Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
a quick and simple way to collect and separate milkweed seeds
I don't know about you, but I love scoring free seeds in the wild. This summer I came across a huge patch of milkweed plants that were growing next to the campground we were staying in, and I was able to harvest a couple of seed pods to bring home with me. I've grown butterflyweed before, but not the common milkweed I'd found, and plan to broadcast a few seeds this winter and see how they do. (I've heard that the green seed pods on common milkweed are edible, so now I'm curious!) If you've...
easiest crop to grow over winter (no greenhouse needed)
You are planting garlic this season, right? This set-it-and-forget-it crop is one of my favorite things to grow in the garden because it's super easy to get started, very low-maintenance, free of pests, and doesn't need any winter protection other than a layer of mulch. I know some people tend to get burnt out this time of year and can't even think of planting one more thing in the ground, but trust me that you want to add garlic to your fall checklist. As long as the ground isn't frozen...
jump on these new deals (and improve your soil over winter)
I typically don't like to send more than one email about Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (which ends tonight at 11:59 pm!) but a new deal just popped up that you should know about: Worx Electric Leaf Mulcher I own this exact leaf mulcher and it's 36% off today, which is less than what I originally bought it for! When I got it a few years ago, I used it to shred over 50 yard bags of fallen leaves. (I know... it was a task!) This mulcher handled the workload with zero problems, and I continue to use...
my favorite Prime Day deals (plus I'm giving away 1k in gift cards)
If you're an Amazon Prime member, you've probably been hearing about Prime Big Deal Days for a couple of weeks now. Well, the day is finally here (actually two days) and Amazon Prime Day deals are live and online from October 8-9 only. If you like to save money, this is why we're friends 😁 and this is the place to score some great deals that are often better than Black Friday. It can be an overwhelming shopping experience with SO MANY deals happening each day, but I've sorted through them all...
my 7 favorite cover crops you can eat
I'm a huge fan of cover cropping in fall (and if you read yesterday's email, you understand why). I love the idea of growing something that feeds the soil naturally and puts in more than it takes out. I love the ease of sowing cover crops and being totally hands-off until spring. But what I love most is knowing there are actually quite a few cover crops that are edible—not just the Austrian winter peas and fava beans that you've heard me talk so much about. It's a double benefit that everyone...
how to nurse your soil back to health over winter
I just started my fall cleanup this week: collecting seeds, trimming back perennials, and cutting down the last of my summer crops. We had a hard freeze a couple nights ago, which wiped out the tomatoes and peppers (though the strawberries are looking solid—I even see some new flowers). As I'm rooting around in my raised beds, I can tell the soil is a bit tired. I've got weeds sneaking their way into now-empty spaces, the soil level has gone down a couple inches and I grew 10 big tomato...
how to make your pumpkins and winter squash last for months 🎃
Pssst... If you've been looking for plants to plant this fall, my favorite online nursery FastGrowingTrees is running a huge sale right now! They've got price drops on a nice selection of flowering trees, fruit trees, and privacy trees. Fall happens to be the perfect time to plant that tree you've been thinking about (here's my post on why and how) and any perennials you want to establish. I'm actually bummed we're not ready to do any new plantings this fall, as I see a lot of great deals I'd...
get your tomatoes to ripen on the vine—faster
Gardening in Central Oregon, I've become a bit of a weather nut. We have a weather station at home (an older version of this one) where we monitor daily temps (which can fluctuate by as much as 40 to 50 degrees from day to night—crazy right?), wind, rain, humidity, everything. September is kind of a dicey month for weather, as our typical first freeze is on the 24th (here's my write-up on how to accurately calculate your first and last frost dates), but we had a freak cold spell a few weeks...
those 3 numbers on fertilizers? they're not what you think 🧐
Every gardener has heard of NPK, and you probably learned a while ago that it stands for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—the three essential nutrients that plants need to grow. Yeah, that's what I used to think too. But I realized (after emailing a major fertilizer brand's customer service to clarify something) that even the reps are giving out false information about what those three values really mean! 🙀 N is certainly nitrogen. But P and K are are not exactly phosphorus and potassium,...
what happens when there's too much nitrogen in the soil (+ pics of my garden)
Today's email (and new blog post) was inspired by another email I received from a reader. She was having trouble in her garden because there's too much nitrogen in her soil, and she wanted to know what she could do to fix that. We (gardeners) spend a lot of time trying to increase nitrogen (and overall fertility) to boost plant growth, that sometimes we don't realize we may be overdoing it. It can happen unintentionally—from adding manure that isn't fully composted to fertilizing too often....
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."