stay safe: horticultural vinegar and how to read any pesticide label, with noelle orloff

Do you have dark succulents and wondering how to ensure they stay that way or maybe even get a shade darker? Follow these tips on How to Keep Black Succulents Blacker!

We all love this nutrient-rich fruit that is packed with potassium and many other vitamins and minerals. But the saddest fact is they have a short shelf life. The day you buy them, they are fresh and firm, and pretty soon, they turn brown and floppy. How to avoid this? How to keep them fresh and flavorful? This article has the answers.

The past two years have been far from ordinary. We have all had to learn how to navigate a world with new safety standards and health precautions. From mask-wearing to social distancing and new restrictions on some of our favorite activities, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered our daily habits. Although we have managed to adjust to these “new normals” for some time now, we now have to navigate another holiday season during a global pandemic.

APPARENTLY MRS. ANDRE’S TOMATOES succumbed to “tiny insect things that will not leave our garden alone,” we hear this week from Himself, who very sweetly shared the actual sympathy postcard he drew for Herself on the occasion of her lost tomatoes.

I N A GOOD SPRING, BELOVED PLANTS COME BACK. Not everybody, of course; some just can’t find their way home.

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

If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it

Ellen Blackstone of the BirdNote team (who describes her job there as “writes/edits/finds photos/posts to the website/sits in on recordings”—sort of like my job at A Way to Garden) was kind and patient enough to be our teacher. Remember, parts of each answer are in the 2-minute clips you can stream (all in the green links–or you can read the transcripts of each episode at those links if you prefer). Here we go:nest, versus roostQ. The topic of where birds prefer to live, and especially the role of the nest in their lifestyles, seemed to provoke my readers’ curiosity—and also probably some misconceptions. What’s “home” to a bird? A. The great number of migratory species are all away from their nests–some as far as a different continent–during the nonbreeding season. Even among the residents, the majority of birds do not use their nest as a home but only a place to raise their young.Exceptions would be some hole-nesters that roost in their cavities throughout the year, but they are a real minority. Those might be chickadees or their cousi

In Part 2 (transcript at this link coming shortly) we tackled powdery mildew prevention and aftercare, and what to do when an abundance of roly-poly or sowbugs and pillbugs has descended on the garden. Should you use copper-based fungicides against tomato blight—and what to do after an infestation by the garlic bloat nematode?Ken, of Ken Druse dot com, is a longtime garden writer, author and photographer and all-around great gardener—and great friend. If you have a question for a future show, you can submit it in the comments on either of our websites, or use the contact form to send us an email from either site, or ask us on

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

Phil Simon has been breeding carrots for more than 40 years. He holds a joint position with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Horticulture Department. More likely than not, you’ve eaten carrots with genetics that have come from his breeding work, which today focuses on challenges including tiny pests called nematodes, and breeding varieties with more vigorous tops to stand up to weed pressure.We talked about colorful carrots–orange wasn’t always the standard issue–and why a successful harvest of carrots starts with the same critical first step: cultivate, cultivate, cultivate that soil deeply.Read along as you listen to the February 1, 2021 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future edit

Craig, a.k.a. the NC Tomato Man, a retired chemist and author of the great book “Epic Tomatoes.” He has been showing his Instagram and Facebook followers each variety and progress from seed to fruit on his social-media streams this year. It’s such fun and so informative, and I wanted to know more.I learned about his outstanding varieties, both large- and small-fruited, along with lots of tomato history, and also about why things go wrong: blossoms drop off without forming fruit, or no blossoms happen at all, or fruit is cracked or misshapen, and other issues.Read