productive fall and winter vegetable gardens, with niki jabbour

My name is Diane Porter, and I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. We are a Zone 5 area here, so I like pretty hardy plants. Daylilies (Hemerocallis, Zones 4–9 for most cultivars) fit my garden perfectly. I have always enjoyed gardening and  actually worked at a local garden center for a few seasons. The gardening bug hit hard!

How to Grow and Care for Braeburn Apple Trees Malus x domestica ‘Braeburn’

There are many gardens and monuments dedicated to Peace and they are worth seeking out when you are on your travels.

Japanese camellias (Camellia japonica) are one of the most recognized evergreen shrubs planted in Southern gardens. As the common name implies, these beauties are native to the Orient. The first ones were introduced to South Carolina by a Frenchman, André Michaux, who was a botanist to King Louis XVI. Michaux developed the first botanical garden in the South near Charleston in 1786. He shared his camellias with his neighbor, Henry Middleton, who started his landscaped gardens at Middleton Place in 1741. One of the original plants survives at Middleton today, a beautiful double red camellia ‘Reine des Fleurs’ (Queen of Flowers).

WHO VISITED: We met Twitter friends like @GardenGuyKenn (all the way from Michigan) and other blog-commenters like Bobster (all the way from Rhode Island) and Leslie (from Connecticut) and Ailsa and Patti, from Ottawa, Ontario.We met Joyce from Iowa and Michelle from Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania (31 miles from Wilkes-Barre, apparently) and Sandra from Clarks Summit (also Pennsylvania, 8 miles from Scranton) and Julie from Reston, Virginia, and Stephanie from Bainbridge Island, Washington, and Stephanie from Seattle (both Stephanies, both from prime garden country…a coincidence?). Someone signed in as being from Scotland, but can that be so? And all of you, thank you, whether from a mile down the road or a country or ocean away…or whether you just visited our virtual tour yesterday.Some of t

First, the disclaimer. I know I said the plant is specifically Pinus strobus ‘Nana,’ and that’s how mine came to me, but here’s the wrinkle: ‘Nana’ is kind of a grab-bag name for many relatively compact- or mounded-growing Eastern white pines, a long-needled species native to Eastern North America, from Canada to Georgia and out to Ohio and Illinois.Today, you can shop for named varieties that are really compact, with distinctive and somewhat more predictable shapes, like‘Coney Island’ or ‘Blue Shag’ (to name two cultivars selected by the late Sydney Waxman at the University of Connecticut, who had a particular passion for this species).I could have pinched the tips of the new growth, or candles, by half each year to keep

(Note on Gallery: Clicking on a thumbnail gives you a large, higher-quality image.)Winterberry hollies are native to swampy areas from Canada south to Florida, from Wisconsin and Missouri east.  Despite their heritage in wetlands, I grow my plants in normal to dry soil, at the edges of my hilly outer fields. I just don’t have wet lowland to offer on my windy hillside.Though they’ll fruit much better in a moist year than a dry one (as with all fruiting plant

IF YOU ARE STILL USING any synthetic chemicals on your lawn, I hope you will stop. So does Paul Tukey. When he founded SafeLawns in 2006, Paul says, “It didn’t occur to people that their lawns could be dangerous.”“The sad reality is that we know that a lot of the chemicals used to grow the lawn (the fertilizers), or the chemicals used to control weeds or insects or fungal diseases—all  of these chemicals are designed to kill things, and they can make us very sick, and they make the water very sick, and the soil very sick, and the air very unhealthy.”Giving up chemicals doesn’t mean you have to pave over your front yard.“We will have lawns long after all these chemicals are banned in the United States, as they have been banned in Canada,” says Paul—explaining that more than 80 percent of Canadians cannot use weed and feed products, or glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) because they are

For a more detailed answer to each question, plus an extra question and answer or two, be sure to listen in. I’ve recapped the highlights below:Q. I have some plants in my garage that still have to be planted. Is it too late? I’ve never planted this late before, but I just got too busy with my job.–Michelle in Canada (hardiness Zone 5B)A. Yes—definitely get them in the ground, whether plunged (pots and all) or planted properly (removed from their pots first). I confess I often simply plunge

In a series of emails and Skype calls since I began A Way to Garden in 2008, Gayla and I have found so much shared turf:We two longtime organic gardeners can get riled up—over topics ranging from the environment, to chemical companies and the “business” of gardening in general, to dyed mulch and more (her most recent rant on offcolor mulch is way down in this post). We both overdo it—on plants, work, and a major inclination to cart home lots of rusty buckets and other “vintage” metal stuff from tag sales. We both live in the garden offseason crammed into spaces where in many rooms, the plants get a majority of the square footage. (And why not?) In addition to the usual tools, you’ll find us both with a camera in the garden, though Gayla is a professional ph

First, some background: Great Lakes Worm Watch is a citizen-science outreach organization, working to map the state of the earthworms—and the habitats they’re living in.“We want to know where earthworms are across the landscape,” says Ryan—and that means even beyond the Great Lakes area, where the project began.  (There is a Canada Worm Watch, too, for those across the border; researchers at the University of Vermont, at the Cary Institute in Millbrook, New York, and elsewhere are likewise studying earthworm invasion.)Individuals, schools or garden groups can sign on help collect data on what worms are fou

My first step with any weed—meaning: wrong plant, wrong place—is to I.D. it, as I have said before, and try to understand its life cycle, so I have a shot at approaching it in the most effective way, and at the right time of year. (More on how to do that, and a link to weed I.D. tools, is at the bottom of the page.) I know I have my work cut out—and probably won’t do better than reducing them, with complete elimination unlikely.mugwort (artemisia vulgaris)THE NURSERY INDUSTRY agrees with me on this one: bad news. In the Eastern U.S. and Canada, it’s a major issue, because mugwort’s energetic rhizomes can quickly overtake places where regular cultivation isn’t called for, such as a row of