Garden Betty
Gardening made easy, life made simpler.
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."
name that butterfly 🦋
My daughter found this in the forest last year while we were camping. It's a dried and perfectly preserved butterfly wing (the bottom portion flaked off on our way home, so we put it in this glass frame for safekeeping). Can you tell what it is? You'll find the answer in my visual butterfly ID guide We have lots of butterflies visiting our garden right now, thanks to our flowering perennials. This one is sea kale (a favorite that I've been harvesting tons of lately), which just exploded in...
about 5 hours ago • 2 min read
the trick to knowing when your garlic is ready
I won't lie, it takes a lot of patience to grow garlic. We're seven months after planting and that garlic crop is looking reeaaaally good right about now (if it didn't get affected by garlic rust, that is). The stems are stiff and upright, the leaves are green and full, and it seems like all those bulbs should be ready to pick, right? Not quite yet! For most people—and depending on the type of garlic grown—harvest time could still be a few weeks away. But unlike its allium cousin, the onion,...
1 day ago • 2 min read
my new site (+ even a new house build video)
Have you taken a look around my site lately? I'm guessing so, if you've been reading my emails and clicking on the links—but if you haven't noticed, Garden Betty got a whole new look recently! Back in January, I was planning a major overhaul of my site. Turns out it's been SEVEN years since I last redesigned it, and a lot has happened online in that time. So I set out a few goals, among them: Better user experience on mobile and tablet (as I know for many people, your phone is your only...
3 days ago • 1 min read
how to use the sun to control weeds and pests
If you've just about had it with all the pests and diseases plaguing your garden for the past few seasons, it might be time to think about solarizing your soil. Most gardeners have never tried (or even heard) of this method, but it's one that a lot of farmers and homesteaders use to keep large plots of their land fertile and trouble-free. You don't need to have a lot of land to give it a try though! It works even with a single raised garden bed. Solarization is a non-toxic, nearly hands-off...
8 days ago • 1 min read
salad greens (that aren't lettuce) that love hot weather
Remember a few weeks ago when I shared my post on the most heat-tolerant lettuce varieties for your garden? Turns out, a lot of you wished your lettuce would last through summer too! Temperatures are starting to climb here and I've definitely got warm-weather crops on my mind. (But I'm not fooled, because even with the 80°F high the other day, the nighttime low was 40°F! Our "safe bet" planting time in Bend is usually early to mid-June.) Besides the usual tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers I'm...
9 days ago • 2 min read
how to grow strawberries from bare roots and save money
This year I revived my strawberry patch and planted 80 new strawberries from bare roots. My old bed had plants that were a few years old, and last summer I noticed berry production dropping significantly from the original plants. So, I dug up the older plants and put in 80 bare-root strawberries with some daughter plants that I'd propagated from runners. Our nighttime lows have been between 25°F and 35°F for the past few weeks, but there's already new growth! That's one of the benefits of...
14 days ago • 3 min read
what's this white mold in my soil?!
I have this free-for-all bed in my garden where I let a bunch of things overwinter or reseed on their own, and so far this spring, they've exploded—Egyptian walking onions, garlic, mache, miner's lettuce, spinach, and a random smattering of winter rye (which I tried as a cover crop last season). I harvested all the leafy greens and have been pulling up the onions as I need them, and I noticed something: white mold growing all over the roots of my plants! 😳 Luckily it's not the kind of mold to...
15 days ago • 2 min read
the mulch I recommend for all kinds of gardens
Mulch usually isn't given much thought in a garden. It's not exactly one of the "pretty" things we're excited to pick out, nor does it get enough credit for all the good things it does throughout the year, from keeping our gardens from becoming a mushy, muddy mess in spring to keeping plant roots from freezing or drying out in winter. And some types of mulch—like compost, which can and should be used as mulch—actually improve soil structure by feeding microbes, increasing soil fertility, and...
21 days ago • 2 min read
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."