From the garden notebook
Where to learn gardening online
Start with a beginner guide, then choose a crop to grow. These free gardening lessons cover soil, sunlight, watering, and your first harvest, with sources you can check.
Beginner Gardening Mistakes
Ten common first-garden problems and the small choices that help prevent them.
Companion Planting Chart: What Grows Well Together
A companion planting chart for vegetables and herbs: which crops grow well together, which to keep apart, and how strong the evidence is.
Frost Dates: How to Find Your First and Last Frost Date
Frost dates explained: what last spring and first fall frost dates mean, why they are uncertain, and how to use them safely.
Gardening Tips
Small habits that make an established food garden easier to care for each week.
How to Grow Plants
The basic needs food plants share and a simple way to find what an unhappy plant may be missing.
How to Grow Your Own Food
A realistic way to turn the space and time you have into useful harvests across the season.
How to Start Seeds Indoors: Seed Starting Guide
How to start seeds indoors with a simple routine, from choosing crops to moving sturdy seedlings outside.
How to Start a Garden
A small, realistic plan for growing food in a yard, raised bed, patio, or balcony.
How to Start a Vegetable Garden
A simple first plan for choosing a spot, preparing the soil, and planting vegetables you will enjoy eating.
Raised Bed Garden Guide for Beginners
A raised bed garden guide for beginners: decide whether a bed helps, choose a reachable size, fill it with soil that drains, and keep it watered.
Soil pH for Vegetables: What pH Should Soil Be?
What pH should soil be for vegetables? A simple guide to understanding soil pH, testing it, and changing it only when your plants need you to.
Sunlight Guide
How to count direct sun, match crops to your space, and work with a garden that gets less light.
Vegetable Gardening for Beginners
A calm first-year plan with easy crops, quicker harvests, and good choices for containers.
Watering Guide
How to check the soil, water the root area, and avoid rigid schedules that do not fit your garden.
What Size Container for Vegetables? Pot Size Guide
What size container for vegetables and herbs: how to choose a pot with enough root room, drainage, stability, and water for the crop you want to grow.
Quick answers
One question about one crop, answered first. Each page names the university extension program it draws on.
- Can Mint Grow in Shade?
Yes. Mint grows in full sun or partial shade with 2 to 6 hours of direct sun. It needs moist soil more than it needs sun.
- Companion Planting for Cucumbers
Companion planting for cucumbers: a squash border, pollinator flowers, and corn with broccoli have field trials behind them. Each has a trade-off.
- Companion Planting for Tomatoes
Companion planting for tomatoes: basil and French marigolds have trial evidence behind them. Keep potatoes, sweet corn and black walnut away.
- Does Cilantro Need Full Sun or Shade?
Cilantro grows best in full sun, but light afternoon shade helps it last longer in hot weather.
- How Does Garlic Grow? From Clove to Bulb
Garlic grows from one clove planted in fall. Roots grow over winter, leaves in spring, and the bulb fills out in early summer.
- How Far Apart to Plant Cilantro
Thin cilantro to 3 to 6 inches apart in rows about a foot apart. Give plants grown for seed 12 inches.
- How Long Does Cilantro Take to Grow?
Cilantro leaves are ready in 45 to 80 days from sowing, and you can start picking once plants are 6 inches tall.
- How Often to Water Cilantro
Keep cilantro evenly moist. In a garden bed, one deep watering a week is a good start. Pots need checking more often.
- How to Plant Strawberry Plants
Plant strawberries in spring with the crown exactly at soil level, 12 to 24 inches apart, in full sun.
- What Temperature Can Cilantro Tolerate?
Cilantro is a cool-season herb. It grows best in mild weather, dies in a hard freeze, and bolts in heat.
- When to Plant Cilantro
Sow cilantro in early spring and again in late summer. In hot places, grow it in fall and winter.
- When to Plant Garlic
When to plant garlic is usually fall: in cold areas, 1 to 2 weeks after the first killing frost. Spring cloves make smaller bulbs.
- When to Plant Lettuce
When to plant lettuce comes twice a year: early spring, and late summer about 3 months before your first fall frost.
- When to Plant Onions
When to plant onions is early spring in cold-winter areas, close to your last frost. In Florida, short-day onions go in from September to December.
- When to Plant Potatoes
When to plant potatoes depends on your last spring frost: plant from about 3 weeks before it up to the frost date, in soil of at least 45°F.
- When to Plant Tomatoes
When to plant tomatoes depends on your last spring frost: set plants out 1 to 3 weeks after it, once the soil has warmed.
