A plate with black-eyed peas and collard greens

Recipe: Vegetarian Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens

Eating black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day is a tradition in the South and among African American communities. This tradition is believed to bring wealth and prosperity.

A red building and a red barn nestled among a landscape of trees with changing fall colors of leaves.

How Tos

How to Prepare Your Garden for Winter

If you live in cool climates, it’s time to start thinking about closing down your garden for the season. However, there are many things to consider when it comes to preparing your garden for winter. Follow this checklist to put your garden to bed and set yourself up for success in the new year!

An arrangement of many colorful zinnia flowers

Growing Guides

How to Save Zinnia Seeds

Zinnias are easy to grow, prolific bloomers, a favorite of pollinators, and have a long vase life.

Four different lettuce varieties in a long deck railing planter

How Tos

Container Gardening Guide

What can you plant in a container? The better question might be, what can’t you? Vegetables, flowers, herbs—almost any plant can thrive in a container as long as it has the proper soil and care. When land space is unavailable, container gardening provides a viable alternative for you to grow your own food and a beautiful garden.

Two large jars filled with pickled watermelon rinds along with spices and chopped garlic sit outdoors on a picnic table

Recipes

Recipe: Pickled Watermelon Rind

In the heat of the summer, few things are as refreshing as fresh watermelon! However, while the flesh of the watermelon is enjoyed, the rinds are usually discarded. Next time you eat a watermelon, don’t throw out the rinds! You can actually soften and pickle watermelon rinds for a sweet and sour treat.

Many trees with no foliage and tree guards around their trunks, in an open space of grass and blue sky

How Tos

How to Prepare Fruit Trees for Winter

It’s essential to properly prepare fruit trees for winter. Tree guards are the best method to protect your trees.

A wooden frame trellis with a large, bushy bean plant growing up it. There is a sign in front describing the crop.

How Tos

Garden Trellis Ideas

Maximize space in your garden with trellises. Some crop types—like cucumbers, tomatoes, and pole beans—need the extra support a trellis can provide, and others, like melons and squash, don’t require trellises but can benefit from being lifted off of the ground. When fruits are suspended from a trellis and kept from the soil surface, they are less prone to disease, and going vertical means that plants can grow vertically instead of sprawling, opening up some garden real estate on which to plant other crops.

hoop house with trays of green seedlings sitting atop two long wooden tables

Learn

How to Harden Off and Transplant Your Seedlings

Before you move your seedlings from your home or greenhouse into your garden—or, in gardening lingo, transplant them!—you’ll want to harden them off.

Small seedlings emerge from the soil in the cells of plastic trays

Learn

Adventures of a First-Time Seed Starter

With the start of each new year at Seed Savers Exchange come seed orders from gardeners across the country who are eagerly anticipating another spring of growing heirloom and open-pollinated vegetables and flowers. And 2018, I discovered, was no different.