Seasonal Gardening

Five bare-root fruit trees compared for winter planting: chill hours, spacing, pollination, and years to first crop, with the math for fitting a small orchard into a 30-by-40-foot patch.

Warm-season grasses wait until late winter, cool-season grasses can be cut in fall or spring, and evergreen grasses should only be combed out. This guide gives the timing for each type, counted back from a stated first frost date.

December still has planting to offer: garlic and bare-root plants outdoors in mild zones, and sprouts, herbs, and microgreens on a kitchen counter anywhere.

Grow lights sit idle all summer, and a dusty cord or a damp shelf can turn that idle time into damage. This guide covers the six steps that keep your lights ready for fall.

Dull blades, rusty tools, and a leaking hose waste the first weeks of spring. This seven-step tune-up gets a twelve-tool set ready in about three hours.

A ready-to-fruit oyster kit turns a kitchen counter into a small mushroom patch for a few weeks. This guide covers misting, light, fresh air, and harvest timing, with cost-per-pound planning math for one kit.

A good garden year starts on paper, months before the first seed goes in. This guide builds a four-bed rotation, counts seed-start dates back from a last-frost date, and counts the seed packets the plan needs.

Wait for a hard frost before cutting perennials back, and cut only the plants that need it. This guide sorts eight common perennials into cut-now and leave-until-spring, with a timed example for a 12-foot border.

Plant amaryllis bulbs indoors in November for flowers from late December into February. This guide covers pot size, planting steps, and a staggered three-bulb calendar.

Indoor plants need far less water in winter than in summer, and the finger test beats any calendar. This guide works through one potted pothos and the fixes for yellow leaves and brown tips.