the promise of roasted brussels sprouts

Good, firm, mild flavoured Brussels Sprouts are a heavy yielding crop that only need a bit of care and consideration. Here are our top tips.

I have found a new commitment to growing and eating Brussels sprouts. From 3 or 4 plants last year I ate several hearty meals including a socially distanced Christmas (not because of any sprout side effects).

Are you frustrated because there are dandelions and other weeds in your lawn? Did you know that dandelion flowers provide one of the first springtime sources of pollen for bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects?

A recipe with 3-ingredients that is super easy and full of fall flavors.

Summertime is upon us, and here in South Carolina, that means garden-fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, and watermelon until our bellies ache. However, if we haven’t planned a vegetable garden like THIS, where can we find all of this delicious produce? During the summer season, farmers markets can be found sprouting up throughout the state, where shoppers can buy in-season, nutritious produce while supporting local farmers. To help make the most out of your next farmers market trip, explore the following tips:

Though I cannot see without a hand magnifying lens if they have the requisite tiny markings, I’m betting from its overall appearance and velvety surface that this is the larval stage of the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, because I have also seen its adult stage flying around, a smallish butterfly with a couple of smudgy spots on each white wing.This article from Missouri Botanical Garden is extremely detailed on my latest visitor, also known as the imported cabbage worm, and other pests of cabbage relatives, including cabbage looper and the caterpillar of the diamondback moth. The latter two caterpillars are smooth, not velvety, among other clues to differentiating among the three.As with all caterpillars, these can be controlle

THIS WEEK I BUILT A GREENHOUSE. Well, to be more correct, Susan (who has worked with me in the garden for many years, for which I am endlessly grateful), built a greenhouse.

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

MY GARDENING LIFE STARTED with a hedge—cutting one back hard, specifically. It was the threadbare, tall old privet surrounding my childhood home, and I was determined to “rejuvenate” it, after reading about the process in a book. No artful hedge has ever been created by my hands, though—a fact that feels all the more lamentable after watching Sean Conway’s video tour (above) of designer and nurseryman Piet Oudolf’s garden in the Netherlands. What magic.

(They’re also really beautiful, if you look at them up close–but beautiful in the way that Japanese beetles are beautiful, meaning not enough for me to count them as beloved pets and keep them around or anything.) Squish!The cross-striped cabbage worm larvae are sort of blue-gray, and as their name suggests striped across their bodies. Not so many years back, it was more a pest in Southern farms and gardens, but has gradually made its way to southern New England, at least. I read up on them in various places–U-Mass Amherst; at the University of Georgia, and so on–and what I conc

YES, IN THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO, preparing to save seeds starts with decisions about what variety to plant in the first place, and rouging out weak and then “off types” that don’t measure up, or conform to the desired traits of that particular tomato or squash or zinnia. Inferior or atypical? Out you go!It’s a process that is repeated throughout the life cycle. For instance, you might pull the lettuce seedlings that are slowest to germinate from your row or cellpack; later pull and eat any with off-type foliage, and perhaps even rogue a third time if some individuals prove more inclined toward disease than others. Only let the best and brightest go to seed and provide the genetics for next year.Want to guard against inadvertent cross-pollination? A chart in the OSA’s guide clarifies what crops are vulnerable (and what close cousins they can cross with—such as carrots with wild Queen Anne’s lace, or that many brassicas, such as Brussels sprouts and kale

MY LIST OF HOMEGROWN INGREDIENTS FOR THE THANKSGIVING TABLE starts with the bumpy, oddball makings of a centerpiece. Gourds (like the warty or Bule ones), though delicious to look at, are more decor than dinner, but I did grow many edible parts of the harvest feast this year: sweet potatoes (which I’ve cooked with you here before) and Brussels sprouts and white potatoes and winter squash and green beans—and come to think of it, there might be something on the menu made with my apples, too, and garlic and parsley and sage and…well, you get the idea.