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."
food crops that do well in shady areas of your garden
|
Last week I bought seeds for Hablitizia tamnoides (from this vendor) and started the process of stratifying the seeds. Half were sown in my winter sowing jugs outside (as we still have about eight weeks of cold weather ahead), and half were placed in damp coffee filters in the fridge. I've heard germination can be a little tricky, so we'll see which method works best. Hablitzia (also known as Caucasian mountain spinach) is a very hardy, vining perennial grown for its spinach-like leaves and shoots. But what piqued my interest most was that it prefers to grow in shade (or semi-shade) and struggles in areas that get a lot of sun. Most of us have a shady spot or two somewhere in our yards—for me, it's the north side of our house. My husband and I jokingly call it Puffy Patio because it holds snow the longest and is so cold, you need to wear your puffy jacket out there—it's at least 10° colder than the rest of our south-facing garden. I like the idea of growing a hardy, shade-loving edible back there and Hablitzia is the first plant I'll try in a large container, since I can experiment with moving it to different areas to see just how much shade or light it can tolerate. Even though gardens are typically classified by USDA hardiness zones (or their equivalent in other parts of the world), your own garden may have its own microclimate—or even a few microclimates. And picking the right plants for each microclimate (whether it's sunny and hot or shady and cool) is key to a productive garden. Knowing your climate and picking the right plants is one of the gardening fundamentals I teach in my Lazy Gardening course. If you're just getting your garden started, or you've had a garden for a while but know it could be better, I'd love to share what else has worked for me over the last 15 years of growing food organically. I call it "rule breaking," as many of my real-life (and most successful) practices go against conventional gardening wisdom. So, I've created three short videos that cover exactly that: three gardening rules that are meant to be broken, and how they can help you build a highly productive yet lower maintenance garden this year. These videos are a sample of what you'll get inside Lazy Gardening Academy, and even if you feel it's not the right time to sign up for my course, I hope you'll still find them useful! When you click on the link below, you'll receive a new video every day (for the next three days) in your inbox. No strings attached. No paywalls or ads. Watch these videos at your leisure and put the advice to work in your own yard! 🌟 Click here to get the first video. 🌟 If you love what you see and want more, then I hope you'll join me inside Lazy Gardening Academy for more easy wins like those. P.S. Find out what kinds of vegetables, herbs, and fruits you can grow in a shady garden. P.P.S. Don't forget to sign up here if you want to get three free videos from my Lazy Gardening course (sent straight to your inbox). Here's what a reader had to say about them: |
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."