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Dee and Carol talk about buying and planting bulbs, garlic, and butterflies this week.

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To watch us on YouTube, click here.

Question of the Week:

What’s really wrong with Carol’s Black-eyed Susans?

Septoria leaf spot, most likely. And particularly susceptible is ‘Goldsturm.’ Listen to Hans Hansen talk about it on Instagram.

Insect of the Week

Butterflies, and how now is a great time to see them in your garden. The adults are flitting and mating and moving on.

Flowers:

Bulbs.

Vegetables:

Garlic

On the Bookshelf:

The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Insect by Wendy Williams (Amazon, Bookshop)

Dirt:

State Animals

Rabbit Holes

Carol: I listened to The Book of Margery Kempe, by Margery Kempe, and is working on the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing.

A Garden to Visit:

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, in Richmond, Virginia

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
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Dee and Carol talk about flowers that shine in the waning days of summer, winter squash and more.

For more info and links, check out our Substack newsletter

To watch this episode on YouTube, click here

Insect of the Week:

Thread Waisted Wasp

Flowers:

Flowers and plants that peak or look great waning at the end of summer

Winning Zinnias from All-America Selections

Vegetables:

Winter squashes and why we don’t grow them

On the Bookshelf:

A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War by Ursula Buchan (Bookshop, Amazon)

Dirt:

People who read live longer: Instagram

Rabbit Holes

Another Lost Lady of Garden Writing, Alice Lounsberry.

A Garden to Visit:

Biltmore House and Garden, Asheville, NC

Thank you!

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

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Carol and Dee talked about refreshing container plantings for fall, new veggies for the vegetable garden, a book of garden columns, and more.

Check out our Substack newsletter for more info.

To watch us on YouTube, click here:

Insect of the Week

Great Black Wasp… a solitary pollinator.

Flowers:

Is it worth refreshing annuals in late summer for fall?

Vegetables:

It’s not too soon to plan for 2027.

All-America Selections Winners for 2026:

Tomato BadaBing! F1

Kale Rubybor F1

Pole Bean ‘Majesty’

Butter Lamp F1 Winter Squash

Basil Treviso -

New Varieties sent to Carol from Burpee

Akoya Small-Fruited Tomato

Sweet 150 Small-Fruited Tomato

Pick N Pop Orange Sweet Pepper

Monteverde Late Flowering basil

On the Bookshelf:

Back to the Garden by Ursula Buchan (2009) (Amazon for used copies)

Dirt:

The five plants every pollinator garden needs

Rabbit Holes:

Judi Dench’s Shakespeare: The Man Who Paid the Rent.

Carol’s blog post for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day.

A Garden to Visit:

Holcomb Gardens at Butler University and the Indiana Native Plant Society (INPS)

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

With a shared love of gardening…

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

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Dee and Carol discuss favorite summer annuals, what to do I the veg garden in August, and many books.

For more information, check out our Substack newsletter

To watch us on YouTube, click here.

Links, etc:

Question of the Week:

What’s wrong with my tomatoes?

Insect of the Week:

Black Saddlebags Dragonfly

Flowers:

Our favorite summer garden annuals. Branching out from perennials and native plants obsession.

Vegetables:

Timely reminders for August

On the Bookshelf:

In the Land of the Blue Poppies: The Collected Plant-Hunting Writings of Frank Kingdon Ward (2003) (Amazon, Bookshop)

Dirt:

Hydrangea Pruning: What Stays, What Goes and When by Lorraine Ballato (Amazon)

Rabbit Holes:

The Churchill Sisters by Dr. Rachel Tretheway. (Bookshop, Amazon).

The Kennedys and the Windsors: The Story of Two Dynasties, One Born, One Made by Caroline Hallemann (Bookshop, Amazon)

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench (Amazon, Bookshop). (Listen to Judi Dench recite Shakespear on Instagram)

Adele Dawson, another Lost Lady of Garden Writing.

Dear Hugo by Molly Claverly (Amazon, Bookshop), and sloes, the fruit of blackthorn.

The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds. (Amazon, Bookshop)

Dee’s buying Bulgarian food

A Garden to Visit:

Tulsa Botanic Garden

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

With a shared love of gardening…

Carol and Dee

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

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Dee and Carol talk about mandevillas, veggie cookbooks and more in this week's episode.

For more info, check out our Substack newsletter.

To watch us on YouTube, click here.

Insect of the Week:

Lily leaf beetle, prompted by a reader’s questions. Check Wisconsin Extension on how to identify and how to control. This site shows the range

Flowers:

Mandevillas and Bougainvillas

Vegetables:

More recipes from the garden.

My New Roots: Inspired Plant-Based Recipes for Every Season: A Cookbook by Sarah Britton. (Bookshop, Amazon) Check out her website and her Instagram account

Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables by Joshua McFadden (Bookshop, Amazon)

On the Bookshelf:

My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner (1899) (Bookshop, Amazon)

Dirt:

Chatsworth Garden Design Revealed in the Drought

Rabbit Holes:

The Botanist’s Assistant by Peggy Townsend (Bookshop, Amazon) Lots of interesting deadly plants mentioned.

Also Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster: Words that first appeared in print for the year you were born…

A Garden to Visit:

Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

With a shared love of gardening…

Carol and Dee

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

Send us Fan Mail

Dee and Carol talked about decorative beans to grow for flowers, beans to dry, and other gardening topics.

For more info, check out our Substack newsletter.

To watch on YouTube, click here.

Links!

Verbena bonariensis 'Vanity’ from All-America Selections

Insect of the Week

June Beetles Info from Wisconsin Horticulture Extension

Flowers:

Hyacinth beans - Lablab purpureus

Scarlet runner beans - Phaseolus coccineus

Yardlong beans - Vigna unguiculata subsp. Sesquipedalis

Corkscrew vine beans, Cochliasanthus caracalla

Vegetables:

Alternative beans to grow - black beans, kidney beans, northern beans - mostly for drying. General info from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Seed sources for older varieties: Rancho Gordo, Seed Savers Exchange, and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

On the Bookshelf:

Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste by Bill Best (Amazon Link)

Dirt:

Harkening back to last week’s episode on trees: Planting Trees at Waddesdon Manor

Rabbit Holes:

Lost Lady of Garden Writing, Danske Dandridge,

The Garden at Rose Brake: Garden Writings of Danske Dandridge,

Muv: The Story of the Mitford Girls’ Mother by Rachel Tretheway (2026)

Slightly Foxed podcast.

A Garden to Visit:

Visit an All-America Selection garden near you!

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

With a shared love of gardening…

Carol and Dee

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

Send us Fan Mail

Dee and Carol talked about trees, including what to consider when buying a tree, pawpaws and walnut trees around the veggie garden, a tree essay book, and more.

For more info, check out our Substack newsletter.

To watch us on YouTube, click here.

A couple of miscellaneous links: Carol’s ritual of the first tomato blog post from 2006 and Play-Doh Blooms (Amazon)

Question of the Week:

Why did a big limb that looked healthy suddenly fall out of my tree? More info from Davey Tree Company

Insect of the Week:

Mimosa Webworms - Info from Purdue - a tale of two kinds of treatment.

Flowers:

How to choose trees for your garden

Vegetables:

Pawpaw trees - Check them out at Stark Bros

Walnut trees - Info from Garden Professors Blog

On the Bookshelf:

Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree: A celebration of our connection with trees by David George Haskell (Amazon Link). Haskell also wrote How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries and The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature. Check him out on Instagram.

Dirt:

Judi Dench and her passion for trees. A clip/intro to her documentary My Passion for Trees

Rabbit Holes:

Dee: A new cookbook, The HIgh Protein Plate, by Rachael DeVaux, RD.

Carol: Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann (2005), a new biography about Katharine S. White (The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker, by Amy Reading), and a new Lost Lady of Garden Writing.

A Garden to Visit:

United States National Arboretum

Thank You:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

And, if you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, send us an email or leave a comment.

With a shared love of gardening…

Dee and Carol

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.

Send us Fan Mail

Dee and Carol talk about coneflowers, share some new veggie recipes Dee is trying, discuss a book on wildflowers and more.

For more info, check out our Substack newsletter.

To watch on YouTube, click here.

Question of the Week:

How do I grow a wildflower meadow from seed? Mini Meadows, by Mike Lizotte. He explains it well.

Insect of the Week

Blue Orchard Mason Bee. You can make nesting boxes for them or buy commercial ones

Flowers:

The Enterprise of Echinaceas, and why do we have so many varieties? We are speaking of Echinacea purpurea.

Watch out for aster yellows, a disease that can infect coneflowers. More info from Missouri Botanical Garden

Vegetables:

Let’s share some summer recipes!

Authentic Shopska Salad Recipe

Cold Yogurt Cucumber Soup - Tarator

Princesses (Bulgarian Ground Meat Sandwiches) Recipe - Food.com

Dee’s Zucchini Squash Challenge on her blog

On the Bookshelf:

A Naturalist’s Book of Wildflowers: Celebrating 85 Native Plants of North America by Laura C. Martin (2021) (Amazon)

Dirt:

Another dose of cuteness on Instagram, a farmer-gardener with his two young daughters, the two “supervisors”. Meet Jeremiah_Farmer .They also have pigs!

Rabbit Holes:

Lost Lady of Garden Writing, Katharine S. White. And Carol’s tips for getting your garden to produce more veggies.

A Garden to Visit:

Dallas Arboretum. One hot place when we visited!

Thank you:

As always, we appreciate all of you for listening to our podcast and for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support us, check out our affiliate links here. Book links are also affiliate links.

Support the show

On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube.