Upside Down Tulips - A Garden Podcast

Hi! We are Christy and Edith, backyard gardeners from Colorado. Lately, we have noticed more and more people picking our brains for tips and trouble-shooting about gardening. We think it’s kinda funny, because we’re not experts. We just learned a lot about gardening from the mistakes we made along the way. You always hear about Victory gardens – but what about all the garden failures? Gardening is about learning, experimenting and rolling with the punches. Every week we share our most epic garden failures and our biggest garden lessons. Most gardens are the result of trial and error. To reduce your chance of failure, join us in our gardens. And learn why you should plant your tulips butt side down. Winner of Best New Podcast at 2020 Colorado Podcast Awards!

Last refreshed: July 1st, 2025 at 12:16 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

45. Here is the Poop on Fertilizing Your Garden

Things are popping in the garden and we’re getting down with our hoes. Christy’s roses are opening, something absconded with her cauliflower plants, and her rosemary after surviving the grim winter, has a ceased to be. It’s like a vegetal soap opera! If you think NPK is an arm of the Russian Secret Service, you need this episode. If you want to know why Edith is reading War and Pees in her bathroom, you should listen. We explain how and when to fertilize flowers, vegetables, roses, and houseplan...

Jun 16, 2021•46 min

44. June is Bustin' Out All Over in the Garden

Here is your June "Get 'Er Done" List! Someone once said if you have to tell people you’re hip and relevant, you’re probably not. We politely yet vigorously disagree. Cause we’ve got slamming plants and vibrating stamens. Exploding gardens and hoe jokes. Doing the ‘what is dead’ search. It sounds like an action filled sci fi adventure, but it’s just another week in the gardens of Christy and Edith. From succession planting to mulching, supporting and staking, and it’s last call for seedlings. Wh...

Jun 09, 2021•46 min

43. Mostly Fresh Tomatoes: A Special Encore of Plump Things

Well, slap some bacon on that Vitamin K, it's an encore! We discuss tomatoes from seeds to BLT’s. In the Middle Ages, Europeans thought of them as poisonous, the French thought they were an aphrodisiac and called them love apples. The Aztec called them “plump things with a navel”. Plus: The difference between determinate, indeterminate, heirloom and hybrid tomatoes are discussed. All you need to know about planting, staking, and harvesting tomatoes. What to do about blossom end rot, blotches, wi...

Jun 02, 2021•41 min

42. Garden Laughs 2: More of Just the Funny

Pardon our garden clogs as we take time to work in our gardens and present our second episode of all garden comedy. Every gardener has a sense of humor. How else can we survive all the missteps and surprises? Can bindweed make you laugh? We think so - revisit the Bindweed Singles Service and the worse come on lines you’ve ever heard - and we hope you will agree. Remember Agnes, the easily distracted creative writing teacher who also has a call in gardening show? We’ve got all the Agneses right h...

May 26, 2021•46 min

41. Roses: Good in a Bed and Up Against the Wall

“No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall." This is the catalog description of a rose named for a former first lady. Her reaction to it is priceless. We’ve got the info on how and where to plant, prune, fertilize, water and care for the Queens of the Garden: Roses. Save money and up your rose game with our easy homemade fertilizer suggestions. We tell you about a thousand year old climbing rose that survived a WW2 bombing that destroyed the cathedral on whose walls it grew. Plus: do those Ja...

May 19, 2021•45 min

40. Perennial Discretion Advised: Rhubarb Murder & Other Strange Tips

And just how supple do you think Sleeping Beauty was after she slept for a hundred years? It does have something to do with gardening, we swear. We discuss the unique requirements to grow perennial vegetables: rhubarb, horseradish, artichoke, asparagus and leek. They come back year after year with minimum care. And not just for food: here’s a recipe to lighten your hair naturally with rhubarb. We also reveal the answer to why asparagus makes your pee smell funny and the artichoke’s secret: it is...

May 12, 2021•45 min

39. How To Grow Irresistible Iris: We Don't Squirrel Around

The Puckerbutt Pepper Company. Now that we have your attention, meet the subject of this episode, the superstar of perennials: the Iris. Used in perfumes, Bombay Saphire gin, and immortalized by artists: you gotta grow an iris. Really, so easy. We tell you, in detail, everything you need to know to keep this flower, grown by the Greeks and Egyptians, alive and thriving. With not a lot of effort. You don’t even have to mulch it! And you can ship it! Why painting them kept Van Gogh’s sanity (for a...

May 05, 2021•49 min

38. How to Grow Herbs - Here Today, Tarragon Tomorrow

Have a container? A small patch of land somewhere? Plant herbs! There is nothing like fresh herbs that you have grown for your health, happiness, and recipe success. Let us help you with tips for sowing, growing, and harvesting your herbs. Plus intriguing truths: What is the most popular spice? (Hint, it isn't Baby) How the Romans used the herb savory. Why medieval monks were forbidden to grow it. Meet an herb whose leaves tastes SO GOOD to 8o% of humans, is inedible to the other 20%, and then p...

Apr 28, 2021•47 min

37. Wanna Grow Fruit? This is Our Resting Peach Face.

Wanna grow fruit on trees, vines, shrubs or in containers? We’ve got you covered. With information on planting, pruning, and fertilizing your fruit bearers. Even growing citrus in your house. Cutting back your raspberries and giving your strawberries a haircut - who knew? Edith has some complaints about a company that did her (and maybe you) wrong. But she is avenged. Ground cherries are an endangered heirloom, as so few people are growing them. But we give you good reasons to grow them. Christy...

Apr 21, 2021•47 min

36. Container Gardening: Hit Us With Your Best Pot

Don’t have a yard or community garden? No problem! Learn how to use containers. A porch, a stoop, a stair, a roof, or a hook somewhere for a hanging basket will be enough to grow something. Terra cotta pots, plastic pots, grow bags, shoe racks, etc - it all works. We tell you which veggies, herbs, and flowers flourish therein. Thriller, spiller, filler - not a rip roaring Godzilla movie- it’s a container technique. As well as: make your own potting soil! We have the recipe right here. We’re foll...

Apr 14, 2021•46 min

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