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Several years ago a friend gave me a selection of homegrown lettuce seedlings for my birthday, and one plant in particular stood out. Its leaves were green with ragged edges, and it had dark purple blotches dotting its foliage. This was, in my view, a seriously unattractive lettuce. I...

Mid-January, and a couple of Siracha plants that are growing outdoors under cover are still ripening fruit. I picked all of these a couple of days ago. That was a welcome development, but it's not at all typical for our area. We're having an unusually warm, wet winter this year. Over the...

Recently I swapped seeds with another enthusiastic gardener in our area, and she gifted me seeds of three kinds of peppers that are all new to me: Marconi, Sheep Nose, and Arapaho. Today I will start pre-sprouting them-- but she also brought me seedlings of each variety, which is amazing. I...

Many of us are either buried in snow or else looking out on our soggy, flooded winter gardens-- but fear not! It's almost February, and it won't be long before tomato seedlings are popping up all over The Easy Garden. Have any of you started your tomatoes? In early January I started a few...

We are looking to preserve some of the vegetables that we grow in our garden, and one of our goals for the summer is to master the art of fermenting green beans. Have you done this before, and do you have a recipe that you follow? Does fermenting work better with a larger volume of ferment--...

This spring I've been using Ladbrooke soil blocking tools to create compressed cubes of moist soil for starting seeds, and it has been a great experience. With the mini soil blocker it's possible to make tiny but still uniform blocks that are about the size of a sugar cube. These are perfect...

Sorghum will be a new crop for me this year, and after having read through past mentions of it in various threads I still have so many questions about it. I am hoping that some of you who have grown it before might be able to offer suggestions. The varieties that I will be planting are Ba Ye...

Gardening is a big part of my life. I just LOVE to dig in the dirt, and for the last couple of years I have taken a deep dive into learning about how to grow my own flowers and vegetables instead of purchasing transplants. This has proved to be more interesting and rewarding than I ever could...

Not sure if any of you have this pest where you live, but European Chafer Beetles showed up in our area about 20 years ago and they have been reeking havoc ever since. The adults look like small brown flying humbug candies, resembling a moth when in flight. In June they swarm around our Ginkgo...

Today my paper bags full of dried up little ranuncula corms are coming out of storage for a quick soaking and then pre-sprouting. I first tried them last spring, and at the time I was a little bit intimidated about how to grow them. The corms can be kind of expensive to buy initially, so it...

Just wondering if anyone has been successful in reducing or eliminating Sooty Mold on a camelia shrub. We have a nice camelia by our deck, but the black fungus is making quite a mess, and it takes a LOT of scrubbing to remove it from the deck boards. I think ants bring pests that cause...

I grew calendula for the first time last year and were they ever wonderful to have in the garden-- but I had trouble getting them to germinate. Very weird seeds. They seem almost prehistoric. Since it is winter and I have time on my hands I decided to try sprouting a few on a moist paper...

We had such warm, dry weather last fall so I was late planting my garlic, not getting it in the ground until November 21st. For the first time I ordered a couple of early cultivars, Thai Purple and Shandong. They suggest that the early garlics aren't necessarily as tasty as the later ones...

I have started two large batches of leaf lettuce seedlings over the course of the past month, and while I am having good results getting them started I ran in to a bottle neck with my first batch now that the seedlings are about 3-4 weeks old. The lettuce seedlings are developing a broad habit...

I have loved gardening for more than 40 years, but for some reason only discovered growing dry beans this past summer-- and I am smitten. Growing beans has kind of allowed me to explore the world with horticulture, and my garden is becoming the UN of beans! This year I found beans to be a very...