Why watering your garden in October and November can make a big difference next spring.

Fall has arrived in Michigan! The leaves are changing, temperatures are dropping, and most of us are winding down our gardening chores.

But there's one chore I don't want you to forget.

WATERING!

I tried my first pawpaw and it tasted like banana pudding! Learn how to grow native pawpaw trees from seed, choose grafted trees, pollinate them and grow pawpaws successfully in northern gardens.

What if your ground cover could help suppress weeds, fill empty spaces and give you strawberries? That’s one of the reasons I love growing strawberries.

What if fall isn't just about finishing this year's garden? What if it's one of the best times to start next year's garden? That really hit me while I was working at our place in Michigan's Thumb.

Carrots seem like they should be one of the easiest vegetables to grow. They're tiny seeds. You sprinkle them in the garden, cover them with a little soil, water them and wait for carrots. Except anyone who has tried growing carrots knows there's a little more to it than that.

There is something incredibly satisfying about harvesting food you've grown yourself - especially when it's your FIRST successful year growing broccoli!

There is something even more satisfying about using almost every bit of it.

By late August, I reach a point every year when part of me wants to look at the garden and say:

That’s it. I’m done. Rip it all out. 😂

The garden isn’t as fresh and perfect as it looked in June. Some plants are tired. Some are overgrown. There are weeds I swear weren’t there yesterday. And everywhere I look, something seems to need harvesting, pruning, pulling, preserving—or dealing with.

Meanwhile, back-to-school season arrives, Labor Day is approaching, schedules start changing, and suddenly summer feels like it’s ending.

But here in a northern garden, the garden may not actually be done just because the gardener is getting tired.

My daughter recently sent me a photo that would make just about anyone stop in their tracks:

A huge papery wasp nest.

You know the kind—gray, football-shaped and hanging from a tree like someone put a papier-mâché piñata in the yard.

So, naturally, I started looking into it.

The other morning, I walked outside and the sky looked strange.

The sun was hazy. The air had that smoky appearance we've unfortunately become more familiar with here in Michigan, even though the fires producing the smoke may be hundreds—or even thousands—of miles away.

And, being a gardener, one of my first thoughts was:

What is all this wildfire smoke doing to my garden?

If you've ever watched a beautiful zucchini, pumpkin, or winter squash plant suddenly wilt and collapse from squash vine borers, you may have wondered: How in the world do commercial growers grow acres of squash without squash vine borers destroying everything?

I wondered the same thing. After losing plants to squash vine borers and even performing "surgery" to remove the larvae from inside my vines, I wanted to know what farmers do differently.

Sometimes my gardening questions don't start with research.

They start while I'm outside on the homestead doing chores, looking at plants, checking on animals or scrolling through gardening posts later and thinking:

Huh. Why am I seeing so much of THAT this year?

Learn how using non-seeding weeds as mulch can conserve moisture, suppress new weeds, improve soil, and save time in your vegetable garden.

Once you've looked at how much money and time you have to spend in and around your garden, there are things to know about how to set a garden budget.