Plant one red currant bush in a pot at least 45 cm wide, fill it with soil-based compost, set it in full sun or light shade, and expect your first real harvest in year two. Red currants are among the…
A white currant bush in a 10-gallon pot will give you your first small harvest in its second season and a full crop of translucent berries by year three. Pick one of the pale Ribes rubrum cultivars, plant it bare-root…
Scarify 20 Sichuan pepper seeds this weekend. That is how to grow Sichuan pepper from seed: a thorny, citrus-scented shrub that pays you back in tingling red husks for decades to come. The rest of this page is 15 moves,…
You can grow codonopsis from seed, and the seeds germinate reliably if you give them what they want: 30 days of cold, moist stratification, a surface sowing with light hitting the seeds, and 7 to 21 days of steady moisture.…
Soak 12 star anise seeds tonight. That is how to grow star anise in pots: a six-year wager that starts in a seed tray and ends with woody, eight-pointed pods drying on your own patio. The rest of this page…
You can grow thimbleberries from seed, cuttings, or rhizome division, and an established plant fruits in about one year. Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) is a thornless, thicket-forming native shrub of western North America, and its berries taste better homegrown because they…
You can grow a persimmon tree from seed, and the seed will germinate reliably if you give it what it wants: two to three days of soaking, 60 to 90 days of cold stratification in the refrigerator, and a deep…
You can grow a pear tree from a seed pulled out of a ripe pear. Clean the seeds, cold stratify them for 60 to 90 days in a damp paper towel in the fridge, then sow them 1 inch deep…
You can grow a plum tree from a pit in your kitchen. Crack the pit, stratify the seed in a damp towel in the fridge for 2 to 12 weeks, plant it 2 inches deep, and expect a fruiting tree…
You can grow a plumcot from a grafted nursery tree in USDA zones 5 to 9 and expect the first real harvest in 2 to 4 years, if you plant two compatible trees close together and give them 500 to…
Plantains (Musa × paradisiaca) grow from suckers, not seeds. A healthy 12 to 20 inch sucker planted in full sun, in fertile well-drained soil, fruits in 10 to 18 months. This guide walks you through the whole cycle, from picking…
A star apple tree grown from fresh seed bears its first fruit in 5 to 10 years. A grafted nursery tree bears in 3 to 4 years. That one difference decides whether you start from seed or buy a grafted…
Yes, you can grow a pomelo from seed. A seed-grown pomelo tree takes 5 to 8 years or more to bear fruit, while a grafted tree usually fruits in 3 to 4 years. Pomelo (Citrus maxima) is the largest citrus…
You can grow sugar apples (Annona squamosa) from fresh seed and pick your first fruit in 2 to 4 years. Hand-pollination is the single biggest lever: trees left to natural pollinators set a disappointing fraction of their flowers, while a…
You find the gray fuzz on a Monday morning, coating a dying blossom at the bottom of your tomato plant like ash. By Friday it has crept 12 inches up the stem, and one fruit wears a ring of pale…
Your avocado tree looks thirsty even though the soil is wet. It takes as little as 6 to 8 hours of saturated soil for the swimming spores of Phytophthora to start a root infection, and the symptoms that follow look…
Plant 16 asters this fall and your October garden feeds migrating monarchs instead of sitting empty. That is the whole trick behind fall asters: native daisies that bloom from August into November, carry more late-season pollinators than garden mums, and…
Plant 6 to 8 weeks before your first hard freeze. That single rule decides whether planting mums in fall works or wastes your money, because a mum with weeks of warm soil grows the roots that survive winter, and a…
Count 13 bloom forms before you buy a single mum. That is the whole trick behind fall chrysanthemums: the plant sold as a round cushion at the garden center is one member of a family with spider legs, quills, spoons,…
In zone 9, fall planting starts when the heat breaks, not when the calendar turns. Wait until daytime highs drop below 90 and nights settle into the 70s, then put your first fall crops in the ground. For most of…
