Featured Plant: Sweet Potatoes Some vegetables really need to hire better PR people. The poor sweet potato suffers from being confused with the yam. No relation. And the potato. No relation. Sweet potatoes are high in fiber and good sources of Vitamins A & C. How many sweet foods can claim that? Although they're available year round, they're in season in November and December, making them popular holiday foods. But did you ever think of growing your own sweet potatoes and having a few baby sweet potatoes to snack on in early fall? Or harvesting sweet potato greens all summer? Unfortunately sweet ...

The Grass Is Greener at Harvard The grass at Harvard University is now being grown organically, without the use of synthetic nitrogen, the base of most commercial fertilizers. Source: NYT > Organic Gardening

Gardening Question of the Week: Can I Prune My Raspberries in the Fall? Someone in the About Gardening Forum wanted to know if pruning their raspberry plants now, rather than waiting until late winter, would have any effect on the amount of raspberries the plants produce. I've always heard that leaving the canes in tact helps the plants make it through winter, although I'm not entirely sure why. We'd love to hear from other raspberry growers, about when you do your pruning. Do any of you cut your raspberries back at the end of the season and have you noticed any differences or problems? Pruning Raspberries in Fall Forum Thread...

Featured Plant: Viburnum The longer I garden, the more I love shrubs. I am utterly delighted with every new Deutzia and Weigela that comes out, but I would never forsake my old favorites, like lilacs, hydrangeas and viburnums. There are over 150 species of viburnums that grow from Zone 2 through 9. These are long-lived and fuss free shrubs that can provide colorful berries for the birds, brilliant fall color and sometimes even fragrance. You're probably familiar with at least a few Viburnums already, like Korean spice, with pink buds that open to white, clove-scented snowballs, the American Cranberry Bush, with it's lacecap flowers and clusters of red berries and the ...

A Toast to this Season’s Harvest Pairing Wine with Vegetables I'm an unabashed vegetable lover and even on Thanksgiving, meat is just an accompaniment to my veggies. This year, instead of matching your wine to your Turkey, choose a variety that will bring out the best in the vegetables you grew and stored for the harvest festival. Here's a cheat sheet from The Wine Guide by Williams-Sonoma and more in depth pairings from the San Fransisco Chronicle for pairing wine with everything from avocados to zucchini. Here are a couple of starter tips: Wine pairs better with cooked vegetables than with raw vegetables Roasted and charred vegetables pick ...

Growing Acorns Maples get all the attention in the fall, but there are plenty of other trees that put on a decent display. I'm especially fond of oak trees at any time of year. There's an oak across the street from me that never seems to drop its leaves. They're still out there, hanging on, well into early spring. This year we had a bumper crop of acorns. One day when I went out to get the mail I was literally pelted with the little nuts, as they fell by the bucketful in the breeze. By now the squirrels have safely buried them in all my outdoor ...

And the Winners Are...Fall Color Photo Challenge I have a love/hate relationship with fall. I bet a lot of you do, too. It's not that I hate winter; I actually enjoy winter sports and there's nothing to compare with the sunrise after a snow storm. Still, I'd rather be outside gardening. Fall color is nature's way of easing us into the bleakness of February, in northern climates. One last hurrah and then hunker down and be patient. All the more reason to celebrate fall and that's just what the photographers in our October Garden Photo Challenge did. It was total eye candy and very hard to come to ...

Gardening Question of the Week: What’s the Difference Between a Variety and a Cultivar? Plant names can be very confusing. One person's 'Love Lies Bleeding' is another's 'Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate'. Then there are those taxonomy enigmas where Actaea is the plant formerly known as Cimicifuga. My feeling is, if the person you're talking to knows what you're talking about, it doesn't really matter if you've got the right name or know how to pronounce it in Latin. The only time it's truly important that you get the name of a plant right is when you are shopping for a specific plant. The full Latin name will ...

A Good Foundation Planting For many of us, the shrubs in front of our homes are about the only gardens we see throughout winter. While there's a movement to get us thinking about alternatives to foundation plantings, shrubs still rule. If you're not yet willing to replace your yews and rhododendrons with perennials and vegetables, you still might want to think about sprucing up your curb appeal. David Beaulieu has a foundation planting photo gallery of inspiration for you to mull over and compare what you have with what it could be. Photo: © Marie Iannotti A Good Foundation Planting originally appeared on About.com Gardening on Wednesday, November ...

Fall Favorite: Helenium Did you ever notice how some of the prettiest flowers have some of the most put-offish common names? Like lungwort and bugsbane, Helenium looks like a daisy dipped in M&M colors, yet it’s common name is "sneezeweed", or sometimes the less popular but no less unappealing "swamp sunflower". I’m told the name sneezeweed came about because Helenium’s leaves were once used for snuff. Well, ‘snuff said about that. Sneezeweed does not make most people sneeze. My only gripe about helenium is that, like most late season bloomers, it doesn’t look like much most of the season. The leaves are unremarkable, although at least ...