Category: Gardening Tips

It feels backwards to start planning next year’s garden while this year’s harvest is still coming in, but it’s actually the best time to do it. The successes and failures are fresh in your mind, seed catalogs are starting to roll out their new releases, and the varieties everyone wants tend to sell out by…

Winter squash and pumpkins pile up fast this time of year, and after the freezer jam success from a few weeks back, it’s natural to want to can your way through the harvest too. But this is one spot where we need to slow down, because pumpkin and squash have a genuine food safety issue…

Bare soil is one of the most common — and most avoidable — mistakes in a home garden. Left uncovered all winter, soil erodes, loses nutrients to rain and wind, and starts spring compacted and depleted. A cover crop fixes all three problems for the cost of a seed packet and an afternoon. What a…

If there’s one crop that converts skeptics into fall planters, it’s garlic. You put cloves in the ground in October, more or less forget about them all winter, and by July you’re pulling up heads bigger and better than anything at the grocery store. It’s one of the lowest-effort, highest-reward things you can grow. Timing:…

Saving seeds is one of those things that sounds intimidating until you actually do it once, and then you wonder why you ever bought a $4 packet of something you grew in your own backyard. Fall is prime seed-saving season — plants have finished their cycle, and what’s left on the vine or in the…

There’s a specific kind of relief that comes with the first cool morning in September — the tomatoes have slowed down, the squash vines are looking tired, and the garden is quietly asking to be put to bed. But “cleaning up” in fall isn’t about stripping every bed bare. Done right, it sets up healthier…

How you harvest herbs matters almost as much as when. Cut them the wrong way and growth slows down or the plant bolts early; cut them the right way and most herbs will keep producing right up until frost. The general rule: cut above a leaf node For most bushy herbs (basil, mint, oregano, thyme),…

It feels counterintuitive to plant more in the heat of August, but this is exactly when to start your fall garden. And the payoff is a second harvest just as your summer crops start winding down. Why August is the sweet spot Fall crops need time to mature before the first frost, but many of…

Water deep, not often Light daily watering trains roots to stay near the surface, where they dry out fastest. Instead, water deeply 2–3 times a week so moisture reaches 6–8 inches down, encouraging roots to grow deeper where the soil stays cooler and moister longer. Early morning is the best time — it gives leaves…