Why Dates Are on Everyone’s Go-to Snack List Right Now

MELISSA CLARK IS ONE OF US. The prolific cookbook author and “The New York Times” food columnist has a homegrown Dahlia (her young daughter); knows a rutabaga from a turnip (so many people don’t!), and is intrepid in harvesting year-round farm-and-garden gleanings—if not in her own backyard, then in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market, where she has been a year-round customer for years, come hell or ice age. With her latest, “Cook This Now,” the hard part will be figuring out which of 120 recipes to start with. Win one of two copies I’ve bought to share—and get her recipe for Carroty Mac and Cheese right now.

Whether you get technical or go generic with your terminology, it’s time to tuck tubers and corms and tuberous roots and rhizomes and yes, even some true bulbs into the soil for years of enjoyment. But which ones, and how?With help from horticulturist Jonathan Wright of Chanticleer Garden, who joined me on my public radio show and podcast, we’ll learn some less-than-expected uses of bulbs, like massed in lawns [photo below, at Chanticleer], and layered in containers. Plus: tips such as which bulbs are more animal-proof tha

Karen Perkins has since 2009 owned Garden Visions Epimediums, a small retail mail-order nursery located in rural central Massachusetts, and founded in 1997 by Darrell Probst. She’s also open for visits and in-person shopping a couple of spectacular weeks each May during Epimedium peak season.Read along as you listen to the March 11, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).epimediums for shade gardens, with karen perkinsQ. I wish

That means more and more I’m layering native plants into my landscape, but which ones among the ones tagged “native” do the very best job? You’ve probably heard the word “nativar,” as in a cultivar of a native plant, but what does it mean and how effective are these often showier cultivated varieties at supporting wildlife? I asked Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology at University of Delaware and author of “Bringing Nature Home” and “The Living Landscape,” to help me understand more about this important subject.We talked about what a cultivar change–bigger flowers, maybe, or colorful leaves, or smaller overall stature–actually does to a plant from the point of view of insects. And I learned about a beta version of

Whatever your current level of ID and interpretation skills, plan to sharpen them with help from Nathaniel T. Wheelwright, who is the Bass Professor of Natural Sciences at Bowdoin College in Maine, and co-author with biologist Bernd Heinrich of the new book, “The Naturalist’s Notebook,” which both teaches us to become closer observers and also provides a five-year calendar-journal for recording our observations.Read along as you listen to the Dec. 4, 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). Plus: Comment in the box at the very bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of the new book–and for information about where to enter to win o

I had to shut up and turn the mic over to Ken, an award-winning garden author and photographer of more books than I can count or apparently write myself. And he began (jokingly) like this:Ken: “Hello and welcome to ‘A Way to Garden. I’m your visiting host, Ken Druse. I’m the author of, as someone said, soon to be 20 books on gardening, and our guest, our special guest today is someone who is familiar to all listeners to the radio show and the podcast and visitors to Margaret

Its author, Rick Wright, has long delved deep into the world of birds, and he has a rich academic background, too, in languages, philosophy, life sciences, and even medieval studies. Through it all he kept on birding and is a leader for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, and the author of state-specific American Birding Association guides, for Arizona and for his home state of New Jersey.We talked about learning to identify sparrows; about the sparrows that don’t look like sparrows at all–the juncos and towhees–about how particular birds are built for migration (or not), and more. And I’ve included a book giveaway: enter to win by commenting at the very bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the April 8, 2019 ed

In a world where we often focus on what product we can add, as if there is an instant solution, Annie says this: “If you take a step back and think about how the natural world works without your influence, and then as many lessons as you can derive from that toward your own practices in your garden, you’re going to be a much better gardener.”Less is often more.Annie is also founder and director of Growing Chefs, a field-to-fork food education program, and co-founder of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Plus, she wrote “The Rooftop Growing Guide” (affiliate link).Annie will be one of the expert presenters at the upcoming Workshop Experience W

Also on the agenda today, a tip on a bulb you may not have grown before, but could order to plant this fall, surprise lilies. Above: giant knapweed (Centaurea macrocephala) and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) in her dry garden.Jenny Rose Carey is former senior director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Meadowbrook Farm and taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple University, where she also directed the Ambler Arboretum.Plus: Enter to win her new book, “The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide”

“It’s time to expand our vision past supporting birds, butterflies, and bees, and fully integrate the most challenging animal of all, the human being, into our native plant gardens,” he writes.So what all would that mean, and how do we do that?Jared Rosenbaum is a botanist and restoration ecologist, and he’s also co-owne

Nearly everyone has ajunk drawer. And while the synonymously messy drawer filled with junk like scraps of paper, pens, gum wrappers, bobby pins, and the random key or two is often the bane of frustration, it can be a necessity for storing miscellaneous items.

If you are looking for Maryland Native Plant List to plan your garden, we have compiled the best ones below!