A Better Yard – Details, episodes & analysis

Heather Holm is an amazing author on native pollinators and has an incredible Instagram Page sharing her love of native pollinators, bees, and wasps.

In this episode, we talk about the need for protecting native pollinators, competition from non-native bees, and what we can do for our local ecosystems.

Meg Cowden is the author of Plant, Grow, Harvest, Repeat - an incredible resource for all gardeners. 

We are replaying this episode with Med all about succession planting from our Spring 2022 season. Right now is a great time to be thinking about succession planting and how you can make the most of your food gardens.

You can find Meg at SeedtoFork.com where she has a lot of information and join her gardening club Modern Gardening Guild.

You can check out her book - along with all other books we've featured on Minnesota Gardening Podcast - at our Bookshop.org book store. 

Earlier this month, the USDA released new hardiness maps that made many changes in Minnesota. Author and podcaster Mary Schier shares what we need to know about those changes and how to deal with them.

Learn more at MinnesotaGardening.com.

Apply this weekend to Minnesota's Lawns to Legumes program and get up to $400 in reimbursable grants to plant Native Plants at your home and community.

Learn more at MinnesotaGardening.com!

Professor Tallamy was extremely generous with his time. In Part Two (recently re-discovered after I thought I'd lost the recording), Doug Tallamy discusses his new book, Nature of Oaks, and takes us through a year in one of Mother Nature's most critical trees.

Professor Tallamy's Books

• Nature's Best Hope
• Bringing Nature Home
• Nature of Oaks

This is a great weekend to get your tree wrap on fruit trees, ornamental trees, and young shade trees. This protects trees from bunnies and sun scald.

Minnesota Gardening Club members can watch the new how-to video for everything tree wrap at MinnesotaGardeningClub.com.

Have a great weekend!!

I am beyond honored to re-air this episode with Doug Tallamy as a guest this week on the Minnesota Gardening Podcast. He is a world-renowned entomologist teaching how we can save nature. This episode is full of action items and steps people can take to make the world a better place for birds, insects, and our entire ecosystem.

Show Notes

Professor Tallamy's Books

• Nature's Best Hope
• Bringing Nature Home
• Nature of Oaks

This is a continuation of my rant (?) episode on Tuesday about invasive plants. Minnesota Gardening Club members should work to remove invasive plants in their landscape this weekend. Even if you love them.

Is this a sorry, not sorry moment? I think it is.

It really does suck though. Many plants that we have long known as great landscape plants are becoming invasive due to climate change and other factors. We must remove them from our home landscape. Again...sorry.

In this episode, we discuss what plants you need to remove and why.

November is notorious for temps going up and down and teasing us with the final throes of Fall versus the full on winter months.

There are two things you should do this weekend if you haven't yet:

Plant Garlic

If you haven't planted any garlic yet, I suggest giving it a try. It is definitely one of the easier food garden plants to grow.

How to grow garlic

It is really pretty easy and we have a great podcast episode you can listen to --> Grow Garlic.

Here are the basics:

1. Head to one of the final Farmers Markets in your community of the year and grab some hardneck garlic.
2. Split the head up into cloves.
3. Toss the clove in the ground about 6" apart and ½" deep.

COOOLD

Garlic needs a winter cold period to create a head of garlic for next year. If it doesn't get a cold period, it will just grow as one weird giant clove. The cold gets it to grow in multiple cloves.

However, garlic does not need a cold period to sprout and will toss a new shoot up in the fall if you plant it too early and we have warm weather. So wait until your fingers will be frozen while planting. That is the time.

Hardneck

There are two types of garlic: hardback and softneck. Sometimes - been there / done that - garden stores will try and sneak soft neck garlic on the shelves. It doesn't work great here but some folks have had success. I haven't.

You'll know it is hardback garlic if the head of garlic has a stem sticking up from the center that is hard. Pretty sweet.

Bulbs

Bulbs are awesome. Many folks wig out this time of year because they bought bulbs and forget them on the garage shelf. Go ahead and plant them. They'll be good.

Here's a long post all about spring-flowering bulbs - Bulbs.

Have a great weekend!!!

Brad

PS: Make sure to check out the new Seasons Calendar I released this week. Would love to get your feedback on it.