With tomatoes, there’s very dramatic difference between homegrown and store-bought. Vegetable warehouses can stock up on green tomatoes because tomatoes can turn red while still hard and filled with starch if they’re exposed to a gaseous plant hormone, and when it comes time to sell them, the warehouses simply turn their tomatoes red. Add to … More Homegrown Tomatoes
Growing herbs is a fun, easy way to get some planting in without a garden patch. Borage, a favorite of bees and butterflies, yields delicately-flavored leaves and flowers, both of which are best eaten fresh. As an annual plant, to keep borage in your garden, just leave a few plants alone so that their seeds … More Borage: A Fluffy, Flowering Herb
Three days after sowing seeds in my garden, the heart-shaped leaves of radish sprouts have appeared above ground. Fast-growing and hard to kill, radishes are a wonderful crop for those who lack patience and time to care for finicky vegetables. Radish seeds can be bought at most stores. Spring radishes, which are much smaller than … More Radishes: The Cutest Crop
Spinach is one of the most basic, healthiest things to include in your diet. Fresh or cooked, the health benefits of spinach are wonderful. As with many leafy greens, freshness matters, and it’s impossible to get anything fresher than straight from your garden or container. To grow spinach, plant your seeds as soon as possible, … More Spinach: Speedy and Cold-Tolerant Greens
Cheerful, bright sunflower blooms are impossible to miss when looking at a summer garden. Sunflowers are grown commercially in fields all around the world, but these plants will look just as nice growing in a small group in your garden. Sunflowers thrive when taken care of well, so if you know you will be around … More The Sunflower: A Summer Beauty
Loofahs are vegan alternatives to natural sponges. Looking at the long, quirky, mesh-y loofah, it may be hard to imagine that it came from anywhere but an animal or a factory. Loofahs are actually the internal structure of fibers that develop in a particular type of gourd, and as such, are the most natural, easily … More DIY Loofa: Green Your Shower
For those interested in alternative ways of gardening, the hay bale method may be very enticing. This way of growing your vegetables and berries lets you skip covering your soil in compost and worrying about soil composition, removes a lot of dirt from the equation, and lets you garden without a garden bed. The hay … More Skip the Beds: Hay Bale Gardening
The staghorn fern does not look like the standard fern: instead of many thin, leaflet-covered ribs, the staghorn fern has thick blades that split at their edges and resemble the horns of an elk. This deep green fern can grow to be quite large, a few feet in diameter, and its base eventually becomes covered … More The Large, Elegant Staghorn Fern
A relative of the tomatillo, the physalis (or groundcherry) is a beautiful little plant whose fruits come bundled in a parchment-like casing. Like most tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, and other members of the nightshade family, the physalis has no trouble growing in Ohio climates. The light and pretty fruits of the grouncherry make it an aesthetically … More The Physalis: Naturally Packaged Desserts
Potatoes are not exactly “cute” vegetables, and their constant availability at the grocery store may leave some gardeners cold to the idea of growing their own. However, a look at a potato plant may change your mind: they have bushy, leafy bodies topped by a few purple or white flowers. A patch of potatoes would … More Potatoes: A Fun Option for Sunny Gardens
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