Summer vegetables can make a garden feel like a produce factory with a very short attention span. One week, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and zucchini seem determined to bury the kitchen counter, and then suddenly the plants slow down, look exhausted and start offering little more than yellow leaves and one lonely cucumber hiding under the…
fall garden
Your Grocery Bill May Help Decide What Belongs in Your Fall Garden
A grocery bill can reveal something surprisingly useful about a garden: which vegetables deserve precious planting space. If a bag of salad greens disappears from the refrigerator every few days, growing those greens in a fall garden may make far more sense than filling a bed with something that rarely reaches the dinner table. Fall…
11 Vegetables That Can Keep Your Garden Producing Into Winter
Summer gets all the attention in the vegetable garden, but the cooler months actually have a pretty impressive lineup of their own. With the right crops, a garden can keep supplying fresh vegetables well after tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers have packed up for the season. It’s all about choosing vegetables that handle cold weather rather…
6 August Garden Jobs That Make September Easier
August has a sneaky way of turning the garden into a to-do list with leaves. One minute the beds look wonderfully productive, and the next, spent flowers, sprawling vines, ripe vegetables, weeds, and thirsty containers seem to demand attention all at once. A few well-timed jobs in August can prevent that September pileup and make…
6 Ways to Stretch a Small Garden Budget Into Fall
A garden budget can disappear surprisingly fast. A few seed packets here, a bag of potting mix there, then suddenly a perfectly innocent trip to the garden center has turned into a receipt that deserves its own zip code. Fall gardening does not have to work that way, though, because the garden already contains plenty…
5 Low-Cost Ways to Add Vertical Interest After Vines Fade
Vines can make a garden look like it has hired a professional stylist, right up until they finish blooming, turn brown, or retreat for the season. When that happens, all that wonderful vertical space can suddenly look awkwardly empty, but a faded vine does not mean the garden has to collapse into a flat sea…
7 Plants That Offer Seeds Birds Can Eat Through Fall
A garden can keep feeding birds long after the last bee disappears from the flowers, and the trick often involves doing absolutely nothing. Instead of cutting every faded bloom to the ground, gardeners can leave mature seedheads standing so finches, sparrows, chickadees, and other seed-eating birds can pick through them as fall progresses. Cornell Lab…
Should You Remove Lower Leaves From Brussels Sprouts?
Brussels sprouts grow in a wonderfully odd fashion, with little cabbage-like buds tucked into the leaf axils along a tall central stalk. The lower sprouts mature first while newer ones develop higher up, which makes leaf removal more nuanced than grabbing pruning shears and giving the plant a haircut. A few well-timed cuts can make…
8 Plants That Add Structure After Summer Flowers Begin Fading
Summer flowers know how to make an entrance. By August, however, some of those dazzling blooms start looking a little tired, leaving gaps where all that glorious color once stood. The good news is that a garden does not need to become a collection of floppy stems and fading petals once summer reaches the home…
Crops to Sow in July for Cooler-Weather Harvests
July can make a vegetable garden feel like it has entered a survival reality show. The sun beats down, lettuce bolts overnight, and tender greens sometimes look personally offended by the afternoon heat. Yet July also offers a golden opportunity: sow the right crops now, and the garden can deliver crisp, sweet, cool-weather harvests just…