Thai chilies have a way of going from perfect to tired in one lazy week. You buy a handful for one curry, use four, and the rest sit in the drawer until they look older than they are. The plain answer to how to store Thai chili peppers is this: keep whole peppers dry in …
You can grow a happy pepper plant in a pot and still get a pretty underwhelming harvest. I learned that the irritating way with a glossy bell pepper transplant in a bucket that looked roomy in May and turned stingy by August. For most gardeners, the best peppers to grow in containers are compact, earlier, …
Cilantro is one of those herbs that makes sensible gardeners feel oddly clumsy. You sow it. It comes up fast. You start picturing a long run of salsa, curries, and noodle bowls. Then one warm stretch hits and the plant shoots up, throws flowers, and turns the whole thing into a lesson in broken expectations. …
If you’re looking for the best blueberries for containers, the short answer is this: pick a compact or half-high blueberry if space is tight, and pick a region-suited highbush if you have a genuinely big pot and care more about harvest than miniature size. That sounds tidy. It usually isn’t. The snag is that “best” …
You can waste a whole season on the wrong kind of “shade”. I’ve done it with a clematis on an east fence that looked shady on paper and turned out to be fine. I’ve also watched one sulk under a maple where the tag’s “part shade” promise was never going to come true. Same plant …
You buy a lavender in full bloom, tuck it into a sunny pot by the front step, and for a few weeks it looks like the easy win of the season. Then the plant goes loose and woody, the center opens up, and the pot stays wet longer than your instincts say it should. That …
You can absolutely succeed at growing luffa from seed. The catch is that seed starting is the easy part. Finishing the crop is where people get burned. I learned that the annoying way. One season I had a gorgeous vine, flowers everywhere, and a trellis that looked like it was winning. Then cool weather crept …
You buy a packet of seeds, tuck them into the soil, and picture a cheerful little beginner vegetable garden a few weeks later. Then the radishes never bulb, the tomato outgrows its pot like a teenager in a borrowed suit, and the zucchini starts acting like it pays the mortgage. That is usually the moment …
The usual tomato-support mistake starts in spring, when the plant is eight inches tall and looks harmless. You grab a cone cage from the shed, push it in, and think, “That’ll do.” Then July shows up. The vine is shoulder-high, one side is loaded with fruit, the cage is leaning like a shopping cart with …
You see “basil companion plants” on every gardening list, tuck three or four herbs into one cute pot, and then two weeks later the basil looks sulky while the rosemary looks smug. I’ve done that one. It looks tidy on the patio and then turns into a tiny argument about water. So here is the …