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."
3 signs your onions are ready
Onions take SO long to grow, especially if you start them from seed. It takes around 100 to 120 days for onions to mature from seed, 80 to 100 days to mature from sets, and somewhere in between if you transplanted a plug of seedlings. Which means... the day you've been waiting for is near! But just because you can see the tops of your onions start to push out of the ground, it doesn't mean they're actually mature. While you can pick onions at any stage of growth (even super young, if you want...
using up a csa box
Do you get a CSA box? That is, a farm share from a Community Supported Agriculture program. (If you've been with me for a while, you might remember that I wrote a book about this back in 2015!) CSA boxes have undoubtedly gotten a lot more popular and mainstream since my first book was published, and I even know people who have their own gardens but still get a CSA box to fill in what they can't or don't want to grow. So it's no surprise that I get this question a lot throughout summer: "What...
my fix for powdery mildew (it's not milk)
I used to get powdery mildew on my zucchini and winter squash every summer when I lived on the coast in Southern California. Now that I'm in Central Oregon, my squash have so far been okay, but my bee balm plants usually get hit hard. Powdery mildew spreads fast across plants, and if you let it go unchecked, it can stunt plant growth and reduce your yield, often leading to poor fruit quality. The chalky white coating typically starts showing up around this time and worsens by late summer, so...
flea beetles. not a fan.
Pssst... If you need to stock up on seeds, True Leaf Market has a massive overstock sale happening right now. Up to 61% off seeds! A few things you can get for just $1.99: Suyo Long cucumbers, Brad's Atomic Grape tomatoes, Tendersweet orange watermelons, Golden Marconi peppers, various types of pak choi, basil, zinnias, and more. For a while, I couldn't grow tomatillos because the leaves would be plagued with tons of tiny little holes or divots. Even worse were the tiny little pests that made...
my trick for germinating spinach in the heat
Spinach is notorious for being extra picky about the soil temperature at which it germinates. Too cold and you'll be waiting weeks for the first sprout. Too hot and your seeds will refuse to germinate at all. And by "too hot," I mean anything over 75°F, which—in most climates—your soil has long surpassed. So you see the conundrum here: How do you get spinach to germinate in summer if you want to harvest it in fall? And keep it from bolting when you plant it out next month? You're gonna have...
the key to insane flowering all season long 🌼
What if I told you that the secret to healthy plants, stronger growth, and spectacular blooming all season long lies in a simple 2-second technique? I don't feel like this is talked about much in backyard gardening circles, but it's so easy to do and gives such great results that I need to put it out there: deadheading. It's a way to keep your annuals flowering continuously or encourage a second big flush of flowers later in the season. Even perennials benefit as it helps channel energy to...
throwing shade
I can't remember a summer in Bend where it's been this hot for this long. My local gardening group is full of posts from people whose plants seem to have stopped growing. My friends are lamenting the lack of tomatoes in their gardens. And my garden? At least 3/4 of it is under shade cloth. Shade is the only way I'm able to keep my plants productive during this intense heat. My lettuce and arugula have been under shade since late spring, but my tomatoes and cucumbers appreciate the respite...
do your carrots look all weird like this?
Back in my old SoCal garden, where I dealt with heavy clay soil, I used to joke with my non-gardening friends that my carrots were "organic" (with their twisty-turny roots and funny shapes and little "hairs") because they were far from the perfectly smooth and uniform carrots at the store. And of course, they were grown organically but that's not the reason I sometimes pulled up carrots that looked like this: Or this: Or my favorite, which I dubbed "Leaping Dancer": Some harvests were better...
I'm shipping organic walking onion seeds!
If you've been with me for a while, you might remember that last fall, I offered organic walking onion seeds from my own garden. (And they sold out!) This year, I harvested my seeds earlier so I can bring them to you in time for your fall garden! Organic seeds from my own garden in Bend, Oregon Egyptian walking onions are a type of perennial onion that can be harvested for its green stems (like chives or scallions) as well as its bulbs (which kind of resemble shallots). Walking onions are...
my new book is HERE! 🇺🇸
Just released!!! 🎉 About two years ago, my longtime book editor asked if I would write a book about Route 66, America's most recognizable roadway, to honor the Route 66 Centennial in 2026. 🇺🇸 It would be very different from all my other cookbooks and on the surface, it didn't seem doable: I knew little about Route 66, none of the recipes would be my own, and was it all going to be diners, drive-ins, and dives? You could only have so many recipes for burgers and pies, after all. But the more I...
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."