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Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

The best thing I’ve ever grown in a container was a Meyer lemon tree—when I lived in DeKalb County, I put fresh citrus from my own porch into my Thanksgiving recipes. I could do it because four feet away from that tree, a water faucet stuck out of the wall.

Potted plants dry out fast—and I’ve learned a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. Part of my teenage plant nursery job was helping haul hoses and nozzles, trying to keep the stock alive. My aunt used to have a part-time summer job just keeping the outdoor plants watered at a single Kroger.

So if you’re thinking of getting some new potted plants, prepare yourself for success by reading the nursery tags that say how much water and sun the plant needs. Those lush hanging baskets of ferns and pink petunias need water every day or so. For the laziest possible gardening, look for “xeriscape” choices—plants that don’t drink much.

Rosemary and other herbs that have small leaves are good starter choices for pots. Because the leaves are small, there’s less surface area that water can evaporate from.

Plenty of potted plants can even live outdoors year-round; check the tag to see if the plant is a “perennial.” Other good choices are succulents like agave and aloe that can also live for years in a pot if they’re brought inside during the winter. Meyer lemon, too.

Or, change out the pots every season. Here in the South, it’s always warm enough to have something purple or pink growing on the patio, like chrysanthemums in fall or frilly decorative kale in winter.

Keep in mind that porous terra cotta pots dry out faster than plastic, resin, or glazed ceramic ones. Direct sun also adds lots of heat—give the pot some shade by hiding it in a slightly larger pot or basket.

Go ahead and get dirt from the store too when you’re picking out your plants—it’ll have material in it that holds water. If you can find it, get some with a shredded coconut fiber called “coir.”  It’s a renewable alternative to swamp-mined peat.

My lemon tree eventually outgrew its pot and would have been too heavy to haul inside in a new pot. So I planted it in the ground. We’ll see if it lives.

These days I’m left with exactly one potted plant—a little succulent jade plant my uncle sent me. It’s small enough to hold in one hand, which is good because it needs to spend winter indoors. I haven’t watered it in a week and it’s doing just fine.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta for half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post Your potted plants are (probably) thirsty appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

I was just sitting down to write about grass when the roar of my neighbors’ lawn mower reminded me why.

Sure, grass is classy, it’s fun to roll around on. A pasture needs it. A homeowners association may demand it. But I was glad it wasn’t me about to spend two hours driving in circles.

To me, lawns are a chore without payoff. I can’t eat grass. Grass is not fixing any carbon to speak of, nor does it attract birds or butterflies, which don’t eat grass either.

If you, too, are tired of going in circles, consider replacing some lawn. Kill a small patch of grass by laying a couple layers of cardboard on it, for months. Be sure to use plain brown cardboard like an Amazon box; shiny cardboard won’t break down well. Weigh down the cardboard with some rocks or mulch and let it sit. Start in spring or early summer, and the grass will be dead in time to plant something in its place this fall.

In the meantime, decide what to put in its place. There are some good lazy alternatives.

For a sunny spot, consider native Eastern Red Cedar trees or any kind of juniper shrub—they come in different heights. These are evergreens, so no leaves to rake. And a native cedar doesn’t get big enough in a human lifetime to fall over and damage a car. Or plant rosemary or mint for something edible.

In the shade, consider a native Eastern Redbud tree, or any size or color of azalea shrub. None of these will get big enough to damage a car either.

Once fall arrives, peek under that cardboard. The grass will be rotten and dead, accompanied by bugs, worms, and soil organisms. They’re allies here, digesting the cardboard and leaving behind nutrients.

Slide the rotting cardboard to the side for a minute and plant the tree or shrub in that worm-rich spot. Water it in, then arrange the cardboard back around the plant. It acts as a ring of mulch at this point—complete with a little ecosystem of critters—that will help keep the soil damp and healthy. Go ahead and throw some straw, wood chips, or leaves over the cardboard to cover up the trash look.

The plant won’t need anything else until at least spring, when it might need a fresh layer of mulch around it to keep down weeds. Or the new plant might shade its area so well that it doesn’t need anything else. Wait and see, and sit on the porch and mow just a little less.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta for half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post How to kill your grass on purpose appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

If seed packets are calling you—their covers adorned with impossibly pink watermelons and lush, billowing blooms—but you don’t know what to say, may I offer some thoughts?

There I sit also, scrolling through the seed catalog, knowing I’ve killed more seeds than I’ve ever grown, but I buy a packet or two anyway. Maybe those tall red poppies will grow on my latest try?

Think about dandelions: When kids make a wish and blow, most of the seeds will never grow. The ones that do grow are the ones that land on the right soil, settle at the right depth, and get the right amount of water and sun and warmth. Give seeds that, and your vocation as a seed-starter begins.

Marigolds are a good pick for Georgia’s spring and summer. If the plant is destined for a pot, pick a short variety. Otherwise, pick any variety. They come in orange and yellow, from big and puffy to tiny and dainty.

Start the seeds indoors around mid-March for blooms as early as possible. If you’re a beginner, buy seed-starting soil—it’s very fine and holds just the right amount of water. For pots, buy or reuse small nursery plastic pots or six-pack containers.

Fill up the pots and put, say, two seeds at the top. Cover with just a sprinkling of dirt; most seeds just want to be lightly pressed into the soil, not buried.

Put the pots on some kind of tray and water the whole setup. Keep everything in a sunny place and keep it watered. If you don’t have a sunny spot indoors, consider grow lights.

Or just wait a couple of weeks—until, say, late April—and start your seeds outdoors. You’ll still want a sunny place, fine seed-starting soil, and plastic pots.

Either way, sprouts should appear within about two weeks. When the plants have six or eight leaves, they can go into the ground or a decorative pot.

Plenty of things can still kill them: mystery soil problems, heavy rain washing them away, a dog digs them up, a slug eats them. But it’s a joy watching these seeds sprout, growing plants the nursery doesn’t sell. A lady in my gardening chat group just shared pictures of her babies; we gave her all the heart and love emojis. My own success rate is getting pretty good; I finally managed to grow those tall red poppies.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta for half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post On the fence about seeds? Go ahead and start planting them indoors appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Jacqueline Anders/Getty Images

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

The amaryllis plant has a superpower: In just a few weeks in a tiny pot of dirt, this giant onion-looking thing sprouts a giant trumpet-shaped flower—in winter.

Its other superpower is that it might grow outside after the holidays.

The thing that comes in the amaryllis box kits this time of year is a bulb. Bulbs spend much of their year dormant, underground (or in a box). But the right temperature or light level wakes them up. The warmth and light of the sun shining through a window in a house makes an amaryllis bulb think spring is here, so it springs. It springs in living rooms and on mantels and in magazine photo shoots.

Not pictured: the subsequent slimy dead bloom, decaying stalk, and raggedy leaves.

But rather than toss it after it blooms and seemingly dies, let it recuperate: Cut off the stalk at the very bottom. The plant doesn’t need it. Then, just let it be—indoors in a warm, sunny place. Water it every week or so, whenever the soil feels dry. The leaves are collecting energy and the roots are collecting nutrients, and that good stuff is building up in the bulb.

Come spring, plant it outside or move the pot to the patio. Pick a sunny spot where you’ll remember to water it. Amaryllis’ wild ancestors come from warm, damp parts of the western hemisphere, so try to figure out where you can mimic those conditions.

If the bulb is going into the ground, plant it deep enough that about an inch of soil covers the top. (Root end down, leaf end up.) That’s a little bit of frost protection.

Take everybody else’s spent amaryllis at the end of the year too. Because some thrive and some just don’t. My mom had a 50 percent success rate from her bulbs last year: One bloomed again and one didn’t. She reports similar results from kin in Auburn and Memphis.

Best case: repeated enjoyment of a bulb that was expensive. Worst case: You’ve dug a hole outside for nothing, which was at least some exercise.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta for half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post Garden Tip: Don’t chuck your amaryllis in the new year appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

If your Ring camera caught somebody loading your brown paper bags of yard leaves off the sidewalk and into a hatchback, it might have been me, and I’m not sorry.

Those leaves are mulch now and will be rich garden soil in the future, and I couldn’t let the city take them away.

In my youth, when I still lived next door to my Aunt Debbie in the woods that Sugarloaf Parkway would replace, I asked her where dirt comes from. She told me dirt is made of rotted leaves.

The soil in the backyard woods, under a new leaf duvet every year, was alive with the tree roots and moss and worms that we could see, along with fungi and bacteria we couldn’t. Under the shade, crabgrass and other weeds wouldn’t grow. Instead, we had native honeysuckles, oaks, and even a few yellow daisies. That’s healthy soil.

It’s hard to replicate that biodiversity in the city or a subdivision, but leaves help.

Their first use is as a mulch. A mat of leaves raked around a tree trunk or a shrub will smother weed seeds.

Over time those leaves will rot—which is to say, critters and fungus and bacteria will eat the leaves and leave microscopic, uh, excrement. But to a plant, that’s fertilizer.

I did the bagged leaf–lifting back when I lived in East Lake and my whole domain was a townhouse yard and a community garden plot. Nutrients were coming out of my soil in the form of vegetables and flowers, and I needed to put back in some good, natural fertilizer. So the garden got put to bed for the winter with a few inches of leaf cover. I chucked whole brown bags into the plot. (Friends in the soil will eat plain brown paper too.)

Now, unknown curb leaves are a risk because there could have been anything in those bags—up to and including weed seeds, herbicides, dog poop, and possum corpses. But I was desperate for leaves and willing to take a chance. Sure, store-bought mulch and fertilizers exist, but they have costs in time, excess plastic bags, and pollution.

Instead, this fall, if you have a tree (or a hatchback), use leaves at home and save yourself some trouble.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post Your dead leaves are far more valuable for your garden than you think appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Gardens can get a bad rap in late summer—with wilting flowers and fewer blooms than in spring—but interior designer and author James Farmer added architecture and heat-tolerant plants so that his backyard excels even in August.

Structural integrity
Raised beds lined with white-painted brick provide the base of Farmer’s parterre garden in Perry. (For more details, see his latest book, Celebrating Home.) Japanese boxwoods add classic shapes.

Plant particulars
Heat-tolerant caladiums produce lush foliage. “Late-summer gardens benefit from being planted a season ahead,” says Farmer. “The caladium bulbs are planted in spring to have a season of root growth before the heat of August sets in. They’re visually cool when it’s hot outside.”

Continental style
Farmer’s toolshed—designed after French pigeon houses called pigeonniers—serves a utilitarian purpose but adds architectural charm with its cedar shake roof, painted brick, and an arched door painted teal.

Have a seat
Aluminum chairs by McKinnon and Harris look vintage but are new, with cushions upholstered in Perennials outdoor fabric.

Designer tip: You can’t go wrong with a pea-gravel garden “floor,” says Farmer. “I like the sound as you’re walking on it. Also, it allows for volunteer plants to pop up and grow.”

This article appears in our August 2022 issue.

The post Room Envy: A garden made for relaxing, even in late-summer heat appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Patty C. / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

On the sunniest Deep South day, wisely planted under the dark green backdrop of a shady tree, a clump of coleus will shimmer with most all the pinks and greens and yellows of other flowers—without a single bloom.

When Vincent van Gogh wanted to study the play among pure red and rusty orange and lime green and blue, he painted a coleus. It’s a plant grown just for the mottled leaves, easy to find in any plant nursery all summer (and not in the pricey section either). What’s not to love?

And, by the way, Van Gogh’s coleus was in a flower pot indoors, which is fine too. The agreeable coleus is happy to live outdoors in the heat then overwinter in a sunny window. (Painter’s gaze optional.)

Coleus’ wild ancestors came from warm regions of the old world, and they naturally grow in the shady, damp places under trees. In Georgia, plant them in deeply shady spots after mid-April and make sure they get water if it’s not raining much. These babies can handle a lot, but not dehydration.

They’ll grow maybe a foot or 18 inches tall in a Georgia warm season. People usually pinch off the unimpressive flower spike to encourage the plant to grow more leaves instead.

Coleus will live until the first frost touches them. In the metro, that’s roughly Halloween, give or take a few weeks.

When the cold weather is coming in the fall, you can keep a coleus in two ways. For a bouquet, snip off stems of any length you like and put them in a vase in a sunny window sill. They are liable to still be around for a Thanksgiving centerpiece.

Or try cloning: Fill a flowerpot with store-bought potting soil or mix. (It’s a sterile mix of compost or peat or old bark with other stuff that’s not too dense but that will stay damp.) Cut about four inches off the end of a coleus stem and remove all but the topmost four leaves. Stick that coleus stem in the dirt, all the way up to the leaves. Put it in a sunny windowsill and keep it watered. That’s it. New roots will grow under the ground, and new leaves will grow above it.

Then, come spring, plant that clone right back outside.

A word on pronunciations: Nanny, my mom’s mom, said COLE-yuh. Two syllables, straight from the country. You sometimes hear CO-lee-us, three syllables. (I’ll go with Nan.)

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta for half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn.

The post A coleus for all of us: How to grow the colorful plant in Georgia appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

No sun? No rain? No dirt? No problem. Sprouts can do without.

All it takes is a jar and a week to get baby radishes, broccoli, and other sprouts to pile on a salad, stuff a sandwich, and garnish some noodles.

When I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Clarkston, I didn’t have much of a garden. But I did have a kitchen with a counter and a window. That’s enough for sprouts year-round, whether days are long or short, cloudy or sunny.

First, take a jar and put in two tablespoons of whichever kind of sprouting seeds you prefer. A whole packet of seeds from the hardware store is fine, too. Besides broccoli and radishes, try kale, alfalfa, mung beans, or onions.

Soak the seeds in the jar overnight. The next day, pour off the excess water. Cover the jar with something breathable so that the seeds stay damp but also get air. A coffee filter over the jar secured with a rubber band works, as does a lid with a few holes punched in it. Google turns up gardeners who use cheesecloth, but for me, that seems to let the seeds dry out too quickly.

Leave the covered, seeded jar in a room that has a window. Don’t put it right next to the window, though: Direct sunlight is too much for seeds that normally sprout amid a little covering dirt.

Twice a day, “water” the sprouts: Open the jar, spritz in some water, and shake the whole thing around some so that all the seeds get dampened. They only want to be damp, though, not sitting in water. Then, just close the jar back up and leave it on the kitchen counter.

It’s not much work—sprouts are fast. And they don’t keep well, so don’t let them go any further than what they look like in the store, say, maybe two inches long or a week or so old. At that age, they begin breaking down without soil and sunlight. “Plant” them (in the jar) just days before you want to eat them.

A little packet of seeds will sprout more of an appetizer than a meal, though you can buy several types and make a flight of sprouts. If you like the way they taste, graduate to the catalogs and vendors that sell sprouting seeds by the pound. Expect to pay at least $10 per pound for seeds, depending on your taste.

This article appears in our June 2022 issue.

The post How to grow easy countertop sprouts appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

As Georgia’s weather starts its spring ascent toward another sweltering summer, it’s time to plant ginger.

There’s usually just enough hot weather in metro Atlanta to coax out the tropical plant’s tall, glossy crowns of leaves and trigger its tasty underground growth.

Start in late March or any time in April with a hunk of organic ginger. That hunk is an underground growth called a rhizome, which tunnels just under the surface of the dirt, splitting all the way into new, delicious, gnarly fingers.

A cut-up ginger finger from the kitchen counter is fine to take to the garden if it’s still at least two inches long—so is a piece from the grocery store. Look for shiny nubs poking off the ginger or a claw-like sprout. That’s where new leaves and stems will emerge. (Splurge on organic: Conventional ginger may have been sprayed with chemicals to stop growth.)

Break up a big multi-fingered rhizome into separate lobes at the narrow parts using your hands or a knife. Plant each one six or so inches apart. Bury the hunks about an inch deep, nub sides up, in the best dirt you have, in the sunniest, hottest, wettest spot you can find. This family of plants comes from places like Indonesia and south India, so you’ll need to channel those climates.

Try a place near where a gutter downspout dumps water or where an air conditioner drips condensate. It’s kind of hard to overwater a tropical plant. And this one gets dug up in winter, so it’s not going to interfere with drainage. Cover the ginger bed with pine straw, mulch, or leaves to help the soil stay damp. It’s okay to buy dirt from the store if your yard dirt is hard to dig.

There’s not enough light indoors for this plant to thrive. A pot on a sunny porch is fine, but it’s got to stay watered.

Then wait.

If the ginger is getting the light, water, and soil that it wants, a spear of stem and leaf will start to poke out of the ground in a few weeks. In a few months, the plant will be about three feet tall. The rhizome will be spreading underneath.

Start watching the weather around mid-October—that’s when metro Atlanta can start to expect weather cold enough to kill tropical plants. Dig up your ginger before the temperature dips below freezing.

Dust away dirt, cut away leaves and stems, and see what’s left—hopefully a hunk of ginger, just in time for pumpkin pie weather.

The post Ginger? Snap! Here’s how to grow it easily in Georgia appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Tobias Titz via Getty Images

Garden Variety is an occasional column about growing plants without grief.

Winter has driven most plants to death or dormancy, but no Deep South freeze is bad enough to kill mint, the kudzu of herbs—and the gardening slack season is as good a time as any to start growing. No person is so bad at gardening that they have to muddle their mojito with soggy grocery store leaves or affront their tabbouleh with dry flakes.

Mints like as much sun and rich soil as they can get, but you’ll still grow a respectable amount in iffy dirt or some shade—even in an old coffee can on a balcony. Plant it any time that it’s not freezing outside. It’s not picky.

Mints come in dozens of varieties. I have two: One was in a Clarkston Community Garden plot I had once and may be peppermint. The other was in somebody’s yard in my old East Lake neighborhood; it might be spearmint.

Mints put out a “runner” just under the ground, a kind of horizontal stem. Roots grow down from it, and leafy stems grow up from it. I call this plant a “tunneler,” though. It’ll tunnel under fences, under sidewalks, maybe under the freeway. For a more manicured look, corral it in a pot or old birdbath or an empty milk jug with a drainage hole in the bottom. Plant it by covering the roots and the runner with dirt. Use the cheapest soil from the store or your own garden soil if you have some. Plant it with a spoon or your fingers if you don’t have a shovel. Water it every week or so if it doesn’t get rain.

It can also grow in the strip between the sidewalk and the street; the sweet smell will cover up whatever dogs leave there. (But, please, grow the mint you plan to eat in a pot at the house.) Indoors, put it in the plant in the sunniest spot you have, and water it when the dirt feels dry.

In metro Atlanta, even in deep winter, enough leaves will survive above ground for you to occasionally steep a bright, minty tea. The plant will perk up in the spring and stay lush all summer. It’s fine (and sweet-smelling) to run the lawnmower over it. In the fall, the stems will die back but not all the way.

If somebody’s giving you a cutting from their yard, sever the runner, dig part of it up, and take it away to your place. Or you can visit a plant nursery to browse different leaf shapes and sizes. An established plant should just cost a few bucks. It’ll be the best investment there.

Maggie Lee has been gardening in metro Atlanta half her life and now runs Yonder Farm, a cut flower and herb farm in Fairburn. You might also know her from her days as an Atlanta political reporter.

The post The kudzu of herbs: Why you should grow mint during the winter in Georgia appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.