Who Were the Sea Peoples?

I recently met an old acquaintance who used to tell me, "I just don't have a green thumb!" In her front yard was a large planting of black-eyed Susans that were dying in the heat and drought. "My God," I said, "these things need water." I spent twenty minutes soaking them. In three hours they looked as good as new. "I just don't have a green thumb" means "I put plants in the ground, but I make no effort to learn about them and pay no attention to what is happening to them, but then, when they die, I wish to attribute their death to some lack of a mystical ability on my part."

You will read gardening books that promote strict adherence to organic purity, and others that recommend using any chemical help you can get. Here, as so often, I think virtue is the mean between two vices: I always try to garden mostly organically. Many of the complaints of the organic community about factory farming are justified. A regime of continual application of artificial fertilizers and pesticides clearly reduces the biodiversity of the soil: they are like similar to taking continual cocktails of drugs in order to remain "healthy." But the analogy holds in the reverse direction as well: antibiotics and other strong drugs have their uses, in emergency situations . If you take antibiotics every time you have a sniffle, you are setting yourself up for serious trouble down the road. But when you have meningitis, it is a very good idea to take them. I try to take the same attitude towards my garden: insecticides, weed killers, and artificial fertilizers are emergency...

The guidelines you get in most gardening books, or on the little plastic spiked tags that come with your plants from the shop, are usually very cut-and-dried about the plants' sun requirements: "Six or more hours of sun per day," for instance, or, "No afternoon sun." But the messy conditions of the real world make nonsense of such simple prescriptions. Four hours of full sunshine and another eight of dappled sun under light shade may deliver more light to your tomatoes than the six hours of full sun they supposedly require. A bit of sun slanting in under taller trees late in the afternoon is unlikely to burn the leaves of your rhododendrons. Nearby glass or a white structure may reflect a good deal more light onto your plants than they receive directly. And what's more, the listed figures are the optimal conditions. But plants strive to survive, and can often get by on something far shy of optimal: I have seen backyard tomato gardens that couldn't hav...

What Edibles to Grow So, you've started gardening, and you want to grow some things you can eat. You should: It's a wonderful thing to eat something you've grown yourself, and if you have kids, it's very good, I think, that they have some idea that food does not merely appear on the grocer's shelf. (If they've ever heard of a "grocer," that is.) Now, if you have the time and space, grow anything and everything your climate supports. But even then, it's not a bad idea to start small, and, for the rest of us, it's a necessity. So what should you grow in the portion of your garden devoted to edibles? I suggest two categories of plants: 1) Those that taste much better fresh-picked. Here, my favourites right now are peas and lettuce in the spring, and tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer. (A cucumber just off the vine is really a different animal than one bought from the store.) 2) Those that can't be had in realistic quantities in the...