…d it, seed tape. I’ll let you know how this experiment “grows” in a follow-up post later this year. —Frank Oliver, Gardener’s SupplyFrank Oliver has been designing and testing innovative gardening products for more than 18 years. He lives on a small farmstead in Essex, VT, where he and his wife raise a few sheep and chickens along with lots of flowers and vegetables. His proudest gardening achievement is organically fostering a lush green p…

If you haven’t tried starting your own plants from seed, make this be the year you give it a try. Sweet peas are among the easiest. Sweet peas are easy to grow. The variety above, Painted Lady, is from Renee’s Seeds. The Easiest The following annual flowers are especially easy to start from seed: Sweet pea Marigold Zinnia Nasturtium Cosmos Sunflowers If you haven’t tried starting your own plants from seed, make…

I’m finally getting around to tidying up some of my flower gardens, and one of the benefits of my tardiness is that there are plenty of seedpods filled with ripe seeds. In a matter of minutes I collected hundreds of seeds for replanting. Saving seeds is one of gardening’s best-kept secrets. When else in life can you get something for nothing? Some seeds, like these from a columbine seedpod, are especially small. I’m final…

The weather in late summer and early autumn is perfect for establishing cool-season turfgrasses. In New England and other cold-winter climates, August and September are the best months to sow grass. After the contractors left late last summer, our back yard was a mess of tire ruts, torn up sod and exposed soil. Not that we had a great lawn to start with. We inherited the bumpy, rocky, weedy lawn when we bought the house and had done not…