Your best garden ever
A planting guide, indoor sprouts, herbal inspo, fermentation help, recipes, and more.
Whether you’re putting in your first garden this year or your fiftieth, I hope it’s your best. By best I mean the garden that feeds your soul as well as your appetite for fresh veg.
I’ve talked with a lot of people over the years who spy my garden with envy but beg off on their own, claiming they’re “too much work.” But if we design it for enjoyment instead of drudgery, we might find we’re only too thrilled to cancel the gym membership in favor of a good weeding round in the veg patch.
It’s with that spirit that I offer you this roundup of links to some of our best Brunette Gardens posts over the past two-plus years. From helpful planting guides to hopeful stories, my aim is to inspire you to live your best gardening life.
My first offering is a comprehensive companion-planting guide, free for all who sign up for this newsletter. It’s the only guide I know of that lists traditional kitchen-garden plants next to North American natives.
Don’t fret if you’re lacking space to garden. As guest-author Stephanie Loomis over at Defaulting to Grace demonstrates, all you need is a kitchen countertop.
If, like me, you grew up in the 80’s and have had to forge an herbal legacy out of whole cloth yourself, this guest piece I wrote for Sarah Donoghue’s The Herbalist's Diary should resonate with you.
The below essay was reprinted by GreenPrints magazine, and readers tell me it makes them tear up, in a good way. The first three reads at GP are free, or you can just read it here.
One of our top five posts, this one on how to craft fermented sauerkraut the old-fashioned way can help you make best use of budget-friendly cabbage, whether you’re growing them yourself or buying them from your local farmer’s market.
Continuing the fermentation theme, check out this interview with Kirsten K. Shockey of Fermenting Change, on the occasion of the anniversary reprinting of her classic how-to.
If you’re scrambling to make use of all that spring kale before the Japanese beetles move in and claim them, allow me to introduce you to the ‘brake bleeder’ method of preserving food in jars, which extends their shelf life just a wee bit longer.
All the best with this year’s yarden. I wish you mulch success!
What are you planting this month?
Here's to "mulch success"! Love that.