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."
why you should keep watering in winter 💦
It's the middle of winter. It's cold. And for most people, that means they can take a break from their usual watering routine until the weather starts to warm up again. Or can they? I live in a high desert climate that typically sees snow, but even so, I lost a young fruit tree and a couple of shrubs last year because of an unexpectedly dry winter. The season started out with plenty of rain and snow, but once all of that melted, we went through a dry spell for over a month with hardly any...
houseplants that don't need soil to grow 🌿
As gardeners, we're used to rooting through soil and getting a little dirt under our nails, right? (And that's a good thing... There's a growing body of research that shows beneficial bacteria in soil can actually alter our minds. Kind of like nature's Prozac! 😮) But mo' soil means mo' problems: fungus gnats, spider mites, that weird white mold, and of course underwatering and overwatering. You know what solves all those problems? Not having soil at all! And thankfully, there are quite a lot...
the seed catalogs I'm ordering from this season
If you're like me, you probably have a pile of seed catalogs on your table right now (with more coming every week—I can't help it, I sign up for all of them 😁). This is what I'm currently paging through: And this is just a few of them I love discovering new seed varieties to try. We don't have a proper greenhouse yet (that will be the next big project) so I'm constantly on the lookout for reliable short-season crops (anything that can go from seed to harvest in less than 75 days). I don't...
this is why your plants probably aren't getting enough light
Here's the funny thing about plants: they don't LOVE to be inside our homes. Sure, they accept it—and will even grow in spite of it—but they really just want to be outside where they have plentiful sunshine. Most of our homes are a lot darker than we think, even if we have nice big windows that get sun for a few hours a day. Newer windows have special coatings that block some light from coming through, and if your plants are more than 10 feet away from those windows, their sun exposure is...
a homemade cough syrup that tastes great and really works 🥃
A lot of people I know have been coming down with something this past week... sniffles, sore throats, fatigue. I'm sure it doesn't help that kids have been home on winter break and everyone tends to spend more time indoors in winter. While some people are inclined to reach for an over-the-counter cough and cold syrup—you know, the "nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing aching stuffy head fever so you can rest medicine"—I'm reminded of a homemade remedy my parents used to make when I was a...
plants that can grow in low light 🌥️
Happy New Year! I hope 2026 is off to a good start for you so far. We had a small house party on New Year's Eve and to everyone's surprise, all of us (including the kids 😳) stayed up till nearly 2am! (Got a second wind after the ball drop. 🥳) The new year started with a hearty brunch at home with all our friends who'd slept over, and then we were off to another friend's house for grilled oysters and black eyed pea soup (both of which are traditional symbols of good luck and prosperity, so...
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."