Advertisement

Best Mulch for a Vegetable Garden

| Prepare, Video

Any natural mulch is better than no mulch at all, but that being said, there are pros and cons to each option. In this video, I explain the benefits and drawbacks of common organic mulch options.      While gardening, I always use mulch, especially in my raised bed vegetable gardens. I’m often asked […]

Read More

How to Use Leaves as Garden Mulch

| Prepare, Video

One of Mother Nature’s very best gifts comes every fall, as leaves drop from trees. For the small price of collecting the leaves and depositing them in your garden beds as mulch, the returns are high.      Raking and blowing leaves is a dreaded task for many of us, but those leaves are […]

Read More

160-Gardening Pet Peeves – My Top 10 from Joe Lamp’l

| Care, Podcast

Fair warning: This week, you’re in for a bit of a rant. I’m sharing with you my top 10 gardening pet peeves. No, I don’t mean those things like finding some pest has taken a bite out of an almost perfectly ripe fruit (although, that drives us all crazy too). I mean the human behavior […]

Read More

159-Catching Up With Joe Lamp’l: Spring-2020 Q&A

| Care, Podcast

For this week’s episode, I invited my Director of Online Media back to join me for another Q&A session. We haven’t done a Q&A episode in awhile. Erin is my co-host when I have one, and when I want to have a conversation with somebody from my team. Our talks are always fun, and it […]

Read More

153-The Science Behind Great Soil

| Care, Podcast

I don’t know if you know this about me, but soil is my favorite topic. I love all things gardening, and I’ve even hurled myself into a large heap of finished compost. Still, soil is king in my book, and the more we learn about the science behind great soil, soil health, and all of […]

Read More

136-Top Garden Takeaways From 2019: Lessons Learned

| Care, Podcast

It doesn’t matter how big or how small your growing space is, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or have decades of experience under your belt. Every year brings new lessons, challenges, disappointments, and wins in the garden. With the end of another year just around the corner, I wanted to share with […]

Read More

131-My Top 12 Tools to Make Your Gardening Life Easier

| Podcast, Prepare

Over the years I’ve tried my share of gardening tools. Along the way, I’ve spent (and wasted) a lot of money. But it hasn’t been a total loss. Some of those purchases have resulted in the tools I can’t live without, including what I consider my top 12 tools to make your gardening life easier […]

Read More

116-Understanding the Soil Food Web, with Dr. Elaine Ingham

| Podcast, Prepare

Are you ready to get your garden geek on? In today’s episode we’re diving into the deep end on the subject of soil – specifically, understanding the soil food web. If you’ve ever told anyone that you “like to play in the dirt” to describe your love of gardening, I’m willing to bet that this […]

Read More

115-Understanding Tomato Diseases and How to Deal With Them

| Care, Podcast

Tomatoes are one of the most popular garden edibles. Unfortunately, they are also one of the most challenging. Highly disease-prone, tomato plants often start strong and set a tantalizing crop of fruit only to transform into a living laboratory for pathogens – practically overnight. This season, I’m growing 43 tomato plants of differing varieties – […]

Read More

105-Gardening Questions Answered: Expert Advice from Joe Lamp’l

| Care, Podcast

Between my podcast listeners and members of my e-newsletter and social media channels, I receive a lot of gardening questions. This week, I’m highlighting questions asked by students of my new Beginning Gardener Fundamentals course. I introduced the course at the beginning of this year to teach the fundamental garden basics I’m asked all the […]

Read More

097-Spring Tips for Vegetable Garden Success

| Podcast, Prepare

As winter slowly yields to spring, the call to get our hands into the soil becomes irresistible. These spring tips for vegetable garden success are a valuable guide to the essential steps everyone can and should take for a bountiful and productive garden. Pick the best location You may have heard the phrase, pick the […]

Read More

086-Timeless Gardening Principles, with Barbara Damrosch

| Care, Podcast

My guest this week is Barbara Damrosh. An icon in the world of gardening, Barbara began her horticultural career in the mid-1970’s and has always been driven by the desire to help others get into gardening. To that end, she published her first of many books, The Garden Primer, in 1988; and she’s spent time […]

Read More

How to Use Fall Leaves in the Garden – and Why You Should

| Compost

Fall is a favorite time of year for many. It certainly is for me. The softer light and cooler temperatures, football games, the approach of Thanksgiving – these are just a few of the reasons fall is what I consider the best season. Yet, it’s the falling leaves that I’m most thankful for right about […]

Read More

074-How to Have and Care for a Healthy Lawn: Top 7 Non-negotiables

| Care, Podcast

Now that I’ve shared my recommendations for creating an eco-friendly garden and a resilient garden during the past couple of weeks, I want to talk about how to have and care for a healthy lawn. I know, to many organic gardeners, “lawn” is a dirty word. Incorporating lawn space is often viewed as environmentally irresponsible, but […]

Read More

073-How to Create a Resilient Garden: 10 Key Principles

| Podcast, Prepare

Would you say you had a resilient garden? Did it stand up to the challenges of this past growing season? This year has been especially difficult for many of us, and while we’re in the middle of my favorite garden time – fall – I’m also already in planning mode for next year. Each season, […]

Read More

072-Creating an Eco-friendly Garden & Landscape: 7 Key Tenets

| Care, Podcast

Having seen many gardens over the years, I’ve been on a mission to inspire people to think more towards eco-friendly gardening. My experiences led me to write a book, The Green Gardener’s Guide: Simple, Significant Actions to Protect & Preserve Our Planet focusing on creating an eco-friendly garden and landscape.     In the book, I […]

Read More

065-Tips For Reducing Garden Overwhelm, With Margaret Roach

| Care, Podcast

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your garden – by out of control growth or disease or an abundance of crops? You aren’t alone. Nearly all of us feel garden overwhelm at some point during the growing season –  and some of us feel that way frequently through the summer months. This week, I talk […]

Read More

How to Create a Drought Tolerant Landscape: Pro Tips – Pt. 5 of 5

| Care

If you live in an area which experiences periods of drought, you’re probably subject to watering restrictions. Fortunately, your landscape can be surprisingly resilient and drought tolerant using the measures I covered in Part 2 of this series which ensure your plants establish well and sink their roots more deeply into the ground. Under extreme conditions, […]

Read More

056-Tomato Care Checklist with Craig LeHoullier

| Care, Podcast

I have a love/hate relationship with tomatoes. This year, I have 32 tomato plants in spite of knowing that tomatoes are notorious for being a lot of work in the garden. Still, in these early days of summer, everything is growing strong, looking great and setting fruit; so it’s easy to start feeling a little […]

Read More

055-Vacation Preparation For Plants: What To Do Before You Go

| Podcast, Prepare

Vacation season has arrived, and if you’ve got a trip planned, you need to take some key steps to prepare your garden for your absence. After all, you’ve probably invested more than your fair share of time (and money!) nursing your plants through a difficult spring, getting new vegetables established, and planting up those containers. […]

Read More

053-Waterwise Gardening With Nan Sterman

| Care, Podcast

This week, I take a look back at a conversation on conservation – with Nan Sterman, co-author of Water-wise Plants for the Southwest and expert on waterwise gardening. Although she spent some years away, Nan grew up in and returned to southern California and has become known as a water-wise guru. Nan speaks frequently on water […]

Read More

Top Ten Tips to Repurpose Plastic Pots

| Plant

More often than not, those new plants we pick up at nurseries or home improvement centers are in a plastic pot. As responsible gardeners, we all hate to simply throw those pots away and add them to the landfill. Most of those pots are made of recyclable plastic, but if you’ve watched a related episode […]

Read More

051-How to Grow Bountiful Blueberries – Key Steps with Lee Reich

| Grow, Podcast

Just about everyone loves blueberries, but this week’s guest – Dr. Lee Reich – might just be blueberry-obsessed. Lee knows how to grow bountiful blueberries and has been perfecting best practice techniques for over 30 years on his small farm in New York state. Beyond bearing delicious fruit, blueberries are also an attractive addition to […]

Read More

043-Raised Bed Gardening, Pt. 2: Perfect Soil Recipe

| Podcast, Prepare

In this podcast, we continue our discussion on raised bed gardening. In case you missed it: I had invited my email group to send me any questions they hoped I would answer on the topic of raised bed gardening. I received a huge response, many from folks who plan to start raised bed gardening for […]

Read More

028-The Role of Minerals in Making Great Soil

| Care, Podcast

Now that the Thanksgiving week is behind us, I typically start to reflect on all the things that happened during the year that went well, and those things that, well, have room for improvement. In the garden, it was a good year overall. But the wet, humid weather this summer wreaked havoc on my organic […]

Read More

025-Five of the Biggest Mistakes in Tree Care

| Care, Podcast

While we love our trees, we often (and unknowingly) do things that can lead to their early demise. This podcast and post discuss five big tree care mistakes (and some of the other most common) that are usually at the root of the problem. Jamie Blackburn, ISA Certified Arborist, was our guest expert for today’s […]

Read More

022-The Year-round Vegetable Gardener with Niki Jabbour

| Grow, Podcast

I am a year-round vegetable gardener. I take pride in that. But it’s no big deal really. I live in Atlanta. Winters rarely get cold enough for snow to even stick around (on those rare times we even get any). And then there’s Niki Jabbour. She’s the real year-round vegetable gardener. She easily earned that […]

Read More

017-The Five Biggest Mistakes Gardeners Make

| Care, Podcast

Over my many years of traveling the country touring gardens both great and small, I’ve managed to summarize what I believe are the five biggest garden mistakes made by gardeners in their home landscapes and gardens. They also happen to be some of the most common. In speaking with horticulturists and gardeners at every level, […]

Read More

006-Weedless Gardening with Lee Reich

| Care, Podcast

Today we’re talking about the common denominator all gardeners face, the one thing that impacts everyone equally when it comes to maintaining our gardens and landscapes and that’s the unavoidable issue of weeds and how to best eradicate them from our lives – or at least our gardens. Fear not – a weedless garden is […]

Read More

003-Growing Epic Tomatoes with Craig LeHoullier

| Grow, Podcast

Growing epic tomatoes likely makes it on to every vegetable gardeners wish list sooner or later. Fortunately, we now have someone who wrote the book on it, literally. Our featured guest for this episode, Craig LeHoullier wrote my new favorite book – a tomato growing guide: Epic Tomatoes; How to Select and Grow the Best Varieties […]

Read More

Get my (FREE!) eBook
5 Steps to Your Best Garden Ever:
Why What You Do Now Matters Most!

By joining my list, you’ll also get weekly access to my gardening resource guides, eBooks, and more!

•Are you a joe gardener?•

Use the hashtag #iamajoegardener to let us know!