Gardening

All about gardening - we have many in-depth guides about edibles, ornamentals, houseplants, and much more. We provide answers for your garden issues!

Small tomato seedlings in black trays with vibrant green leaves on a sunlit indoor windowsill.

Vegetables

Can You Winter Sow Tomatoes?

Winter sowing works best with herbs, native wildflowers, and cold-loving crops, but you can do it with heat-loving plants like tomatoes! Just because you can doesn’t mean you should; so, is this the best method for sowing tomato seeds? Let’s find out.

Several green stems with small thorns emerge from soil covered in light brown mulch.

Shrubs

5 Signs of an Unhealthy Bare-Root Rose

Roses are durable and resilient, rising from a bundle of sticks and roots to flourish into leafy, blooming specimens. To experience the magic of bare-root selections, we can hone in on what makes them viable. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores what to look for in a healthy bare-root rose (and what to avoid).

Lupine plants with tall, slender stems, dry seedpods, and faded leaves are covered in a blanket of snow, ideal for winter sowing in the garden bed.

Flowers

How To Winter Sow Lupine: 5 Pro Tips

Lupine brings distinctive bloom spikes in a sweep of color in spring and summer. Sowing them in winter is an easy way to give seeds the conditions they need to germinate. Gardening expert Katherine Rowe explores how to winter sow lupine for a successful show of warm-season blooms.

Close-up of rich red-burgundy Cymbidium orchid clusters blooming among green strap-like leaves, highlighting the differences between Oncidium and Dendrobium orchids.

Flowers

Oncidium, Dendrobium, and Cymbidium Orchids: Key Differences

Orchids comprise a great number of genera and an enormous number of species. With such a wide range available, it's nice to know what you're looking at and how that affects its care. Orchid enthusiast Melissa Strauss examines three popular genera and describes how to tell them apart and how to care for them.

start victory garden

Edible

How to Start a Victory Garden in 9 Easy Steps

Victory gardens helped take the pressure off the food supply chain during war times. They also made everyday American gardens more sustainable and productive. In this article, horticulture expert Matt Dursum shows you how to start a victory garden the easy way.

Close-up of a faded orchid plant in a white pot with long, glossy, narrow leaves, thick aerial roots, and a slender brown dried stem with small clusters of dried flowers.

Flowers

What to Do With Brown, Dried Orchid Stems

Orchids make great houseplants, but they're not without their issues. When something looks amiss, like brown stems, it can be distressing if you don't know the cause. Orchid enthusiast Melissa Strauss goes over the potential causes, and how you should deal with brown orchid stems.

A shot of a composition of several different flowers that showcases what wildflowers winter sow February

Flowers

13 Wildflowers We’re Winter Sowing in February

Winter sowing is a cheap way to start seeds. All you need to start are some old milk jugs, some soil, and wildflower seeds. These 13 species are perfect for winter sowing since they require cold stratification to germinate. Start them in February for early spring blooms!

Clusters of pear-shaped, golden-yellow tomatoes hanging from green vines with deeply lobed leaves.

Edible

17 Essential Crops for Your Victory Garden

Victory gardens reflect a historical movement where growing food in the home garden filled supply shortages during World War I, with a surge in World War II. The premise has lasting implications, where fresh food close to home ensures a ready supply of diverse choices. Balanced techniques like providing pollinator resources and crop rotation hold today. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores essential victory garden crops to implement in our own resilient gardens.

Pale pink and cream flowers with soft petals, golden stamens, and unopened buds clustered around.

Flowers

7 Reasons Your Hellebore Plants Are Not Blooming

Hellebores bring lovely late winter blooms and handsome foliage worthy of mass planting in optimal garden locations. If your beauty isn’t blooming, there are a few key cultural conditions to explore and adjust for future color. Garden expert Katherine Rowe examines the primary reasons for a lack of hellebore blooms and how to revive the (mostly) carefree perennials.

Winter snowy garden with dormant or dead trees and shrubs, showcasing bare branches and dry, brown leaves.

Trees

Are My Trees and Shrubs Dead or Dormant? 5 Ways to Tell

In mid to late winter, we cross our fingers that our bare trees and shrubs endured the seasonal extremes and any late cold blasts, merely resting before spring’s warming conditions. During this quiet time in the landscape, it can be difficult to discern a dormant plant from a dead one. Garden expert Katherine Rowe explores visual and physical cues to hone in on the viability of your dormant tree or shrub.

A woman adds fresh soil to herbs grown using the winter sowing method in February, planted in a blue pot.

Herbs

9 Herbs to Winter Sow in February

Winter sowing helps get that spring garden underway as early as possible. There are many herbs that you can grow this way and include in your vegetable or herb garden this year. Gardening expert Melissa Strauss has nine tasty herbs you can start growing now.