Plants

Mortgage Lifter Tomato: The Heirloom That Paid Off a House Mortgage Lifter is one of the most famous heirloom tomatoes in America, a huge, meaty pink beefsteak with a story as big as its fruit. According to legend, a self-taught West Virginia gardener bred it in the 1930s, sold the seedlings to eager neighbors, and … Read more

Sweet 100 Tomato: The Cherry Tomato That Changed Home Gardens Sweet 100 is a red cherry tomato hybrid famous for long, heavy clusters of sweet, bite-size fruit that ripen from midsummer until frost. It’s one of the best-known cherry tomatoes ever sold, a staple of patio pots, children’s gardens, and backyard snacking for more than … Read more

San Marzano Tomato: The Sauce Tomato Everyone Tries to Imitate San Marzano is the most famous sauce tomato in the world, an elongated, thin-skinned plum tomato prized for sweet, meaty flesh, low acidity, and few seeds. Chefs build pizza sauce around it, home cooks pay a premium for the canned version, and gardeners plant it … Read more

Sungold Tomato: The Orange Cherry Tomato Gardeners Plant First Sungold is a golden-orange cherry tomato that has become the benchmark for sweetness in the home garden. Its bite-size fruits ripen early, hang in long clusters, and taste so sweet and tropical that many gardeners eat them straight off the vine before they ever reach the … Read more

Cuphea: The Hummingbird Plant That Doubles as an Oil Crop Cuphea is a genus of tropical and warm-temperate plants best known to gardeners as cigar plants, firecracker plants, and Mexican heather, and to hummingbirds as an all-season nectar bar. Its small, tubular flowers bloom nonstop from late spring until frost, and the plants ask for … Read more

The Sedge Genus That Quietly Does Everything Carex is one of the largest plant genera on Earth, a group of grass-like perennials called sedges that grow in nearly every habitat from mountaintops to coastal sand dunes. Most gardeners walk past them without a second look, which is a shame, because few plants offer so much … Read more

Determinate tomatoes are the compact, bush-type plants that grow to a set size, set fruit on the ends of their shoots, and ripen most of the crop in a short stretch. They’re also called bush tomatoes, and they’re the reason a gardener with a patio, a small bed, or a canning project can grow tomatoes … Read more

Indeterminate tomato varieties are the vining tomatoes that keep growing, flowering, and ripening fruit all season until frost shuts them down. Where a determinate plant stops at a set size and delivers most of its crop in a few weeks, an indeterminate plant keeps adding new stem, new flower clusters, and new tomatoes for months. … Read more

Determinate vs indeterminate tomatoes is the single most useful distinction on a seed packet, because it tells you how big the plant will get, how much work it needs, and when the fruit will arrive. Every tomato variety falls into one of these 2 growth habits, or lands in a middle category called semi-determinate, and … Read more

The Fragrant Shrub With a Famous Reputation for Being Fussy Gardenia is one of the most beloved fragrant shrubs in the American South, prized for waxy white blooms whose sweet, spicy scent can drift across an entire yard on a warm evening. It’s also one of the most notoriously temperamental, a plant that rewards the … Read more