How to build a deer fence with fishing line

Anyone who has an orchard or garden knows how frustrating it is to work day in and day out only to find deer have eaten your lettuce, trampled your tomatoes, pulled up turnips and carrots, ripped the leaves off your young apple trees, or eaten the fruits off the trees.

Several glass jars with a variety of different seeds sit in a row on a glass shelf

How Tos

How to Store Seeds

Protect your rare or stock-up sale finds with these three proper storage tips that ensure your seeds are viable when the planting time is right. It doesn’t take much, especially if you are storing seeds for two years or less.

Red radishes growing in a mulched bed with leafy green tops

How Tos

Everything You Need to Know About Radishes

Radishes are wonderfully diverse with many different colors, shapes and sizes! Spring and summer varieties can be pink, red, white, golden, or purple. They can be shaped like bulbs, be more elongated like fingers, or even taper like carrots.

Rows of young plants in black plastic containers with white picket labels on a table

How Tos

How to plant tomato and pepper transplants

Two of the most popular crops to start indoors and transplant out are peppers and tomatoes. These tips will help ensure that you will have healthy, happy plants after you introduce them to the great outdoors.

Young potato plants growing in a row outdoors in trenches dug in the soil

How Tos

How to Grow Potatoes

Here are a few tips from SSE’s gardening crew on how to grow potatoes, when to plant, advice on watering, proper storage conditions and saving seed stock for a healthy and bountiful harvest. A wide variety of potatoes can be found listed on The Exchange.

A wooden frame trellis with a large, bushy bean plant growing up it. There is a sign in front describing the crop.

How Tos

Garden Trellis Ideas

Maximize space in your garden with trellises. Some crop types—like cucumbers, tomatoes, and pole beans—need the extra support a trellis can provide, and others, like melons and squash, don’t require trellises but can benefit from being lifted off of the ground. When fruits are suspended from a trellis and kept from the soil surface, they are less prone to disease, and going vertical means that plants can grow vertically instead of sprawling, opening up some garden real estate on which to plant other crops.

Learn

Gardening & Seed Saving Terms

Use this list of terms to expand your knowledge and understanding of seed saving and gardening. The following definitions are drawn from The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving, edited by Lee Buttala and Shanyn Siegel and published by Seed Savers Exchange.

A whole tomato between two halved tomatoes on a wooden surface

How Tos, Lifestyle, Recipes

Recipe – Sugo: Juice of Life

Sugo: Juice of Life, submitted by Robin Morgan, Seed Savers Exchange intern and Italian chef. The Italian word sugo means both “juice of life” and a tomato-based pasta sauce. To call something sugo is to say it is rich, interesting, and worthy.

Many small red peppers, halved covered in seeds, laid out on a metal sheet

How Tos, Lifestyle, Recipes

Recipe: Fried Thin Skin Ausilio Peppers

Fried Thin Skin Ausilio Peppers, submitted by the Ogle-Riccelli family, who have stewarded the ‘Ausilio Thin Skin Italian’ pepper for four, going on five generations. These fried peppers taste great on bread or in a sandwich and go well with onions, mushrooms, and diced potatoes.

A wooden box of red, orange, yellow, and white tomatoes of varying sizes

How Tos, Lifestyle, Recipes

Recipe: Golden Tomato Tart

Golden Tomato Tart, submitted by Rosalind Creasy, author, photographer, and Seed Savers Exchange advisor. This spectacular tart can be served as an appetizer or as an entrée for a light lunch. It is quite dramatic made with gold tomatoes or any combination of colorful homegrown luscious tomatoes. Any leftover marinade can be used as a base for a vinaigrette dressing.