Upside Down Tulips - A Garden Podcast

It’s Halloween 2.  We’ve got Tom Cruise, Ichabod Grain, and Canable Pectin.  Wrap yourself in our Halloween quilt with the best stories from last year, new stories from our listeners, and two new podplays. We have tricks: how to eat an eyeball if you have to; and treats: The Silence of the Lamb’s Ear and a headless garden ghost.  Revisit the haunted Fordney mansion which holds a true ghost story a...

We share new things we tried last summer and how they worked out. Good, bad, and ugly things. Important things like which tomatoes to plant to get rid of a soil fungus,  the easiest beautiful annual to care for, how to have fresh greens in your garden for 8 months, and what is and how to grow a successful moon garden. Do you know what a Maximillian sunflower is and why it’s great to have it in you...

Do you want to have a headstart for your plants in next year’s garden?  We have the details on bringing in geraniums, rosemary, and peppers. The harden off/soften on method, the pruning, misting, microclimating, and dormancy inducing techniques that help your plants survive the winter in your house. Plus how to grow plants from cuttings. As well as a question about broccolini, a story about beaver...

We are not an “organic proprietary mixture”, although we get a little ticked off by something that claims it is. We go into all the dos & don'ts and pros & cons and easy tips for how to freeze and can your harvest for the winter. Plus more drama: what died all by itself on Edith's hügelkultur? Why does Christy's pumkin look like Walter Matheau?  Why is Edith afraid of canning equipment?  And what,...

A spanking new episode exploring upcycling for your garden: toilet paper rolls are not just for making chunky necklaces anymore. Second lives for soda bottles, boots, toilets, broken tools, bathtubs, tires and more. Learn to make your own pots for seedlings and then use a ‘seedling apartment building’ to shelter them. Whether it’s a recipe for drying cherry tomatoes with zero energy use, or a reci...

Everything you wanted to know about growing, curing, and storing garlic.  The difference between hardneck and softneck garlic. What they have in common are fantastic health benefits.  In Romania it is often considered as good as antibiotics!  Plus eat the rainbow that’s not Skittles - a vegetable’s color is an indication of its health benefits.  We explain. What we’re planting now - hoping it will...

Eating raw fruits and veggies is not only great for your health, but for your energy bills, and the environment as well.  Not enamored of eating a pile of plain raw veggies for dinner?  We have suggestions: recipes for cold soups, sauces, salsas and smoothies. If a Colorado garden zone 5B can produce fresh greens allowing you to eat uncooked nutritious foods for about 7 months, so, most likely, ca...

The September garden: watch out for frosts and for insects making homes in your garden cantaloupes. A to-do list that includes the hows and whys of watering, planting, harvesting, fertilizing, and weeding. What to do with a tsunami of tomatoes. Taking care of your lawn, flowers, and trees. We are so full of good information we could burst like Christy’s forgotten pumpkin. We also have questionable...

We want you to have a happy harvest so we let you know when your veggies are ripe. From beans to zucchini and most things in between, it’s about color, texture, smell, shriveled stems, green caps, tight heads, and leaves dying back. It might surprise you that in most cases, size doesn’t matter. Seed collector alert: what to start looking for before they blow away. Meet Buff Biffins the plant homic...

We give a tip of the hat to our Curmudgeons and share a story about the power of unexpected kindness. What you can plant today and still harvest before winter and why you should plant trees now.  How to extend the life of the vegetables you have past your first frost date, the Persephone period explained, and sheltering plants for the winter so they’re alive come Spring.  What happened to bad smel...

The ubiquitous bane of the gardener - Bindweed. There seem be at least 50 ways to fight your bindweed - pulling, snipping, solarizing, suffocating, boiling, blow torching (really), using strong chemicals that kill everything around it and sometimes leaving bindweed standing alone on the hill, victory flag in hand.  Yes, gardeners, it’s war. We’re on your side discussing what could work and how lon...

We’re talking ways to save water that is both nutritious and free.  There’s more to watering than what comes from your hose. We’re talking rainwater, gray water, black water, cooking water.  One of these things is not like the other, however. How to collect water, store it, apply it to your garden.  How to help save your lawn and water bill in this heat. From sprinklers, soaker hoses, rain barrels...

We discuss the things that can happen to your tomatoes, the ‘risks’ as it were:  blossom end rot, blossom drop, not setting fruit, not ripening, Septoria, early blight, late blight, middle aged blight (just kidding on that last one). We tell you how to fix what can be fixed and when to throw in the trowel and not beat yourself up about it. Cause it’s probably not your fault! Plus Antelope Twomey i...

We discuss what we (and hopefully you) learned from each other this past year.  Like how to do your own soil test, and what is Soil Pep? (It has nothing to do with pompoms or short skirts). We discuss gardening by grid, taking suckers off of tomato plants, how to garden without disrupting the natural way of things, why Christy has changed her mind on a certain store bought fertilizer and what went...

It’s Episode 50!  And our First Anniversary!  (Which means we’ve been doing this for a year and we’re not so good at math.) Thank you to everyone who has listened over the last year!  We truly love this community of gardeners, friends and stewards of the planet.   To celebrate, we share are a few of our favorite moments from the year: From the silly - shredded tweet and Salvadore Dilly, to the pro...

It’s hot and dry July. The early season plants are reaching their endtimes, flowers need to be deadheaded and the Japanese beetles are back! To temper the horror of that, Edith wrote a poem!  We then talk 50 ways to kill your Japanese beetles.  You could sweep, bag, spray, trap, grind, or entice them with a lovely fruit cocktail. (Fruit cocktail? What is this, 1954?) You could also try Neem Oiling...

The start of July means summer is in full swing and our gardens are at the peak of the season. It is also a big month for garden maintenance. So we have gathered together over 20 tips on what you should be doing in your July garden - what not to plant, what you can plant, what to deadhead, how to get broccoli baby heads even if your original plant goes to seed. Plus:  helpful info on pinching, wat...

We’re thrice potting cucumbers and shaking seed heads, all while exploring the world of vines.  So much more than just a conveyance for Tarzan, vines shelter, give beauty, grow food, attract pollinators and hide unsightly views.   Not even to mention that’s how grapes grow and that’s what makes wine! Which vine’s seeds cause paralysis, labored breathing and convulsions- and still has “sweet” in it...

“Hope is being planted and I feel it growing.” We’re quoting from a listener’s letter because we’re too hot to say anything worth quoting.  BUT we did have the presence of mind to gather about 10ish garden tips we forgot to tell you in the past year. Like what is well drained soil? Can you plant in a ziplock bag?  Do you need different fertilizers for different plants and what is elbow soap? Why y...

Things are popping in the garden and we’re getting down with our hoes. Christy’s roses are opening, something absconded with her cauliflower plants, and her rosemary after surviving the grim winter, has a ceased to be. It’s like a vegetal soap opera! If you think NPK is an arm of the Russian Secret Service, you need this episode. If you want to know why Edith is reading War and Pees in her bathroo...

Here is your June "Get 'Er Done" List!     Someone once said if you have to tell people you’re hip and relevant, you’re probably not.   We politely yet vigorously disagree.  Cause we’ve got slamming plants and vibrating stamens. Exploding gardens and hoe jokes. Doing the ‘what is dead’ search.  It sounds like an action filled sci fi adventure, but it’s just another week in the gardens of Christy a...

Well, slap some bacon on that Vitamin K, it's an encore!  We discuss tomatoes from seeds to BLT’s. In the Middle Ages, Europeans thought of them as poisonous, the French thought they were an aphrodisiac and called them love apples. The Aztec called them “plump things with a navel”. Plus: The difference between determinate, indeterminate, heirloom and hybrid tomatoes are discussed. All you need to...

Pardon our garden clogs as we take time to work in our gardens and present our second episode of all garden comedy. Every gardener has a sense of humor.  How else can we survive all the missteps and surprises? Can bindweed make you laugh? We think so - revisit the Bindweed Singles Service and the worse come on lines you’ve ever heard - and we hope you will agree. Remember Agnes, the easily distrac...

“No good in a bed,  but fine up against a wall."  This is the catalog description of a rose named for a former first lady.  Her reaction to it is priceless. We’ve got the info on how and where to plant, prune, fertilize, water and care for the Queens of the Garden: Roses. Save money and up your rose game with our easy homemade fertilizer suggestions. We tell you about a thousand year old climbing...

And just how supple do you think Sleeping Beauty was after she slept for a hundred years?   It does have something to do with gardening, we swear. We discuss the unique requirements to grow perennial vegetables: rhubarb, horseradish, artichoke, asparagus and leek. They come back year after year with minimum care. And not just for food: here’s a recipe to lighten your hair naturally with rhubarb.  ...