Growing dahlias in pots is also a great option for someone with a small space—a small patio, front porch, or deck—provided the area gets at least six to eight hours of sunlight a day. If you’re at the garden center, dahlias are usually found in the flower bulb section. and online, you’ll also usually find them listed under summer bulbs. However plants are actually grown from tubers. Dahlia tubers look more like an oddly-shaped potato than a flower bulb....

I usually spread my garlic crop out over a couple of my raised beds. If I still need space, I’ll pop a few extra here and there in an ornamental garden. Jessica has written a great article about the differences between hardneck and softneck garlic. Another great resource is a book written a few years ago by Canadian author Liz Primeau called In Pursuit of Garlic. Before we talk about when to harvest garlic, let’s first discuss how to harvest garlic scapes and ensure they don’t go to waste!...

When the photographer for my book, Donna Griffith, grabbed an old window a mutual friend was giving away, I enlisted my brother-in-law, Deon, to help me figure out how to build a cold frame to fit. You could also use clear plastic for the lid. The idea is that the glass or plastic will harness the winter sun’s warmth, allowing plants to grow inside. Now we’re not talking tomatoes here, but there are several things you can grow, including root vegetables and greens....

Types of garlic There are hundreds of varieties of garlic to grow, but two main types: hardneck and softneck. Jessica writes about them in this detailed article, but here are the basic differences: Hardneck garlic: I grow hardneck garlic in my Northern garden as it’s very cold tolerant. The plants produce a central stem, called a scape which gardeners typically snap off in early summer in hopes of promoting large bulbs....

My garlic scapes are usually ready sometime in June. If you didn’t plant any garlic yourself, keep an eye out for the scapes at local farmers’ markets. Garlic scapes are delicious when roasted with potatoes or other veggies. My favorite way to eat scapes is to make them into a pesto. I’ve adapted this garlic scape pesto recipe from a few that I’ve discovered over the years. I stir it into pasta topped with lots of fresh parmesan....

Why add garden soil amendments? We often hear that soil is made up of particles like sand, silt, and clay, but that’s only part of the story. Soil is a complex ecosystem containing minerals, organic materials, microbes, and countless organisms which vary from region to region, and often from yard to yard. Soil anchors plants, but it also provides water and nutrients. New gardeners quickly learn the importance of building soil, and experienced gardeners prize the dark crumbly compost that comes out of their backyard bins....

The earlier you sow in August the better for some of these crops, so you can maximize their growing time before temperatures start to drop. As the days become shorter, plant growth will start to slow, too. Some years, if I’m away on vacation or busy, I’ve bent the rules a bit (i.e. planting a little later) and still ended up with some reasonable harvests. But with fall vegetable gardening, much will also depend on factors like the weather and where your garden is located....

What are spider mites? Although they damage plants like many insect pests do, spider mites aren’t bugs. They’re actually a type of arachnid, related to larger spiders and ticks. They’re so small that you need a strong magnifying glass or macro lens to be able to make them out, and, even then, they just look like oval-shaped dots. Like their larger cousins, spider mites do make webs, but they don’t use them to catch prey....

Rather than sacrificing flowers in my ornamental gardens for a vase, it’s nice to have flowers to pick that were grown specifically with summer bouquets in mind, which is why I’ve allowed fun annuals, like cosmos and zinnias and sunflowers to take over one whole raised bed. I’ve gathered a few tips for making raised flower beds There is no one superior raised bed design that is specifically suited for flowers....

The container gardening trend is so hot, in fact, that it’s the topic of my forthcoming book with Cool Springs Press. I’ve spent the entire summer scouting locations, shooting photographs, and designing container gardening projects for the book, and I gotta say, I’m astonished by the amount of creativity in the container gardening world! It seems that today’s gardeners are more willing than ever to take risks when designing their containers....

What is frost cloth? Frost cloth, also known as a row cover, frost blanket, reemay, or garden fleece, is a lightweight material made from spun bonded polypropylene fabric. I’ve been using it in my vegetable garden for decades and write about its versatility in my book Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden. My goal is to garden smarter, not harder and frost cloth is an important part of my season extension and pest prevention strategies....

Pea sprouts and pea shoots You may have noticed there are a lot of terms used for describing immature pea plants: sprouts, microgreens, pea tips, and shoots among others. However there is some overlap and I divide them into two main groups: sprouts and shoots. Pea sprouts – Sprouts are the first stage in the lifecycle of a plant. They’re grown in water and harvested after just a few days when the root tip begins to grow....

Why include shrubs in a pollinator garden Before we introduce you to these five shrubs for pollinators, it’s important to understand why shrubs are an important addition to a pollinator garden in the first place. While bees and butterflies forage for nectar and pollen on a broad diversity of flowering perennials and annuals, shrubs fill in several important gaps that those types of plants leave open. In addition to offering a source of nectar via their flowers, the foliage of certain shrubs can also serve as a larval host plant for various butterfly and moth caterpillars....

This bias on growing beans isn’t limited to my mother-in-law and I. In fact, North American gardeners have generally not embraced runners as a garden veggie, but rather grow them as ornamental plants. Take a peek at any North American seed catalogue, and you’ll see two, perhaps three varieties of runners offered, typically listed in the annual flower section of the catalogue. Alternatively, in the UK where runners are a popular crop, most seed catalogues will list at least dozen varieties, detailing the edible characteristics of each....

Upon further inquiry, we always come to learn the caller is asking about a big-leaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla. While these old-fashioned hydrangeas bear gorgeous balls of pink or blue flowers, they’re notorious for their unreliably here in the northern U.S. Some years they bloom beautifully, while other years there’s not a single bud in sight. If you’re a USDA zone 5 or 6 gardener who has faced this experience yourself, here are a few tips you can use right now to get better blooms from your hydrangea....

Why curing onions is important If you plan to store the pungent bulbs for winter use, curing onions is a necessary step in the process. Without proper curing, onion bulbs turn soft and mushy. Their dry, fully cured skins protect them from desiccation and keep pathogens from entering the bulb, causing rot, and developing a foul smell. Curing onions also allows you to store them at room temperature, rather than having to keep them in the fridge....

What is a straw bale cold frame A straw bale cold frame is a low cost temporary structure used to protect crops when the temperature drops in autumn and winter. It’s essentially a miniature greenhouse. Building cold frames is a great way to increase self-sufficiency in a home vegetable garden and extend the typical harvest season by a couple of months. The box of the frame is made from insulting straw bales and topped with a clear top to capture solar energy....

What are seed potatoes? Seed potatoes are not actually seeds at all. Instead, they are simply potato tubers that are used for planting. Most often, they are saved from last year’s harvest and stored over the winter under exacting conditions to keep them firm and disease free. Rather than saving some of your own harvest for replanting the next year, I recommend purchasing new certified disease-free seed potatoes at the start of each growing season....

When to pick tomatoes: two strategies As a tomato ripens, its color deepens, the sugar content rises, and the fruits soften. Traditionally garden tomatoes are picked when fully mature, but in reality ripening can happen on the vine or on your kitchen counter. In fact, I’ve found that there are advantages to harvesting tomatoes before they’re fully ripe; fewer pest issues, less cracking and splitting, and reliable ripening. Below you’ll find information on harvesting both ripe and partially ripe tomatoes as well as tips on how to ripen the fruits indoors....

Annual herbs to plant in fall: While many perennial herbs like thyme and oregano prefer well-drained soil that’s not overly fertile, the below annual herbs grow best when given compost and regular irrigation. Parsley – Of all the herbs I grow in fall, parsley is the one that I use the most. I’m constantly clipping sprigs of my curly and flat-leaved parsley for salads, marinades, soups, and pastas. Parsley’s ease of cultivation and versatility in the kitchen make it a prime candidate for a list of herbs to plant in fall....