Guides
Expert guides to help you grow a successful garden.
Showing 29 of 29 guides
How to Plant an Appalachian Medicinal Herb Bed
Plant a heritage bed of eight traditional mountain herbs, from catnip to comfrey, with a dry end, a damp end and the mint safely in a pot.
How to Overwinter Perennial Herbs
Learn which herbs are hardy perennials and which are tender, then mulch, cut back, and lift the right ones before winter really bites.
How to Grow Comfrey for Mulch and Compost
Plant sterile Bocking 14 comfrey once in a permanent spot, then cut it several times a season for free mulch, compost and liquid feed.
How to Grow Elderberries From Cuttings
Take pencil-thick dormant cuttings in late winter, root them in water or potting mix, and plant out two varieties after your last frost.
How to Grow Mullein From Seed
Surface sow mullein in full sun and poor, dry soil, leave the taproot alone, and cut the spike before it sheds seed.
How to Tell Safe Herbs From Poisonous Look-Alikes
Learn the features that separate wild carrot, ramps, elderberry and chickweed from deadly look-alikes, and why no single clue is ever enough.
How to Identify a Plant Before You Pick It
Read leaves, stems, flowers, roots and habitat together, check two regional field guides, and leave any plant you cannot name with certainty.
How to Start a Three Sisters Garden
Grow corn, beans and squash together in one bed by planting corn first, beans once it stands a few inches tall, and squash last of all.
How to Keep a Garden and Plant Journal
Record what you sow, when it sprouts, what you harvest and what went wrong, then use those notes each winter to plan a better garden.
How to Grow a Mountain Tea Garden
Plant a small bed of peppermint, catnip, bee balm and sage, plus a pot of wintergreen, for the traditional tea herbs of the Appalachians.
How to Start a Ramp Patch
Pick a damp, leafy spot under deciduous trees, plant nursery bulbs or fresh seed, mulch with leaves, and wait before you cut a single leaf.
How to Dig and Dry Roots in Fall
Lift dandelion, burdock, echinacea and other garden roots after the tops die back, slice them fresh, and dry them until they snap cleanly.