A Way To Garden

I CALL THE phenomenon tomato troubles: the yellow-spotted foliage that falls off, or the plant that produces all those misshapen fruits. And yes, the attack of the hornworms, too, when you wake up to a lot of missing leaves one day. Or all of the above. A few years back I checked in with the tomato man himself, Craig LeHoullier, author of the book “Epic Tomatoes,” to see what we can do even under...

LEA JOHNSON is a plant ecologist whose work, she says, is driven by this question: “All of the wild diversity of life on earth is here, with us, right now. How can we take it with us into the future?” It’s a compelling question, and one that can motivate not just scientists like Lea, Director of Conservation at Native Plant Trust in New England, but also native-plant gardeners like us....

I KNOW, it feels like we just planted the vegetable garden moments ago. But a close look around as summer really takes hold quickly reminds us that our work is never done… Some crop or other is reaching the end of its run, making room for a succession sowing of more of that same thing or something else altogether, or maybe of a weed-suppressing, soil-building cover crop—some of which are act...