Things to consider when planning your 2022 garden. How to lengthen the season in colder zones, new ways of watering, and inexpensive ways of providing shade. The new way Christy will plant her expensive herbs and the one herb Edith will never plant again. What you need to do in January to ensure getting the garden you want in July. Two treats for theater lovers: Hamlet and Ophelia in their frozen garden, and a mulch pile begging to be spread belts out Broadway tunes. “Ah, five, six, seven, EIGHT...
Jan 12, 2022•47 min
You want to plant a garden. Now what? In this Encore Episode, we explore Gardening 101: where to put your garden, how to determine what kind of soil you have, and how to amend it. But along the way we’re discussing Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania and Sir Walter Wally in Raleigh NC. We have tips on why thinning out boyfriends and carrots are important. We share soil tests you can do at home, with stuff from your pantry! Knot nematodes, spineless cactus, plumcots and cat skulls may not seem like th...
Jan 05, 2022•53 min
"I can use some socks.” If that quote doesn’t signal an exciting episode, we don’t know what does. It's our annual Favorite Mistakes of the Year! We go through our many gardening mistakes of 2021, some of which ended in... plantslaughter! From too much sun to not nearly enough, from a hostile poppy takeover to accidentally killing houseplants - learn from us. And laugh with us! Support UDT by joining our Garden Party and get fun rewards! Get a UDT Coffee Mug or other cool Merch! Visit our websit...
Dec 28, 2021•42 min
Blanket yourself with this delightful Christmas quilt of an episode. From the care of your Christmas tree, poinsettias, and amaryllis to a mailbag featuring two of the most heartwarming stories we’ve ever heard. Plus, the most unusual “12 Days of Christmas” you’ve ever heard, a way to frustrate scammers, and a stomach churning Gift of the Magi. And “The Ghosts of Gardens Past” to warm your eggnog. Happy Holidays! Support UDT by joining our Garden Party and get fun rewards! Get a UDT Coffee Mug o...
Dec 22, 2021•50 min
In this Encore Episode, learn how to grow herbs! 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...
Dec 15, 2021•49 min
Edith and Christy search the globe and outer space, looking for unusual gardens. From above the Arctic Circle, to the indigenous forests of Africa - from the ketchup and fries plant, to where you can find gardens inside taxicabs, to a parody of “The Martian” - so much great information presented alongside funny letters to Santa and groan worthy puns. The elves Wunorse Opanslae and Shinny Upatree warn us about the one gift they never should have given Mrs. Claus. Believe it... Or not! Support UDT...
Dec 08, 2021•42 min
In this Encore Episode, you can end re-gifting with our suggestions of wonderful gifts you can make FROM the garden and FOR the gardener. From body butter to soup of the month to sage bundles to Herbs de Provence - in these times where so many of us are operating on a Bob Cratchit budget, make wonderful gifts for about a ha’penny. We also suggest some simple gifts for that special gardener in your life. Or for yourself! Or for us! We think we may be headed toward The Bigger Time - cause we have ...
Dec 01, 2021•46 min
Happy Thanksgiving! Like friends and family coming to our table, we have new letters from listeners as well as favorites from last year. They run the gamut from the missing mashed potatoes to Spudsgiving. Plus a new podplay about the Cranberry Wars. Oscar Wilde, the Buddha, and the Minneapolis Miracle are already seated. We’ve saved a place for you. We would be grateful if you joined us. Support UDT by joining our Garden Party and get fun rewards! Get a UDT Coffee Mug or other cool Merch! Visit ...
Nov 24, 2021•44 min
We have gathered only good news, because things have been stressful and we needed it. News about how gardeners like you are helping with climate change, how architects are designing skyscrapers that are covered in gardens, how Maine has put itself in the forefront of the right to grow your own food and how a gardener in Atlanta created a sitting garden for her neighborhood. And more! Also, an unsolved garden mystery involving a huge zucchini and a bad assed gardener who takes his cue from Clint ...
Nov 17, 2021•43 min
In this Encore Episode, we talk about tools - not humans with appalling behavior but garden tools that help us out. Christy’s cartoon thumb bears witness to the importance of tools. She has definitely paid the price for yanking the cosmos. Hori knives in holsters, hand weeders, hacks you find in your kitchen or garage. Tools that blow which might make you feel like you’re licking the sidewalk. Waste of money tools. Tools with cancer warnings that has Edith playing detective. Meet Janelle the str...
Nov 09, 2021•44 min
It's go thyme! This week is all about how to grow an indoor herb garden. But first, Edith encounters a persnickety security system demanding a “secret word”, Christy is starting a produce section in her attic, and we both had a fennel fail. What is the Persephone Period? We will tell you. If you’re as determined as we are to grow fresh herbs indoors this winter, give us a listen. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme - not just an old Simon and Garfunkle song. It could be part of your kitchen herb ...
Nov 03, 2021•51 min
It’s Halloween 2. We’ve got Tom Cruise, Ichabod Grain, and Canable Pectin. Wrap yourself in our Halloween quilt with the best stories from last year, new stories from our listeners, and two new podplays. We have tricks: how to eat an eyeball if you have to; and treats: The Silence of the Lamb’s Ear and a headless garden ghost. Revisit the haunted Fordney mansion which holds a true ghost story and find out what could happen if you garden after dark on Halloween. We’ve got tricks, treats and laugh...
Oct 27, 2021•48 min
We share new things we tried last summer and how they worked out. Good, bad, and ugly things. Important things like which tomatoes to plant to get rid of a soil fungus, the easiest beautiful annual to care for, how to have fresh greens in your garden for 8 months, and what is and how to grow a successful moon garden. Do you know what a Maximillian sunflower is and why it’s great to have it in your garden? And for chuckles, pod plays about being the quarterback in a garden football game and a new...
Oct 20, 2021•47 min
Do you want to have a headstart for your plants in next year’s garden? We have the details on bringing in geraniums, rosemary, and peppers. The harden off/soften on method, the pruning, misting, microclimating, and dormancy inducing techniques that help your plants survive the winter in your house. Plus how to grow plants from cuttings. As well as a question about broccolini, a story about beavers, a 172 lb. cabbage, and a 76 pound rutabaga. It’s a supersized episode! Both of us laugh, both of u...
Oct 13, 2021•47 min
We are not an “organic proprietary mixture”, although we get a little ticked off by something that claims it is. We go into all the dos & don'ts and pros & cons and easy tips for how to freeze and can your harvest for the winter. Plus more drama: what died all by itself on Edith's hügelkultur? Why does Christy's pumkin look like Walter Matheau? Why is Edith afraid of canning equipment? And what, in the garden, will give you more, the more you use? These kind of miracles, giving trees, an...
Oct 06, 2021•48 min
A spanking new episode exploring upcycling for your garden: toilet paper rolls are not just for making chunky necklaces anymore. Second lives for soda bottles, boots, toilets, broken tools, bathtubs, tires and more. Learn to make your own pots for seedlings and then use a ‘seedling apartment building’ to shelter them. Whether it’s a recipe for drying cherry tomatoes with zero energy use, or a recipe for roasted tomato salsa, or the recipe that might have kept Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara tog...
Sep 29, 2021•42 min
Everything you wanted to know about growing, curing, and storing garlic. The difference between hardneck and softneck garlic. What they have in common are fantastic health benefits. In Romania it is often considered as good as antibiotics! Plus eat the rainbow that’s not Skittles - a vegetable’s color is an indication of its health benefits. We explain. What we’re planting now - hoping it will overwinter and give us vegetables early in Spring 2022. And we pepper this barrage of information with ...
Sep 22, 2021•41 min
Eating raw fruits and veggies is not only great for your health, but for your energy bills, and the environment as well. Not enamored of eating a pile of plain raw veggies for dinner? We have suggestions: recipes for cold soups, sauces, salsas and smoothies. If a Colorado garden zone 5B can produce fresh greens allowing you to eat uncooked nutritious foods for about 7 months, so, most likely, can your zone. Better skin, great gut health, improve your immunity: eat it raw. Plus we solve the bloss...
Sep 15, 2021•44 min
The September garden: watch out for frosts and for insects making homes in your garden cantaloupes. A to-do list that includes the hows and whys of watering, planting, harvesting, fertilizing, and weeding. What to do with a tsunami of tomatoes. Taking care of your lawn, flowers, and trees. We are so full of good information we could burst like Christy’s forgotten pumpkin. We also have questionable information as Edith gives her theory of the evolution of the French language. Could it possibly be...
Sep 08, 2021•47 min
We want you to have a happy harvest so we let you know when your veggies are ripe. From beans to zucchini and most things in between, it’s about color, texture, smell, shriveled stems, green caps, tight heads, and leaves dying back. It might surprise you that in most cases, size doesn’t matter. Seed collector alert: what to start looking for before they blow away. Meet Buff Biffins the plant homicide detective who learns that sometimes you gotta be cruel to be kind in the garden. Saints, assassi...
Sep 01, 2021•48 min
We give a tip of the hat to our Curmudgeons and share a story about the power of unexpected kindness. What you can plant today and still harvest before winter and why you should plant trees now. How to extend the life of the vegetables you have past your first frost date, the Persephone period explained, and sheltering plants for the winter so they’re alive come Spring. What happened to bad smelling Gunther and why the Dormouse accuses Alice of being a poisoner and a perv. We know better - she’s...
Aug 25, 2021•46 min
The ubiquitous bane of the gardener - Bindweed. There seem be at least 50 ways to fight your bindweed - pulling, snipping, solarizing, suffocating, boiling, blow torching (really), using strong chemicals that kill everything around it and sometimes leaving bindweed standing alone on the hill, victory flag in hand. Yes, gardeners, it’s war. We’re on your side discussing what could work and how long it could take. Note: Be patient. And presenting 3 short comedies to ease your (and our) frustration...
Aug 18, 2021•47 min
We’re talking ways to save water that is both nutritious and free. There’s more to watering than what comes from your hose. We’re talking rainwater, gray water, black water, cooking water. One of these things is not like the other, however. How to collect water, store it, apply it to your garden. How to help save your lawn and water bill in this heat. From sprinklers, soaker hoses, rain barrels, and water absorbing polymers to aeration and hydrozoning, we cover this topic as thoroughly as the pa...
Aug 11, 2021•49 min
We discuss the things that can happen to your tomatoes, the ‘risks’ as it were: blossom end rot, blossom drop, not setting fruit, not ripening, Septoria, early blight, late blight, middle aged blight (just kidding on that last one). We tell you how to fix what can be fixed and when to throw in the trowel and not beat yourself up about it. Cause it’s probably not your fault! Plus Antelope Twomey is back with a moving and funny poem called “Ode to the Gardener”. It’s all about you, our gentle list...
Aug 04, 2021•44 min
We discuss what we (and hopefully you) learned from each other this past year. Like how to do your own soil test, and what is Soil Pep? (It has nothing to do with pompoms or short skirts). We discuss gardening by grid, taking suckers off of tomato plants, how to garden without disrupting the natural way of things, why Christy has changed her mind on a certain store bought fertilizer and what went horribly, nauseatingly wrong with Edith’s Bokashi experiment. Gardening is not for the squeamish. Fr...
Jul 28, 2021•49 min
It’s Episode 50! And our First Anniversary! (Which means we’ve been doing this for a year and we’re not so good at math.) Thank you to everyone who has listened over the last year! We truly love this community of gardeners, friends and stewards of the planet. To celebrate, we share are a few of our favorite moments from the year: From the silly - shredded tweet and Salvadore Dilly, to the profound - May Sarton’s quote about gardening, we’ve got you covered. We fill in between the two, revisiting...
Jul 21, 2021•41 min
It’s hot and dry July. The early season plants are reaching their endtimes, flowers need to be deadheaded and the Japanese beetles are back! To temper the horror of that, Edith wrote a poem! We then talk 50 ways to kill your Japanese beetles. You could sweep, bag, spray, trap, grind, or entice them with a lovely fruit cocktail. (Fruit cocktail? What is this, 1954?) You could also try Neem Oiling or Milky Sporing them to their everlasting rest. Then, for a little dark humor, we brought back Darla...
Jul 14, 2021•50 min
The start of July means summer is in full swing and our gardens are at the peak of the season. It is also a big month for garden maintenance. So we have gathered together over 20 tips on what you should be doing in your July garden - what not to plant, what you can plant, what to deadhead, how to get broccoli baby heads even if your original plant goes to seed. Plus: helpful info on pinching, watering, weeding, staking, dividing, mulching. So many "ings!" Don’t know what a farrier is? Neither di...
Jul 07, 2021•48 min
We’re thrice potting cucumbers and shaking seed heads, all while exploring the world of vines. So much more than just a conveyance for Tarzan, vines shelter, give beauty, grow food, attract pollinators and hide unsightly views. Not even to mention that’s how grapes grow and that’s what makes wine! Which vine’s seeds cause paralysis, labored breathing and convulsions- and still has “sweet” in its name? (That may be taking forgiveness a step too far.) Let us introduce you to the Lazy Housewife Pol...
Jun 30, 2021•50 min
“Hope is being planted and I feel it growing.” We’re quoting from a listener’s letter because we’re too hot to say anything worth quoting. BUT we did have the presence of mind to gather about 10ish garden tips we forgot to tell you in the past year. Like what is well drained soil? Can you plant in a ziplock bag? Do you need different fertilizers for different plants and what is elbow soap? Why you should pinch your mum now and what the appearance of dog vomit slime mold tells you. Free resources...
Jun 23, 2021•46 min
