must read: ‘late migrations,’ with margaret renkl

The harvest video was on Hudson Valley Seed’s Instagram account, and one of that New York-based organic seed company’s co-founders, K Greene, talked with me about growing shallots and their more commonly grown cousin, garlic. He also shared some other ideas for succession sowing of edibles whose planting time still lies ahead—whether for fall harvest or to over-winter and enjoying in the year ahead. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 7, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) o

MY UPCOMING DROPOUT MEMOIR (“And I Shall Have Some Peace There,” February 2011, Grand Central Publishing) is no longer a private matter—not some secret document whose life plays out on my dining table and my editor’s desk. Recently it pulled itself together into what’s called an Advance Reading Copy, resembling a paperback version of the book-to-be, and showed off at BookExpo America, a trade fair at the Javits Center in New York City.

FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE AREA, meaning the Hudson Valley of New York State or thereabouts, these spring events here in the garden and elsewhere may be of interest: Saturday March 14, Spring Garden Day, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rensselaer County. (518) 272-4210. This popular, day-long annual event in Troy, New York, includes a choice of classes, from growing orchids at home to successful vegetable gardening.

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

In the fall of 2016, Dr. Connally won a $1.6 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control to fund a four-year study, in coordination with the University of Rhode Island, to gauge the effectiveness of various tick control methods in the areas around people’s homes. She’ll tell us more about the angles being pursued, and also about self-care topics, from treated clothing to the use of topical repellents and more.Read along as you listen to the Dec. 11, 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).backyard tick research, with dr. neeta connallyQ. A little context first: You’re in the Northeast, where a lot of the cases of Lyme in the United States occur, but there are multiple tick species around the nation. You

First, the workshop back story: Last year, Bob Hyland and I started teaching together again, something we hadn’t done in more than a decade, not since our “old lives” in New York City, where he was head of horticulture for Brooklyn Botanic Garden. What started as, “Do you want to do a container workshop at Berkshire Botanical Garden together?” turned into another and another over at his nursery. The bug bit us; we remembered how much fun we have working together this way, so this year’s schedule reflects that.The April and September workshops begin here with light breakfast, tours and teaching in the garden, then we all head over to Loomis Creek for two-plus hours more learning. Hope to see you at some of the events.MARCH Sunday, March 7 – Reading at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA, with my sister, Marion Roach Smith, to celebrate Paris Press’ publication of its “Sisters” anthology. 2 PM. Free, but must RSVP to in

I’ve been open as part of their Open Days scheme for 15 years (hard to believe) and even before all that am proud to have introduced the Conservancy to what has become a signature project, the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden (which was part of my “beat” when I was garden editor of “Newsday” on Long Island). Later I visited and covered many of their other projects in the pages of “Newsday” and then “Martha Stewart Living.” Read all about it–along with details of extra goodies like plant sales and guest lectures at this year’s open garden days at my place.And join me in saying a giant thank you to the Conservancy for all they have done for American gardens and gardeners.

Kate Spring, and her husband, Edge Fuentes, founded Good Heart Farmstead in Vermont in 2013, which serves up to 100 customers each season who subscribe to their CSA share program. Their farm is a hybrid business structure called an L3C, a low-profit, limited-liability company, where part of the mission is to support Vermonters in need of food access.Kate’s also a writer and the only person I know with her very own brand new yurt, which I couldn’t wait to hear about after having seen it be constructed on her Instagram.Read along as you listen to the December 14, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).mastering microgree

September is the new January, says Gretchen, so “Happier at Home” chronicles a series of experiments and adjustments to her life that took place from September to May. (In Gretchen’s smart, not-preachy school of self-improvement, we happily get the summers off apparently!)“To feel more at home at home, I had to know myself, and face myself,” she writes, and her curriculum starts with a hard look at topics like Possessions (the September chapter), Body, Marriage, Parenthood and even Time (that devilish one), among others.  As different as she and I are–Gretchen, a former attorney, is a mother to two small girls, an urban dweller, a wife–I found something thought-provoking in every section of “Happier at Home.”Gretchen doesn’t garden, or want to garden, but on her blog recently she posted this footnote to a story she wrote: She can tell gardening makes me happy, I think. For me, of course, home is everything—because it i

This old-friend thalictrum is a Japanese native, but there are American species, too, such as the charming little rue anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides, with white blooms in spring near the woodland floor.My summertime companion, though, produces lavish lavender 3-foot-wide sprays of tiny flowers, each with showy yellow stamens, on 10-foot stems that are painted appropriately purple (below) and dressed up with delicate, blue-green foliage that

Read along as you listen to the June 26, 2107 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).evaluating monarda with george coombs of mt. cubaQ. We’ve talked before on the show about your past trials of other native plants like Baptisia and Heuchera—and native plants are the mission of Mt. Cuba, which is both a garden for visiting and a research center, right?A. Mt. Cuba Center is actually a former du Pont family estate, the Copeland family estate, and they left their estate to become a public garden. What kind of sets us apart from others in the area is that we focus on native plants. We broadly define our nativity region as the Eastern United States.We do a lot of work promoting plants in a display capacity in the gardens itself, and then we also do research like what I do, trying to help

Los Angeles-based Shulman is not a vegetarian, she says, but finds herself eating that way a lot–which may sound familiar to others, especially with the farm market and garden harvest season just getting into high gear.“I realized that people have problems with the concept of the vegetarian main dish. There’s really no lexicon for it. If you eat meat, you can ask, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and you can say, ‘Chicken,’ and that’s a good enough answer.“In my house, I do have one-word answers. When my son says, ‘What’s for dinner?’ I can say, ‘Frittata,’ or ‘Gratin,’ or ‘Pasta,’ and his only question will be, ‘With what?’ And