MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

  She doesn’t have greenhouses or even a giant garden, but Toronto-based Gayla Trail, a.k.a. You Grow Girl, has plenty of homegrown leafy greens to eat over a very long season—including some wild varieties I bet you’ve never tried. Last time I checked, Gayla was harvesting basketful Number 40-something of the season with lots more to come. Gayla was the first garden blogger I ever heard of, and she’s been online since February 2000—long before a lot of us even knew what a blog was. She’s always organic and actually more than that—“moreganic,” as she refers to it, which we discussed—and also the author of various books including “Easy Growing” and “Grow Great Grub.” And most of all, she’s someone I count as a friend.

Who among us doesn’t have at least one Urgent Garden Question? This month on the public radio show and podcast, Ken Druse and I answered a diverse list of them: About fighting the parasitic vining plant called dodder. About why sometimes not all nursery plants bought at the same time perform the same once planted in our gardens. About some different Nicotiana, beyond the usual suspects. About when and how to save seed from Eucomis, the pineapple lily, to propagate more bulbs. And about selecting “improved” plants that show up in our own gardens to perhaps save seed from, to create our own strain.  You all know Ken Druse, my long-time friend and fellow garden writer, author of “The New Shade Garden,” and “Natural Companions,” and “Making More Plants” among other great books. 

THE HARVEST IS FINALLY ACCELERATING, which got me thinking about a tool that’s as critical to success right about now as my mower and spade: the perfect canning jar.  One morning this week, over a cup of tea on Skype with my friend Gayla Trail a.k.a. You Grow Girl, we ended up having an entire conversation about them, in fact. Bottom line: neither of us knows how we could live without them! 

I spent much of the summer transfixed by this year’s pair of phoebes who nested on the back porch as usual, and from a favorite low perch just across the way from there, launched themselves repeatedly into mid-air to catch insect after insect.  How do birds get their food, and what do they eat, anyway? Well that depends on the bird, and Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote.org has some answers. A million people a day and more than 200 radio markets hear the 2-minute public radio show called Bird Note, and now “BirdNote” is a book too, which Ellen edited. 

I’ve been relishing a harvest of diverse tomatoes, though I only planted two varieties in my own garden this year. My virtual harvest in all colors, shapes, and sizes has been courtesy of Craig LeHoullier on Instagram, and he and I talked top tomatoes and tomato troubles and more. Craig, a.k.a. the NC Tomato Man, a retired chemist and author of the great book “Epic Tomatoes.” He has been showing his Instagram and Facebook followers each variety and progress from seed to fruit on his social-media streams this year. It’s such fun and so informative, and I wanted to know more.

I had to talk myself off the ledge repeatedly through the last half of July and into early August. The trigger? A garden that looked pooped and a gardener that felt the same. With the right plants and tactical tricks, though, the beds and borders can carry on right through fall. Garden designer Katherine Tracey helped me with advice on how achieve that. Ready to tune up your garden with a longer view into autumn with some tweaks now and some long-range plans and planting for coming years? Kathy of Avant Gardens retail and mail order nursery in

From recommendations for unusual-shaped almost bonsai-like trees for the garden, to the subject of male conifer cones (yes, there are males and females!), invasive sweet autumn clematis, perfect paint colors for outdoor garden features, and even how to harvest, cure and stash garlic: All of those were among readers’ and listeners’ Urgent Garden Questions this summer. Ken Druse, longtime friend and author of such beloved garden books as “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants” and “Natural Companions,” helped me answer them.

WHAT MAKES a particular native plant a good choice for the home garden? And where can we look for clues into which natives will do best in our particular location and conditions?  Dan Jaffe is propagator and stock bed grower at New England Wild Flower Society, and author in collaboration with his colleague Mark Richardson of “Native Plants For New England Gardens.” Wherever you garden, he has advice to help you think about what to look for in a garden-worthy native and more, and how to really define native, anyway. I learned the concept of ecoregions—about choosing plants not because I live within a particular county line on a map, but instead guided by bigger natural factors.

  When I talk about intermingling several plants to serve as a mixed groundcover, perhaps under trees and shrubs, I often refer to the idea as “making mosaics.” No surprise, therefore, that a new book called “A Tapestry Garden” caught my attention. I talked to its co-author, Marietta O’Byrne, about ideas for weaving plants together artfully.  Longtime nursery owners and hellebore breeders Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne co-created “A Tapestry Garden: The Art of Weaving Plants in Place.” Their property, Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon, includes their extensive and inspiring tapestry-filled gardens. We discussed how to knit plants together — what qualities to look for (and avoid) in pleasing partnerships.

Jane Hurwitz says that her mission is simply this: to get more of us to garden with butterflies in mind. I suspect that sounds like something you wouldn’t mind being nudged to do, or do more effectively. Jane Hurwitz is editor of “Butterfly Gardener” magazine, and former director of the Butterfly Garden and Habitat Program for the North American Butterfly Association. Her new book from Princeton University is called “Butterfly Gardening, the North American Butterfly Association Guide,” and offers practical advice—both the overall principles and also plant-specific palettes, region by region. We talked about the role of native and non-native plants, about what the Number 1 plant gardeners around the country credited as being an effective attractant, about taking into account the borrowed landscape around you, and what an adult butterfly looks for in a flower, anyway.

The latest crop of Urgent Garden Questions ranges from peonies that just didn’t bloom, to ants on peony buds and ants in flower pots, mosquitoes in water gardens, slugs in everything and more. Ken Druse and I teamed up to respond to them.  Ken is author of many books, including “The New Shade Garden” and “Natural Companions” and “Making More Plants,” and is also a longtime friend. 

How do you grill vegetables to perfection? And what do I do with my garlic scapes, or the greens on all those radishes? And so many of the other extras of the garden, or perhaps from your weekly CSA share delivery. These are just some of the questions I have at the moment, and I suspect that you may, too. In this increasingly bountiful produce season, whether from the CSA share, farmers’ market, or backyard, I’ve been turning to inspiration to my friend Alexandra Stafford’s website; alexandracooks.com, and to her Instagram feed, too. Ali’s here with some advice, from how to store vegetables to make them last longest (hint: cut green off those roots at once, for instance) to recipes for veggie tacos to a pasta carbonara that uses a ton of them, and various sauces, quick pickles and pestos, too.

I don’t grow a lot of roses, just a few favorites, but birds plant the occasional multiflora rose seed here and there around the garden. One of the resulting seedlings looked really strange when I noticed while weeding in an out-of-the-way spot the other day. It was all disfigured, and red, and—uh-oh—rose rosette disease comes to my corner of Nowheresville. I hear from a lot of you who have encountered rose rosette disease not on some weed as I did, but on your prized rose bushes. I invited research scientist Christina King of Star Roses and Plants—known for more than a century for many favorite garden plants, including the most popular roses today, the Knockout series—to explain what this disease is all about, and what promise lies ahead for fighting it. 

Since I have lived full-time in a rural place the last decade, I find that probably not coincidentally, my reading list tends increasingly toward tales of the natural world. The new book “Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land,” made it to the top of the pile recently and I want to tell you about it, and introduce its author, biologist Scott Freeman. Scott is Principal Lecturer in Biology at the University of Washington and author of various biology textbooks. His latest book is at once a tale of his family’s 17-acre project that involved salmon and reforestation, and tackling invasive species and more, but it’s also about how each of us can engage in a role of stewardship with the earth, and about how to live a more present and engaged life as a citizen of the planet. It’s a tale of ecological restoration, which Scott says “is really just gardening with native plants on a big scale.”

The vegetable garden is starting to provide in earnest. But before we all dish out the same old side of steamed broccoli or green beans or kale every night from here to the first freeze, it’s time to get some recipe ideas that are as fresh as those veggies. What do you say we all make this the year of the more inspired approach to eating our vegetables? To that end, I called friend and cookbook author Alana Chernila, whose latest volume is “Eating from the Ground Up: Recipes for Simple, Perfect Vegetables.” Get her tips, recipes, and a chance to enter to win the cookbook, too.