Just Grow Something | Evidence-Based Home Gardening

It's two o'clock on a July afternoon. You walk out to check the garden, and your squash leaves are drooping so low they're nearly touching the mulch. Your tomato plants look like they've given up on the whole season. If your first thought, every single time, is “I need to water right now,” hold on a second before you grab that hose. Because that dramatic afternoon collapse you're looking at likely...

Fall gardening doesn't start in September. For the crops that take a long time to produce, your broccoli, your cauliflower, your cabbage, your Brussels sprouts, it starts right now in late June and early July. And if you've never had a productive fall brassica bed, it's almost certainly because you started too late and it took me a lot of years to master this. This episode is about fall gardening...

It’s June, your tomatoes are climbing, your corn is waist-high, and the internet is full of fertilizing advice—most of it missing the most important variable: timing. In this episode, we dig into what your vegetables need right now at mid-season, why nitrogen timing is the thing most gardeners get wrong, how fruiting crops and leafy crops have completely different needs, and when fertilizing can a...

Every June, one of the most common questions that floods gardening groups, emails, and extension offices is some version of: “My tomato leaves are turning brown — do I have blight?” The confusion is completely understandable, because there are two diseases that get lumped under that word — and they are caused by completely different organisms, show up in different ways, and require completely diff...

Every year, gardeners across the country watch their squash plants collapse overnight and have absolutely no idea why until it’s too late. The culprit is the squash vine borer, and it is one of the most misunderstood pests in the home garden. In this episode, Karin Velez breaks down the full life cycle of the squash vine borer, including regional timing differences that explain why gardeners in Fl...

Perennial weeds are in a different category than annuals. They don’t just re-seed, they regrow from the ground up, season after season, from root systems that can run three feet deep or spread fifteen feet sideways underground. In this episode, we’re tackling them systematically. First, a regional tour of the most aggressive perennial weeds in the U.S. - what they look like, how they spread, and w...

Mulch is one of the highest-return investments you can make in your vegetable garden and yet most gardeners are using whatever happens to be available rather than whatever would actually work best for their situation. In this episode, we dig into the full lineup of organic mulches—straw, shredded leaves, wood chips, pine needles, grass clippings, and compost—as well as a shorter look at inorganic...

A listener asked for a deep dive on dahlias and I’m delivering, from the ground up (pun intended). But we’re not stopping there. In this episode, I’m covering the full world of spring-planted bulbs: dahlias, gladiolus, cannas, calla lilies, and tuberous begonias. You’ll learn when and how to plant them, how to grow them for maximum blooms, how to cut them for the vase (because that’s half the fun)...

We made it to 300 episodes! And to celebrate, I’m doing something a little different. I went looking for the questions home gardeners are asking most, the ones showing up in Reddit threads, Facebook groups, university extension Q&A lines, master gardener helplines, and my own DMs and emails, over and over and over again. Then I went to the research: university extensions, peer-reviewed horticu...

The subject of whether you should top your pepper plants can bring on a pretty strong debate among gardeners. That’s because this is one of those topics where the answer genuinely is: it depends. And I mean that in a very specific, evidence-based way that comes down to two things: your climate and your pepper type. I’ll be straight with you, I do not top my peppers. We are in a zone 6b in west cen...

Last week on the show we talked about the basic considerations for growing in containers, and that included how to evaluate whether a crop is a good candidate for growing in a pot. This week we’re digging into the three crops I get asked about the most often when it comes to growing in containers: tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. And while, technically, you can grow most anything in the right sized...

No yard? No tiller? No problem. If you've got a patio, a porch, a balcony, or even a sunny driveway, you can grow a real, productive vegetable garden in containers. Today on Just Grow Something, we walk through the essentials of container gardening from the ground up: how to evaluate whether a crop is a good candidate for a pot, how to pick the right container size based on root system and mature...

Empty beds mean missed harvests. But with the right plan, they're completely avoidable. Today on Just Grow Something I'm walking you through succession planting and relay planting, the strategies that keep your garden productive not just across space, but across time. Whether you're dealing with a four-month growing season or gardening in year-round heat, there's a succession approach that works f...

What if you could get more food from the exact same garden space, without expanding a single bed? That's the promise of interplanting, and today on Just Grow Something I break down exactly how to do it right. Building on the "high, low, fast, slow" mantra I use in my own garden and teach in my Plan Like a Pro course, I walk you through the framework that makes interplanting work and the common mis...

Get my greenhouse selection guide to help you choose which protected growing structure is right for you: https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/greenhouse A protected growing structure isn’t “set it and forget it” but a microclimate you manage. In this final episode of our greenhouse mini-series, you’ll get a practical operating manual for cold frames, low tunnels, caterpillar tunnels, high tunnels,...

Get my free guide to choosing which protected gardening structure you should choose - https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/greenhouse Protected growing structures like greenhouses can be game-changers - earlier harvests, fewer rain-splashed diseases, better crop quality, and more reliable timing. But they also create a new microclimate with new rules: overheating, humidity spikes, irrigation deman...

Download my Protected Growing Quick Guide to help you make the decision on what type of structure would work best in your garden: https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/greenhouse Thinking about a greenhouse but not sure if you really need one? There are some beautiful and expensive options out there, but greenhouses aren’t the only option for extending the season your garden. Today on Just Grow Som...

Hardening off is the difference between sturdy transplants that take off fast and seedlings that stall, scorch, or collapse after planting. Today on Just Grow Something, you’ll learn what to do indoors before hardening off, a simple step-by-step hardening-off schedule (including temperature guidelines, shade vs. sun, wind protection, and watering adjustments), and what to watch for when you transp...

Timing your seed starting shouldn't be hard. There are plenty of calendars to follow, right? Until following a calendar means you start too early, run out of space, and end up babysitting leggy, root-bound seedlings for weeks. Or you start too late and miss the planting window you planned for. So, today on Just Grow Something, we're connecting the dots between frost dates, planting calendars, and...

If you want an easier garden season, February is the time to set the foundation. Two steps do most of the heavy lifting: getting a soil test and prepping beds without damaging soil structure. Done well, these tasks reduce fertilizer guesswork and improve root growth. You can do a lot right now that sets you up for success without rushing into two classic mistakes: 1. throwing amendments at the gar...

Today is a clinic episode, a Seedling Troubleshooting Clinic to be exact, because if you’re starting seeds indoors, something is eventually going to look weird. A tray that was perfect yesterday is suddenly leaning. Something looks fuzzy on the soil surface. Or a seedling that seemed fine just flops over. The good news is most seedling problems come from a small handful of causes, causes that we c...

Onions and shallots are closely related, they can be used in similar ways, and they look similar at the store, but they behave differently in both the kitchen and the garden. So, today on Just Grow Something we’re doing a side-by-side comparison of these alliums. We’ll cover how they differ in taste and cooking uses, how they differ in growth habit, how to grow each one, and finally, how to adapt...

If you’ve ever planted a big patch of arugula at the same time you planted the rest of the spring garden, only to watch it shoot up a flower stalk a few weeks later, you’ve already met this week’s topic: heat-sensitive crops. Heat-sensitive doesn’t always mean a plant can’t survive warm weather. It usually means warm temperatures and lengthening days change the plant’s priorities. Instead of produ...

My Plan Like A Pro Course is Open for Registration: ⁠⁠ https://justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/pro ⁠⁠ If you’ve ever gone into a Facebook gardening group and asked, “When am I supposed to plant this?” and then gotten ten different answers, you are not alone. And if you’ve ever started seeds too early, ended up with giant leggy plants taking over your house, and then still got hit with a late cold sna...

If you’ve ever planned a garden that looked amazing on paper and then halfway through summer you thought, “I do not have the time for this,” this episode is for you. Because a garden can be beautiful, productive, and fun and still be too much if the plan doesn’t match your real life. Today on Just Grow Something we’re building a low-maintenance garden plan. Not by choosing “easy plants,” but by de...