Give Seeds A Chance
I think of my vegetable garden as one big science experiment of the kind that I was not allowed to do at home when I was ten, on account of [...]
Michele Owens, Ranter Emeritus
What I learned in Buffalo
My visit to Buffalo for the garden bloggers' meeting was eye-opening in many ways. It was really fun to meet all the different personalities in this world, including the extremely [...]
Why Brent & Becky’s Bulbs Keeps Getting My Business
The bankruptcy of Park Seed and Wayside has got me thinking. Like every other gardener of my generation, my two great inspirations as a beginner were Michael Pollan's Second Nature, [...]
I just turned 50, so I have thought about gardening and aging
I turned 50 this week and feel pretty great about it. The wonderful thing about 50, as opposed to 35 or 43 or 45, is that you are no longer [...]
Most Neglected Vegetable Garden Crops
Neglected parsley. Even if you refused to eat them as a kid, even if your mother was too enlightened to try to strong-arm you into eating them, even [...]
What’s Invasive? Telling People What They Can’t Plant In Their Yards
That plant is aggressive. It gets really big. It elbows out neighboring plants. It spreads all over and covers a lot of ground in a hurry. My country yard. So [...]
Long Food-Obsessed, now I’m On-Trend
I've always been food-obsessed. I've always known that "What's for dinner?" is life's most important question. That's why I've been gardening for the last 18 years. I used to be [...]
Asparagus: A Life Lesson
I never see a bundle of asparagus without being reminded of the stupidity of my younger self. This was the younger self whose first house purchase was a decrepit 220 [...]
Mache – the Small Green that Engineers Its Own Survival
We live in enlightened times. Our choices of salad material are now expansive. I've planted soft-leaved stuff with fun names like Les Oreilles du Diable, or the devil's ears. I've [...]
Give Us Glossy Magazines, Please!
In this peculiarly awful winter, when the usual dirty snow/ frozen ground depression is melding with economic depression, a little glossy paper and some stunning photography really lift my spirits. [...]
Love Song For A Parsnip
I was talking a few weeks ago with the editor of a gardening magazine, who asked me what had really excited me in my vegetable garden in 2008. My answer [...]
Mrs. Greenthumbs: An Appreciation
My next-door neighbor recently said that she was stumped by design questions and that I should write a book about the subject. I laughed. If you want to know how [...]