B is for Bergenia, Brunnera, Bibb Lettuce, and Other Gardening Topics
Season 7, Episode 15, March 12, 2025
On this week’s episode, which you can listen to a day early with this link, we discussed flowers and vegetables that start with the letter “B,” a new book on foraging mushrooms, and several other topics in and out of the garden.
(Note: You will want to read this entire newsletter all the way to the end for a special surprise. No peeking until you’ve read it all the way through!)
If we had been more clever, we would have focused this letter B episode on “blue” because we both seem to be attracted to blue in the garden.
After we answered a few questions from our listeners, we talked about two annuals and two perennials that start with “B,” though we are playing fast and loose with this naming thing. Check out a few links to a couple of them, including, Baby's Breath - Gypsophilia 'Gypsy Rose Pink,' an AAS Winner, Brunnera 'Jack Frost' from Proven Winners, and Bergenia 'Miss Piggy' from Proven Winners. We also talked about Bells of Ireland. If you want to grow it as a cut flower, we recommend checking out Lisa Ziegler’s Gardener’s Workshop website, where she has some seeds of Bells of Ireland for sale, plus offers lots of classes for growing cut flowers.
For our vegetable topic, we decided to focus on two kinds of lettuce, Bibb and Butterhead. (See, we are very loose about using the letter “B” to frame our topics for this episode!) If you are thinking of growing lettuce in your garden, it’s getting close to time to start them outdoors, depending on where you live. In other news—as they say—while editing this episode, I looked up lettuce on the All-America Selections site and found out that an old standard butterhead, 'Buttercrunch,' is an AAS Winner from 1963! It’s as old as Dee!
On the bookshelf, we talked about a new book we got review copies of: Go Forth and Forage: A Guide to Foraging Over 50 of the Most Common Edible & Medicinal North American Mushrooms by Whitney Johnson (Amazon). If you have any thoughts of foraging for mushrooms, we recommend this book. It’s a fun and enthusiastic look at how to safely and responsibly forage for edible mushrooms. You can follow her on Instagram where she’s appalachian_forager.
For our dirt, we talked about an article we found a while back about how they are using Prairie Strips in Row Crops (Iowa State University) to improve soil, stop erosion, bring in more pollinators, and just make life better all around.
Dee’s rabbit hole was all about pansies, so she brought up Pansies: How to Grow, Reimagine, and Create Beauty with Pansies and Violas by Brenna Estrada (Amazon) again, a book we talked about a few weeks ago.
I promised to put in the show notes what gothic horror book I’m listening to while I work on a new jigsaw puzzle. It’s The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (Amazon link), published in 1794. (That is not a typo. 1794.) I read about it in Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney. At regular speed, the audiobook is 32 hours, but it will take me a bit less time as I’ll listen at 1.25 speed. Will I finish the book before the puzzle or the puzzle before the book?
A couple more links and then we are at the end of this newsletter! The Lego bouquet I just built is Flower Arrangement and I put a picture of it on Instagram. Dee’s Instagram reel about downsizing her garden shows how much she’s reducing it! Go, Dee, go!
Now, one last link for those of you who have read all the way to the end. Ready? It’s exciting, at least we think so!
You can now watch us as we recorded this video because we posted it on YouTube. Now you can see us as we talk about flowers, veggies, and all the best dirt! You can see us hold up books and cute little flower pots. You can watch Dee’s cat try to butt into the conversation! We don’t promise there will be a video every week, but we are going to try for a while! (And yes, you can still listen to us as a podcast on all the podcast streaming platforms, including YouTube.)
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For more info on Carol visit her website. Visit her blog, May Dreams Gardens and check out her new weekly newsletter, In the Garden With Carol.
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Hi Dee and Carol!!! I have a question I've wrestled with for quite a while. My neighbor has a Rose of Sharon that she said her mother started from a cutting by just snipping off a branch and putting it into water. I have tried this several, several times. I have also tried dipping the end into rooting hormone and covering the pots with plastic bags to keep the humidity up. All these efforts were last summer and fall. I have just taken a new cutting in hopes that with only buds and no leaves, it will finally grow roots for me. Do you have any other suggestions? Many thanks from Jan Dodson in Oklahoma City.