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 not to be a slave to your potted plants
If it seems like your potted plants are drying out too fast after you water them, or you find yourself having to water twice a day because your plants keep looking sad, today's email aims to help you get off the hamster wheel of watering every. single. day. by hand. I don't talk enough about containers, but I should. I had an extensive container garden in California. My first garden in Oregon consisted of four potted tomato plants on a deck, and in my current garden, I've got dozens of plants...
how to fix bitter cucumbers
Picture this: You pick your first ripe cucumber off the vine, eagerly bite into it as you're standing in the garden, and then... blecchhh. It's so bitter that it almost tastes like soap. Same with the next cucumber. What happened?! Bitter cucumbers are not uncommon, especially if you've had a very hot summer. Sometimes it's just the skin that's bitter, but bitter-tasting flesh and seeds can make the whole fruit nearly inedible. The good news is you still have at least another month or two in...
do your tomatoes get splits and cracks like this?
I just harvested my first ripe tomatoes a couple weeks ago from the plants I'd transplanted in early June. (And these are the "early" tomatoes—65 days to maturity, which is right on time. When you read those seed packets or plant labels, the "days to maturity" for tomatoes always means days to maturity from transplant, not from seed. Weird, right? I go over this confusing thing in my post here.) A few of the (otherwise healthy) tomatoes I'm seeing on the vine right now share a common...
how to plant fall crops in the heat of summer 🔥
Let's talk about fall. I know, we're still in summer and it sure feels like it... 🥵 Which brings me to today's topic: planting a fall garden when it's pushing 90°F outside. Maybe you want to start seeds. Maybe you've already started seeds and your seedlings are ready to move into the garden. You're probably wondering how to get fall crops like kale, broccoli, and lettuce to survive the blistering heat outside. These cool-season plants are susceptible to transplant shock, early bolting, or...
why's that tomato leaf curling?
I love growing tomatoes in summer, but at the same time... I feel like these plants really keep me on my toes all season! If they aren't complaining about the weather (first it's too cold, then it's too hot), they're pouting in the garden by rolling up their leaves or drooping or making you guess at what other problem they're having. Right?!It's definitely hard to be this invested in your plants! Here's something I see occasionally in my own tomatoes and what I've found is pretty common with...
why your tomatoes look weird like this 🐱
If you love to grow big, beautiful tomatoes (especially heirloom tomatoes) then you've probably had your share of weird-shaped fruit with bulges, bumps, and brown scars that sort of look like zippers. It's a common condition called catfacing (though I don't really see the resemblance—I guess whoever coined the term thought their puckered tomatoes looked like cat's cheeks? 🤷♀️). And while most catfaced tomatoes are still edible, so long as they haven't started rotting where the wounds are, it...
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."