versatile succulents, indoors and out, with wave hill’s harnek singh

I admire Cyclamen more and more as the years go by.

Ivy is a versatile green or variegated plant that climbs or acts as ground cover. As an evergreen plant grown for its leaves the plants would need nitrogen based fertiliser but I have found Ivies grow well even in poor soil.

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).

There is no reason why you should settle down for an empty, boring backyard when there is so much that can inspire you. Check out our post on how Your Backyard Can Be the Best Hang Out Place with these DIYs!

With all that in mind, I made my annual frantic call with some urgent tomato questions to today’s guest, Craig LeHoullier in North Carolina, the NC Tomato Man as he’s known on social media, author of the classic book, “Epic Tomatoes” (affiliate link). Craig knows more about these cherished fruits than almost anyone I’ve ever met. He even shares that in live sessions each week on his Instagram account where you can ask your questions and get solid answers. I asked Craig how he’s doing and what we should all be doing to bolster a bountiful harvest and also about which fruits to save next year’s seed from anyhow and other tomato questions. Read along a

2 tbsp canola oil 12 oz package original breakfast sausage links 4 green onions chopped with white and green portions separated 8 oz portabella mushrooms, sliced 1-pint cherry tomatoes, halved 1 tsp dried thyme or 1 tbsp fresh thyme ½ tsp salt 3 cups water 1 cup milk 1 cup grits (white or yellow) ¼ cup butter 4 oz shredded cheddar cheese Heat oil in a large sauté pan. Add sausage links and cook until browned and thoroughly cooked. Remove sausage and keep warm. In the same pan used to cook sausage, add the white portion of the chopped green onion and mushrooms. Sauté until tender. Add tomatoes, thyme and salt and sauté until the tomatoes are tender. Add sausage back to the pan and gently stir to evenly heat.

Ferns have been on the planet for more than 300 million years—about twice as long as flowering plants—and in recent years breeders with sophisticated eyes have introduced extra-showy varieties for our gardens.No wonder there is a focus on ferns, since they are naturally deer-resistant, mostly adapted to shady gardens, and hey, you don’t need to deadhead them since they’re not flowering plants. You can’t attribute any of those qualities to, say, a daylily.On my radio show and podcast, Tony treated me to a 101 on ferns and how to use them in the garden (that’s a tiny section of the 28-acre private nonprofit Juniper

Lovers of succulents and oddball plants in general grow bowiea with most of its showy, round green bulbs above the soil surface, and with its twining filigree of stem-like foliage trained up onto some kind of support. That’s how the plant in my dining room (shown) is growing right now. Probably neither is what happens in the wild, but no matter; let the foliage climb up something or let it dangle; bury the bulbs a lot or hardly at all.Order a baby at Logee’s, or better yet order three and cluster them in one pot for company. Each bulb can reach 8 inches in diameter over time, and as for the foliage—there seem to be no end to it (until it simply stops).What matters is that you give it bright light and gritty soil and respect bowiea’s desire to sleep all winter. Stop watering it when the tendrils start to turn yellow and dry up in fall, then water not at all or very rarely when it is sleeping. I usually give it a little drink perhaps once a month in winter out

Start with a cold-hardy cultivar if you plant to try to overwinter rosemary in the ground in other than a truly frost-free hardiness zone. ‘Arp’ is the best known, along with ‘Hill Hardy’ (also known as ‘Madalene Hill’ after the late herb gardener from Texas; ‘Arp’ was her discovery, by the way, the result of her search for plants that could take not extremes of cold but the Texas heat). Oregon-based Nichols Garden Nursery’s owner touts ‘Nichols Select’ as being a toughie, too.It’s “as hardy as any I’ve grown, probably Zone 6B, and the flavor is terrific,” Rose Marie Nichols McGee in an interview one spring. “It was planted 25 years ago at our home and survived minus-7 degrees F once. I think this is your best for a long-lived rosemary.”The U.S. National Arboretum website trialed many cultivars, and how they fare on all scores. Even in USDA Zone 7A,

We talked about the advantages of growing from seed, about extra-cooperative little plants like certain sedges and Erigeron (fleabane) that can beautify even tough spots like at the roots of trees, about using pots to announce garden areas and the signature plants of each of the distinct gardens at Wave Hill, too—like larkspur, to name one.the plants of wave hill, with louis bauerQ. Glad to have you on the show, Louis.A. Thanks for asking me.Q. Thank you for saying yes because I need a little help with my plantsmanship over here. [Laughter.] So for people who haven’t visited Wave Hill, which is a must stop for any keen gardener, do you want to just give us the teeny version of why we need tocome visit—a little bit about Wave Hill?A. Well it really i

I KNOW THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE LURE of the garden pulls me outdoors before I change out of my PJs, before I brush my hair, without washing my face. It’s that powerful and seductive a force, indeed, especially with the lawn greening up right now, all verdant and provocative. But I have to say, my dear Andre Jordan, I try to make certain I have my trousers on. Do I sense a pattern in your doodles, a theme of how alcohol figures into horticulture in The Garden According to Andre (and no, I don’t mean for sterilizing pruners):

I just call them all fancy-leaf begonias, but they divide into several structural groups:Fibrous-rooted ones have cane-like stems and often wing-like leaves. Rhizomatous types grow from fleshy, caterpillar-like structures inclined to spread over the pot lips or even stand upward. The extra-flashy Rex begonias, which are a little trickier if you get too cool or too hot since they may defoliate in protest, are rhizomatous. I fail with them; my conditions are not to their liking. There are also semi-tuberous and tuberous begonias, with swollen bases, but my collection doesn’t include any