old, old orchard I garden in were planted, the norm was full-size or standard trees. Their shapes were barely visible when I bought the property, overgrown with a combination of their own unnecessary, thicket-like growth and miles of multiflora roses and grapevines.

AS I PLANT MY PARSLEY, PICK ASPARAGUS and get ready for tomato transplant time, it gets me thinking about tomorrow (as in “the offseason”) when my Northern garden doesn’t offer up so much food as it will the next few months. No worry, because I am a hoarder—of fresh garden and farmer’s-market produce (though not on sagging shelves like that 1940 Farm Security Administration slide, above!).

She is an Extension Urban Horticulturist with Washington State University, and an associate professor of horticulture and landscape architecture there—and joined me this week on the radio podcast to talk (and debunk) popular garden myths.You know, like whether you should dig a really big hole for trees and shrubs and amend the soil before backfilling. Or whether gravel in the bottom of a container helps drainage, or bone meal is a must (or a bust) for bulbs. Or whether landscape fabrics are really the miracle they claim to be—that has so many people using them as “weed block.”Linda has been

THE ANNUAL RITUAL BEGINS: At tax time in the Northeast, we start our tomato seeds indoors, though many of you may be putting your seedlings out in the garden already or otherwise way ahead of me.

IDON’T THINK THIS DOODLE by the inspirational and eccentric Andre Jordan needs much explanation, except perhaps to say that the only creature not in line for legumes like peas and beans here this year at my seasonal supermarket/vegetable garden has been Margaret. Sigh.

Helping me answer, as he does each month, is my friend and longtime garden writer and photographer, Ken Druse of Ken Druse dot com, author of “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants” and many other favorite garden books.Read along as you listen to the Nov. 13, 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). If you have a question for a future show, post it in comments on this website, or on Ken’s website, or use our contact forms to email us, or ask us at Facebook.com/awaytogarden.the november q&a with ken druseQ. We’re at mid-November. How much frost have you had, and what zone ar

And last week I wrote a tomato growing story as part of a garden series I’ve been doing in “The New York Times,” and this week I wanted to continue that tomato theme and talk about them with Mr. Tomato himself, Craig LeHoullier, a.k.a. NC Tomato Man and author of the classic book, “Epic Tomatoes (affiliate link). Comment in the box at the bottom of the page to enter to win a copy.Craig has gardened and grown tomatoes in areas of the U.S. as different as New England and Seattle, Pennsylvania and Raleigh, North Carolina, and lately in the mountains of Western North Carolina, too. He’s one of the founders of the Dwarf Tomato Project that we’ve talked about on the show before, and generally just an all tomato all the time