Category Archives: Garden Advice

Annual Flowers that Bloom All Season + Tips for Continuous Blooms

March 26, 2025 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Annuals may only last one season, but they are an easy way to add tons of color to the garden. They are easy to grow, affordably started from seed, and are great for filling in gaps in a perennial bed or attracting pollinators to vegetable gardens. These annual flowers also offer the advantage of continuous blooms. With a bit of maintenance, you and the pollinators can enjoy them until they’re killed by frost.

Black Ball Bachelor’s Button in bloom — Black Ball Bachelor’s Button

Bachelor’s Buttons

Bachelor’s buttons are easy to grow from seed. They’re a hardy, low-maintenance option, which is why they’re often included in “wildflower” mixes. Bachelor’s buttons also make wonderful cut flowers for fresh or dried arrangements. Plus, they’re also edible and make adorable natural decorations for baked goods.

We carry three varieties of bachelor’s button:

Black Ball (maroon-black flowers)
Blue Boy (deep blue flowers)
Polka Dot Mix (mixture of red, rose, blue, and lavender flowers)

Bachelor’s buttons thrive in well-drained soil in full sun. It will tolerate partial shade but may not bloom as well. Bachelor’s buttons are also tolerant of poor soils.

Celosia

Celosia is a good flower for beginners that makes excellent borders or cut flowers. It blooms throughout summer and fall and offers a wide selection of bright colors. Celosia has unusual flower shapes that add fun texture to fresh and dried arrangements.

The variety we carry, Tall Menagerie Mix, that includes mostly “cockscomb” or “coral” type blooms with some spikes. Menagerie Mix produces sturdy, heat-resistant 3 to 4½ foot tall plants.

Celosia thrives in well-drained, moderately fertile soil in full sun.

Cosmos

Cosmos offer some of the biggest bang for your buck. They’re super easy to grow from seed and provide tons of colorful blossoms over a long season. Their large flowers look stunning on their light, feathery foliage.

Cosmos are also great for attracting butterflies and come in a range of colors like white, pink, magenta, orange, and yellow. We carry six cosmo varieties.

Cosmos grow well in full sun in well-drained, average soil.

Marigolds

Marigolds are the classic companion plants for vegetable gardens. Their bright blooms attract beneficial insects all summer long. There’s some evidence that they deter pests. One study found that a particular variety we carry, Golden Guardian, reduces the presence of nematodes more effectively than chemical insecticides.

We carry nine marigold varieties in a range of patterns and colors, including yellow, orange, golden, red, and red-purple.

Marigolds thrive in moist, well-drained soil where they receive full sun.

Petunias

Petunias are incredibly popular though most people only find the over-priced containers of petunias at big box stores. Thankfully, petunias are easy to grow from seed in the garden or containers. Homegrown petunias will offer blooms over a much longer season and are more affordable.

We carry two petunia varieties and both will bloom until frost.

Petunias like full sun and moist, well-drained soil.

Zinnias

Zinnias are among the easiest flowers to grow and offer a near rainbow of colors. They bloom from early summer until frost, especially with a little care. They also make excellent cut flowers and cutting theoccasional bouquet will encourage them to branch out and create more blooms.

We offer nine zinnia varieties with a range of shapes, sizes, and colors, including white, light pink, magenta, red, yellow, and light purple.

Zinnias thrive and offer the most blooms in well-drained soil and full sun.

Tips for Continuous Blooms

Here are a few tips to keep your garden blooming until frost.

Space your plants appropriately. Adequate space and airflow makes for healthy plants that will bloom over a longer period. Zinnias in particular are susceptible to Downey mildew. Providing good air circulation is key to reducing the risk of mildew and other fungal diseases.
Follow sunlight requirements. Unfortunately, all of these plants bloom best in full sun. If you don’t have a garden bed that receives plenty of sunlight, you can grow many of these like marigolds, petunias, and zinnias in containers on a sunny patio, balcony, or even window box.
Add compost to the bed. Flowers aren’t heavy feeders, but they benefit from moderately fertile soil. Adding finished compost is a great way to ensure you provide nutrient-rich soil without over-fertilizing.
Water consistently. These annual flowers are fairly tolerant, but for the best blooms, they’ll likely benefit from some watering, particularly during dry spells.
Regularly deadhead your flowers. Most annual flower benefits from deadheading every one to two weeks. When you deadhead flowers like zinnias, cosmos, and marigolds it encourages them to keep blooming to try to produce seed. If you want to save seed, let some blooms go to seed at the end of summer.

Garden Advice

Transplanting Vs. Direct Sowing

March 19, 2025 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

It’s planting season! Depending on where you live, you have probably already been starting seeds indoors and even direct sowing a few over these last couple of weeks. While some seeds have strict guidelines, others can thrive as transplants or direct sown crops. How do we know which crops we should start indoors and which we should direct sow? Here’s a rundown on which crops we typically transplant or direct sow and the benefits of each method.

Some Tomato (and a few Eggplant) Seedlings After Transplant

Crops You Should Start Indoors

Crops that we start indoors need to tolerate a certain amount of disturbance. They have to transition from a controlled environment to the outdoors. Inside, you control the soil moisture, lighting, humidity, and wind. Transitioning outdoors, your plants will experience harsh sunlight, varying moisture and humidity levels, and wind.

As you transplant them into the soil, the plants will also experience root disruption. Some plants, like tomatoes, thrive with root disruption. You can repot them multiple times and then transplant them into the garden with few negative side effects. Other plants, like many in the Cucurbit family, don’t tolerate root disturbance.

Many of the crops we recommend you always start indoors are warm season crops with a long growing season, like tomatoes.

Theoretically, you could direct sow tomatoes, our Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes frequently self seed outdoors, but with most varieties you’ll end up with poor results.

Tomatoes are slow to get started and if you waited for your soil to warm enough for tomato seeds, you may not get a harvest until late summer or even fall.

Celery & Celeriac
Eggplants
Tomatoes
Peppers

While some of these crops occasionally self-seed, their long season and lack of cold tolerance means they’re really only productive as transplants.

Crop You Should Direct Sow

Seeds you direct sow must tolerate environmental conditions right out of the starting gate. The crops that we always direct sow are usually those we plant in high volume, like corn, and those that won’t tolerate root disruption like summer squash and okra.

Beets
Carrots
Corn
Cucumbers
Radishes
Turnips
Parsnips
Muskmelon
Okra
Rutabaga
Spinach
Summer Squash & Zucchini
Swiss Chard
Winter Squash & Pumpkins
Watermelon

While you could technically transplant some of these crops, their growing style makes it impractical.

It can be tempting to transplant crops like zucchini for an early harvest, but they’re so sensitive to transplant shock, direct sown plants often produce more quickly. If you must transplant any of the cucurbits, use a method like soil blocks that minimizes root damage.

Cabbage seedlings in a plastic tray — Cabbage Seedlings

Crops You Can Direct Sow or Transplant

There are many crops that are suitable for direct sowing or transplanting. Throughout a growing season, we may use a combination of these methods even for a single crop. We can keep things simple with direct sowing or use transplanting to handle weather conditions and grow additional successions.

Basil
Beans
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Chinese Cabbage
Collards
Endive
Kale
Lettuce
Marigolds
Mustards
Onions
Peas
Southern Peas
Sunflowers
Zinnias

Always do your research on individual crops. Some may tolerate either planting method, but need special care to ensure success.

Transplanting Versus Direct Sowing

It’s decision time! When working with crops that can be direct sown or started indoors, there are several things you’ll need to think about.

Benefits of Transplanting

Transplanting has many benefits for crops that tolerate it. Starting seeds indoors gives you complete control of the environment. It’s a great way to establish seedlings with strong root systems before planting them in the garden.

Earlier harvest. Transplanting allows you to get a jump start on crops while the outdoor temperatures are still too cold for direct sowing.
More successions. Having transplants ready to go in spring and throughout the season as beds open up can help you get the most from a small garden.
Less waste. Planting out established transplants prevents you from needing to thin rows of seedlings. This can save you on the amount of seed you use.
Mulch from the start. Seedlings are easy to transplant into a bed already covered with mulch. This is ideal for folks using the no-till method with winter kill cover crops and anyone looking to cut back on weeding.
More flexibility. As transplanting allows you to control the environmental conditions, it’s a great way to add flexibility to your seeding schedule. Even if your spring is cold and wet, you can start plants indoors. You can also start cool weather crops like broccoli indoors during the height of summer for your fall garden.

Benefits of Direct Sowing

Direct sowing doesn’t work with every crop, but for many, it can be a low maintenance solution. Getting started in the garden often makes for tough, well-established seedlings.

Less effort. We put less time and effort into tending direct sown seedlings.
No special equipment. You don’t need lights, racks and extra space, heat mats, humidity domes, or a greenhouse to direct sow seeds.
Better drought tolerance. Direct sown crops have the advantage of no disruption to their root systems. This means they display better drought tolerance, particularly early in the season.
No risk of transplant shock. If you’re not able to invest the time in hardening off and properly transplanting seedlings, direct sowing is more practical. Improperly transplanted seedlings can suffer transplant shock, which will delay harvest.
Easier on tender plants. Some crops like melons have fragile stems and roots. While many choose to transplant them, it can be tricky and you may lose some plants.
Better for high-volume crops. Direct sowing is the more practical option when you’re sowing tens or hundreds of seeds, like many gardeners do with corn, carrots, beets, and salad mixes.

Garden Advice

What Can Weeds Tell Us?

March 11, 2025 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Weeds are the backbreaking drudgery of the summer gardener’s existence. They seem to burst from the soil the second we turn our back on the garden. While we wage war to prevent them from overtaking the tomato patch, it’s easy to think of weeds as the enemy. But if you learn to listen, you’ll realize that all those weeds are whispering. The type and prevalence of certain weeds in our gardens can tell us things about our soil composition, fertility, and pH.

When we learn to listen to weeds, we can work to improve our soil.

Compacted Soil

Compacted soil occurs when soil particles are pressed together, allowing few air spaces. This type of soil can be difficult for many plants to get the air, water, nutrients, and space they need for their root systems. Heavy clay soils are prone to compaction, but foot traffic, garden equipment, and even heavy rainfall can all contribute to compaction.

Several weed species are adapted to take advantage of compacted soils, allowing them to grow in an opening where many other plants can’t thrive. Some of these weeds, like burdock, feature large, tough taproots that can grow through hard soil. Others, like chickweed, have shallow root systems that easily penetrate just the surface of the soil.

Here are some weeds that commonly grow in compacted soil:

Dandelion (Taraxacum spp.)
Dock (Rumex spp.)
Chicory (Chicorium sp.)
Chickweed (Stellaria media)
Plantain (Plantago spp.)
Pineappleweed (Matricaria discoidea)
Knotweed (Polygonum spp.)

What can you do about compacted soil?

Adding organic matter is a great way to improve compacted soil. Try adding a few inches of finished compost to each bed. Cover crops are another great idea. They add organic matter and some, like daikon radishes, also help break up hard pans. You can also use a garden fork or broad fork to help lift and loosen soil by hand.

To prevent further compaction, avoid walking on garden beds and opt for no-till methods when possible.

High Fertility

Some weeds are more prevalent when certain nutrients like phosphorus, magnesium, or nitrogen are available in high quantities. These nutrient imbalances can occur naturally or as a result of over fertilization.

Here are some weeds that can indicate a high nutrient level:

Lambsquarters – High Nitrogen
Pigweed (Amaranthus spp.) – High Nitrogen
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) – High Phosphorus
Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) – Rich Soil
Wood sorrel (Oxalis spp.) – High Magnesium
Mustard (Brassica spp.) – High Phosphorus
Knapweed (Centaurea spp.) – High Potassium
Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) – High Nitrogen

What should you do about high fertility?

You’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “wait, don’t I want my soil to be fertile?” Yes, to a certain extent, but we also want our soils to be balanced. An excessive amount of any nutrient can cause more issues than it solves. For example, excessive nitrogen can prevent the uptake of essential micronutrients like iron, manganese, and zinc. It can also encourage plants to put on tons of foliar growth at the expense of fruit growth. You could end up with very lush looking plants that don’t produce well.

Excess nutrients can also end up in local watersheds with devastating results. Excess phosphorus, for example, is often washed away with rainwater where it ends up in ditches, streams, and storm drains. It eventually finds its way to rivers, lakes, and oceans where it causes toxic algal blooms make the water unsafe for humans and wildlife.

To prevent excess nutrients, have your soil tested before fertilizing or adding amendments. When possible, use well-balanced natural alternatives like compost instead of chemical fertilizers.

Put fertility to good use by planting beds with heavy feeding crops like corn, broccoli, and tomatoes.

Low Fertility

There are also many weeds that take advantage of low fertility. These thrifty weeds will flourish in nutrient-poor soils where even our toughest vegetables will struggle.

Here are some weeds that can indicate low fertility:

Ragweed (Ambrosia spp.)
Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)
Crabgrass (Digitaria spp.)
White clover (Trifolium repens)
Plantain (Plantago spp.)

What should you do about low fertility?

One immediate solution is to top dress your garden in a couple inches of finished compost. Another great way to sustainably add more fertility to your soil over time is through nitrogen-fixing cover crops and green manures.

We also recommend getting a soil test. A good test will help you identify specific nutrients that your soil is lacking and allow you to amend your soil without wasting money and resources.

If you’re working on a pollinator or native plant garden, you can also select plants that are well adapted to low fertility. These include, coreopsis (Coreopsis spp.), goldenrod (Solidago spp.), yarrow (Achillea spp.), and Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius).

Acidic Soil

Acidic soil naturally occurs in wooded areas and is common throughout the eastern United States. While many farms on the east coast have naturally acidic soils, most vegetable crops grow well in neutral to slightly acidic soil.

Most food crops do best when the soil pH is between 6.0 to 7.0. While some will tolerate soil that leans more acidic, others like beets will offer a very poor yield. Soil that’s too acidic can prevent plants from absorbing key nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

Here are some weeds that may indicate acidic soil:

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)
Ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare)
Sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella)
Moss
Horsetail (Equisetum spp.)
Knotweed (Polygonum spp.)
Hawkweed (Hieracium spp.)

What should you do about acidic soil?

A soil test is always a good idea to confirm your suspicions. Thankfully, acidic soil is relatively cheap and easy to amend. To neutralize acidity in your soil, spread agricultural lime (finely ground limestone) over your beds. If you have a soil test, look at the lime application rates to based on your soil pH to find the appropriate amount for your garden.

If you have a particularly acidic area, you can also take advantage of it and plant blueberries or ornamentals like azaleas, both of which thrive in acidic soil.

Chickweed (Stellaria media) in bloom — Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Alkaline Soil

Alkaline soil isn’t naturally common in the eastern United States. It’s common throughout much of the Midwest and western half of the country (excluding the Pacific Northwest). However, the excessive use of lime without a soil test and proper application rates can lead to soil that’s too alkaline. Alkaline soil can prevent your crops from taking up important nutrients like iron, manganese, and zinc.

Here are a few of the plants that may indicate alkaline soil:

Chicory (Chicorium sp.)
Chickweed (Stellaria media)
Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota)

What should you do about alkaline soil?

If a soil test confirms that you have alkaline soils, you can adjust the pH level by amending the soil with sulfur. Like lime, it’s a relatively affordable and safe garden amendment. You can also use acidic amendments like peat and pine needles to help maintain and encourage a more acidic pH over time for acidity loving crops like blueberries.

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