Growing Guides ·
Cucumber Types: Slicing, Pickling, Burpless and Greenhouse
Cucumbers split into four groups that need different handling. Which to grow outdoors, which need glass, and why some turn bitter.
Vegetables
74 guides in Growing Guides.
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How to Grow Potatoes: Chitting, Depth, and Earthing Up
Potatoes form on stem, not roots, which is why you plant them deep and keep burying them. Seed potatoes, timing by variety group, and the mistakes that cost a crop.
Growing Guides ·
Vegetable Garden Ideas for Small Spaces That Actually Yield
A small plot wastes space on the wrong crops. What returns most per square foot, how to go vertical, and the succession that doubles a season.
Growing Guides ·
What Grows Well Together in a Vegetable Garden
What grows well together in a vegetable garden, by the 4 mechanisms that actually do something. Which pairings have evidence, and which are folklore repeated.
Growing Guides ·
How Many Varieties of Pumpkins Are There — 150 and Up
How many varieties of pumpkins are there runs past 150 named types across 5 Cucurbita species. Which group yours belongs to, and what each is good for.
Growing Guides ·
Types of Gardening Methods — 8 and What Each Suits
Types of gardening methods come down to 8 real choices, from no-dig to hydroponics. What each costs in space, water and effort, and which fits your ground.
Growing Guides ·
How to Clear an Overgrown Garden Fast
Identify what is there before you cut anything, then clear in one pass with the right tool. Smother what you cannot dig, and never strim blind.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Alfalfa: Lime First, Then Years of Cutting
Alfalfa roots 15 feet down and fixes its own nitrogen, but it fails on acid soil. Test and lime before sowing — you cannot fix pH afterwards.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Barley: Winter or Spring, Grain or Cover
Barley ripens faster than wheat and tolerates poor dry soil. Winter sowing yields more; spring sowing is quicker and safer on heavy ground.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Broccolini: Cut the Crown to Get the Stems
Broccolini is a broccoli-kai lan hybrid grown for side shoots, not a head. Cutting the small central crown early is what triggers the real harvest.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Collard Greens: Sowing to Harvest
Collards tolerate more heat and more cold than any other brassica, and frost genuinely sweetens them. Sow, space wide, and pick from the bottom up.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Jicama: 9 Months, and Only the Root Is Edible
Jicama needs 150 to 270 frost-free days and a trellis. The vine, leaves, pods and seeds all contain rotenone and are genuinely poisonous.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Kohlrabi: Fast, Hardy and Best Picked Small
Kohlrabi swells above ground in 45 to 60 days. Pick it at tennis ball size — left longer it goes woody, which is why most people dislike it.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Loofah: A 200-Day Crop You Start Indoors
Loofah needs a long hot season and a strong trellis. Start seed indoors six weeks early, and leave the gourds on the vine until they rattle.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Millet: Grain, Birdseed or Cover Crop
Millet matures in 60 to 90 days on poor dry soil where other grains fail. Decide early whether you want grain, birdseed or a summer cover crop.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Taro: Wet Feet, Long Season, Always Cooked
Taro wants constant moisture and 200 frost-free days. Every part is toxic raw — the calcium oxalate only breaks down with thorough cooking.
Growing Guides ·
What Vegetables Should Not Be Planted Together
Most bad pairings come down to four real mechanisms — shared disease, allelopathy, root competition and shade. The pairs worth actually avoiding.
Growing Guides ·
How Much Sun Do Cucumbers Need? Six Hours Minimum
Cucumbers need at least six hours of direct sun and crop best on eight or more. Below six you get vines, flowers and very few actual cucumbers.
Growing Guides ·
How to Dry Garlic: Curing It So It Keeps Until Spring
Curing takes two to four weeks in shade with moving air. Get it right and hardneck keeps six months, softneck ten. Get it wrong and it rots by October.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Chayote: Plant the Whole Fruit
Chayote is grown from a sprouting fruit, not seed. It needs 120–150 frost-free days, a structure that can hold 20 kg, and short days to set fruit.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Fennel: Bulb or Herb, and Why It Bolts
Florence fennel bolts if checked even briefly. Sow direct in midsummer, keep it watered, and earth the bulb up — herb fennel needs none of that.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Lima Beans: Bush and Pole, Sowing to Harvest
Lima beans need warmer soil than any other bean — 65 °F minimum — and a longer season. Bush types crop in 65 days, pole types in 90 but far heavier.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Moringa From Seed: Germination to First Harvest
Moringa seed germinates in one to two weeks and the tree can reach ten feet in its first year. The catch is frost — it dies at 32 °F.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Papaya: Fast, Fruitful, and Short-Lived
Papaya fruits within a year from seed and declines after four. Plant several to get a female or hermaphrodite, and never let the roots sit wet.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Soybeans: Edamame in a Backyard, Honestly
Soybeans are easy to grow and harvest in one short window — pods fill, then go hard within about a week. Here is the timing and what yield to expect.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms on Logs: A Two-Year Project
Fresh-cut hardwood logs, plug spawn, and patience. Inoculate in spring, wait 9–18 months for colonisation, then fruit them for five or six years.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Spaghetti Squash: Space, Sun and a Hard Rind
One plant needs 2–3 m and produces four to six fruit. Leave them until the rind resists a thumbnail, then cure — picked early they taste of nothing.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Tomatillos: You Need At Least Two Plants
A single tomatillo cannot pollinate itself and produces empty husks. Two or more plants, full sun, and support for a sprawling 1.5 m shrub.
Growing Guides ·
How to Plant Cactus Cuttings: Callus First, Water Last
A fresh cut planted straight into damp compost rots. Let the wound callus for days or weeks, pot dry, and wait before the first watering.
Growing Guides ·
How to Prune Cucumbers: Only Vining Types Need It
Vining cucumbers benefit from removing the bottom foot of growth and the side shoots. Bush types need nothing — pruning them costs you fruit.
Growing Guides ·
Radish Plant Growth Stages: Seed to Seed in Six Weeks
Germination in three days, true leaves at a week, root swelling from day ten, harvest by day 25. Knowing the stages tells you when something went wrong.
Growing Guides ·
Tomatoes Not Turning Red? Heat Is Usually the Reason
Above about 30°C tomatoes stop making lycopene and stall green or orange. Ripening is temperature-driven, not sun-driven — so don't strip the leaves.
Growing Guides ·
Vegetables to Plant in July: A Second Season
July sowings catch the autumn window that spring crops miss. Count back from your first frost, add the short-day factor, and sow accordingly.
Growing Guides ·
Does Asparagus Need Full Sun? Yes — It's a 20-Year Decision
Asparagus wants eight hours of sun and stays in the same bed for two decades. Siting it in part shade halves the crop for the whole of that time.
Growing Guides ·
Does Lettuce Need Full Sun? Only in Spring and Autumn
Lettuce wants full sun in cool weather and afternoon shade once it turns hot. Six hours is plenty, and heat is what makes it bolt and turn bitter.
Growing Guides ·
What to Plant With Carrots: Onions, Leeks and Low Shade
Alliums and aromatic herbs confuse carrot root fly by smell. Avoid dill, fennel and anything that shades a slow-germinating seedbed.
Growing Guides ·
What to Plant With Garlic: Roses, Carrots and Brassicas
Garlic sits in the ground nine months, so companions have to work around its timing. What pairs well, and the two families to keep away from it.
Growing Guides ·
When to Plant Jalapeños: 8 Weeks Before Your Last Frost
Start jalapeño seed indoors 8 to 10 weeks before last frost and transplant only once nights hold above 55°F. Cold soil stalls them for weeks.
Growing Guides ·
Can You Plant Potatoes in the Fall? Only in Zone 8 and Warmer
A fall potato crop works where the ground stays workable and frost is late. In zone 7 or colder it rots before it sprouts. How to tell which you are.
Growing Guides ·
How Long Does It Take for Zucchini to Grow? 45–55 Days
Zucchini goes from seed to first pick in about 45 to 55 days, and from flower to harvest in only four to eight. The timeline and what stalls it.
Growing Guides ·
How Many Tomato Plants Per Person? Depends on the Plan
Two or three plants per person for fresh eating, but eight to ten each if you are canning. The numbers by use, plant type and realistic yield.
Growing Guides ·
When Do Tomatoes Bloom? 5 to 7 Weeks After Transplanting
Tomatoes flower about five to seven weeks after transplanting, once night temperatures hold above 55°F. What delays it and what stops fruit setting.
Growing Guides ·
Do Seeds Need Sunlight to Germinate? Most Do Not
Most seeds germinate in the dark and need light only once the seedling emerges. The exceptions that must be surface-sown, and why depth matters more.
Growing Guides ·
Growing Mushrooms at Home: Which Method, and Why
Oyster mushrooms on a kit crop in three weeks. Substrates, sterile versus pasteurised, humidity, and the contamination that ends most attempts.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Eggplant: Heat, Flea Beetles and Fruit Set
Eggplant needs more heat than tomatoes and takes the worst of the flea beetles. Soil temperature, spacing, why flowers drop, and picking by shine.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Lettuce: Beating the Bolt and the Bitterness
Lettuce turns bitter and runs to seed in heat. Sowing windows, cut-and-come-again, shade in summer, and why germination fails in warm soil.
Growing Guides ·
How to Save Tomato Seeds: The Fermenting Step
Tomato seeds need fermenting to remove the germination-blocking gel. Which varieties come true, the three-day process, and drying and storage.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Brussels Sprouts: The Long Season Explained
Brussels sprouts need 80 to 130 days, firm ground and frost to taste right. Sowing dates, why sprouts blow open, and when to stop feeding.
Growing Guides ·
Snow Peas: Sowing, Supporting and Picking Them Flat
Snow peas are a cool-season crop picked before the pod fills. Sowing windows, how they differ from sugar snaps, trellising, and why yours turned tough.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Rice in a Backyard Bucket
Rice needs heat, a long season and standing water — all of which a black bucket on a sunny patio can supply. Realistic yields, and why it is worth doing anyway.
Growing Guides ·
How Deep to Plant Potatoes (And Why Hilling Matters More)
Four inches at planting, then hill as they grow. Why planting deep in cold spring soil backfires, and how depth differs in containers and no-dig beds.
Growing Guides ·
Types of Hot Peppers, Ranked by Heat and What They Taste Like
Scoville is only half the story — a habanero and a serrano at similar heat behave completely differently in a pan. Thirty peppers by heat, flavour, and best use.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Asparagus: Three Years to the First Real Cut
Asparagus is a twenty-year perennial that pays nothing for two seasons. Bed preparation, crowns versus seed, and the cutting discipline that keeps it going.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Carrots: Stones, Thinning, and Carrot Fly
Forked carrots come from obstacles and fresh manure, not bad seed. Sowing direct into stone-free soil, why you should barely thin, and the fly barrier that works.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Ginger From a Piece of Supermarket Root
Ginger grows readily from a shop-bought rhizome, given warmth, humidity and a wide shallow pot. Why it sprouts sideways, and the eight to ten months it needs.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Tomatoes: Determinate or Indeterminate First
That one word on the seed packet decides your spacing, your pruning, and your harvest shape. Then it is warmth, consistent water, and feeding at the right time.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Peppercorns: A Tropical Vine in a Pot
Black pepper is a climbing vine needing warmth, humidity and three years before it fruits. What it takes indoors, and why all four peppercorns are one plant.
Growing Guides ·
When Is Corn Harvested? The Milk Test, Not the Calendar
Sweetcorn has a harvest window of a few days and starts losing sugar within an hour of picking. The three signs, and why you check by piercing a kernel.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Onions: Day Length Decides Your Bulb Size
Onions bulb on day length, not on age — so the wrong variety for your latitude never sizes up. How to pick the right type, plant it, and feed it to a full bulb.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Cabbage: Firm Soil, Wide Spacing, Mesh
Cabbages need firmer ground than most crops, more room than people give them, and a physical barrier against pests. Splitting heads and clubroot, explained.
Growing Guides ·
When to Plant Dahlias, and Whether to Lift Them
Dahlia tubers rot in cold wet soil, so the planting date is set by soil temperature. Starting them early under cover, and the honest case for leaving them in.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Beans: Bush or Pole, and Never Sow Early
Beans rot in cold wet soil and resent transplanting, so sowing date matters more than anything else. Bush versus pole, supports, and picking to keep them coming.
Growing Guides ·
Companion Plants for Tomatoes (And 5 to Keep Away)
Basil, marigolds, and borage earn their place next to tomatoes. Fennel, potatoes, and brassicas do not. What to plant together, and why each pairing works.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Garlic: Plant in Fall, Harvest in July
Garlic is the easiest crop in the garden if you plant it at the right time. Here is the full cycle — choosing bulbs, planting depth, mulch, scapes, and harvest.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Peppers: Start Early, Then Keep Them Warm
Peppers need more heat than tomatoes and stall in cool nights. When to sow, the temperature range that makes flowers drop, and why to feed them less than you think.
Growing Guides ·
How to Harvest Lettuce So It Grows Back Again
Cut-and-come-again gets three or four crops from one sowing, but only if you cut above the growing point. Where that is, and why lettuce turns bitter.
Growing Guides ·
How to Ripen Green Tomatoes Indoors After the Season
Tomatoes ripen on ethylene, not sunlight, so a windowsill is the wrong place. What actually works, which fruit will never ripen, and what to do with those.
Growing Guides ·
Companion Plants for Potatoes, and What Ruins the Crop
Potatoes are greedy, shallow-rooted and need earthing up, which rules out most neighbours. What genuinely fits alongside them, and the two crops to keep well away.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Peas: Sow Cold, Support Early, Pick Often
Peas are a cool-season crop that stops in heat, so sowing early beats sowing well. Support at three inches, and the sugar-to-starch clock after picking.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Cucumbers: Heat, Water, and Bitter Fruit
Cucumbers fail from cold soil at the start and inconsistent water later. Bush or vining, why the first flowers set nothing, and what actually makes them bitter.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Watermelon: Heat, Space, and Knowing When
Watermelon needs 70 to 100 warm days and more room than people give it. The three ripeness signs that work, and why thumping mostly does not.
Growing Guides ·
Companion Plants for Cucumbers, and What to Keep Away
Cucumbers need pollinators and hate competition for water. What genuinely helps, what the evidence is thin on, and the two neighbours worth actually avoiding.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow an Avocado: From a Pit, and From a Tree
A pit sprouts easily and almost never fruits. What the toothpick trick produces, why grafted trees exist, and the A/B flowering quirk that decides pollination.
Growing Guides ·
How to Grow Broccoli Without It Bolting or Buttoning
Broccoli bolts in heat and buttons when checked as a seedling. Timing the sowing, spacing for a decent head, and cutting so the side shoots keep coming.
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