Growing In The Garden

I grow skyflower over an arbor and up a trellis against a wall, and it looks good for most of the year. When it’s blooming, it draws butterflies and hummingbirds all day. It’s an upright shrub you can train like a vine, and my neighbor keeps hers pruned into a round bush, so you can shape it to fit your space. It handles desert heat better than you’d think, as long as you giv...

This past March, I went out to my garden and found my spring flowers fried. Crispy edges, scorched leaves, plants that should have had weeks of growing left. That’s not what March usually looks like here. The heat showed up earlier than it used to, and it took the spring flowers with it.

When the weather stops following the patterns you expect, it changes how your ...

The hottest light in a desert garden comes from the afternoon sun on the west side. For years, I’ve blocked it with something that costs little or nothing and comes back on its own: sunflowers.

In this guide, I’ll share how I use branching sunflowers to shade my beds through the worst of the summer heat, which varieties I use, where to put them, and how to keep th...

Most gardening content focuses on identifying pest eggs so you can remove them. Squash bugs, stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs; we spend a lot of time learning what to wipe off a leaf. But what about the beneficial insects? Would you recognize a hoverfly egg or a cluster of ladybug eggs if you found them?

My friend Jean Elston, who is finishin...

This is the recipe that finally made me love eating yardlong beans. Blistered Chinese long beans are easy, and they come together in about 15 minutes. These beans have so much flavor and just the right amount of savory crunch. It all cooks fast in one pan, so it doesn’t heat up the kitchen.

A quick note so the names don’t trip you up. Chinese long...