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."
I got all these harvests without planting anything
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As I'm writing this email, it's 60°F in town today. (Nothing to get excited about—our last frost date is still months away.) But the last few week of warm weather has meant many things are going off in my garden: asparagus, rhubarb, walking onions, potato onions, garlic, and lots of leafy greens like bloody dock, garden sorrel, true French sorrel, sea kale, and pink dandelions (a variety that's less bitter than the common yellow dandelion). An entire spring and early summer food garden already growing, all without me doing a single thing. No seed starting. No transplanting. Zero work. (Not since last fall, when I covered all the plants with frost cloth.) I got my first harvest of spring vegetables over three weeks ago, right when I sowed the first seeds for my annual vegetables. That's the beauty of having a perennial vegetable garden—year-round food without needing to plant new plants each year. (In my zone 5 garden, all of these plants do die back in winter, but most of them can remain evergreen and productive if they're grown inside a heated greenhouse.) If you're a student of Lazy Gardening Academy or have been following me for a while, you know I'm a huge fan of "lazy gardening," a method I teach that produces more food with less work. And part of that method includes planting perennial vegetables, herbs, and flowers throughout your garden to take the pressure off spring planting (and increase your harvests). Many of these plants are hardy to Zones 4 and below! You just need to protect the roots over winter (with a thick layer of mulch) so they'll come back in spring. P.S. Get an instant food garden every spring without having to plant something new each year. Grow one of these 31 perennial vegetables!​ P.P.S. Don't let weeds get you down this time of year—look at them as a free bonus salad from your garden. Here's how to identify and eat 28 common backyard weeds and invasive plants (that are actually delicious).​
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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."