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."
how to turn fall leaves into brown gold 🍂
Right now, my kids' favorite thing to do when we walk through neighborhoods or parks is drag their feet (or even their bodies 😆) through piles of crisp fall leaves. It's been such a beautiful season in Bend with all the changing colors and lots of leaf piles to play in. 🍂 True story: Several years ago, when I first moved onto my property, I made a post in my local Facebook group asking strangers if I could have their bagged-up leaves. Dozens of people offered up hundreds of bags—all I had to...
how to use row covers effectively to protect your plants
In my email a few days ago, I talked about how you can cheat winter and grow vegetables all season long without a greenhouse. I've been doing it for the past five winters in my climate, where the lows are anywhere between 0°F to 25° (and occasionally a bit below that). I usually have a mix of mature plants left over from my summer garden and baby-leaf greens that were seeded in early fall, and all of them overwinter easily. The key is 1) growing cold-hardy plants appropriate for your climate,...
how to grow food all winter with NO greenhouse ❄️
For the last six winters, I've been growing a variety of leafy greens and herbs in my backyard—without a greenhouse. I can harvest salads when temperatures are down in the teens Fahrenheit and while plants do grow more slowly in winter, they still produce (and often taste even better when they're harvested after a few brutally cold nights). A lot of people think that without a greenhouse, gardening in winter is impossible if you live below USDA hardiness zone 8. I mean, it's not hard to see...
are you using mulch correctly?
It's almost winter, which means your garden is probably starting to wind down. I got my last round of seeds in the ground this week (including cover crop seeds) and am waiting for my strawberry patch to die back before I winterize it. (My everbearing plants are still trying to pump out flowers!) But, winter's coming. All of my beds are mulched with a variety of things: straw, plant debris, shredded leaves, pine needles. I also like to use sheep wool over winter because it's so insulating (and...
how to use fall leaves to revive your soil 🍂
With all the rain and wind we've had the past few days, the deciduous trees in our yard finally dropped the last of their leaves. Before this, we actually had a pretty mild season so we got to enjoy some beautiful fall color. 🍁 I'll let those leaves dry out over the next week before cleaning up a bit, and while I do leave a fair amount right where they are to promote a healthy yard, I collect the excess to use elsewhere in the garden. You might remember that I shared a Prime Day deal last...
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...
herbs you can grow outside all winter ❄️
I talk about my perennial herb beds a lot, and that's because I absolutely love how low-maintenance they are... especially in fall and winter. I do cut back some of my plants this time of year to keep them nice and tidy, but they otherwise take care of themselves. My zone 5 microclimate often sees a few nights of single-digit temps in winter, but these plants hold steady and bounce back beautifully once temperatures start to warm up in late February. They're often the first harvests I get...
best ways to store your homegrown produce over winter
As I'm writing this, I've got a bunch of pumpkins that have survived deer all month on the porch 😆, a bucket full of winter squash that I need to spread out on a shelf, and a big tub of freshly cleaned garlic bulbs stored in the garage. (I harvested the garlic in mid July but with how busy I was in the garden this summer, I just got around to removing the dead stems last week. It was a job I put my kiddo on in front of the TV, and to her dismay, she did so well that I'm making it her job...
the trick to keeping carrots 🥕 fresh and crunchy for 6 months
Pssst... Just a few Egyptian walking onion sets remain! Get yours now to plant in fall—and enjoy onions forever! These organic walking onion topsets (bulbils) are harvested fresh from my own garden in Bend, Oregon. Here's an easy guide to growing them in any climate (and my original email about them from a few days ago). Back to this email... 😄 No, it's not a trick subject line. I've kept my homegrown carrots crisp, fresh, and flavorful—just like the day I harvested them—for six months. And...
ground covers that ACTUALLY stay green all winter
Not gonna lie: The winter landscape can sometimes look a little depressing after a few freezes when everything starts dying back. I do love the sculptural branches of a deciduous tree that's shed all its leaves, but when the days are short, nothing beats a lush carpet of green. My own garden in Bend would certainly be a lot less interesting if it weren't for evergreen ground covers, which add color and texture in winter and fill the garden with flowers in summer. I'm in zone 5, and there are...
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."