Learning when and what to plant for your cool weather crops versus your warm weather crops is one of the major decisions of planting season I step into the garden before dawn, the horizon just a faint glow, and slip between the rows where last year’s squash vines curled to rest. The air is cool and fragrant with damp soil, and in that hush before the world stirs, I feel the promise of new life. Today we move from planning to action—planting the seeds and starts that will carr

I slip out into the garden just as the horizon blushes with dawn. The air is cool enough to carry the scent of damp earth and yesterday’s...

I slip into my boots before dawn and step into the garden, the mist still clinging to the leaves like a promise. My fingers sink into the...

“Raised bed vegetable garden with drip irrigation.” Dawn comes slow in Kentucky, the sky the color of watered-down peach jam. I kneel beside a row of carrot seedlings, press two fingers into the cool earth, and let the scent of damp humus climb straight to memory: my grandmother humming “How Great Thou Art” while she thinned lettuce starts behind the clothesline. A robin cocks its head on the fencepost, waiting for the first grub I uncover. In that small, dirt-flecked moment