Upside Down Tulips - A Garden Podcast

With World Naked Gardening Day just around the corner on May 7, we thought we would share one of our favorite pod plays.   Good laughs and celebrating the garden are what we are all about at Upside Down Tulips.  Most of the time we even have clothes on. We will be back next week with a brand new episode filled with our fun garden tips and tricks and bad jokes. xoxo Edith & Christy World Naked Gard...

Judy Seaborn, founder of Botanical Interests seed company, stops by to share her favorite gardening mistakes - and gives us so many great tips. Which plants won’t benefit from starting early?  Which don’t like being transplanted?  How do you keep your seeds from clumping in one place in the garden?  What plant is a must in Judy's garden this year? Plus:  If you plant onions in a circle do you get...

To celebrate National Gardending Day on April 14, we packed this episode with a wheelbarrow full of Spring tips and tricks!   Then, we give you something new!   We interview an expert:  Brittany Pimental, the Equity and Food Access Director at Denver Urban Gardens.  We learned so much. Just about every city has a community garden program and they’re there to help you.  We learn about viable seeds...

Can you smell the lilac? It’s all about common and not so common scents in the garden. Combat the malodorous smells of modern times - the exhaust, the garbage, your overly patchoulied co-worker - with the gentle scents that certain trees and plants will provide. Which ones are our favorites, which ones have medicinal properties, which plant can be sowed straight from a teabag. Listen as a letter f...

Using the Academy Awards as our inspiration, we give awards to the favorites, and also the disappointments, in our gardens. Along the way we share what made our successes shine and what might prevent future failures.  Trees to vines to veggies to flowers- from best ensemble to the most dependable to the villains - Garden 2021 has been a heck of a year. Plus buggy hollyhocks, raging at the radish,...

We’re gardeners and sports lovers, so let’s say this episode is smashmouth gardening. Where else are you gonna get that? We tell you which are the easiest veggies and flowers to grow, and give you tips to ensure your success. Do you like beans, carrots, zucchini, lettuce, and peas? Do marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers and morning glories please your eyes?  Add some hardy perennials and you ha...

We'll Take Worm Composting for $1000, Ken. And Let's Make it A True Daily Double!  We explore vermiculture, which ensures that you can grow the most nutritious vegetables, the most beautiful flowers because you can make the best fertilizer in your backyard, under the sink, on your balcony. Are we pulling your garden-overalled leg? No, we’re not.  Vermiculture is raising worms for their precious po...

What you can and what you shouldn’t do in your March garden. Direct sowing, soil conditioning, temperature watching, winter sowing, indoor seedling starting, perennial clean up - it all starts now.  When, what, and why to prune off your trees.  And take time for Your Morning Wordle - our new pod play in honor of you, the gardeners. Learn How to Winter Sow! Support UDT by joining our Garden Party a...

We took notes and name names.  Of our favorite greens. Our goal is to have 9 months of fresh green salad stuff from the garden. Tips on growing endive, arugula, perpetual spinach, dwarf kale, corn salad, romaine and more. How to plant, harvest, care for, and fertilize. Along the way we get wayword and curdled noddles, grief stricken vegetables, and all root and no bulb enter the fray. Plus a brand...

“Butterflies are flying flowers and flowers are tethered butterflies”  Saving our bees and butterflies is also saving our food sources. We explain how you can help whether you have a garden or a balcony or somewhere to plant milkweed seeds for Monarch butterflies.  And how to get those seeds for free. What colors and plants attract not just a butterfly but a kaleidoscope of butterflies. Not just a...

Find out which heirloom seed company will ship you seeds with no shipping fees, and hear what may be the worst joke in the world. Then learn how to make two or more houseplants out of your existing houseplants by rooting, stem cutting, or dividing.  Discover what pantry staple can be used as a rooting hormone.  And if you think a "rooting hormone" has anything to do with why you are loathe to leav...

In this week's special encore episode, we share the difference between dirt, soil, top soil, potting soil, and seed starting soil.  Who knew? We didn’t! But we do now.  Also: How many worms in a shovelfull of good soil? How to use the principles of regenerative agriculture in your garden large or small. How do worms procreate and why should you care? Why does Plato the Greek philosopher think peop...

Winter Sowing 2!  Good news! You don’t have to wait to garden.  We answer your questions about how to sow seeds, outside in the winter.  Does it matter where you live?  When is the best time?  Can you use compost?  What is the best way to water?  What kind of light?  Should you ever take the tops off? What if it gets really cold?  Along the way we have a hilarious headline correction from England,...

In this Encore Episode, Christy teaches us how to winter sow, and it’s about the coolest thing a gardener can do. Meet Johnny Hardscribble, a tough guy who needed a Hail Mary to save his spirits and found one in his garden.  Meet the Gardeners of the Galaxy: The Fairy Godwater, the Bee Team, and the Mulch Master. We also answer the tough questions: can you put deer poop in your compost?  What is a...

Things to consider when planning your 2022 garden.  How to lengthen the season in colder zones, new ways of watering, and inexpensive ways of providing shade. The new way Christy will plant her expensive herbs and the one herb Edith will never plant again. What you need to do in January to ensure getting the garden you want in July. Two treats for theater lovers: Hamlet and Ophelia in their frozen...

You want to plant a garden.  Now what? In this Encore Episode, we explore Gardening 101:  where to put your garden, how to determine what kind of soil you have, and how to amend it.  But along the way we’re discussing Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania and Sir Walter Wally in Raleigh NC. We have tips on why thinning out boyfriends and carrots are important.  We share soil tests you can do at home, wit...

"I can use some socks.” If that quote doesn’t signal an exciting episode, we don’t know what does. It's our annual Favorite Mistakes of the Year!  We go through our many gardening mistakes of 2021, some of which ended in... plantslaughter!  From too much sun to not nearly enough, from a hostile poppy takeover to accidentally killing houseplants - learn from us.  And laugh with us! Support UDT by j...

Blanket yourself with this delightful Christmas quilt of an episode. From the care of your Christmas tree, poinsettias, and amaryllis to a mailbag featuring two of the most heartwarming stories we’ve ever heard.  Plus, the most unusual “12 Days of Christmas” you’ve ever heard, a way to frustrate scammers, and a stomach churning Gift of the Magi.  And “The Ghosts of Gardens Past” to warm your eggno...

In this Encore Episode, learn how to grow herbs!  Have a container? A small patch of land somewhere? Plant herbs!  There is nothing like fresh herbs that you have grown for your health, happiness, and recipe success.  Let us help you with tips for sowing, growing, and harvesting your herbs. Plus intriguing truths: What is the most popular spice?  (Hint, it isn't Baby) How the Romans used the herb...

Edith and Christy search the globe and outer space, looking for unusual gardens. From above the Arctic Circle, to the indigenous forests of Africa - from the ketchup and fries plant, to where you can find gardens inside taxicabs, to a parody of “The Martian” - so much great information presented alongside funny letters to Santa and groan worthy puns. The elves Wunorse Opanslae and Shinny Upatree w...

In this Encore Episode, you can end re-gifting with our suggestions of wonderful gifts you can make FROM the garden and FOR the gardener. From body butter to soup of the month to sage bundles to  Herbs de Provence  - in these times where so many of us are operating on a Bob Cratchit budget, make wonderful gifts for about a ha’penny. We also suggest some simple gifts for that special gardener in yo...

Happy Thanksgiving!  Like friends and family coming to our table, we have new letters from listeners as well as favorites from last year. They run the gamut from the missing mashed potatoes to Spudsgiving. Plus a new podplay about the Cranberry Wars. Oscar Wilde, the Buddha, and the Minneapolis Miracle are already seated.  We’ve saved a place for you.  We would be grateful if you joined us. Suppor...

We have gathered only good news, because things have been stressful and we needed it.  News about how gardeners like you are helping with climate change, how architects are designing skyscrapers that are covered in gardens, how Maine has put itself in the forefront of the right to grow your own food and how a gardener in Atlanta created a sitting garden for her neighborhood.  And more!  Also, an u...

In this Encore Episode, we talk about tools - not humans with appalling behavior but garden tools that help us out. Christy’s cartoon thumb bears witness to the importance of tools.  She has definitely paid the price for yanking the cosmos.  Hori knives in holsters, hand weeders, hacks you find in your kitchen or garage. Tools that blow which might make you feel like you’re licking the sidewalk. W...

It's go thyme! This week is all about how to grow an indoor herb garden. But first, Edith encounters a persnickety security system demanding a “secret word”, Christy is starting a produce section in her attic, and we both had a fennel fail. What is the Persephone Period? We will tell you. If you’re as determined as we are to grow fresh herbs indoors this winter, give us a listen. Parsley, sage, ro...