How to Plant & Grow Boysenberries

How to Plant & Grow Boysenberries

Delicate, full of flavor, and packed with brilliant sweet juice, boysenberries were created by bringing together blackberries, raspberries, loganberries, and dewberries, resulting in a bramble that produces large, dark purple fruits. Delicious in cobblers, pies, preserves, and sauces, as well as an absolute treat to eat fresh, this uncommon berry is often overlooked due to…

Foraging Paw Paws

Foraging Paw Paws

Paw Paws are a delicious native fruit that’s prized by foragers! In this article, you’ll learn how to ID paw paw (Asimina triloba) trees throughout the year, plus when to look for the fruit, and how to best harvest and store it. How to ID a Paw Paw Tree Paw paws are small, perennial understory…

How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds

How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds

Learn how to harvest sunflower seeds from your garden, plus how to save them for snacking, birdseed, or replanting in next year’s garden! When to Harvest Unlike many flowers, you don’t want your sunflower blooms to dry all the way up before collecting your seeds. Brown, dead, dry sunflowers have likely either dropped all their…

How to Grow Sunflowers from Seed

How to Grow Sunflowers from Seed

Learn how to plant, grow, and care for sunflowers in your garden! These cheerful flowers attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators to your garden, plus provide a food source for birds, small mammals, and humans too! Growing Sunflowers At a Glance: Here’s a quick reference list about growing sunflowers. More details can be found in…

How to Save Calendula Seeds

How to Save Calendula Seeds

It’s easy to save seeds from calendula flowers. Find out how to know when they’re ready & the best way to store your homegrown calendula seeds! Calendula is a wonderfully easy flower to save seeds from. If you’ve ever saved marigold seeds, it’s not any more difficult than that! However, note that calendula (Calendula officinalis)…

How to Save Marigold Seeds

How to Save Marigold Seeds

Learn how to collect and store seeds from marigold flowers! (Never buy marigold seeds again!) In this article, you’ll learn how to collect and store seeds from marigolds (Tagetes spp.) that may be growing in your garden. Be sure not to confuse marigolds with calendula (which is sometimes called pot marigold) – here’s an article…

How to Freeze Peppers

How to Freeze Peppers

Got a bumper crop of sweet or bell peppers, and can’t possibly eat them all fresh before they start to go bad? Do you wish you could eat your lovely homegrown peppers all year ’round, not just when they’re in season? Do you have spare room in your freezer? If so, you might want to…

Rose Petal Jelly

Rose Petal Jelly

Learn how to turn the beautiful roses in your garden into a tasty and gorgeous rose petal jelly! It’s made with reduced sugar pectin, fresh rose petals, sugar, lemon juice, and water. That’s all you need to make this pretty floral treat. Rose petal jelly tastes very good too – somewhat like a mild grape-like…

How to Grow Ageratum from Seed

How to Grow Ageratum from Seed

Ageratum, also known as flossflower, bluemink, and Mexican paintbrush, is an easy-to-grow, old fashioned favorite in cottage gardens and flowerbeds. Fluffy flowers in shades of blue, lavender, or white stand out in lovely contrast against the rich green foliage. Well loved by pollinators as well as people, this quick-to-bloom annual isn’t only beautiful in the…