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."
my favorite edible ground covers (that are actually delicious)
If you grow vegetables, you likely mulch with straw, leaves, compost, or something similar. If you grow berries or fruit trees, they're probably surrounded by grass, wood chips, bark, or gravel. But have you ever thought about growing a living mulch? A low-mounding, wide-spreading plant that grows among your other crops and does all the same things "regular" mulch does (protect the soil, retain moisture, smother weeds) but is also edible and worthy of its own harvest? This is how I take...
vegetables that thrive in hot climates (+ a warning about coir)
I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, where temperatures always topped triple digits before summer even started. In fact, my mom just told me every day this coming week will be over 100°F! 🔥 That kind of weather makes it tough to have a summer vegetable garden, because many of our favorite crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, squash) stop setting fruit once temps soar above 90°F. Yes, these are warm-weather crops, but they're not hot-weather crops. If it's blazing all day and the nighttime lows never drop...
how I stopped slugs from eating my plants
Did you know slugs are not insects, but mollusks? And that they've been around for hundreds of millions of years? Which is why it's kind of amusing that humans still have so much trouble controlling these ravenous garden pests in a way that's economical, effective, and sustainable. I'm sure you've heard or read about all the usual tactics for dealing with slugs: using copper tape, spreading coffee grounds or eggshells around plants you want to protect, making beer traps or just going straight...
flowers 🌼 that bees love (they're simpler than you think)
Here's what many people find surprising: The best flowers you can grow for bees and other pollinators usually don't make the lists of bee-friendly plants. They don't want your fancy double dahlias or double peonies, or any of the stunning hybridized flowers that put on quite the show every summer (and are all looks but little nectar). Bees prefer simpler flowers that have good landing pads, tiny clusters of flowers, and the weedy flowers that bloom earliest in the season. In fact, their...
strategies for dealing with weeds (without sprays)
Weeds are the bane of every garden... even if you can eat them. (Although I do make an exception for claytonia, aka miner's lettuce, which I found in a corner of my front yard this week. That's a lot of salad greens right there, doing their own thing with no water at all and giving us free food!) Miner's lettuce growing wild in my front yard Sometimes it can feel like you're growing more weeds than the actual plants you want in your garden. Sometimes you're spending more time than you'd like...
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."