Grow Food

Wood chips are widely regarded as an excellent landscaping mulch – and for good reason. Spread out over the soil in a thick layer, wood chip mulch suppresses weeds, preserves …

It happens every year. The end of the gardening season rolls around, and there are still green tomatoes hanging out. In some cases, quite a few. Sure, there are plenty …

Growing vegetables in October? Yes, of course. Even if you’ve already had your first frost, there are still vegetables you can grow this time of year. Let’s take a look …

If you grow tomatoes, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t, then you’ve probably been inundated with the message that you have to grow marigolds, too. After all, marigolds are the …

Fall showed up this week. I went away for a few days, leaving behind a green backyard. When I came home, everything was gold, orange and red. And that means …

Soaking garlic cloves before you plant them is a practice that many gardeners swear by, including organic garlic producers. These same gardeners swear that it improves growth, creates robust roots, …

Most of us are still plucking sun-warmed tomatoes off the vine in September, but by now the plants themselves are starting to look a little rough. (Okay, a lot rough.) …

It’s fall, and that means it’s time to plant asparagus! I know, traditionally, asparagus is planted in the spring. But there are some solid reasons to start your asparagus on …

By the time September rolls around, there are two types of vegetable gardeners. There are the ones that say, “Garden? What garden? That was summer. This is fall. I’m going …

Fall is a time for cozy sweaters, pumpkin spice beer (I’ll leave the lattes to others) and chilly nights around the fire pit. It’s the time when we finish preserving …

Gardeners know the absolute joy of tasting a homegrown tomato, bitten into, right off the vine. It’s why so many of us turn our noses up at those tasteless things …

August has always struck me as a weird month. It’s a month of impatient transition. We’re still dealing with the scorching temperatures of summer; the countertop is hidden beneath a …

When you think about something as old as gardening, rarely do you think of the word “trendy.” But just like with everything else, trends pop up in the gardening community. …

Whether you’re holding on to the last few weeks of summer for dear life or praying for it to hurry up and end, one thing is clear – August begins …

Crop rotation is the practice of rotating the types of vegetables you grow in a given section of your garden each year. The idea behind it is to reduce the …

Did you know you might be contributing to the spread of diseases in your garden? We all like to think we would never be so careless. After all, we spend …

Isn’t it funny how, as gardeners, our favorite thing to grow is often the most problematic? I probably don’t even need to say it to know we’re all thinking about …

It’s summertime and the living is easy. For someone. Somewhere. Or at least that’s what the song says. In my neck of the woods, I’m sweating like crazy, up to …

When was the last time you had a tomato that was absolute perfection? I’m talking about the kind where you put great slabs of it on a BLT, and as …

You’ve been planning for this day since late winter, poking cream-colored seeds into the dirt. You encouraged them under their grow lights when they were skinny little seedlings. Then, when …

I don’t know what it is about tomatoes, but they bring out the competitive gardener in me. When it comes to my tomato plants, I want earlier tomatoes, more tomatoes, …

As gardeners, there’s often this weird belief that if we don’t get our gardens planted within weeks of that all-important final frost date, the whole season is lost. But that’s …

Tomatoes are the drama queens of the vegetable garden. One minute, they’re growing along nicely, filling out with flower clusters and beautiful fruit; the next, they’re throwing a full-blown tantrum. …

If you’re growing tomatoes (whether it’s your first year or your fiftieth), you’ve probably noticed that as the season progresses, the leaves towards the bottom of the plant turn yellow. …