Category: Home & Garden

For general information on growing oak trees, see our guide.

In this article, we’ll go over a handful of the most common oak trees, how to identify them, and what makes them so special.

After reading it, you’ll be able to tell these different species apart at a glance, which will surely impress those not in the know.

Before we dive into the individual species, let’s go over the two major groups of oaks that species are often divided into: red and white.

Species from the red or Erythrobalanus group usually have bristly and jagged leaf lobe tips, pointed buds, roughly-textured and darker-colored bark, smaller sizes at maturity, and bitter-tasting acorns that take two years to fully mature.

Alternatively, species from the white or Leucobalanus group tend to have wavy and rounded leaf lobes, rounded buds, flaky and lighter-colored bark, larger mature sizes, and sweet-tasting acorns that mature in a single year.

Becoming familiar with these features isn’t enough to differentiate species within these two groups. However, it’s very helpful for quickly ruling out what your Quercus is not.

Here we go!

1. Black

A member of the Erythrobalanus group, Q. velutina has a tall, straight trunk and an open crown that can be rounded or irregular in shape.

Its oval-shaped acorns are reddish-brown and striped, with a tan cap that covers half of the acorn.

Native to the eastern United States, the tree flaunts lustrous green leaves with seven to nine bristle-tipped lobes and fuzzy undersides.

This velvety texture also coats leaf buds and is a key feature for identification – velutina means “velvety,” after all. Another helpful feature is the black bark at maturity, hence the common name.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-60 feet
• Spread: 50-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-10 inches
• Leaf Width: 3-8 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.5-0.75 inches
• Bark Color: Black at maturity
• Bark Texture: Deeply furrowed

The black oak isn’t a significant tree in landscaping, but it’s a real aesthetic treat when you find one out in nature!

2. Bur

Also known as the mossycup oak, Q. macrocarpa is a member of the white oak group that hails from northern and central regions of the US, and southeastern Canada.

This tree has a broad, strong crown and rounded, dark green foliage that’s only significantly lobed in the lower half of each leaf.

Additionally, it has huge brown acorns – hence the name macrocarpa, or “large fruit” – that are almost entirely covered with tan caps.

These have conspicuously-fringed margins, and each looks a lot like a “mossy cup,” if you will. These acorns and the uniquely-lobed leaves are dead giveaways for Q. macrocarpa identification.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 60-80 feet
• Spread: 60-80 feet
• Leaf Length: 6-12 inches
• Leaf Width: 3-6 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1.5 inches
• Bark Color: Dark gray to gray-brown
• Bark Texture: Deeply ridged and furrowed

As you can imagine, such an interesting tree can be quite valuable. Plant it in USDA Hardiness Zones 3 to 8 with full sun, solid drainage, and moist, fertile soils.

Fun fact: here in Boone County, Missouri, there’s a legendary bur oak known as The Big Tree, a beloved, 400-year-old specimen that’s almost 90 feet tall and 130 feet wide! I’ve had the privilege of seeing it in person, and it’s a big ol’ boy for sure.

3. Chinkapin

Hailing from the eastern United States, Q. muehlenbergii is a member of the white oak group, but it has oblong lance-shaped shiny green leaves with coarsely toothed margins, rather than rounded lobes.

Its crown is open and globe-shaped, and it has small, oval-shaped acorns that mature to black and are halfway covered with tan, scaly cups.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-60 feet
• Spread: 50-70 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-6 inches
• Leaf Width: 2-3 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1 inch
• Bark Color: Ash gray
• Bark Texture: Rough and flaky

Trying to add some beautifully-jagged chinkapin leaves to your own landscape? Make sure the tree is given full sun, ample drainage, and a moist, fertile loam in USDA Zones 5 to 7.

Learn more about growing chinkapin oaks in our guide.

4. Columnar

The narrow, fastigiate form of an English oak, Q. robur f. fastigiata is a skinny tree from the Leucobalanus group that flaunts sharply upright branching and densely packed green leaves, with six to 14 blunted lobes and blue-green undersides.

The top third of its shiny, brown, elongated acorns are covered with a tan cap.

Having trouble telling this species apart from Q. alba? Check the base of each leaf for a pair of earlobe-esque lobes, which is a clear sign that these trees are cut from English oak cloth.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-70 feet
• Spread: 10-20 feet
• Leaf Length: 2-4 inches
• Leaf Width: 0.75-2.5 inches
• Acorn Length: 1 inch
• Bark Color: Grayish black
• Bark Texture: Deeply furrowed

These trees are hardy in USDA Zones 5 to 8. They grow well in full sun and well-draining soils of average fertility with moderate moisture.

All in all, this is a lanky version of a gorgeous Old World tree that’s perfect for narrow planting spaces!

5. Cork

Q. suber is an interesting entry on our list as it’s the first of the live oaks, which are species of Quercus with evergreen leaves.

And as such, live oaks such as Q. suber don’t fit into the deciduous red or white groups.

Native to northern Africa and southern Europe, the cork oak has dark green, oval-shaped, wavy-toothed, leathery leaves of a shiny, dark green hue. Additionally, it flaunts long, tan-capped, and red to black acorns.

The tree is named for its thick and corky bark, which is cultivated in Europe and Africa for its commercial applications in wine bottle corks and the like.

This bark, in combination with the evergreen leaves, are how you spot Q. suber.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-70 feet
• Spread: 40-70 feet
• Leaf Length: 2-4 inches
• Leaf Width: 1-3 inches
• Acorn Length: 1.25 inches
• Bark Color: Reddish-brown
• Bark Texture: Corky, deeply fissured

Corky utility aside, it’s also a splendid street tree, park planting, or suitable option to provide shade for a residence.

Make sure it’s situated in USDA Zones 8 to 10, given full sun to partial shade, watered little, and provided with acidic loam to grow in.

6. Holly

Another live oak with evergreen foliage, Q. ilex flaunts a rounded crown that branches pretty close to the ground for a Quercus.

Native to the Mediterranean, holly oaks have dark green leaves that resemble holly, hence the common name.

Its large acorns are long, with gray caps that cover a third of the dark red to brown nuts.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-70 feet
• Spread: 40-70 feet
• Leaf Length: 3-5 inches
• Leaf Width: 1 inch
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1.5 inches
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Smooth to fissured

The Ilex-like leaves are the most helpful clue for picking this species out of a lineup.

If you’ve ever wanted holly-like foliage paired with the wood of a Quercus, you can’t do better than the holly oak.

For any interested growers, this species is hardy in USDA Zones 7 to 10 and needs to be situated in a rich and moist loam with full sun to partial shade exposure.

This tree also produces light brown acorns that are covered halfway with a light gray cap.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-60 feet
• Spread: 30-40 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-5 inches
• Leaf Width: 2-3 inches
• Acorn Length: 1 inch
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Ridged and exfoliating

This fast-growing tree is the fantastic and novel Quercus to add to a garden in USDA Zones 7 to 10.

If you want to cultivate one of your own, make sure to put it in a full sun location with well-draining soil, and be sure to read our guide to Mexican white oaks to learn more.

9. Nuttall

Also known as Q. texana, the Nuttal oak hails from the southern and central regions of the United States, and is a wide-spreading, rounded, and open-canopied member of the Erythrobalanus group.

Its bright green leaves have five to nine bristly lobes with deep, wide gaps between them, and the tree produces brown, striped acorns that are covered a bit less than halfway with tan caps.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-80 feet
• Spread: 40-65 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-9 inches
• Leaf Width: 2-5 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1.25 inches
• Bark Color: Medium to dark gray
• Bark Texture: Smooth to furrowed

The deep green leaves have fuzzy white undersides and six to 10 bluntly pointed lobes, with the largest pair in the middle.

The brown acorns are rounded, and almost completely encased by their tan caps.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-60 feet
• Spread: 40-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 6-8 inches
• Leaf Width: 1.5-5 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1 inch
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Fissured

Fast and uniform growth, ease of transplanting, and tolerance of shoddy soils all make this a worthwhile planting in USDA Zones 5 to 9.

Make sure to provide full sun and moist, acidic loams for optimal growth.

The acorns produced are oval-shaped, with tan caps that cover half to a third of the brown nuts.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 35-50 feet
• Spread: 35-50 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-8 inches
• Leaf Width: 3-4 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1 inch
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Ridged

This tree is rarely used in the landscape, but is quite attractive when stumbled upon out in the wild.

As you could have probably guessed, each leaf has a sawtoothed appearance that’s quite easily recognizable.

The acorns are very unique, too – up to two-thirds of each brown nut is covered with a shaggy-scaled gray cap.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-60 feet
• Spread: 40-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 3.5-7.5 inches
• Leaf Width: 1-2.25 inches
• Acorn Length: 1 inch
• Bark Color: Ash brown
• Bark Texture: Deeply furrowed and ridged

Due to its vigorous acorn production and foreign origins, this tree has invasive growing potential across the United States, and is listed as invasive in many states.

This makes knowing what it looks like important. Although Q. acutissima is a handsome tree, you’re better off selecting native oaks instead.

15. Scarlet

A member of the Erythrobalanus group, Q. coccinea hails from the eastern United States and southern Canada, and rocks a rounded, open habit.

The tree flaunts glossy, dark green leaves that look like a cross between those of Q. rubra and Q. palustris, with seven to nine bristly lobes and moderately-sized sinuses.

The top third to half of the reddish-brown nuts are covered with a brownish-tan cap, and there’s a distinctive ring that surrounds each acorn’s point.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-70 feet
• Spread: 40-50 feet
• Leaf Length: 3-6 inches
• Leaf Width: 2.5-4.5 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.5 to 1 inch
• Bark Color: Gray to gray-brown
• Bark Texture: Shallowly ridged

An aesthetic, drought-tolerant planting for lawns and streets, scarlet oaks prefer full sun, acidic sandy soils, little moisture, and placement in USDA Zones 4 to 9.

16. Sessile

Q. petraea is a white oak from Europe and Western Asia, with a similarly rounded habit to that of Q. rubra.

The leaves, however, are very different – light green, oval-shaped, and with four to six pairs of rounded lobes.

The reddish-brown acorns are long and stemless, i.e. sessile, with a tan cap spanning a third of the nut.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 60-80 feet
• Spread: 60-80 feet
• Leaf Length: 3-7 inches
• Leaf Width: 1-3.75 inches
• Acorn Length: 1 inch
• Bark Color: Dark gray
• Bark Texture: Deeply fissured

This tree is not very common in US cultivation, but it’s a delight for those who happen to stumble across it.

It’s definitely more beloved across the pond, though – it’s the national tree of Ireland!

17. Shingle

A tree that’s native to the eastern half of the US, Q. imbricaria has a conical form that broadens with age.

The lance-shaped, glossy dark green leaves have a bristly tip, a nod to its Erythrobalanus membership, while its rounded, dark brown acorns are covered less than halfway with a tan cap.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 40-60 feet
• Spread: 40-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 1.25-4 inches
• Leaf Width: 0.5-2 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.625 inches
• Bark Color: Brownish gray
• Bark Texture: Shallowly furrowed

Species of Quercus don’t usually make for great hedges, but Q. imbricaria is a delightful exception.

With long-lasting, dense foliage and a high tolerance for pruning, shingle oaks can function in the landscape as stupendous screens!

Be sure to provide full sun, moderate moisture, and rich soils that drain well in USDA Zones 5 to 8.

The small, globe-shaped acorns are vertically striped with alternating strips of light and dark brown.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 60 to 80 feet
• Spread: 40 to 50 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-9 inches
• Leaf Width: 4-5 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.5 inch
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Ridged

Not a common commercial planting, it works quite nicely in the south, as you probably could have guessed.

20. Swamp White

A swamp-loving member of the white oak group, Q. bicolor earned its species epithet from the way its oblong, coarsely-toothed leaves are light green on top, and practically silver underneath.

With a short trunk and a rounded, broad crown, this tree produces light brown acorns, with a brownish-tan cap on the top third of each.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-60 feet
• Spread: 50-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 3-7 inches
• Leaf Width: 1.25-4 inches
• Acorn Length: 1 inch 
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Moderately furrowed

This species from northeastern North America is a perfect planting for low, wet spots in the landscape, although it can tolerate drought, as well.

Be sure to give this variety the ol’ full sun treatment that oaks love.

21. Water

Hailing from the southeastern US, Q. nigra has a form which varies from conical to round-topped.

Belonging to the red oak group, this tree wields blue-green to green leaves that are actually quite variable in shape and dimensions, but they usually have three lobes towards the apex which give the foliage a uniquely club-like shape.

Additionally, the dark acorns are striped in alternating hues of brown and black, with a light brown cap covering the top quarter to third of each nut.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-80 feet
• Spread: 40-60 feet
• Leaf Length: 1.5-4 inches
• Leaf Width: 0.5-2 inches
• Acorn Length: 0.5 inch
• Bark Color: Light to dark gray
• Bark Texture: Shallowly furrowed

With a name like “water oak,” this tree will thrive in moist spots within the landscape.

Add full sun, rich soils, and a location somewhere in USDA Zones 6 to 9 to the mix, and you’ve got one happy tree.

22. White

As closely adhering to the qualities of a Leucobalanus as an oak can be, Q. alba is a tree from the eastern United States that starts out pyramidal, growing rounded and spreading imposingly wide with maturity.

The dark green to blue-green leaves of the white oak are oblong to obovate, with about five to nine rounded lobes and narrow, yet deeply-cut sinuses.

The ovate, light brown acorns are covered with a tan, warty-scaled cap that extends a third of the way down.

Features at a Glance

• Height: 50-80 feet
• Spread: 50-80 feet
• Leaf Length: 4-9 inches 
• Leaf Width: 2-4.5 inches 
• Acorn Length: 0.75-1 inch
• Bark Color: Gray
• Bark Texture: Scaly, irregularly plated

Slow to grow and tough to cultivate, this is not the best selection for landscaping, although it’s quite attractive.

But its lumber – and generally that of the entire Leucobalanus group, by the way – is quite resistant to moisture absorption.

Here in Missouri, Q. alba is highly valued for its utility in making wine barrels, fun fact.

Get ready to experience a frosty blast of family-friendly fun to warm up even the chilliest winter day! This list of ice puns and ice-cold jokes are sure to thaw out those serious faces and bring on the giggles.

The best ice puns and ice jokes

From frosty puns to cold-themed silliness, these jokes are the perfect companions for cosy nights by the fireplace or snowball fights in the garden. A good pun makes a great caption for instagram and TikTok posts too (combine them our nature hashtags to save lots of time), and you can even use them on winter birthday cards and Christmas cards.

So, bundle up and prepare for a blizzard of laughter. These ice puns and ice jokes are about to ice the competition when it comes to good old-fashioned fun ❄️

Coolest ice puns

Let’s lower the temperature and turn up the giggles with some funny ice puns.

Ice to meet you!

Have an ice day!

The ice of life

Icy does it

Ice’ll be back

As cold as ice

The way icy see it

Ice, ice, baby

Once or ice

Ice and easy

On the ice list

Icy what you did there

Best puns about icy weather

This selection of winter puns will help you have a good laugh and see the funny side of a cold day.

Say freeze!

An ice thing about winter

Life’s a freeze

Freeze don’t go

Highs and froze

Freeze the day

Ill at freeze

The bee’s freeze

How froze it?

Freeze things happen

More cold weather puns and freeze puns

Ready for some more cool puns?

Strike a froze

Coughs and freezes

Nobody froze

Freeze a jolly good fellow

As far as it froze

Chilly season

There she froze

Just one of froze things

The birds and the freeze

Friends or froze

Froze and cons

Cold puns about hail

How about a good ice pun with a hail theme to brighten up a hailstorm?

Words hail me

Heads or hails?

Hail and hearty

All hail broke loose

Having a hail of a time

Head over hails

A cold day in hail

Give ‘em hail

For the hail of it

Frosty ice puns

These icy puns as perfect for celebrating a frosty morning.

Love at frost sight

Frost and foremost

My long frost friend

Feeling frostrated

The frost to know

All is not frost

More hilarious ice puns

Sticks like igloo

Sleigh my name, sleigh my name

Ice believe in miracles

Dressed to chill

Ice in the hole

Ebb and floe

An icicle made for two

Ice versa

What an ice-capade

Let’s ice things up

If looks could chill

Awesome ice puns about the big thaw

Thaw loser

A sight for thaw eyes

At full melt

Thaw inspiring

Below the melt    

I came, I thaw, I conquered

Even more chilly ice puns

That’s an ice thing to say

Before your very ice

Ice-solate yourself with a good book

Have an ice-ceptional day!

What an ice-sore

Of ice and men

Don’t call ice, we’ll call you.

Ice-t’s a beautiful day

That’s not how icy it

Ice believe in you

Glacial recognition

This cold brings tears to my ice

 Feeling a little ice-solated

The great ice-scape

Ice see what you did there

Icy come, icy go

This ice is snow joke!

Funny ice jokes

Get everyone giggling with these family-friendly ice jokes.

What’s a snowman’s favourite drink? Ice tea.

Why did two new friends walk out onto a frozen pond together? It was a good way to break the ice.

What is the best meal to eat in an igloo? Brr-eakfast!

How does a snowman get around? By riding an icicle.

What did the woman say after she slipped and fell on ice? Nothing, she just gave everyone the cold shoulder.

What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire? Frostbite.

Why do inventors spend a lot of time on thin ice? They’re looking for the next major breakthrough.

What do you do when your ice house falls apart? Just igloo it back together.

What’s a snowman’s favourite makeup? Ice-shadow.

What do you call kids that love to spend time on the ice? Chill-dren.

Why are there so many cracks at the ice rink? Because the maintenance crew is slipping up.

What’s cooler than being cool? Ice cold.

More silly jokes about ice

Why did the man cancel his plans for a winter hike? He got cold feet.

What’s an Ig? An ice house without a loo.

What happens when and ice cube gets angry? It boils with anger, then lets off some steam.

How do snowmen greet each other? “Ice to meet you!”

What did one icicle say to the other icicle? “I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to drop out.”

What do snowmen like to eat for lunch? Ice bergers.

Why did the snowman put his money in the freezer? He wanted cold hard cash.

What do you call a frozen crocodile? A croc-ice.

What happens when you’re alone and you get too cold? You’re totally ice-olated.

Why can’t you get a job at the ice rink? Because there’s a hiring freeze.

What do you get if you cross a wizard and a blizzard? A cold spell.

What did the snowman say to the grumpy iceberg? “Why are you always so glacial?”

How do snowmen greet each other in the morning? “Have an “ice” day!”

Knock knock ice jokes

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Freeze! Freeze who? Freeze a jolly good fellow!

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ice. Ice who? Ice see you!

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Icy. Icy who? Icy a big polar bear up ahead!

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Frostbite. Frostbite who? Frostbite your food, then chew it!

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ice cream. Ice cream who? Ice scream if you don’t let me back inside!

Ice captions for instagram and TikTok

Liven up your wintry social posts with these fun ice captions.

Stay frosty, my friend

Warm hearts, cold noses

Ice appreciate your friendship

Embrace the beauty of frost

Keeping my cool

Warm hugs in cold weather

Ice-t’s a frosty day outside

Nature’s frosting

Warm hearts melt icy barriers

Ice love spending time with you

Frosty mornings and warm hearts

Embrace the chill and have a ball

Ice-t’s a chilly but heartwarming day

Let’s frost the world with smiles

One really good final ice pun

I’d tell you my best ice pun, but it’s slipped my mind!

And there you have it: a flurry of frosty fun and icy giggles to brighten up the chilliest of days and help you have a good time. Whether you’re sipping hot cocoa by the fire or building snowmen in the garden, these ice puns are the perfect way to lighten the mood and get the whole family chilling out!

More family fun

For more wintry-themed fun, check out these articles:

Christmas jokes

Our Christmas jokes will keep the laughter going all holiday season.

Christmas scavenger hunt

Keep the kids busy with this free printable Christmas scavenger hunt.

Free printable winter outdoor play ideas

Kids can burn off some energy and enjoy the fresh air with this free printable winter bucket list.

Winter nature crafts

Get creative with these simple, low-cost winter nature crafts.

Winter gardening for kids

Gardening can be fun in winter too!  Check out these winter gardening projects for kids.

Winter quotes

Embrace the season and get inspired with these lovely winter quotes.

Winter container gardening

This roundup of winter plants for pots will help you keep the garden looking great all season long.

Pin for later

In this article, we discuss guidelines for choosing the best time to plant bulbs, and what to do if you miss this optimal window of opportunity.

First, let’s talk about the word “bulb,” in both the strict and broad terms of its definition.

What Is a Bulb?

A bulb is a type of geophyte, or a plant that’s propagated via an underground storage vessel that contains all it needs to grow and flower.

Inside are a growing bud and leaves. On the outside are roots and a scaly brown wrapper called a tunic.

Because of the tunic, true bulbs are often described as “tunicate.”

The word “bulb” is commonly understood as an umbrella term that not only applies to true types, such as the allium, daffodil, hyacinth, and tulip, but also to other fleshy-rooted plants, including ones that grow from corms, rhizomes, tubers, and tuberous roots.

These others vary in appearance and growth habit, but are also types of underground storage units.

So, although the crocus is a corm, and the caladium is a corm/tuber (depending upon who you talk to), and the iris is a rhizome, if it blooms in the spring and grows from one of these various underground storage units, that’s what we’re talking about.

We refer to these vessels of spring as “hardy” because they winter over outdoors, and experience the chill needed to enable them to break dormancy and burst into the spring flowers we know and love.

One source of this information is a guide to frost dates from the National Gardening Association. It’s very easy to use. Simply type in your zip code, and find the earliest fall date for which the temperature may be expected to be in the 30s.

Okay. Now that you have a formula for success, what happens when you forget all about those gorgeous ‘King Alfred’ daffodils you just had to have, and when you remember they’re waiting patiently in the shed or the cellar, it’s already winter?

The pros at Purdue Consumer Horticulture offer a definitive answer: If the ground is soft enough to dig, go ahead and plant. With soil temperatures above 40°F, they will grow roots.

They recommend adding a layer of mulch to “prevent bulbs from being heaved out of the soil” by freezing and thawing.

Provided they establish roots and experience some chilling, bulbs planted late may still bloom in their first spring. This will probably happen later in the growing season than what you would typically see, however they should be on track for seasonal blooming the following year.

Alternatively, you may force forgotten bulbs to bloom.

Place them in a container of potting medium with their tips above the soil, and store them in the refrigerator at a temperature of 40°F for about 13 weeks. Then set them in a 65 to 70°F location where they should bloom within two weeks.

It’s All About the Chilling

To recap, spring-blooming bulbs are available for sale in early fall, when weather conditions are likely to be right for planting.

Guidelines such as soil temperature, nighttime air temperature, and the last average frost date can help you to achieve optimal results.

If you miss the fall window of opportunity for ideal chilling, you may still have success if you plant when the soil is at least 40°F, or you can force blooms indoors.

Even forgotten bulbs found up to a year after they should have been nestled in the ground may still have substantial energy reserves.

But does anyone even have a root cellar anymore?

If you do, I’m supremely jealous.

Since most of us aren’t lucky enough to have adorable root cellars in our backyards, we have to resort to purchasing store-bought veggies at some point during the year.

It either gets too hot outside to grow root vegetables, or too cold, thanks to the frozen ground and all that.

If you are lucky enough to be able to grow these tasty roots outside practically all year, see our complete guide to growing beets.

Thanks to modern HVAC systems and grow lights, you can grow juicy, ruby-colored beetroot in containers year-round.

In this article, I’ll show you exactly how to do it.

The Best Weather

You can grow beets in containers indoors or outdoors.

For outdoor container growing, the hardy roots do well in a wide range of USDA Hardiness Zones: anywhere from Zone 2 with its extreme low of -50°F to Zone 10 with its low of 30°F.

Beets are as versatile as they are colorful. But keep this in mind: they love cool weather and scads of sunshine.

Members of the goosefoot, or Chenopodiaceae family, beets are closely related to chard, the difference being that chard is grown for its leafy greens, not the roots.

You can grow beets outdoors in containers through fall, winter, and spring if you have a greenhouse or a cold frame and you live in USDA Hardiness Zones 7-10.

In Zones 2-6, you’ll need to bring them inside for the winter. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore the temperature set on your thermostat. Beets like temperatures that sit right around 50-70°F.

You don’t want your home or greenhouse to be too hot, or too cold.

For reference, when it’s -10°F outside here in the Anchorage area of Alaska, I tend to set my house’s heater at 67°F – perfect for growing beets!

Prepare the Soil

You can use garden soil for an indoor or outdoor container, but you may have to amend it. Beets need a pH of 6.0-7.0, so if you’re using soil from the yard, it’s worth conducting a soil test.

They need well-draining, light soil to allow the roots to expand as they develop.

To make a healthy soil from your own materials, add well-rotted manure or compost to garden soil and mix in some bone meal for additional phosphorous, if you need to.

Your soil should be light and fluffy. If it’s too heavy, your roots might turn out looking like this:

After doing a bit of research, I discovered that saprophytic fungus is harmless to your plant, but it’s unsightly.

The mold develops because potting soil is already full of fungi that are good for your plant.

When you sprinkle organic fertilizer onto the surface of your potting mix without working it in, the fungi in the soil start feeding on the nutrients.

The high concentration of fertilizer in one place is basically a dream buffet for the fungi – and it’s a sign that the fertilizer is working just as it should.

So instead of freaking out, just take a fork or trowel and gently mix the moldy goodness into the soil.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s move on to the actual sowing of your seeds!

How to Sow

While you can technically start beets in seedling trays, the delicate roots can get blunted or damaged easily if you aren’t extremely careful when transplanting.

If you’re planning to grow a beet crop on your deck in early spring and it’s still too cold out to keep the plant outside, you can start the seeds indoors in two-inch-deep seed trays or a biodegradable starter tray.

You’ll want to do this just two to three weeks before the average last frost date, when the weather warms up enough for your beets to survive outdoors.

Once the seedlings are about two inches tall, it’s time to transplant them into deeper containers.

Sowing the seeds directly into your containers is usually the best option.

Now, onto the actual sowing process.

Beetroot seeds strike an uncanny resemblance to a handful of nutritious cereal.

This is because each seed you’ll get in a packet is actually a spiky protective pod containing several smaller seeds. Or you can get a monogerm variety, which has one seed per pod.

To help with germination, soak the pods in warm water for two to three hours before you sow. This helps to open them up.

Spaced three inches apart, poke one-inch-deep holes into the soil with your finger.

Drop two of these delightfully funky seeds into each hole and cover lightly with soil. That way if one seedling doesn’t sprout, you still have another.

The same guidelines apply if you’re planting in seed trays.

Now you’re ready to give your seeds a good soaking.

How to Grow

I’ve got a lovely container garden going in my home office right now, and I used to carry each container to the kitchen and water it with the gentle rain feature on my kitchen faucet.

Obviously, this was rather time-consuming. Especially since I tried to water each of my containers without my toddler catching me – or inadvertently tripping me.

And with beets, dragging a 10-inch-deep container all over the place would be even harder.I solved the problem by getting this little galvanized watering can from Amazon.

It fits in the palm of my hand and I can use it to water all of my office plants with just two trips to the faucet.

My other favorite thing about this watering can is its sprinkle spout.

Instead of a fat stream of water that displaces teensy new seeds in a heartbeat, the watering can gently and evenly drizzles water on the soil.

Make sure to use a similar method to water your freshly planted seeds so they don’t move around.

After planting, water them thoroughly.

If the seeds are growing in seed trays with covers on them or any other sort of humidity-retaining feature, you will probably only need to water them every two or three days.

In pots or containers, the moisture tends to evaporate more quickly, so water every other day.

Your seeds should germinate within five to ten days. After that, water your seedlings when the top inch of soil dries out. You want to keep the soil moist, but not waterlogged.

Thin the seedlings about a week after germination by cutting the weaker stems at their base with a pair of sharp, clean scissors.

You probably won’t meet too many weeds unless you used garden soil to pot your beet seeds, but if you do see weeds, tug them out right away so that they don’t steal any water or food from your roots.

Read on to discover the most important not-so-secret secret to growing great beets.

Provide Plenty of Light

Here it is: beets love sunshine.

If you’re growing this root vegetable on a brightly lit deck, that’s perfect.

Managing Pests and Disease

Pests and diseases can crop up whether you grow your beets indoors or outdoors, but because your plants are growing in containers, you shouldn’t have too many problems.

A container does just that – contains beets in their own little world, separate from the many different plants and critters that can contribute to problems.

If aphids, beet webworms, and flea beetles gnaw on your leaves, spray the leaves with a neem oil solution. Learn more about how to manage aphids here.

For more information on combating creepy crawlies that are attacking your crop, be sure to check out our guide to common beet pests.

Diseases are also less of an issue with container-grown beetroot.

Plus, the soil in containers tends to be less humid and dry out more quickly than the earth does, which helps keep fungal diseases away.

But keep an eye out for cercospora leaf spot, one of the most common fungal diseases to plague this plant.

It appears as patchy spots on the foliage, eventually spreading over the entire leaf area.

If your plants become infected, remove the affected leaves right away.

The beetroot should still thrive if only some leaves were infected. But if the entire plant is covered with leaf spot, uproot the beet and dispose of all plant matter.

As a general preventative measure against disease, keep your beet greens well thinned as they grow taller, to promote good airflow, avoid overcrowding, and prevent the spread of fungus.

Taking two to four leaves from the outer portion of the plant will help with this while allowing the root to keep growing well – plus you’ll get a tasty treat for your salad.

In addition, avoid watering the actual leaves of the beet so that they don’t get damp and prone to fungal diseases.

In cases of a severe infection, use an organic fungal spray if you need to.

Learn more about common beet diseases in this guide.

Harvest Time

You can harvest beet greens for salads and stir-fries whenever you want, depending on whether you like tender young leaves or bigger, mature greens.

Simply snip a leaf or two from the outer portion of the plant; this helps with airflow, too! To learn exactly how and when to do this, see our full guide on how to harvest beet greens here.

Around six to eight weeks after the germination of your seedlings – check your seed packet for maturity date – you’ll have leafy green tops with juicy bulbs waiting just below the surface of the soil.

Or maybe they’ve even popped out of the soil a bit, unable to contain their glory.

That means it’s the most exciting moment of all: root harvest time.

Uproot your hard-won bulbs for pickling, roasting, juicing, and more.

You’ve heard that it’s important to prune your pear trees. You’ve purchased a pair of pruners and have looked at a few resources but you’re still not quite sure when to carry them outside and start snipping.

Maybe you’re nervous, too. How, exactly, does one prune a pear tree?

We link to vendors to help you find relevant products. If you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.

If you want to learn more about growing pears, read our guide.

In this article, we’ll point out exactly why pruning Pyrus trees is important, and walk you through the steps you need to take.

Here’s everything we’ll cover:

Why Should You Trim Pear Trees?

If you’re wondering why you should bother to cut branches off your pear, you’re not alone. What good does cutting limbs off do?

Here’s the secret: trimming young pear trees helps them grow into and maintain the shape you prefer.

But pruning also does much more, and trees of any age can benefit.

By trimming away boughs that are touching each other or growing too close together, you help eliminate the threat of injury. When there’s friction between them, the bark can rub off, creating an entry point for pests and disease.

And when leafy branches are growing too close together – even if they aren’t touching – sunlight can’t reach every bough individually.

According to experts at the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, pruning fruit trees improves airflow between limbs. This can help dry out excess moisture, like dampness from a recent rainfall, more quickly.

This, in turn, helps keep fungal infections away.

The experts at the People’s Trust also say that a well-pruned tree lets more sunshine in, resulting in large, vigorous leaves and buds.

Diane Brown, extension educator at the Michigan State University Extension, adds that sunlight is crucial in helping the leaves to make sugar, allowing the tree to grow as it should, and helping to produce high-quality fruit.

Delicious!

When to Trim

You should plan to prune in late winter or early spring. Experts at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension say pruning them at this time helps to protect their winter hardiness and health.

Be on the lookout for winter dieback, or cold damaged wood, and prune it away, too.

You’ll still be catching the tree at the tail end of its dormant stage, but the wounds created by the pruners will heal quickly as the growing season begins, reducing the chance that insects will infest the branches through the open cuts, or that disease will take hold.

If your pear desperately needs a trim though, late summer is an option, say the experts at the Maine Extension.

You’ll only want to remove dead or broken branches at this point, as a heavy trim in summer will weaken the plant. You never want to remove more than a third of a tree’s growth in a given year.

To keep your tree as healthy as possible, cut back dead or diseased branches, or limbs that are rubbing against each other, once a year.

How to Prune

Before you begin snipping away, consider what you wish to achieve with your Pyrus tree.

Do you want to train it into a shape ideal for bearing large yields of high-quality fruit year after year? Or would you rather it grow with a more natural look, potentially at the expense of a larger harvest?

If you’re really fancy, or short on space, you can try growing them in the espalier style.

If you prefer the first option, you’ll probably want to prune your pear into what’s known as a “single leader” or “central leader” shape.

Since pears tend to grow straight up, the central leader shape honors the way pears like to grow while also maximizing light exposure to the lower and middle branches, which helps promote fruit production and quality.

But if you’d rather maintain a “natural” look, with branches that grow more naturally and uniformly while also keeping the tree healthy, you can do that, too.

We’ll cover how to prune with either of these goals in mind in a moment. But first, a few tips and notes on equipment.

Fiskars Bypass Pruners

Use a sharp pair of bypass pruners for young specimens and small branches. I like these from Fiskars, which are available from the Home Depot.

For older trees with thick limbs, use a pruning saw like this one from Fiskars, also available from the Home Depot.

Fiskars Pruning Saw

Always cut about an inch above an outward-facing lateral bud, which allows a new branch to grow outward rather than crossing back inward toward the trunk.

For branches that curve upward, make an angled cut so that water can easily run off the open wound. For boughs that stick straight out, a straight cut works well.

Always clean and disinfect your pruning tools before making any cuts.

Never remove more than a third of the tree’s growth in one year.

You can learn more general tips in our guide to the basics of pruning.

Pruning to Create a Central Leader

Your goal here is to allow the trunk to grow straight upward, and to create two to three sets of strong scaffolding branches growing outward from the center.

Pruning of this type should be done at planting time, or during the winter following the tree’s first summer.

If you’re starting out with a whip, or a branchless tree, you’ll want to make what’s called a “heading cut” at planting time, wherein you cut a few inches off a branch, typically removing the tip and one or two buds.

Heading cuts stimulate new growth.

Your heading cut on a whip should reduce the height to 30 to 45 inches, says Diane Brown of the Michigan State University Extension. This will encourage side shoots, which will become your scaffolding branches as the tree grows.

If you’re starting out with a branched tree, you can skip this step. Instead, prune dead, diseased, or broken boughs away by cutting them back to their point of origin.

This is called a “thinning cut.” Unlike a heading cut, a thinning cut does not stimulate new growth but instead redirects energy into the existing branches.

When you cut entire boughs off, take care to leave about one-quarter of an inch of the stump in place, essentially leaving only the branch collar behind.

The branch collar is a ring of thickened tissue surrounding the branch’s attachment point to the trunk. If you cut nice and close to it, the collar will naturally seal itself back over in time.

A longer stump, on the other hand, can rot and potentially breach the collar area’s protective tissue, ultimately infecting the entire tree. But if you cut too much of the stump off, you risk removing the collar entirely, and injuring the trunk.

When the tree has several branches, after about a year of growth, choose four or five to keep. Pick branches with a crotch angle of 45 to 60 degrees.

A narrower angle can result in a weak branch that can’t properly support fruit. It can also cause bark to get trapped in the crotch and begin to crack – an open invitation for rot.

The lowest branch you choose to keep should be about two to three feet off the ground.

Over time, these boughs will become your lowermost scaffolding branches.

In the first several years of growth, also cut away any developing fruits as soon as you see them. This will allow the tree to focus on growing strong and healthy instead of producing fruit, and after year three, you’ll be able to let it bear pears!

Continued Care for Central Leaders

Two or three years after you form the first set of scaffolding limbs, select a second set from the branches that have grown above the lower scaffold.

The crotch of the lowest branch in your second scaffold set should be about two feet above the crotch of the uppermost branch in your lower scaffold.

Cut back any limbs in that in-between space. Leaving this space relatively open will allow sunlight to reach the center of the tree.

Once you’ve done that, trim the branches in your second scaffold set back so that they’re a couple of inches shorter in length than the lower boughs.

According to extension expert Diane Brown, your pear will begin to look a little bit like a Christmas tree.

This shape – narrower at the top, and broader at the bottom – prevents the upper branches and leaves from blocking overhead sunlight that needs to reach the lower scaffold.

If you’re growing a dwarf pear variety, your shaping work is done after you create this second set of scaffolding branches.

But if you’re raising a semi-dwarf or standard tree, you’ll need to create a third and final set.

Whenever the tree has grown several more branches – generally a year or two after you create the second set of scaffolding branches – you’ll repeat the step above to create the third set of scaffolds.

Remember to trim them to be a couple inches shorter than the middle branches.

When your pear reaches the desired height – around eight to 10 feet for a dwarf, 12 to 16 feet for a semi-dwarf, or about 20 feet for a standard variety – you can opt to trim the central leader at the top of the tree, cutting it back to your desired height.

If your pear gets too tall, you may have difficulty harvesting fruit, depending on your height preference and expectations for the tree.

Do this every couple of years to maintain the desired height.

After doing all this work, you can sit back and relax for the most part. The tree will retain the form that you have coaxed it to grow into, and will only need minor adjustments every year or two.

Trimming for a Natural Look

If you love your pear trees but want them to look more natural while still providing fruit every year or two, you can choose a more laid-back trimming option.

All you need to do for this one is to:

• Cut back broken, dead, or diseased branches.
• Remove branches that are crossing, growing inward toward the trunk, or rubbing against each other.
• Trim away any branches with crotch angles narrower than 45 degrees.

Let the tree grow as tall as you want. Every two or three years, stand back and look at the overall shape of your pear.

If you see any limbs sticking out awkwardly, or notice that some areas of the tree are too dense with lateral branches for light to penetrate, you can choose to do a bit of pruning.

Use thinning cuts to remove the lateral branches you don’t want, cutting them back to their point of origin, leaving the branch collar intact.

Otherwise, you really don’t need to do much at all.

A Note on Age

Pruning to shape a pear is best done when the tree is young. Once it’s around five or six years old, the shape is more or less set in stone, and heavy trimming could be detrimental.

If you’ve recently moved into a home with older, neglected pears, cut with care. Remove those broken, dead, or diseased branches first. Then, use thinning cuts to remove branches that crowd the tree.

Make room for sunlight to hit the innermost branches from every angle, taking care not to prune back more than one-third of the branches.

For a severely crowded, tangly tree, you may need to thin about a third of the branches off every year for two or three years, until it looks adequately thinned out.

Did your central leader die back or break off? See our guide for what to do if the top of your tree dies.

A Peary Delicious Bounty

Whether you choose to create a central leader or use a more natural method for pruning your pears, you’re sure to get plenty of delight out of growing your fruit tree. Or, if you’re like me, your fruit trees, plural.

How do you like to prune your pears? Let us know in the comments below! We love reading your stories and answering your questions.

For more helpful tips, remember to check out these articles on growing pears next:

Read on to learn how to easily propagate hydrangeas from stem cuttings.

When to Take Stem Cuttings

Hydrangeas are deciduous perennial shrubs that grow and bloom throughout the spring and summer months.

You can take cuttings any time from late spring after the plant has leafed out until early fall.

If it is late in the growing season, make sure foliage is still green and that you have enough time for roots to fully form before the ground freezes, as it can be challenging to keep newly established plants indoors through the winter.

Plan for about six to eight weeks for cuttings to take root before they will be ready for planting out in the garden.

Next, carefully strip off most of the leaves, leaving a pair at the tip of the cutting. The new roots will form at the nodes where the leaves have been removed.

If your chosen hydrangea is a variety with large leaves, you can also trim the remaining two leaves by cutting them in half.

This will decrease the amount of water needed to support the foliage, reducing stress on the cutting while it is developing its roots. This step is not necessary if leaves are less than three inches long or wide.

Throughout this process, it is important to keep the cut stems from drying out. Be mindful, work quickly, and avoid setting them in direct sunlight.

You can wrap cuttings in a damp paper towel and place them in a plastic bag until you are ready to pot them up.

When you have taken all the cuttings you require, you can choose to dip the cut ends of each stem in powdered rooting hormone. This step is optional, but it may speed up the rooting process.

Potting in Soil

Fill one or more six-inch-wide containers with damp sterile potting soil, or a soilless mix containing half peat moss and half perlite.

Avoid using soil from the garden or any soil that is rich in fertilizer. The excess nutrients could cause the cutting to rot before rooting can occur.

Moisten the potting medium, then make holes with a pencil or your finger, and place the cuttings in the pot one by one, burying at least two sets of leaf nodes below the surface of the soil. Tamp the potting medium down around each stem until it is snug.

You may plant multiple stems in one container, spacing them at least two inches apart.

Water well, allowing the soil to drain thoroughly. The soil should be moist but never soggy.

The next step is to create a humidity dome over the cuttings. You can do this by covering the container with a plastic bag, and using stakes to keep the bag from touching the leaves.

If you don’t want to use a bag, you can also cut off the top of a milk jug or plastic water bottle and place it upside down on top.

Place the pot in a sheltered area out of direct sunlight. Check on it every couple of days, watering when the top of the soil feels dry. Avoid overwatering as this could lead to rot.

Roots should begin to form in about two to three weeks. This could happen in as little as a week in warm humid weather.

You can check to see whether a cutting is rooting by pulling gently on the stem. If you feel some resistance, this will indicate that roots are developing.

After a few weeks, when you are certain the stem has begun to root, you can remove the bag or humidity dome. Continue to monitor closely and water when the soil feels dry.

On Sunday and Monday of this week, we attended the Homesteading Life Conference in Hannibal Missouri. This is an annual event organized by Doug and Stacy, and both my son Ezekiel and I gave presentations. He talked on his landrace watermelon project, and I spoke on composting and Grocery Row Gardening.

It was an excellent event with lots of wonderful people – and the town of Hannibal is excellent. It’s the home town of Mark Twain so we spent Tuesday visiting his boyhood home and other sites from his life. We also got to see multiple original Normal Rockwell paintings at the Mark Twain Museum.

After that, however, we had a little more time so some of the older children and I walked around the shops of downtown. There we visited Lydia’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is a fantastically weird store. The owner restored paintings and had quite a bizarre collection of artifacts for sale.

Somehow, we ended up talking about gardening, and he mentioned growing pawpaws, and shared with me that a grove of wild pawpaws was located just a short distance away at Riverside Park, near the playground alongside a creek by the Mississippi. He also mentioned that he had found Native American artifacts in the area.

I thanked him and we walked back to our Air BnB, where I gathered up the whole family and took them to the park.

While Rachel watched most of the younger children at the playground, some of the older ones joined me on a hunt, both for arrowheads and pawpaws.

Though we didn’t find arrowheads, we did find lots of pawpaws:

Unfortunately, we were too early in the season, but I’m hoping we get enough ripening after the fact to give us viable seeds.

Pawpaw trees are a native North American tree species which is one of the few fruit trees to flower and fruit in the shade, making it a very good food forest species. If you live in a place with some shade, decent rainfall, and not super hot or super cold, pawpaw trees will probably fit into your garden.

More resources:

How to germinate pawpaw seeds: https://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/how-to-grow-pawpaws-from-seed/

Michael Judd’s FOR THE LOVE OF PAWPAWS: https://amzn.to/3YyVE5P

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Garlic is one of the easiest crops to grow, and learning how to grow garlic is simple. Even better, once you’ve grown it, you can regrow garlic yearly from your bulbs. 

Keep reading for garlic tips in any climate, including how to grow garlic in Arizona and other hot climates.

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Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure policy for more information.

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10 Tips for How to Grow Garlic

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1. Choose the best garlic variety for your climate

Learning how to grow garlic is simple. Garlic is easy to grow, but choosing the variety best suited to your climate to grow garlic successfully is important.

Hardneck varieties of garlic are cold-hardy and a good choice for those in cold climates. This type produces a flower stem or “scape” which must be removed for bulbs to fully form. The scape is edible and delicious. 

Hardnecks do not store as well as softneck varieties. 

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Softneck varieties are the best types to grow if you live in a warm climate (like the low desert of Arizona). Softneck types store well and are often braided for storage. The flavor may be less intense than hardneck types. 

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2. Plan ahead and order garlic early

When it is time to plant garlic, many growers are often already sold out. It’s best to plan ahead and order garlic months before it is time to plant. 

• If possible, look for a local grower; they will sell varieties well-suited to your climate.
• Check the ship date of whoever you order garlic from to ensure they ship in time for your preferred planting date. (Note the time needed for vernalization of hardneck varieties in warm climates — see below). 
• Many companies begin selling garlic in May and are often sold out by August. Plan ahead and order early. 

Finding a source that ships garlic at the right time can be the most challenging part of growing garlic in Arizona. I’ve had the most success with garlic from Forever Young Farms. They sell soft neck varieties well-suited to growing in the low desert of Arizona, and they ship it in time to plant. 

Other online retailers that sell garlic include: Botanical Interests, Baker Creek, Terroir Seeds, Territorial Seed Company, Peaceful Valley Farm, and Seed Savers Exchange. 

It’s best not to grow grocery-store garlic. The garlic may not be a good variety for your area and may have been treated with a growth inhibitor.

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3. Prepare garlic before planting

If you live in a warm climate like Arizona and you are growing a hardneck variety of garlic, the bulbs must be vernalized. Vernalize garlic cloves by putting them in the fridge (cloves intact) in a closed paper sack for at least six weeks. 

Softneck varieties also benefit from vernalization, but it isn’t as critical as for the hardneck types. 

If you live in a cold climate and plant in the fall, the bulbs will naturally be exposed to the needed cooler temperatures. No artificial vernalization is necessary. 

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4. Plant garlic at the right time

Garlic is usually planted in the fall — from September through November. Plant garlic about a month before the soil freezes in cold climates. 

How to grow garlic in Arizona: The best time to plant garlic in the low desert of Arizona is during the month of October. 

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5. Choose the best location for planting garlic

Choose an area that receives at least 6-8 hours of sunlight.

Garlic grows best in loose, well-draining soil. Prepare the soil by loosening soil to a depth of several inches.

Raised beds or containers that are at least 6” deep are excellent choices for growing garlic. 

Garlic is a heavy feeder. Amend the planting area with compost and a balanced organic fertilizer.  

Garlic is a good companion for most crops (other than beans, peas, sage, and parsley); tuck a few bulbs around other vegetables to help deter pests. Garlic grows very well in containers.

Plant garlic in wells of fruit trees — may help deter common pests. 

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6. Plant garlic correctly

Break apart the bulbs, and soak in a solution of fish and kelp fertilizer and baking soda (1 T of each per gallon of water) for at least 8 and up to 24 hours. 

The baking soda has antibacterial benefits and the fertilizer stimulates growth.

Plant with the flat side (roots) facing down and the pointy side (sprouting side) facing up. 

Plant cloves 2-3” deep and 4-6” apart. For square-foot gardening, plant 9 per square.

Mulch planting area well, especially in cold climates.

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7. Care for garlic as it grows

Water well when new leaves are forming. When leaves begin to die back, water less often. It’s best to water garlic deeply, less often. 

Garlic is a heavy feeder. Feed monthly with an organic fertilizer while garlic is actively growing.

Cut off flower shoots (scapes) as they emerge to encourage bulb development.

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8. Harvest garlic at the right time

Garlic is ready to harvest when about half the lower leaves are brown and the cloves are plump and well-formed. Garlic left in the ground too long will begin to split and the garlic will not store well.   

In the low desert of Arizona, garlic is often ready to harvest during the month of May.

Stop watering when the lower 3-4 leaves brown. Dig up a test bulb to check on size. 

About a week later, harvest the garlic by gently lifting it with a fork rather than pulling. 

Do not rinse or trim roots and stems after harvesting.

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9. Cure harvested garlic for longer storage

Allow the harvested garlic to cure in a shady well-ventilated area. The ideal temperature for curing is around 75-80°F (this may need to be inside if you live in a hot summer climate like Arizona). Provide a slight breeze with a fan (if possible) if it is indoors.

Softneck garlic can also be braided and hung up to cure. 

Lay the garlic out in a single layer on a rack or floor, or braid the stems of soft neck varieties.

Allow the garlic stems to wither and the papery skins to tighten around the cloves.

Trim roots and trim stems to about 1″ when the necks are moisture-free, completely tight, and dry.

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10. Store cured garlic properly

• Store bulbs in a dry cool place. A great way to store garlic is in mesh net bags (I use these mesh bags from Amazon) hung up in a cool place. 
• Check cloves regularly, and use any soft ones right away. Softneck varieties will store longer than hardneck varieties. 
• Save the largest cloves for planting next year. Leave the stored cloves intact.

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Roasted Garlic Recipe

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Best Pepper Varieties to Grow at Home​

Peppers come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, ranging from sweet to fiery hot. Learn about the different types of peppers, and then plant a few varieties to spice up your garden. Can’t decide which ones to add? This article shares over 15 of the best pepper varieties to grow at home.

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Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. See my disclosure policy for more information.

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How hot are these pepper varieties?

This post about pepper varieties begins with the sweetest at #1 – no heat at all – and ends at #15 with the hottest pepper I’ve grown in my own garden, a former world record holder for the hottest pepper. 

A pepper’s heat is often compared with the heat of a jalapeño – “it’s hotter than a jalapeño” or “it’s not as hot as a jalapeño”. Jalapeños come in on this list at #9.  The Scoville scale is used to measure how hot peppers are.

Scoville heat units (SHU) measure the concentration of capsaicinoids, a chemical compound responsible for the spicy flavor in peppers and other foods. The jalapeño ranks between 2,500 and 8,000 SHU on the Scoville scale. This means a pepper must be at least eight times hotter than the jalapeño to be considered much spicier.

The hottest peppers on the Scoville scale are the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Carolina Reaper, reaching over two million SHU. That means these peppers are more than 250 times hotter than the jalapeño! However, some peppers have been tested that have reached over 2.2 million SHU, making them potentially even hotter than the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Carolina Reaper! For reference, police-grade pepper spray is about 500,000 to 5.3 million SHU.

Of course, it’s not just the Scoville scale that measures spiciness in peppers. Different peppers contain different types of capsaicinoids, which is the chemical compound responsible for the heat. The levels of capsaicinoids in a pepper will determine how hot it is, regardless of its Scoville rating.

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Which pepper variety should you choose?

Want to grow peppers in your garden? My advice is to pick a sweet pepper, a hot pepper, and maybe one or two in between. Adding peppers to your garden is a great way to give variety and flavor to the other vegetables you harvest from your garden.  Peppers are easy to grow and maintain, so the perfect choice for a beginner gardener.

If you are looking for seeds for the varieties of peppers listed, click on the link attached to each pepper’s name and it will take you to trusted seed sources. Want some tips for growing peppers? This article explains how to grow peppers in your garden. 

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #1: mini bell pepper​

What does a mini bell pepper look like? ​

The colors of mini bell peppers cover the rainbow, ranging from green, red, yellow, orange and even purple, depending on the variety. Mini bell peppers are about 2 or 3 inches long. 

What does a mini bell pepper taste like?​

Besides looking different, the different colors of bell peppers actually have differences in flavor. Green bell peppers are the least ripe or sweet. As the bell pepper ripens from green, to red, then yellow, and finally orange, the sweetness and flavor increases. The flavor of a purple pepper can be compared to a green pepper. If left on the plant longer, the purple pepper will normally ripen to yellow and then orange. 

How hot is a mini bell pepper?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 0

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Types of peppers to grow at home #2: bell pepper ​

What does a bell pepper look like? ​

Bell peppers are a bell-shaped large pepper. They range from 4 inches up to 8 inches for the largest peppers. The colors of bell peppers cover the rainbow, ranging from green, red, yellow, orange and even purple, depending on the variety.  

What does a bell pepper taste like? ​

Similarly to the mini bell pepper, the different colors of bell peppers have differences in flavor. Green bell peppers are the least ripe or sweet. As the bell pepper ripens from green, to red, then yellow, and finally orange, the sweetness and flavor increases. The flavor of a purple pepper can be compared to a green pepper. If left on the plant longer, the purple pepper will normally ripen to yellow and then orange. 

How hot is a bell pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 0

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #3: banana pepper

What does a banana pepper taste like? ​

Mild, almost no heat. A little bit sweet and tangy taste. 

How hot is a banana pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 0 – 500

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Types of peppers to grow at home #4: Carmen pepper

Types of peppers to grow at home #4: Carmen pepper

Carmen peppers are a bull-horn shaped pepper about 6 inches long and 2 inches wide. For best flavor, pick when peppers are a deep red color. Thick-walled and meaty.

What does a Carmen pepper taste like? ​

Carmen peppers are a sweet tasting type of Italian pepper with little to no heat. They are delicious roasted. 

How hot is a Carmen pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 0 – 500

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #5: pepperoncini

What does a pepperoncini pepper look like?

Pepperoncini peppers are a thin-walled 2 to 3 inch tapered pepper, most often harvested when green, although they ripen to red on the plant.

What does a pepperoncini pepper taste like? ​

Pepperoncini peppers are most often pickled and have a tangy, sweet heat. Raw pepperoncini peppers have a mild, sweet heat. 

How hot is a pepperoncini pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 100 – 500

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Types of peppers to grow at home #6: Anaheim pepper​

What does a Anaheim pepper look like?

Anaheim peppers are a medium-sized pepper about 6-10 inches long. They ripen from green to red. 

What does a Anaheim pepper taste like?

Milder than a jalapeño. One of the most common peppers – mild flavor and heat. Favorite for roasting and chile rellenos. 

How hot is a Anaheim pepper?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 500 – 2500

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #7: poblano pepper​

What does a poblano pepper look like?

Poblano peppers are thick-walled and heart-shaped. The peppers are  3 to 6 inches long and very dark green in color.  

What does a poblano pepper taste like?

Poblano peppers are mild with just a bit of heat and earthy tasting. They are often roasted and peeled. Dried poblano peppers are called ancho chilis.

How hot is a poblano pepper?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 1,000 – 2,000 

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What does a Hatch chili pepper look like?

Hatch chili peppers are very similar to the Anaheim pepper. These peppers have an elongated shape that ranges from 6-10 inches long. Hatch chilis most often refer to the type of chili grown in Hatch, New Mexico. 

What does a Hatch chili pepper taste like?

Similar taste to Anaheim pepper; earthy flavor with varying levels of heat depending on ripeness. 

How hot is a Hatch chili pepper?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 1,000 – 8,000

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #9: jalapeño pepper​

What does a jalapeño pepper look like?

Jalapeño peppers are a thick-walled medium sized pepper. Most are 2-3 inches long, but some jalapeños are as long as 6 inches. Usually harvested when green, but ripens to red. 

What does a jalapeño pepper taste like? ​

When jalapeños are left to ripen to red on the vine, the flavor is less hot and sweeter than the green ones. Jalapeño peppers are thought by many to be just the right amount of heat. The peppers are hot, but not uncomfortably so. 

How hot is a jalapeño pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 2,500 – 6,000

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Types of peppers to grow at home #10: Fresno pepper​

What does a Fresno pepper look like?

A Fresno pepper is about 2 to 3 inches long, slightly curved, with smooth skin. As it matures, it changes from green to a deep red. It has thinner walls than a jalapeño.

What does a Fresno pepper taste like? ​

Medium hot, and slightly sweet. When green, a Fresno pepper looks and tastes similar to a jalapeño. As the pepper matures, it turns red and develops a smokier and fruitier taste that is slightly hotter than a jalapeño.

How hot is a Fresno pepper?​

Scoville heat units (SHU): 2,500 – 10,000

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #11: Jaloro pepper​

What does a Jaloro pepper taste like?

The Jaloro pepper tastes like a fruitier version of a jalapeño.

How hot is a Jaloro pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 5,000

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #12: Serrano pepper​

What does a Serrano pepper look like?

Serrano peppers are smaller than jalapeños. They start green, and ripen to orange and finally red. These peppers are 2-4 inches long and about 1/2 inch wide. Serrano pepper plants are easy to grow and productive. I’ve had plants last for several years in the garden, producing hundreds of peppers each year. 

What does a Serrano pepper taste like? ​

Fresh flavor but hotter than a jalapeño. Adds a spicy kick to salsa. Delicious roasted or fresh. 

How hot is a Serrano pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 10,000 – 23,000 

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Types of peppers to grow at home #13: Thai chili pepper​

What does a Thai chili pepper taste like? ​

There are many different types of Thai chili peppers, and they range from hot to very hot. 

How hot is a Thai chili pepper?​

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 50,000 – 100,000

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Types of peppers to grow at home #14: habanero pepper​

What does a habanero pepper​ look like?

Habanero peppers are thin-walled, waxy pepper that is about 2 inches long and 1 to 2 inches wide. Color ranges from yellow to orange and then to red depending on when it is harvested. 

What does a habanero pepper taste like?

Good mix of heat and flavor. Very hot but also a little citrus flavor. 

How hot is a habanero pepper?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 200,000 – 300,000

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Pepper varieties to grow at home #15: Bhut Jolokia​

What does a Bhut Jolokia (ghost pepper) look like?

Bhut Jolokia peppers are 2 to 3 inches long, and range from red and orange to purple and brown. They have thin, dented skin that tears easily.

What does a Bhut Jolokia (ghost pepper) taste like?

The flavor comes in stages – first a very sweet chili flavor, followed by intense heat that intensifies for about 15 minutes. Use caution when handling and using. 

How hot is a Bhut Jolokia (ghost pepper)?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 850,000 – 1,463,700 

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Bonus type of pepper: Chiletipin

What does a Chiletipin look like?

Chilteipin is a small, round chile pepper with bright red skin and a unique smoky flavor. The color ranges from light green to bright red when fully ripe.

What does a Chiletipin taste like?

Chiletipins have a distinct flavor that can range from fruity and smoky notes to intense heat. 

How hot is a Chiletipin?

SHU (Scoville Heat Units): 50,000 to 100,000 

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1. Cranesbill Geranium

A vigorous perennial ground cover, cranesbill geranium (Geranium sanguineum) enjoys part shade under tall trees.

Blooming in May and June, different cultivars bring merry variations of pinks and purples to spring gardens.

Flowers hover on stems above the mounded foliage, and can be deadheaded if desired when blooms fade. The foliage itself is full and dense, reaching a height of nine to 18 inches.

Each plant spreads to about 18 inches, and multiple plants together can create a handy camouflage for bare ground, debris, or even irrigation tubing underneath.

Cranesbill geranium requires little maintenance and can be grown in USDA Zones 3 to 9.

‘New Hampshire Purple’ Cranesbill Geranium

‘New Hampshire Purple’ features cute, pinkish-purple flowers and bright green foliage that turns red in fall.

You can find ‘New Hampshire Purple’ available at Nature Hills Nursery.

Learn more about cranesbill geranium in our guide.

2. Creeping Phlox

A ground-hugging species, creeping phlox (Phlox subulata), also known as moss phlox, is small but mighty.

Topping out at about six inches high, this plant crawls outward, spreading quickly up to two feet wide.

Cultivars are available in shades of blue, pink, purple, red, and white. Early spring blooms open from April through May, and if deadheaded, plants may offer a second bloom later on in the season.

Creeping phlox is common in USDA Zones 3 to 9. It softens the edges of gardens and foundations, and looks comfortable while lazily draping over the edges of rock walls and borders.

‘Emerald Blue’ Creeping Phlox

‘Emerald Blue’ sports an abundance of bright blue flowers, completely covering its green, moss-like leaves.

One-gallon containers of ‘Emerald Blue’ creeping phlox are available at Fast Growing Trees.

Learn how to grow creeping phlox in our guide.

3. Ostrich Fern

Shade-loving ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) accent gardens with their frilly textured fronds. Forming vase-shaped plumes, the delicate foliage dances and rustles gently, with even a light breeze.

These lush green plants can reach heights of three to six feet. When supplied with constant moisture, they spread by underground rhizomes, forming dense colonies that contrast and balance flowering plants nicely.

Ostrich Fern

Plus, the curled up “fiddleheads” that emerge in spring are edible! Ostrich ferns do well on their own with little maintenance in USDA Zones 3 to 7.

Find them at your local nursery or at Nature Hills Nursery.

Read more about growing and caring for ferns in our guide.

4. Sweet Woodruff

A herbaceous perennial ground cover, sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) forms a bright green mat of tight vegetation.

In late spring, clusters of tiny white flowers emerge, but don’t let its petite size fool you. This plant is not as dainty as it appears.

In moist, shaded areas, It spreads rapidly via underground rhizomes. This is helpful for choking out unwanted weeds.

It requires little maintenance aside from controlling the spread. As its name suggests, when dried, sweet woodruff has a pleasant, sweet scent reminiscent of drying hay.

Sweet Woodruff

Suited to USDA Zones 4 to 9, sweet woodruff is a perfect selection for growing under black walnut trees, it’s ideal in borders, as well as naturalized areas of your landscape.

You can find sweet woodruff at Nature Hills Nursery.

Flowering Perennials

To me, perennial flowers are a must-have in every garden. They’re sustainable, eco-friendly, and cost-effective.

Not only is it satisfying to see the plants evolve and grow from year to year, but they also help build soil.

Unlike annuals, it’s unnecessary to replant perennials every year, so unless you’re dividing or transplanting, the soil is left undisturbed. The roots lock soil in place, reducing erosion and capturing moisture before it runs off.

Let’s take a look at a few that do well under black walnut trees:

5. Bee Balm

Bee balm (Monarda spp.), also called bergamot, is in the Lamiaceae family, along with mints.

This explains the faint aromatic quality of this herbaceous perennial’s square-shaped stems and dark green foliage.

The flowers of bee balm are unique, with distinctive bracts, and can be found in various colors like pink, red, violet, and white.

Butterflies and bees adore this 10- to 18-inch-tall plant, but keep in mind that it can be prone to powdery mildew.

Balmy Purple Bee Balm

Balmy Purple bee balm (aka M. didyma ‘Balbalmurp’) sports vivid magenta flowers and grows to a mature height of 10 to 12 inches.

Find Balmy Purple bee balm available at Nature Hills.

Read our guide for an in depth look at bee balm.

6. Black-Eyed Susan

The classic black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) is a cheerful choice for black walnut landscaping.

The shape of the flowers are similar to daisies, only a bit larger at about three inches in size. They’re bright yellow to orange with a dark brown, conical center.

The plant stands about two to three feet tall at maturity. Its long, lance-shaped leaves and stems are a deep green and have a rough, hairy texture.

Black-eyed Susan adds a vivid pop of color and makes a statement planted in groups. It also makes an excellent cut flower.

Rudbeckia is winter hardy in USDA Zones 3 to 7 and is drought tolerant.

‘Glitters Like Gold’ Black-Eyed Susans

The hybrid cultivar ‘Glitters Like Gold’ boasts long-lasting, three-inch blooms and can be found in #1 containers at Nature Hills Nursery.

Read all about black-eyed Susans and how to care for them in our guide.

7. Coneflower

Native to the United States, coneflowers (Echinacea spp.) are a favorite of American gardeners.

They’re also a favorite of bees and butterflies who love to visit their large, five-inch, daisy-like flowers.

Flower colors include various shades of the standard pinks and purples as well as vibrant oranges, burgundies, and other fun colors.

The plants aren’t fussy, and although they love sun, they’ll tolerate some shade under your walnut tree.

Easygoing and dependable, coneflowers bring maximum value to the garden. Growing in clumps, their height usually tops out at about four feet and their flowers are long-lived.

Crazy Pink™ Echinacea

Coneflowers grow in USDA Zones 3 to 8 and they’re perfect for mass planting and for native, wildflower, and woodland style gardens.

Take a look at the vibrant shade of this hybrid Crazy Pink™ (Echinacea x ‘Adam Saul’) coneflower, with nursery containers available from Plants by Mail.

Learn all about coneflowers in our guide.

8. Hosta

Rhizomatous, clump-forming perennials, hostas (Hosta spp.) form long and elegant stems with multiple bell-like, fragrant flowers in different shades of purple, and white.

While hosta flowers are a highlight, they might be best known for their easily recognizable foliage.

Hostas range in size from small to giant, and the leaf color varies widely from bright, neon green and yellow to subdued blue-gray. They can be solid or variegated, smooth or textured.

A visit to your local nursery or a walk through a botanical garden is sure to reveal a new variety you haven’t yet discovered, as will our roundup of top-pick hostas.

This perennial does exceptionally well in the shade under trees, especially the blue varieties.

They require consistent moisture and an annual top-up of compost, but aside from that they’re low maintenance.

These shade masters grow in USDA Zones 3 to 8, and depending on size, can be used as ground covers, accents, or focal points in the garden.

‘Blue Angel’ Hosta

For a blue hosta option, check out ‘Blue Angel’ with its large, textured blue-green leaves and white flowers.

You can find plants in one-gallon containers available at Planting Tree.

Learn more about hostas and how to grow them in our guide.

9. Tulip

A perennial bulb, the tulip flower (Tulipa spp.) represents the essence of spring.

Popping up in April and May, they welcome us to a new growing season with refreshing splashes of color. Flower shapes range from the traditional cup to frilly, fringed, star-shaped, and more.

Flowers sit atop green stems with large, wide leaves and some can reach heights of two feet.

Tulips make showy cut flowers and stunning spring displays when planted in patterned groupings.

La Belle Epoque Bright Mix Tulips

For a soft, romantic color scheme, take a look at La Belle Epoque Bright Mix which features three double-petaled, late-flowering cultivars: ‘Copper Image,’ ‘Double Late White,’ and ‘Double Late Rose.’

You can find bulbs in a variety of package sizes available at Eden Brothers.

With so many options and so much to learn about tulips, you may want to read more in our guide.

Annual Flowers

Annual plants offer an easy way to add colorful accents to your landscaping plan.

Their short-lived nature allows you to change your design scheme from year to year. Consider these if you’re planting near a black walnut tree:

10. Calendula

Calendula (Calendula officinalis), also known as pot marigold, is famous for its typically vivid orange and yellow flowers, and touted for its health benefits. They make sweet cut flowers for bouquets and arrangements, and can be deadheaded to encourage more blooms.

Calendulas grow in part shade, but do a little better in the sun, so this annual is a good choice for gardens further out from the drip line of black walnuts where they might receive more sun exposure. 

You can find calendula seedlings grown in containers at your local nursery or greenhouse.

‘Sunset Buff’ Calendula

If you’d like to try growing your own from seed, take a look at ‘Sunset Buff,’ available at Eden Brothers.

It’s a gorgeous heirloom variety with big, double blooms in a subtle bicolored combination of pink and cream, sold in packets or by weight.

Check out our guide to learn more about calendula.

11. Impatiens

Also known as busy Lizzie or balsam, impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) are possibly the most popular annual bedding plants for US gardeners.

You’ll find cell packs of this annual each spring at nurseries, greenhouses, big box stores, and even grocery and corner stores.

This tender perennial grows in a spreading mound up to 24 inches across, depending on the variety. It prefers consistent moisture and part shade to full shade, making it a sensible choice for gardens under your black walnut.

Choose from a vast number of hybrid cultivars in colors to suit your scheme.

Rockapulco® ‘White’ Double Impatiens

You’ll even find some with fancy, double flowers that resemble roses, like this Rockapulco® ‘White’ double-petaled impatiens available from Nature Hills Nursery.

Get the full story and learn more about impatiens in our guide.

12. Tuberous Begonia

The tuberous begonia (Begonia x tuberhybrida) is in a class of its own.

Named for their tuberous roots, flower sizes and colors vary between cultivars, in shades of orange, pink, red, yellow, and white.

Common height and spread is between 12 to 18 inches, and this tender perennial, typically grown as an annual, prefers part shade.

This makes it a good choice for borders and edging planting beds. It dislikes high heat and humidity, and does best with consistent moisture, good ventilation, and regular feeding, so maintenance can be a little demanding.

‘Splendide Ballerina’ Tuberous Begonia

‘Splendide Ballerina’ gives a large bloom size in a lemon yellow and pastel peach combination that looks delicious enough to eat.

It’s available in packages of three, six, or nine tubers at Eden Brothers.

Learn all there is to know about tuberous begonias in our guide.

13. Zinnia

Ranging in size from six inches to four feet tall, hundreds of zinnia (Zinnia spp.) cultivars offer a variety of flower shapes and colors.

Zinnias prefer sun, so plant them far enough from the base of your black walnut to bathe in sunlight.

Flowers begin to open in June and continue through the rest of summer. Deadheading encourages new blooms. These annuals like evenly moist, well-drained soil.

Seedlings can be transplanted, but they’re a little sensitive, so if you can, start them from seed directly in the ground.

‘Benary Giant Wine’ Zinnias

‘Benary Giant Wine’ from Eden Brothers is a handsome, tall variety with bright, wine-colored blooms and foliage that’s resistant to powdery mildew

Learn more about growing zinnias in our guide.

Ornamental Trees and Shrubs

Ornamental trees and shrubs lay the groundwork as foundations to build gardens around. Consider the following plants to help build your design:

14. American Arborvitae

American arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) is commonly known as eastern white cedar or northern white cedar. It’s a dense, conical or pyramidal-shaped evergreen that grows in USDA Zones 2 to 7. The green foliage forms in scale-like and flattened sprays on branches.

This evergreen can reach a height of 20 to 40 feet and spreads to 15 feet. It prefers full sun to part shade and requires little maintenance.

Remaining green through winter, it provides shelter for wildlife, wind protection, and visual appeal even through the cold months when deciduous trees and shrubs lose their leaves.

American Arborvitae

T. occidentalis is commonly available at nurseries and greenhouses. Find it online in one-gallon containers and sizes ranging from two to four feet at Fast Growing Trees.

Learn how to plant and care for arborvitaes in our guide.

15. Forsythia

The early spring yellow flowers of forsythia are a cheerful addition to any garden.

The Forsythia genus includes 11 species and numerous cultivars in sizes ranging up to 10 feet tall to suit your site requirements.

This deciduous shrub can be used as a focal point or planted with others to form a flowering hedge.

Forsythias do well in full sun to light shade and are hardy in Zones 5 to 8. Aside from some occasional pruning, they’re low maintenance.

‘Lynwood Gold’ Forsythia

‘Lynwood Gold’ is a fast-growing hybrid available in two-quart or three-gallon containers at Fast Growing Trees.

Learn more about forsythia in our guide.

16. Ninebark

Common ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) is a deciduous shrub. A vigorous grower, some specimens can reach up to eight feet tall.

Round clusters of adorably tiny white flowers, sometimes with a hint of pink, develop along the stems in late spring to early summer, leaving reddish-green seed pods behind as flowers fade.

Ninebark has an upright, arching form with densely layered leaves, making it a wise choice for hedging.

The bark exfoliates on mature branches, revealing layers of red and brown inner bark. Ninebark grows in a wide range of soils and does well in full sun to part shade.

Sweet Cherry Tea™ Ninebark

Sweet Cherry Tea™ offers a strong contrast to other plants in the garden with its deep burgundy foliage. Find it at Fast Growing Trees in two-quart and two-gallon containers.

17. Rose of Sharon

A deciduous shrub easily grown in well-drained soils and full sun to part shade, rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) graces the garden with large flowers in shades of blue, pink, red, and white from late spring into autumn.

Grown in USDA Zones 5 to 8, this vase-shaped shrub can reach eight to 12 feet tall.

It can be trained to grow as a small tree or espaliered, and some strategic pruning will encourage more blooms.

Pink Chiffon® Rose of Sharon

This Pink Chiffon® rose of Sharon sold by Planting Tree is loaded with gorgeous pink blooms.

Read all about rose of Sharon in our guide.

18. Serviceberry

Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.), is a large, deciduous, early-flowering shrub.

Native to eastern North America, it grows well in USDA Zones 4 to 8. Serviceberry can be pruned to form a small tree, reaching up to 30 feet tall.

Showy, white flowers appear in early spring and give off a pleasant fragrance before the dark green leaves unfurl. As fall approaches, leaves typically turn to shades of orange and red.

‘Autumn Brilliance’ Serviceberry

Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’ is a hybrid that features small white flowers, and dark green foliage that transforms to bright red and orange in the fall.

It’s available in two sizes ranging from two to four feet tall at Fast Growing Trees.

19. Viburnum

Most shrubs in the Viburnum genus are tolerant of juglone, but V. macrocephalum is one of my favorites, with its large puffy clusters of white florets.

This deciduous shrub thrives in Zones 6 to 9, blooming from May to June and reaching up to 10 feet tall and wide.

V. macrocephalum grows in full sun to part shade and makes an attention-getting focal point or an attractive flowering hedge.

Fairly resistant to most insects and diseases, it makes a low-maintenance option for planting near your black walnut.

Chinese Snowball Viburnum

Available in three-gallon containers, this Chinese Snowball bush from Fast Growing Trees doesn’t produce fruit, putting lots of energy into its huge pom-pom blooms.

Check out our guide to growing viburnum to learn more.

Edible Fruiting Trees and Shrubs

Whether you’re aiming to feed your family and friends or just curious about experimenting with edible landscaping, try these trees and shrubs if you’re planting near a black walnut:

20. Black Raspberry

Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) is a member of the Rosaceae family, a deciduous shrub with scrambling thorny stems reaching up to 12 feet long.

They produce clusters of dainty white flowers in the spring from May to June, then form succulent, dark berries shortly after.

This shrub grows wild in some areas of the United States, and as we all know, anything that grows wild usually isn’t fussy with soil or water requirements in its native environment.

Similar to other raspberries, for productive cultivation, proper pruning and management is a good idea. Black raspberries do well in Zones 5 to 9.

‘Cumberland’ Black Raspberry

Rubus idaeus ‘Cumberland’ is a black raspberry bush that grows much larger than some other varieties, topping out at four to five feet tall.

You can find plants available at Fast Growing Trees.

Learn more about black raspberry and other brambles in our guide.

21. Cherry

Cherry trees (Prunus spp.) are easy to plant and many self-fertile varieties are available for home gardeners, so you don’t necessarily need to plant a pollinator to obtain a fruit harvest.

Flower blossoms emerge in spring in subtle shades of white to pink, making them a stunning early, albeit temporary, attraction in the garden before other flowers come into bloom.

Most cherry trees grow well in Zones 4 to 7, so look for one that will do best in your Zone.

As with most fruit trees, they need full sun for best production, so aim to locate this tree in a warm and sunny spot outside of the deep shade of your black walnut.

Various sizes are available to suit your garden space, from dwarfs to 25-foot-tall standards, and you can even train them against a wall or fence if space is limited.

‘Stella’ Cherry

P. avium ‘Stella’ will knock your socks off! This tree reaches 15 feet at maturity and produces dark, plump, and sweet fruit that is lovely for eating fresh.

It thrives in Zones 5 to 8 and you can find trees available to purchase at Planting Tree.

Learn more about cherry trees and how to care for them in our guide.

22. Currant

Red, white, black, and pink currants (Ribes spp.) are tough and reliable early-flowering shrubs that form clusters of pink, red, white, or yellow flowers in the spring, depending on the species or cultivar.

These shrubs prefer mostly sunny conditions but will tolerate light shade. Once established, they’re fairly drought tolerant.

Grown for both ornamental and edible purposes, a diverse selection of these plants will produce edible fruits that vary in size, form, flavor, and texture.

Most are self-fertile and different currant cultivars ripen at different times. These shrubs grow well in Zones 3 to 7.

R. rubrum ‘Pink Champagne’ is a compact shrub that produces large clusters of light pink berries with a pleasant and addictive tart flavor.

23. Peach

Peach trees (Prunus persica) are a great edible tree option for growing near black walnuts, but you’ll need to plant them in a spot that provides full sun – perhaps the south side of your tree, just outside the shade of the canopy.

Showy spring blossoms are an added ornamental benefit with peach trees.

For home gardeners, dwarf or semi-dwarf self-fertile varieties are good choices. Look for one to suit your location in Zones 4 to 9.

‘Early Elberta’ Peach

‘Early Elberta’ reaches a maximum height of 10 to 15 feet and grows in Zones 5 to 8. It’s available in three different sizes at Planting Tree.

Learn more about growing peaches in our guide.

24. Pear

If you have space for multiple fruit trees, consider planting pears (Pyrus spp.).

You’ll be overjoyed to see the cheerful spring blossoms, and satisfied when you taste the delicious homegrown fruit.

Find warm, sunny planting spots for at least two cultivars selected for cross-pollination. Some pears are self-fertile and may produce a harvest on their own, but it’s wise to add a pollinator as this will increase the size of your crop.

Dwarfs max out at about 10 feet tall, while standards can reach up to 30 feet. Pears need well-draining, fertile soil and require little maintenance once established.

‘Red Bartlett’ Pears

P. communis ‘Red Bartlett’ is a common variety with a harvest time in August to September, suited to USDA Zones 5 to 9. Check it out at Fast Growing Trees.

If you’re new to growing pear trees, read our guide to learn more.

Vines

Incorporating vines into your landscape design plan is a creative way to add an additional layer of dimension. These vines do well under black walnut trees:

25. Clematis

A prolific climbing beauty, clematis (Clematis spp.) should be considered for your black walnut garden design.

These perennial vines produce masses of fragrant flowers available in a variety of different shapes and sizes. The color choices seem endless!

In Zones 3 to 9 you’ll find cultivars suited for different purposes – long climbers for fences, poles, and obelisks, and shorter vines for mixed borders and containers, with different bloom times.

They range in size and some can grow as long as 40 feet! Clematis is certainly a versatile vine to add to your landscape.

Clematis ‘Jackmanii’

Check out ‘Jackmanii’ from Fast Growing Trees. With huge purple blooms, it grows up to 20 feet long and is available in one- or two-gallon containers.

For more information on growing clematis, take a peek at our comprehensive guide.

26. Honeysuckle

Climbing honeysuckle (Locinera spp.) is a deciduous twining vine with thin, pliable stems and solid green or variegated leaves.

As you pass near these vines during the summer, you’ll be drawn – along with the bees, birds, and butterflies – to the sweet-smelling fragrance coming from their trumpet-shaped flowers.

These vines wrap gently over fences, arbors, and pergolas in Zones 3 to 9. They grow fine in most well-draining soils in full sun to part shade.

‘Dropmore Scarlet’ Honeysuckle

Once established, they’re self-sufficient and drought-resistant, making them perfect for gardeners looking for low-maintenance options.

Lonicera x brownii ‘Dropmore Scarlet’ is a hybrid cultivar with long-lasting, coral-colored flowers. It’s available at Nature Hills Nursery in #3 containers.

Read all about honeysuckle in our guide.

27. Wisteria

As if stepping through a portal into a magical fairy tale, a mature wisteria (Wisteria spp.) cloaking an arbor in full bloom is sure to take your breath away, or at least slow it down to a relaxed and peaceful rhythm.

Depending on the variety, the draping, fragrant flowers can be showy and short-lived or longer-lasting and more subtly impressive. Colors include blue, pink, lilac, purple, and white.

Some are winter hardy and various types will grow well in Zones 4 to 9. They prefer well-drained soil and a nice sunny structure to climb.

They will still grow in the partial shade of your black walnut, but you may find flowering is slightly hindered.

‘Blue Moon’ Wisteria

W. macrostachya ‘Blue Moon’ blooms multiple times through spring and summer. Not all wisterias will show off quite as much as this cultivar, so you may want to check it out!

‘Blue Moon’ is sold in one-quart and two-gallon containers at Fast Growing Trees.

Learn the whole story about growing wisteria in our guide.

Vegetables

Growing vegetables under black walnuts can be tricky, and some are very sensitive to juglone, like tomatoes.

You can try raised beds or container gardening, but there are certain varieties of vegetables that will actually do quite well in the ground. Read on for a few suggestions.

28. Bean

Beans come in lots of shapes, colors, and sizes, and they’re easy to grow.

If you find yourself always eating the same kind of beans from the grocery store, why not try growing something different?

Green, yellow, and purple string beans are classic favorites for home gardeners. But also consider lima, pinto, and kidney beans as well as edamame, aka soybeans.

Plant seeds – the dried beans – in spring once the danger of frost has passed.

Give them about an inch of water weekly and limit nitrogen fertilization for a productive harvest. Remember to give pole beans something to climb!

Yardlong Beans

For something a little different, check out these asparagus aka yardlong beans sold by Burpee in one-ounce packets.

Read all about the different kinds of edible beans and how to grow them in our guide.

29. Beet

Although beets aren’t always the most popular choice of vegetable, they’re incredibly healthy and easy to grow.

A variety of fun and beautiful colors are available like red, gold, purple, and white, and there are numerous ways to prepare this versatile vegetable.

Try roasting, steaming, and pickling them. Or experiment with Russian borscht soup! Chop the greens into mixed salads or add them to stocks and stews for a boost of flavor and nutrition.

Beets grow well in cooler temperatures, so plant seeds early in spring or late in the fall.

Thin seedlings when they’re young to give them at least two inches in between, and provide at least one inch of water per week.

You can harvest the leaves any time and pull the beet roots when they’ve reached maturity, which is typically once they reach one to two inches in diameter.

‘Chioggia’ Beets

‘Chioggia’ beet seeds are available at Eden Brothers. When cut in half, they reveal a neat alternating red and white pattern of rings like a bullseye. How fun is that!

Read our guide to growing beets for more details.

30. Carrot

As with the other vegetables on our list, carrots come in a broad range of shapes and sizes.

Choosing my seeds every season is a thrill and I love to try new varieties. I excitedly anticipate the satisfaction of pulling a fresh carrot from the garden to see how it looks and tastes.

Try ‘Imperator’ that are long and tapered, or medium-sized ‘Nantes.’ ‘Danvers,’ thick and not too long, are perfect for raised beds. Experiment with colors beyond the traditional orange, like yellows, purples, whites, and pinks.

Carrots need deep, loose, and well-drained soil. They also need to be thinned if seeds are planted close together, to make room for root growth. Watering is critical during the first stages of development.

Rainbow Blend Carrots

Try this organic Rainbow Blend, a mix of ‘Atomic Red,’ ‘Cosmic Purple,’ ‘Lunar White,’ and ‘Solar Yellow,’ from Eden Brothers for a delightful array of colors.

Read all about growing carrots in our guide.

31. Garlic

Garlic is possibly one of the easiest edibles to grow, as well as one of the most common ingredients in cooking.

I don’t know about you, but for me it always comes down to a classic combo of salt, pepper, and garlic.

Garlic is a perennial bulb in the Allium genus alongside chives and onions.

It’s grown as an annual herb, sowing seed cloves in the fall, leaving them to do their thing over the winter, poking out of the soil in the spring, and maturing in the summer.

Varieties fall into two groups, hardnecks and softnecks.

Hardnecks produce a flowering, edible scape and are better suited to cooler climates. Softnecks don’t flower and they’re best for warmer regions.

‘Chesnok Red’ Garlic

‘Chesnok Red’ bulbs from Burpee are sold in half-pound bags. Described as “one of the best for cooking,” this hardneck variety is an award winner. Give it a try!

Learn all about successful garlic growing in our guide.

32. Onion

How many onions do you purchase and use in one year? Aren’t you curious to know if you can grow your own? These vegetables thrive when grown near black walnuts, so give them a try!

Bulb onions are available in many forms with different characteristics: flat or round; red, yellow, or white; sweet or spicy.

Start plants by direct seeding or transplanting sets from the previous season. Onions need consistent moisture so be sure to quench their thirst.

When the tops have fallen over and most are dry, they’re usually ready to harvest.

‘Evergreen Long White’ Onions

For an easy to grow bunching onion, try ‘Evergreen Long White’ heirloom seed, available in packets from Burpee.

To learn all the details about growing onions, visit our guide.

33. Squash

Last but definitely not least on our list is squash. The brunt of endless jokes and viral memes, this vegetable is the gift that keeps on giving. If you grow one variety, you will likely want to try several more.

Squash varieties come in all shapes and sizes, so choose your favorite among the winter and summer types best suited for your Zone.

Common varieties are butternut, acorn, patty pan, crookneck, and the infamous zucchini, focus and victim of the aforementioned memes.

Squash grow on vines and do best in sunny spots, so position them outside of the deep shade of your black walnut in well-draining, fertile soil.

You can plant seeds directly in the ground or try transplants. Water deeply and infrequently during the growing season.

Depending on the variety, you may harvest shortly after flowering or later in the growth cycle.

Check the average number of days to maturity and growing instructions on the seed packet for your chosen squash for more details.

‘Elite’ Zucchini

Check out ‘Elite,’ a fancy French hybrid zucchini from Burpee. Available in packets of 25 seeds, this summer squash is ready to pick early in the season.

Read more about growing summer squash in our guide.

Focus on Your Garden’s Strengths

If you’ve had trouble with certain plants failing under or near your black walnut tree, try some suggestions from this list instead.

As I always say, knowledge is power, and now you have more. Focus less on any weaknesses in your garden and more on its strengths. Put nature to work for you to make your job easier and more enjoyable.

Do you have a success story about growing under black walnuts? Please share it in the comments section below.

For more information about other types of nut trees that produce juglone, check out these guides next:

THE TERM “food forest” from the permaculture world sounds big—like if I suggested you start one, you’d probably say, “I don’t have room for a forest of any kind.”

But today’s guest bets that most of us who garden have room for at least a little bit of fruity deliciousness in the form of a tree or two, underplanted with some carefully chosen companions. Maybe where a portion of the front lawn is right now, and maybe emphasizing native fruiting species.

Maryland-based Michael Judd is a longtime champion of edible landscaping, the author of various books, including “For the Love of Pawpaws” (affiliate link), and hosts an annual pawpaw festival each September. Lately he’s even the creator of a new app called Fruit Patch to help you get started on your own little food forest. (Above, flowers of one of Michael’s favorites, the pawpaw; photo by Jonathan Palmer, KYSU Land Grant Program.)

Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page to enter to win a copy of “For the Love of Pawpaws.”

Read along as you listen to the Aug. 14, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

making room for fruiting plants, with michael judd

 

 

Margaret: Is harvest time going on down there?

Michael: Oh, yes. Harvested a bunch of American elderberries and beach plums today with my little girl, and we’re going to make some popsicle juice out of it.

Margaret: I know, you make the most interesting recipes because of course elderberries, you don’t kind of take them off the plant and shove them in your mouth at most points in their ripeness. But yeah, you make syrups and juices and popsicles and all kinds of great stuff.

Michael: Yeah. One of our favorites is food forest jam, which varies with the harvest season, but one of the bases of that is sort of black currant and black aronia, elderberry. And then we sweeten that up with some goumi or some beach plums or Nanking bush cherries. And so there are all these different combinations that are exquisite. Very, very tasty.

Margaret: Not that you have a lot of fruit or anything over there [laughter].

Michael: Gotta do something with it.

Margaret: How many pawpaw trees?

Michael: Oh gosh, at least a hundred.

Margaret: Uh-huh? And how many persimmons, American persimmons? [Laughter.]

Michael: Oh, American persimmon. You’re hitting on my sweet notes now. It’s probably a similar number of American persimmons. And if you’ve never had a select American persimmon, it is one of the most exquisite fruits on the planet, it is delicious. Not like a lot of people’s experience with a native American persimmon, which sometimes if eaten before fully ripe will feel very stringent and tacky in the mouth. And even some of those, even fully ripe, do that. But select cultivars are absolutely delicious dessert like jelly with all kinds of aromatic notes in it. Yeah, two of my favorites right there, pawpaws and persimmons.

Margaret: You’re making me hungry. And so I mentioned food forest in the introduction, so what’s a food forest and then what’s a fruit patch? Just sort of give us the idea of what this is on whatever scale.

Michael: So a food forest [above, a young section of Michael’s] is not growing food in the forest. It’s growing food like the forest. When you take a very healthy ecosystem forest, you see a lot going on. You see overstory trees, mid-story, understory trees. You see vines running up through it all. You see herbaceous ground-level layers running, and it’s all working together. It’s all pumping and working symbiotically.

So when we take that observation, we see that pattern, and when we come to plant something on our landscape out in the open lawn, you want to plant a fruit tree, instead of sticking that fruit tree sort of out there in the middle of the sea of grass at the whims of weed whackers, what you’re doing is you’re creating a group for it, what we call a guild in permaculture. Typically these are perennial companion plants that support that main fruit producer. So we’re not necessarily going to stack that upper, mid-story and understory, but we’re going to take the concept of putting plants together to support each other.

And in that case, we often will put in something that fixes nitrogen, something in the legume family, something like the, was it the wild Baptisia, with beautiful blue flowers, and there’s all these other benefits as well. But fixing nitrogen through the roots to the plants around it is like planting your fertility in one go.

Then you’re also thinking about, O.K., well, let’s draw in beneficial insects. So let’s put something like yarrow in there, which has this great architecture, great habitat for all kinds of beneficial insects.

And then you’re also going to want something that’s like a mulch plant, something I love to use, like comfrey, which is also medicinal. So multipurpose plants, but also things that I can chop and drop for mulch or that can die on their own and pulse that soil level and feed that tree long-term. And then you might have something like Echinacea, a little gas station for the pollinators to land on.

Margaret: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Michael: Yeah. And augment that pollination. So you’re creating diversity. A guild is not just the plants, it’s the life that it attracts as well. So it’s going to affect ecology balance. And really what you’re doing is taking yourself off the hook for having to really care for that tree because you’ve done a little bit of design upfront by putting plants together, they help serve each other’s needs, and that gives you more time to do yoga, swing in the hammock, play with your kids.

Margaret: Wait for the harvest [laughter].

Michael: Wait for the harvest, or go do more of these. And I call these fruit patches. Of course, they could be a nut patch, it could be a bush fruit, but it’s a very simple concept. So it takes that larger idea of a food forest, and brings it down to something that could be eight, 10 feet in diameter only. And you can fit-

Margaret: Like at the canopy of the tree, so to speak, and underneath it like that, with that size?

Michael: Right.

Margaret: Not of the whole yard. It doesn’t have to be the whole yard. It could be this one area.

Michael: Right. And then if you did have more space, and you wanted to have less lawn, you could start spacing these patches out 12, 15, 20 feet apart and have your other fruit trees in those spaces. And then over time, if you want, you could kind of keep doing what I call sheet mulching, which is like lasagna gardening. It’s like laying down cardboard and newspaper and straw and wood chips and mulch, whatever sort of material that you have, organic material around you, floating around us. Put that down. And that helps extend those patches, so that over time your lawn disappears and you’ve got this cornucopia of plants. And when I do something like that, I’ll often put in sort of running plants that will help sort of cover that space and not have to maintain it.

Margaret: Yeah, it makes sense. So we recently did a “New York Times” garden column together, and you were talking about this. It was about the subject of kind of fruit patches turning into food forests and a lot of the native species. And one thing you taught me that I didn’t know because I’m not… A lot of these terms come from permaculture, the tradition of permaculture. And I didn’t know that the tree, like if we say did a persimmon, an American persimmon tree [above], that’s our centerpiece. And beneath it, like you said, is the guild of companions and so forth. What are some other sort of centerpieces that you, especially like for those getting started?

Michael: Well, the elderberry that I mentioned earlier is a favorite. I like to get people started with fruits that they’ll have success with, so that they’ll continue to plant. So I don’t usually encourage some of the more challenging fruits to grow, which can be like peaches. Many apples can be quite a bit of input. So if you’re not ready to be very hands-on, then pick something that’s going to grow very quickly and easily. And elderberries, oh my, they’re one of the fastest-growing plants I’ve ever seen. And you can literally take a cutting at the end of winter and stick it in the ground and boom, it will explode into a bush.

Margaret: Now, we should say you’re in Maryland [laughter].

Michael: Yes.

Margaret: So the explosion, it might be a little slower explosion up here in Zone 5.

Michael: Yes, that’s true. But eventually, I tell you is elderberry, I’ve been up in the Catskills and areas in New York, and I’ve seen big, beautiful, and they bloom gorgeous. So you’re getting this edible landscape.

Margaret: A division of them is because they spread, the roots spread sideways, and they’re easy to keep in check if you just go around the perimeter that you desire with a shovel every so often. But I grew them always as bird plants, because they’re so beloved by wildlife, by birds especially. And so as you’ve said earlier, you use them in your jams and syrups and popsicle liquid and things like that. But yeah, they’re great wildlife plants, too. And pollinator plants.

Michael: Yeah. Another thing that goes for most fruit, most of your fruiting plants, you’re having all these multiple benefits, so you can plant for yourself and for wildlife at the same time. And that way if you don’t get to harvest, you’re not worried, something else is thriving from your efforts of putting it in. And those flowers also, you can bake those or you can batter and pancake those. The flowers themselves have a lot of medicinal value, and they can be eaten long before the fruit shows up.

Margaret: Yes. So elderberry is another possibility. And when we did the Times story, you mentioned using another plant that I have for the birds in my landscape, a lot of them, is the Amelanchier, or shad or juneberry. And I said to you [laughter], I said, “Well, I’ve never tasted their fruit because a flock of birds always comes in before they even ripen, really.” I mean, they’re just so beloved by cedar waxwings, for instance, the fruits of the juneberry. But that’s another possible centerpiece, right?

Michael: It’s a wonderful centerpiece. I mean, it’s a very ornamental tree whether you eat the fruit or not. And you’ll often see them in parks. I harvest them at playgrounds. I’ve seen them outside of fast-food restaurants. They’re very common because they’re very beautiful as a very sort of small, very delicate branching and habit to them. And then they have gorgeous, early seasoned flowers, like all white, these little plumes all over the tree, which then very quickly turn into these little blueberry-sized fruits that have the flavor of sort of cherry pie to me when I eat them, with a little bit of almond aftertaste. And so they are exquisite. I hope you can get some.

And year to year, some years they will be wiped out by birds. But then this year, for some reason, the birds weren’t hitting them. And we got-

Margaret: Oh, interesting.

Michael: We got a huge harvest. I’ve made delicious juneberry jam. It will make great pies. Or you can soak it in vodka; it makes a great infusion.

Margaret: And they really have to get kind of dark-colored [the ripening fruit, above]. I mean, before they’re ripe and delicious.

Michael: Ideally, yeah. They seem to be sort of reddish and then they’ll start to go sort of a purple-y. You can get them a little early, and they’re still pretty pacey, especially if you’re going to make jam or sort of cook them down a bit.

Margaret: O.K. Now, with the pawpaws, not that you like pawpaws or anything with your annual pawpaw festival with 600 guests and oh my goodness, at your Maryland homestead farm, etc. You need two, correct? Because we need a little cross-pollination. Unlike, I think, with the persimmon, it’s I can only have one. How does that work with pollination with some of these things?

Michael: So with pawpaws, more the merrier. They grow in patches and groups for many reasons. But the cross-pollination is very important for pawpaws. Now, you might hear they have that there’s a few cultivars that might have the potential to self-pollinate, but that’s not what you want necessarily, anyway. You want genetic diversity.

The one or two cultivars or rare specimens that might pollinate themselves are not going to have a heavy fruiting set. And over time, their fruit’s not going to be the same quality. So even though there’s a potentiality for them to self-pollinate, generally speaking, you definitely want to have cross-pollination at least two, and you want to have them within 20 feet of each other.

Now, the other caveat with pawpaws in general is you don’t want them in strong winds, for a couple of reasons. One, because they have this huge tropical leaf, gorgeous edible landscape specimen here. We’re talking like a foot long, 6, 8 inches wide. Oh, absolutely beautiful. And being that large, it loses a lot of water very quickly. So it doesn’t want to be in the wind, and it wants to have enough moisture. Now, that doesn’t mean wet soil, because they will not grow in wet soil. They need moist soil, out of the wind. And that also helps with the pollination, since they’re pollinated by sort of flies and fruit gnats and spiders and beetles and all these shady characters that wouldn’t really thrive in the open as well.

And then I also go ahead and plan a diversity, of course, all around them so that I’ve got life going on to stimulate that pollination. Because since it’s not bees, it’s these other characters, you want to just kind of be inviting them in. So at the same time, black currants for me are flowering and bringing in life around my pawpaws, goumi bushes, which is another one of my favorite bush fruits, is also heavily flowering at the same time and drawing in just that activity in the zone. But you can also hand-pollinate pawpaws very successfully.

Margaret: O.K. And one of the other, besides that big tropical sort of oversized foliage, it also, they can potentially get great yellow fall color [above], which is beautiful, and is another sort of ornamental attribute of them. So they are handsome.

Michael: Very beautiful. And now, they’ll take on different growth habits depending on where they’re at. So commonly they’re known as an understory, and are found throughout the eastern zone, throughout the woods. And the understory often has a patch, which is one mother plant with lots of suckers, and they can extend up to a quarter of an acre in some areas. So they can really dominate a zone. Right.

Margaret: Wow! [Laughter.] That will do in the front lawn.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t that. But that’s more in the shade. And what it’s doing is it’s self-propagating itself, not with fruit, but through its rhizomes, and that’s how it’s growing. It’s a very adaptive species. We’re talking about the only member of the custard apple family that migrated over millions of years into the cold north. So it’s an incredible, very unique species. And the fact that we’re able to grow a tropical fruit here just blows me away. It’s just phenomenal.

Margaret: And it’s native in a lot of states. I mean, I think it’s like-

Michael: Good 26 out of-

Margaret: 26 states, I think. Yeah, half the country.

Michael: But it’s busted out of that. It’s busted out and it’s growing all over the continent. They’re growing them in Europe. South Korea has planted a ton of them. I mean, they are becoming sort of this international, dare I say, phenomena. I mean, there really is a lot of excitement and a lot of pawpaws are being planted around the temperate globe.

Margaret: Yeah. So I want to ask you about a couple of things. One is deer, which always comes up no matter what I ever talk about on the show or write about in the Times or on the blog or whatever: deer. And I remember when we did the Times story, you had one fun guild, one fun assortment of companion plants, around something or other that, certain centerpiece that you used as sort of a deer deterrent. Any other… You’re in 25 acres where you are, on your property. Now, what’s the deal with the deer? Do you have a lot of deer?

Michael: We have a resident herd. I’ve actually never seen a site with more deer than ours. And I’ve seen a lot, and I’ve worked around a lot. And this site is packed with the deer, partly because we’re sort of on the edge of the woods and then you come out into suburbia. So they love that edge. Plus our site is loaded with plants, and they’re welcome here. So that has to be a key part of design, always, upfront. You have deer, you have to design for deer first. And luckily they don’t eat the pawpaws. They do not eat pawpaws. Now, that said, if pawpaws are not growing in your area and you plant a young pawpaw tree, the deer will try it because-

Margaret: They’ll browse it. Yeah.

Michael: They’ll browse it to begin, just to try it, because it’s not in their memory bank, but as soon as they try it, they’re not going to eat it again. So you can fence it for the first couple of years, and then once it gets up and once it’s mature, it can handle that initial testing. They will not eat it. They will not eat it. I guarantee it by watching where I’m at and all the pawpaw trees I have. It’s one of the reasons I have a lot of pawpaw trees, because we’ve got so many deer and they don’t eat it. So definite positive there.

But you’re mentioning a guild that was in the article that I designed early on for a juneberry, which they most certainly would love to eat. So to get that juneberry going, I did a sort of a 10-foot-by-10-foot fruit patch, and I planted the juneberry in the middle and then ringing around it, I did Egyptian walking onions, which are really cool, and the deer don’t eat alliums, so they’re not going to eat that

Next to that, I had a spiky gooseberry bush. So they’re going to come up to that, they’re going to poke their nose and they’re like, “Ah, this sucks,” and they move on. And next to that is a sage, a culinary sage, and they’re not going to eat the aromatic herbs either. So they’re like, “Ah, nothing here,” and they go along. And I had a wormwood, another medicinal plant, next to that. And then they’re like, “Ah, there’s nothing here,” and they moved on and they never saw that young juicy juneberry tree in the middle. So you can be creative.

Margaret: So you fooled them on that one? Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. I got them. I got them on that one.

Margaret: So some of the other… I don’t know if they eat elderberry. I have a fence around-

Michael: They do. They do eat elderberry.

Margaret: They eat elderberries [above, elderberry fruit, background, with aronia berries]?

Michael: You betcha. That’s a challenge because I love growing elderberries. So what I typically have to do is I’ll get sort of welded wire fencing and I’ll make a good four foot, 3 to 4 foot-

Margaret: Like a fence, so to speak? Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Just a circle, and tie it around and stake it. And you want those to be ideally 60 inches tall, and you’ll have to grow your elderberries out of that and then have your elderberries be rather tall, which is challenging because most people don’t realize, like most of your shrubs, you want to renew those stems to get ideal fruiting. So if you don’t… Like for you, you have a fenced-in area. Ideally, you’re taking out the wood, the stems of the American elderberry after their second year. So anything over two years you’re taking out, so you only have first and second year canes, primary and fruiting canes. And that way you keep your shrub rejuvenated, and you’re getting maximum fruit. Otherwise they become large and sort of crowded, and you’ll get less fruit production and health decline will happen, so good to be interactive with your elderberries.

Margaret: So you’ve recently introduced this app, the Fruit Patch App, I know. And I don’t know if you get analytics, so to speak, data from… I don’t know if you know what people are interested in, or have you had feedback from people or what kind of… Because what it does is it kind of leads you through the basics of this process we’ve been talking about, about picking a centerpiece depending on your sun or shade conditions, and then picking some guild members to go around it.

And by the way, there’s other “guilds” that you could do. You encourage us to do what we’re going to use or eat. You mentioned some before that have ecological value, but you also say we could plant our favorite herbs underneath it, right?

Michael: Right. So there’s no set science in all of this. It’s a concept, and you plant what you think you’re going to use and harvest. Ideally you do get in some nitrogen fixers and some habitat plants, but even if you don’t, at least you’re creating diversity. You’re creating habitat no matter what, by putting in other perennials around your plants. But by adding in the nitrogen fixer, you’re helping balance the need for that fertilizer. But I also deeply mulch all the time.

So I’m constantly feeding my soil. If it doesn’t have a groundcover, a strong groundcover on it, and then I’m mulching it, and that feeds the soil. The fungi are releasing nutrients to your trees. So it’s not necessarily a sense of competition that’s going on if you have sort of a juicy zone for everything, there’s plenty there and they’re supporting each other. So that’s one concept. You have to deal with that whole competition, and “Oh, I’ve got to have things all spaced out.” In a sort of linear, non-fertile system that’s being fed, yes, but when you’re really sort of creating a nice soil base, you have enough there for your plants to thrive.

Margaret: Well, in the way that’s speaking of forests, in the way that the forest before it got decimated in most places, the way that the forest would drop its leaf… The trees would drop their litter leaves every year, that leaf litter would degrade, continue feeding the soil, all the creatures that lived in the soil… and so on and so on and so on. It was a system, as you said earlier.

Michael: And with lots going on, a very packed system. So yeah, it’s taking that concept and observation. But the Fruit Patch is something I’m very excited about. I’m always working toward seeing the change that I want in the world by really helping people feel confident in planting fruit trees, nuts, these medicinal plants, and having success with it, and how to do that, how to meet everybody where they’re at and starting out. So I try to keep it simple and how-to.

And the Fruit Patch is a tool for that where it’s starting out with just basics. You can have full-sun or partial-shade options, and you can have a main fruit, and you can choose either like a culinary herb companion group for your tree or a sort of more of a native pollinator group for your tree or your fruit bush. And we’re soon going to add mushrooms to that, of course, because another one-

Margaret: Of course.

Michael: … of the big categories that I’m in love with, but easy-to-grow mushrooms and wine apps and things. So yeah, very excited about that. Right now we’ve started out, it’s on the Apple phone, the iPhone. We’re going to get it eventually to Android. There’s a learning curve with creating this software, but we’re pretty proud of where it’s at.

Margaret: It’s fun.

Michael: We certainly encourage everyone to check it out. Yeah, it’s a tool. It’s actually a tool for a larger vision we have, which is the Food Forest Transformation Network, which we’re starting out along the eastern side of the US. And you’ll see a map on the app of the area that we’re starting with as far as your choices for growing. But then as we grow this, we’re going to create links and sort of a social network as well that shows how collectively through our fruit patches, we can create this food forest network.

Margaret: Not that you have big goals or anything like that. Or a hundred of these and a hundred of those trees [laughter].

Michael: Right, right. Well, we need so much, don’t we? We need so much. And we need practical things that we can all do. And that’s where I’m focusing.

Margaret: Yeah. Well, Michael Judd, I’m always glad to speak to you, too. And I had such fun doing the Times story recently, as I said, because I really didn’t know many of my fruiting plants are just for the birds, I thought. So I didn’t know these other ideas of how I could utilize them as a harvest for me, too [laughter]. So that was kind of fun. And I hope I’ll talk to you again soon.

Michael: Wonderful. Thank you, Margaret.

enter to win a copy of the pawpaw book

I’LL BUY A COPY of “For the Love of Pawpaws” for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:

Have you ever grown, or even tasted, a pawpaw? What fruit do you grow in your home garden?  

No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll select a random winner after entries close Tuesday August 22, 2023 at midnight. Good luck to all.

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prefer the podcast version of the show?

MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 14th year in March 2023. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Aug. 14, 2023 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

I got to travel to Jamaica to see some of the places where my dad and grandparents had lived after leaving Cuba, their home country.

And I was also introduced to a thrilling array of plants and fruits I’d never seen before: slimy-sweet guineps, purple-white star apples, stately birds of paradise, and violet clumps of agapanthus.

The orchards and gardens of the island were unforgettable. Sadly for me, most of the gorgeous vegetation that flourishes in warm places like Jamaica fails to grow here in Alaska.

But many of these plants thrive in places where my family lives, like southern California and Arizona.

And if you live in USDA Hardiness Zones 6-11, this guide can help you try your hand at growing graceful, cheery agapanthus flowers.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

What Is Agapanthus?

The name Agapanthus comes from the combination of the Greek words agape (love) and anthos (flower).

So they’re pretty much a love flower. Flower of love. Lovely flower.

You get the idea.

With their lance-like leaves and tall, three-foot stems, spring- and summer-blooming agapanthus reminds me of allium flowers – which makes sense, since they’re in the same botanical family.

They also remind me somewhat of lilies, with their upright stalks and round umbels of trumpet-shaped blooms.

And I’m not alone.

Though they’re not in the same family as lilies, agapanthus are often called “lily of the Nile” or “African lily.” In South Africa, they’re also called blue lily, isicakathi by the Xhosa people, and ubani by the Zulu.

The first reason for these names is that the flower is native to the southern African countries of Swaziland, Mozambique, South Africa, and Lesotho; the second is that in the 1900s, botanists originally classified the appealing flower as a member of the Liliaceae family.

But it’s now recognized as belonging to the Amaryllidaceae family, which has three distinct subfamilies:

1. Allioideae, which gives us onions, garlic, and chives
2. Amaryllidoideae, which includes daffodils and snowdrops
3. Agapanthoideae, whose only genus is Agapanthus

The most prominent species within the lonely Agapanthus genus are A. africanus, A. praecox, A. orientalis, and A. inapertus. Dozens of cultivated and naturally occurring hybrids are derived from these species. Most cultivars feature blooms in shades of blue, violet, and white.

Depending on the species, foliage can be deciduous or evergreen.

And while the flowering plant is native to southern African countries, it has naturalized all over the world, including in the United States, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and the UK.

In fact, this plant naturalizes and spreads so well and is so resistant to pests, disease, and death in general that some gardeners consider it a weed.

But others value its tenacity: in hot desert regions of the world, it’s often the only green for miles. It’s also somewhat fire-resistant. While it does burn eventually, the thick, sap-filled leaves take a long time to do so.

A border of agapanthus, therefore, has been known to help slow a fire.

Plus, it’s hard to deny their beauty.

A pathway bordered by the vibrant, globe-shaped blooms is quite divine indeed.

Cultivation and History

Not much is known about the history of this plant, but at some point in the middle of the 17th century traders brought evergreen varieties from the southern African coast to Europe – and later to the US. In the 19th century it was introduced to Australia and New Zealand.

The deciduous type of agapanthus wasn’t discovered by colonists (though it was well-known to local people) until the early 18th century. Unlike the coastal evergreen variety, deciduous species grow wild in the mountainous regions of southern Africa.

As a result, deciduous cultivars thrive in areas with cooler winter temperatures. Think USDA Hardiness Zone 6.

But evergreen cultivars suffer in any type of cold and are best grown in Zones 8 through 11, unless you’d like to keep them as houseplants for part of the year.

While evergreen varieties can’t stay outside during the winter, they make excellent indoor potted plants during the cold season.

People in some cultures use the rhizomatous root system for medicinal and spiritual purposes. Xhosa women of South Africa make a necklace out of the roots to help keep pregnant women and their unborn babies safe from harm.

Zulu women put the plant’s anti-inflammatory properties to good use by making traditional medicine to alleviate chest pain, heart disease, coughs, and edema.

Propagation

The two ways to propagate agapanthus are from seed and by root division. It takes some patience to grow them from seed, as they won’t flower for two to three years.

Bear in mind that seeds saved from an existing plant won’t necessarily produce true to the parent plant.

But it can be a fun project to try, since they’re easy to care for.

Planting root divisions is the quickest way to get gorgeous blooms in your yard.

From Seed

The seeds take a while to get going, so it’s best to start them indoors where they won’t be bothered by bugs, critters, and the weather.

The beauty of this method is that no matter which growing zone you live in, you can start agapanthus seeds indoors at any time.

All you need is a seed tray with separate cells, potting mix, a spray bottle, and some sand or perlite.

Or, use garden soil amended with well-rotted compost and sand. The key is to keep the soil loose and well-draining.

Agapanthus plants grow well in pots because they actually enjoy being a bit root bound. They’ll reward you with extra blooms if you let them get nice and tight and cozy.

You can leave them in the six or eight-inch pots indefinitely, or you can transplant them out to the garden or into a larger container when the leaves reach a height of six to eight inches. Go for a minimum of eight inches wide and deep for a single plant.

If you started your seeds in late summer or fall, keep them in containers indoors until the following spring.

By Root Division

So where can you get a root division?

First off, if you’re purchasing a bare root plant from a nursery, it came from a root division.

A root division is a clone of the parent plant, so if you have a particular cultivar you would like to replicate, it’s best to divide the plant instead of saving seeds.

You can plant divisions in the fall or the spring.

Just note that deciduous cultivars will remain dormant throughout the winter. So if you plant them in the fall, don’t worry if you don’t see any new growth right away.

You’ll need to wear gloves when you handle your agapanthus, as the sap from the leaves and rhizomes can cause skin irritation.

To start, you will need to dig up the entire plant.

To do this, dig six to eight inches deep around the outside of an existing clump, leaving a margin of about six inches, depending on the size of the clump.

With a knife, cut the tuberous root ball in half between the shoots, so you don’t injure any new growth.

Take each of these sections and cut it in two. In the end, you’ll have four new pieces, each with at least one or two shoots attached.

Instead of repotting or replanting them right away, leave the new divisions outdoors, uncovered and out of direct sunlight, for 24 hours. This allows the roots to stop bleeding sap and begin healing over the cut sections.

If you plant the new divisions too soon, the damp soil could get into those wounded roots and cause them to rot.

Make sure the soil is loose, rich, and well-draining. It never hurts to amend the area with sand or perlite, and compost.

Dig a hole that’s just deep and wide enough to fit the root ball.

Set the roots inside the hole and backfill with the soil, sand, and compost mixture. Cover the entire root ball, but allow any shoots to poke up above the surface.

That’s all there is to it!

If you’re planting in the spring, you’ll want to give the plant one inch of water per week until it’s established. When it’s happily producing lots of leaves and flowers, you can provide just a half-inch of water a week.

Agapanthus are famous for their drought tolerance and prefer not to have wet feet.

But if you’re putting the division in the ground during autumn, it’s best to water it once and then let it be.

How to Grow Agapanthus Flowers

If you pick up a potted lily of the Nile from a nursery, or you’re ready to set out the plants you started from seed, plant them out in the fall or spring.

Pick a location in full sun or part shade. Particularly in hotter areas, these plants can benefit from some afternoon shade.

Dig a hole just deep and wide enough for the root ball, and set it inside. Backfill and provide one inch of water per week, until the plant is established and you see evidence of new growth.

After that, slow watering to half an inch every week. Avoid overhead watering whenever possible, and consider using drip irrigation to prevent spraying excess water on the foliage, which can lead to fungal infection.

If you’re planting several of these beauties together, make sure to place them 24 inches apart, as they’ll spread up to 36 inches as they mature.

Don’t worry if they all eventually start rubbing their long, skinny elbows together. This means they’ve got a large, extra-tangly group of rhizomes supporting them from below the soil, and they love this type of closeness.

These flowers can thrive in any soil pH between 5.5 and 7.5, and they don’t need much fertilizer.

A dose of a 5-5-5 NPK fertilizer applied in the spring, and then again two months later, is enough to keep them happy for a whole year.

Growing Tips

• Make sure plants get plenty of sun
• Provide organically-rich, well-draining soil
• Water one inch a week until established, and then slow to half an inch

Pruning and Maintenance

Knowing when and how to prune and maintain your agapanthus can keep plants healthy and vigorous, and also prevents them from becoming invasive.

The most important thing to do is watch the blooming flowers closely. As the flowers start to die back, deadhead them to prevent them from going to seed.

If they develop seed pods before you can catch them, it’s important to remove the entire head before the pods can open and fling seeds all over your yard and beyond.

You’ll need some gloves and a pair of pruning shears. You can then dispose of the pods in the garbage. Just be sure not to dump the flower heads anywhere that they could potentially get outside and start spreading in places where you don’t want them.

Deciduous varieties will go dormant in the fall, but you’ll want to let the leaves remain on the plant until they’re completely dead and brown.

This allows the leaves to continue to photosynthesize and send energy into the rhizomes for winter storage.

Once all the leaves are brown and dead, gently pull or cut them off the plant.

Come springtime, the plant will produce new foliage and flowers, aided by the stored energy reserves.

If your agapanthus are healthy with lots of fresh foliage every spring for deciduous cultivars, or year-round for evergreens, there’s no need to divide them.

But if you notice patches of yellowed, dead leaves, or if the plant is not flowering, it might mean the roots are too congested.

To fix this issue, divide the plant, according to the instructions described above.

It’s recommended to divide deciduous varieties every six to eight years, and evergreen types every four to five years.

You can learn more about dividing perennials in this guide.

Managing Pests and Disease

Remember when I said that agapanthus resists many afflictions, including death itself?

While those with invasive clumps may bemoan this fact, it does have an upside for gardeners who love them: they are reliably pest and disease resistant.

In this article, you’ll learn how to cultivate this landscape plant for foundation or stand-alone placements, as well as mixed borders and hedges.

Cultivation and History

The Spiraea thunbergii species is native to China and Japan. The true species and its cultivars are suitable for US Hardiness zones 4 to 8. It is known by various names, including baby’s breath, golden bridal wreath, and Thunberg spirea; as well as Thunberg’s meadowsweet.

Please note that S. thunbergii is considered invasive in parts of the US, including: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania (Blair County), New York (Fulton County), Connecticut (New Haven).  It is prized as a Plant of Merit in the Midwest.

The ‘Ogon’ cultivar is an early bloomer with a loose, mounding habit that reaches a height and width of 3 to 5 feet. It puts on a show in spring, its cascading stems laden with petite white blossoms that resemble tiny English roses.

Cuttings are taken in one of two ways.  In the summertime, soft, supple young stems are cut, dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in potting medium.

Alternatively, hard woody stems are cut just before spring, dipped in rooting hormone, and placed in potting medium.

In the layering method, a long, arching stem is bent to the ground, partially severed, and coated with rooting hormone. It is then covered with soil and weighed down with a rock. The rooted stem portion is then detached from the parent and transplanted.

Pruning and Maintenance

To rejuvenate this plant, use a pair of sharp pruners, to remove some of the oldest, woodiest stems. Cut them to the ground just after flowering in the spring.

You may also prune deeply every few years, to a height of about 12 inches, to encourage healthy, new growth.

Fall-planted shrubs benefit from a protective layer of burlap and an extra layer of mulch to weather their first winter.

And while somewhat drought tolerant, in the event of a severe heatwave/dry spell, you should provide supplemental water to minimize stress.

And finally, apply a balanced, slow-release fertilizer in late fall or early spring each year.

S. thunbergii is not a pest- or disease-prone plant. However, if it’s stressed due to conditions like inadequate space between plants, inefficient soil drainage, over- or under-watering, or poor weed control, it fall victim to problems associated with its near relative, the rose.

Some insects to watch out for are: aphids, leaf rollers, scale, and spider mites. An application of food grade diatomaceous earth is one method of preventing/treating an onslaught.

Potential diseases include: fire blight, leaf spot, powdery mildew, and root rot. The removal of affected leaves and stems, and the application of a chemical fungicide or a biofungicide may halt the spread of some.

However, root rot from oversaturation may be irreversible.

Best Uses

To show off your Mellow Yellow beauty to best advantage, consider planting it alone as a specimen. This provides ample room to be seen from all sides, as it shows off its blossoms in spring, golden leaves in summer, and bronze tones in fall.

You may prefer to include it in a mixed border or bed with shrubs of various colors, statures, and textures, like evergreens, forsythia, fothergilla, juniper, roses, viburnum, and weigela.

It’s also an excellent choice for adding textural appeal and an anchor to the back of a foundation bed, particularly in spring, with a front edging of bulbs in bloom.

And if you’re looking for a plant to use as a hedge along a driveway, or a property perimeter by a busy road, S. thunbergii offers an airy, colorful alternative to dense and compact choices like privet or boxwood, as it absorbs fumes and creates privacy.

Quick Reference Growing Chart

Plant Type:	Mellow Yellow ‘Ogon’ Spirea	Flower / Foliage Color:	White flowers, yellow/bronze leaves
Native to:	China and Japan	Maintenance:	Minimal
Hardiness (USDA Zone):	4-8	Soil Type:	Not picky; all
Bloom Time:	Early spring	Soil pH:	Neutral to slightly acidic, 6.0-7.0
Exposure:	Full sun to part shade	Soil Drainage:	Well-draining
Growth Rate:	Fast	Companion Planting:	Evergreens, forsythia, fothergilla, juniper, rose, spring bulbs, viburnum, weigela
Spacing:	18-24 inches	Uses:	Foundation plantings, hedges, large containers, mixed borders, specimens
Planting Depth:	As deep as the nursery pot, and twice the width	Attracts:	Bees and butterflies
Height:	3 to 5 feet	Family:	Rosaceae
Spread:	3 to 5 feet	Genus:	Amygdaloideae
Tolerance:	Drought, pollution, deer	Species:	spiraea
Pests & Diseases:	Aphids, fire blight, leaf rollers, leaf spot, powdery mildew, root rot, scale	Cultivar:	thunbergii

We will describe the many facets of this virus and how to control it.

Types of Plants Affected

Turnip mosaic virus has a phenomenally wide host range – at least 318 species of plants in 43 families! And it infects plants all over the world.

Most cruciferous vegetables are susceptible to this virus. Among them, TuMV is the most severe on turnip, radish, mustard, and Chinese cabbage.

Hosts in other families include spinach, beets, lettuce, rhubarb, and tobacco.

Symptoms

TuMV can infect the whole plant.

The symptoms of this disease vary depending on which host it infects and the stage of growth of the plants.

Symptoms on the young leaves include yellow round spots.

Cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower leaves develop light green circular lesions that are up to five inches wide.

The tissue in these lesions dies as the infection progresses. Even worse, the lesions may join together and result in the complete loss of leaves.

The plants may be stunted and senesce prematurely.

Spread of Turnip Mosaic Virus

Unfortunately, a wide variety of aphids can transmit TuMV by feeding on a plant for less than a minute.

Particular threats include green peach, turnip, and cabbage aphids.

Winged aphids typically spread the infection over a thousand feet.

The aphids are more likely to travel downwind, so weather conditions have an enormous effect on the spread of this virus.

Aphids reproduce and spread more widely when it is warm and dry (68-82 F). Therefore, the aphids spread the virus more rapidly under these conditions.

Plants are less likely to become infected in cool, windy, and wet weather.

Once a crop has been infected, aphids can rapidly spread the disease between plants if they are not controlled.

In addition, the virus can be spread mechanically, such as using infected equipment – or even your hands.

There is no evidence of the transmission of turnip mosaic virus by seeds.

Mixed Infections with Cauliflower Mosaic Virus

Cauliflower mosaic virus often infects cabbage and other cole crops when they are already infected with TuMV and enhances the severity of the infection.

In cool weather, this combination of diseases causes severe stunting and vein clearing.

Stunting and mottling are more common in warm weather.

Cauliflower mosaic virus is also spread mechanically and by aphids. However, unlike turnip mosaic virus, it only infects members of the brassica family.

While there are a lot of variables involved, most gardeners in the continental US will be able to grow a fall garden if we plan it right!

Here’s what’s to come in this article:

Planning a fall garden requires knowing a couple of things about your climate, and a couple of things about the crops you dream of harvesting. Once you gather this information, you will be ready to don your gardening gloves.

First Frost Dates: Winter’s First Kiss

First things first, before you can figure out the best time to plant any given crop in autumn, you’ll need to know your region’s average first frost date.

Your first frost date is the average date that you will experience a light freeze in your neck of the woods. If you don’t know this date, you can look it up by your zip code at The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Temperatures at or a couple of degrees below freezing will kill most tender plants, whereas cold-hardy vegetables can survive a deeper freeze. The flavor of some will even improve in the cold weather.

Soil Temperature for Germination

Before planting seeds, make sure to refer to your seed packets to check the recommended soil temperatures for germination.

Just because you start your parsnip seeds 16 weeks before your predicted first freeze doesn’t mean the soil will automatically be the right temperature for them to germinate as well.

Some regions may have warmer or cooler soil than is recommended for germination at the time when you plan to sow. You’ll have to take your specific conditions into account as well, to determine what will grow for you.

A soil temperature right around 70°F is the sweet spot for many seeds to germinate. But specific plants may have different requirements, so remember to check those packets!

Days to Maturity and Freeze Out Temperatures

Before you grab your seeds and run into your garden to plant, take a look at those seed packets and double-check the number of days to maturity. Do they match up to your planned schedule?

The recommended planting schedule above will give you a general idea of when the listed plants should be started, transplanted, or sown. But the total time needed for them to reach maturity may differ somewhat for different varieties.

To calculate how many days you will need, take the number of days to maturity, then add fourteen extra days (two more weeks) of growing time to compensate for slower growth in autumn.

If your seeds say they take 70 days to reach maturity, then you need to count on at least 84 days.

Keep in mind that standard days to maturity are also typically calculated from the time when seeds germinate, not from the moment you put them in the ground. If you direct sow seeds in the garden, start counting when they germinate.

If you start seeds indoors and transplant them into your garden, start counting from the date when you transplant.

The crops most commonly planted in fall can handle a light freeze.

If any of the plants you’ve selected cannot handle freezing temperatures, make sure they will have time to mature before your first frost.

If your seed packet says the plant is frost tolerant, then it can continue to grow and reach maturity after your first frost.

You’ll have to take into account the sometimes unfortunate reality that some edible plants will “freeze out” and die when the mercury plummets. If you live in a northern climate with low temperatures early in the fall, you may not be able to bring certain plants to maturity if winter arrives early.

But with careful planning, you should be able to get cold-hardy crops as well as some tender fall plants started on the path toward success!

Certain planting techniques, such as planting with row covers or in cold frames, as well as applying a protective layer of mulch, can help to alleviate the risk of frost damage.

But nonetheless, knowing the average temperatures for your area and what certain plants can withstand serves as an excellent starting point when planning your fall planting schedule.

Weather patterns can of course vary from year to year. But you want to give your plants the best start you possibly can, based on recorded averages for your area, temperatures that they are known to be able to withstand, and the time they will require to be ready for harvest.

If you find that certain items you had hoped to grow probably won’t do well with the allotted number of available fall growing days for your area before winter sets in, save those seeds for spring.

If varieties of a certain crop known for having a shorter number of days to maturity, or for their cold hardiness over others, are available, go for those when you make your picks.

Container gardening is another good option for certain crops that are less cold-hardy. If you have the space for it, and if you find certain items are a little slow to grow this year and your crops have yet to come in when Jack Frost arrives despite your careful calculations, bring these pots inside to a well-lit area and hope for the best. With a little luck, you’ll still be able to produce a delicious harvest, despite the weather outside.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the signs of termite infestation, methods to detect damage caused by subterranean and dry wood termites, and how to identify infestations in different areas of your home. We will also discuss the signs of termite infestation in outdoor spaces and when it is essential to seek professional termite inspection. Additionally, we’ll provide valuable insights into DIY termite damage prevention measures and the importance of professional termite control and treatment.

Image source

By the end of this guide, you will be equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to protect your home from termite infestations and ensure a termite-free and secure environment for years to come. Remember, early detection, understanding termite behaviour, and prompt action are your strongest allies in the battle against these seemingly unstoppable insects. So, let’s dive in and learn how to defend our homes from the relentless force of termites.

1. Understanding Termite Behaviour

Termites, often referred to as “silent destroyers” are small but highly destructive insects that can wreak havoc on homes and structures. Understanding termite behaviour is crucial for early detection and effective control. Termites are social insects, living in colonies with distinct castes – workers, soldiers, and reproductive individuals (kings and queens). They feed on cellulose-based materials, such as wood and plant matter, which significantly threaten our homes and wooden structures.

2. Signs of Termite Infestation

Identifying the signs of termite infestation is vital to prevent extensive damage to your property. One of the most common indications is the presence of mud tubes. Subterranean termites build these tubes to protect themselves while they travel from their nests in the soil to the food source – often the wooden parts of your home.

Additionally, discarded wings near windows, doors, or other entry points may indicate a termite swarm, which occurs when reproductive termites fly off to form new colonies. Finding small holes or tunnels in wooden structures can also be a sign of termite activity, especially if the wood sounds hollow when tapped.

3. Detecting Subterranean Termite Damage

Subterranean termites are the most common type found in homes. They construct their nests in the soil, and once they infest your property, they can cause significant damage. Common areas they target include crawl spaces, basements, and around the foundation. 

To detect subterranean termite damage, look for sagging floors, buckling wood, or areas that appear water damaged. Termites often chew through wood from the inside out, leaving a thin layer of painted or veneered surface intact. You may also notice blistering or peeling paint on wooden surfaces caused by termite activity beneath.

4. Identifying Drywood Termite Damage

Drywood termites, on the other hand, do not require soil contact and infest dry wood within structures. They tend to establish colonies in attics, eaves, and wooden furniture. Detecting dry-wood termite damage can be trickier as they keep their activities concealed within the wood. Even professional Maryville pest control experts take the time to detect these bad boys. 

Look for small piles of faecal pellets resembling sawdust or coffee grounds. These pellets are the remains of the wood that termites have consumed. Additionally, keep an eye out for small, kick-out holes on the surface of the infested wood, through which the termites discard their faecal pellets.

5. Signs of Termite Damage in Different Areas of the Home

Termites can cause damage in various areas of your home, depending on the species and the conditions they encounter. Apart from the common signs mentioned earlier, you should pay attention to specific areas prone to infestation or hire a crew if you need prompt relief. 

In the kitchen, inspect wooden cabinets and the spaces beneath appliances. In bathrooms, check for water leaks and any damp or damaged wood, as termites are drawn to moisture. In the attic, look for wood damage and signs of termite swarms.

6. Signs of Termite Infestation in Outdoor Spaces

Termites don’t limit their activities to indoor spaces. They can also infest outdoor structures, such as fences, decks, and wooden sheds. Signs of termite infestation outdoors include damaged or hollow-sounding wood, mud tubes on wooden surfaces, and the presence of discarded wings.

Keep an eye on any wooden structures or landscaping elements that come into direct contact with the soil, as they can serve as entry points for termites into your home. 

7. Repairing Termite Damage

If your home has suffered termite damage, it’s crucial to address it promptly. Repairing termite-infested wood should be done by a professional contractor who can assess the extent of the damage and replace the affected wood with termite-resistant materials. Regularly inspect your home for signs of new termite activity, even after treatment and repairs. Early detection of any re-infestation will allow for swift action and prevent further damage. Protecting your home from termites requires a proactive approach. Regularly inspect your property, both indoors and outdoors, for signs of termite infestation. If you suspect termite activity or notice any damage, don’t hesitate to contact a professional pest control company.

For residents in the area, we recommend Colonial Pest Control as your trusted partner in termite prevention and treatment. Their experienced technicians employ effective and eco-friendly methods to safeguard your home from these destructive pests. Take preventive actions now to ensure a termite-free and secure home for years to come. Remember, early termite detection, understanding termite behaviour, and timely action are the keys to protecting your home and valuable belongings from the devastating effects of these tiny yet formidable insects.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ):

1. When to Seek Professional Termite Inspection?

While it’s essential to be vigilant and look for signs of termite infestation, there are times when professional inspection is necessary. If you suspect termite activity, notice unexplained wood damage, or discover termite swarmer’s in your home, it’s time to call a pest control expert. For quick touch with pest control in Maryville, TN service provider, visit their website, https://www.colonialpc.com/maryville-pest-control. 

Experienced pest control technicians have the expertise and tools to conduct thorough inspections, identify the type of termites infesting your property, and recommend the most appropriate course of action.

1. How Can You Implement DIY Termite Damage Prevention Measures?

While professional intervention is essential for active infestations, there are several preventative measures you can take to minimize the risk of termite damage. Ensure that there is no direct wood-to-soil contact around your home, as this provides easy access for termites. Regularly inspect and seal any cracks or gaps in your home’s foundation, walls, and roof to prevent termite entry.

Consider using termite-resistant building materials and treat wooden structures with termite repellents or preservatives. Maintaining good drainage around your property can also help reduce excess moisture, which attracts termites.

1. What are the services offered by professionals?

If you discover an active termite infestation or have taken preventative measures and want to ensure long-term protection, professional termite control, and treatment is the best option. Pest control Maryville TN companies offer various treatment methods, including liquid termiticides, baits, and fumigation.

A qualified pest control professional will assess the extent of the infestation and recommend the most suitable treatment strategy based on the specific situation. They will also provide follow-up inspections to ensure the treatment’s effectiveness and prevent future infestations.

The sight of sunflowers has always warmed my heart. Radiant, tall, and resilient, they’ve silently witnessed countless summer days. When I first heard of growing them indoors, my initial thought was, “Is that even possible?” With curiosity as my guide, I embarked on an indoor gardening journey.

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Rethinking the Boundaries of Home Gardening

For most of us, the concept of indoor gardening revolves around small potted plants or herbs. Sunflowers? That seemed outlandish! Yet, the idea intrigued me. Imagine the magic of having these sunny blooms greet you inside your home!

 Choosing The Right Sunflower Variety

After taking a closer look at the Farmers Classic website, it became clear that there is a wide range of sunflower varieties available. While the classic yellow sunflower is a popular choice, there are also many other options to choose from that may better suit your needs. In particular, I was drawn to the Dwarf Sunflower. Not only are they smaller in size, but they are also more manageable, making them an excellent choice for indoor gardening. By adding a touch of greenery to your windowsill or table, you can enjoy the beauty of these little sunflower beauties year-round.

 Harnessing Sunshine for My Indoor Sunflowers

While my home may not be a sprawling mansion, it does offer a cozy and comfortable atmosphere. In fact, I take pride in the fact that I have a few sunny windows that allow plenty of natural light into the space. To make the most of this light, I decided to plant sunflowers in close proximity to these windows. Not only do they add a touch of natural beauty to the space, but they benefit from the sunlight by thriving and growing vigorously. I find it rather fulfilling to watch these beautiful flowers grow and blossom each and every day, thanks to the ample sunshine they receive from my strategically placed sunny windows.

 Gearing Up With The Right Tools

Having a list of necessities on hand, I started researching indoor gardening tools to aid me in my venture. As I scoured the web, I came upon two companies, Batagrowlight and Boyagrowlight, that were highly regarded for their LED grow lights, which came highly recommended by fellow indoor gardeners. Although intrigued, I decided to stick with natural sunlight for the time being. However, I made sure to jot down their names for future reference when conducting gardening experiments. It’s always good to have options and keep them in mind for future endeavors.

Planting Sunflower Seeds with Care and Excitement

I was excited to start my sunflower journey and with the assistance of Farmers Classic, I was able to find the perfect pot and premium potting mix. The potting mix is specifically designed to provide the nutrients and moisture the seeds need to thrive. As I began planting the seeds, I made sure to plant them about an inch apart to prevent overcrowding, which could stunt their growth. After a gentle watering, I felt a sense of satisfaction knowing that my sunflowers were well on their way to becoming beautiful and healthy plants. I also made sure to keep an eye on them, checking the soil moisture regularly and providing adequate sunlight to ensure optimal growth.

 Embracing Anticipation and Witnessing the Arrival of Green Shoots

Planting a seed is an exciting experience for anyone. It marks the beginning of a journey where one is able to witness the beauty and magic of nature. As you plant the seed, you are filled with a sense of hope and anticipation. Every morning, you check on the pot, eagerly waiting for the tiny green shoots to make their much-awaited appearance. This process teaches us about the importance of patience and perseverance. It reminds us that the best things in life take time to grow and develop. Furthermore, planting a seed allows us to connect with the earth and appreciate the wonders of life. It is a simple act that can bring immense joy and fulfillment.

 Caring for Young Seedlings with Diligence and Avoiding Over-Watering

As the days went by, my little green friends grew stronger. I was amazed by the way they developed and bloomed. I made sure that their soil was suitable for their growth and I added some organic fertilizer to keep them healthy. I also provided them with enough sunlight and proper ventilation to make sure they got all the nutrients they needed. Checking the moisture level of the soil was my daily routine, and I made sure they were well-watered, but not drenched, as too much water can cause root rot. I did not want to make the common mistake of over-watering my plants, so I took the necessary precautions to make sure they thrived and flourished under my care.

 Balancing Sunlight and Artificial Light: Exploring LED Grow Lights for Year-Round Plant Growth

Although the window spot provided ample sunlight, I couldn’t help but consider the lack of light during the winter months. I began to search for alternative sources of light and that’s when those LED grow lights crossed my mind. However, I wanted to make sure I was making the right choice, so I decided to seek advice from someone knowledgeable in the field of gardening. Luckily, I came across a fellow gardening enthusiast who introduced me to Helpful Farms. Although their primary focus was on cannabis cultivation, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that their lighting advice was applicable to a variety of plants. Not only did they provide valuable information about LED grow lights, but they also gave me some tips on how to optimize my plant growth with other techniques. Needless to say, my winter gardening concerns were put to rest thanks to Helpful Farms’ expert advice.

 Natural Pest Control for Indoor Gardens

Although indoor plants may appear to be free from pests, that is not always the case. In fact, pests such as aphids may still try to make a home on your beloved sunflowers. However, there are ways to prevent these unwanted guests from taking over your indoor garden. One effective tip from Hempful Farms is to create a gentle spray of soapy water and apply it to your plants. This solution is gentle on your plants and can help to keep pests such as aphids at bay. By following simple tricks like this, you can ensure that your indoor garden remains healthy and free from pests.

 The Enchanting Bloom: Witnessing the Magical Moment of the First Flower

Weeks of love and care, filled with daily watering and gentle pruning, finally led to the magical moment when the first bloom appeared. It was a surreal experience that filled me with awe and wonder. The vibrant colors and delicate petals of the flower were an embodiment of the warm and sunny days of summer, and seeing them right in my living room was a truly special moment

that I will always treasure. As I watched the flower grow and flourish over the coming weeks, I was filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment, knowing that my hard work and dedication had paid off in such a beautiful way.

 Harvesting Sunflower Seeds and Embracing the Cycle of Life

After the flowers had bloomed and their petals slowly fell away, all that remained were the seeds. These little treasures, once properly roasted, made for truly delightful snacks that I found myself indulging in on a daily basis. However, I was mindful to reserve a handful of these seeds for the next upcoming planting season, ensuring that new life would be born once again. It’s truly amazing how the cycle of life works, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to witness it firsthand.

 Lessons And Reflections

Indoor gardening, especially something as unconventional as sunflowers, taught me patience and the joy of little things. Sure, there were challenges. But every hurdle was worth the morning when I sipped my coffee, looking at the sunny blooms.

 

In conclusion, while sunflowers might seem an unlikely choice for indoor gardening, they are worth every bit of effort. With the right tools, guidance from platforms like Farmers Classic, and a sprinkle of patience, you can bring the magic of sunlit fields right into your home. So why not give it a shot? Happy gardening!

Read on to find out what symptoms to look for and what you do to prevent this hideous but superficial disorder.

What is Apple Cork Rot?

Cork spot is a disorder of the tree’s physiology and has nothing to do with a disease. The condition causes the fruit to have an unappealing outside appearance and a corky texture on the interior. It typically occurs in fruit that are low in calcium. In some cases it may also be due to an imbalance among potassium, magnesium, and calcium.

While the fruit are technically edible, they will be difficult to sell, they they may have a bitter flavor. If you run a small commercial orchard, your customers may fear that your apples are contaminated with mold.

Symptoms

The first sign that something is amiss will be little green dimples or depressions on the outer portion of the fruit’s flesh. This process typically starts in the early summer and can continue as the fruit grows and enlarges.

Eventually, the little spots grow and become corky and discolored. The spots may be as much one half inch across.

Why does this happen, you might ask? There are several reasons why the fruit may become low in calcium. The obvious one is a shortage of calcium in the tree. This is typically due to low pH in the soil.

However, other factors can contribute to the development of cork rot. One is when the shoots on the tree grow too vigorously and draw the tree’s calcium away from the fruit. Light crops can also produce this effect.

How to Control Apple Cork Rot

While there isn’t much you can do for your poor fruit at the moment, there are steps you can take to stop this from happening in the future.

The most long-term approach is to add limestone to the soil every 3-5 years after planting. You should have your soil tested, so you will know how frequently you need to apply the limestone.

If you have established trees, you can consider spraying calcium four times each to reduce cork spot.

Another step you can take is to prune water sprouts and excessive growth in the summer. You should also consider abstaining from applying nitrogen to the soil for 1-2 years.