GROW WITH CONFIDENCE
Growing guides
Practical, beginner-friendly growing help backed by credible research, horticultural judgment, and honest first-hand experience where we have it.
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Featured growing guides
HARVEST GUIDE
When and How to Harvest Cucumbers
Cucumbers move from perfect to overgrown quickly. Learn how size, color, firmness, variety, picking frequency, and gentle harvest technique tell you when fruit is ready.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Bean Seeds Don’t Germinate: Early Problems & Fixes
Missing bean seedlings usually leave clues underground. Learn how cold and wet soil, drying, crusting, planting depth, damping off, and seedcorn maggot affect emergence—and how to decide whether to wait or replant.
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TOMATO GUIDE
Principe Borghese Tomato Growing Guide
Principe Borghese produces small, meaty tomatoes for drying, roasting and sauce. Learn how to start and support the compact determinate plant in the current Hollowstead listing, harvest ripe fruit, dry it with controlled heat, and save seed.
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SEED STORAGE & STARTING
How to Store Garden Seeds and Test Old Seed
Keep leftover seed dry, cool, and labeled, then use a small germination test to decide what deserves space in the next planting. Includes a counting example, storage checklist, and crop-specific next steps.
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SEED STARTING
The Complete Guide to Growing Tomatoes From Seed
Start tomato seeds with confidence. This guide covers the quick version first, then goes deep on temperature, light, watering, potting up, hardening off, transplant timing, containers, and common seedling problems.
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BEAN GROWING
Growing Beans From Seed: The Complete Guide
Grow beans with confidence from direct sowing through harvest. Learn when soil is warm enough, how deeply to sow, when climbing beans need support, how succession planting works, and how to diagnose common early problems.
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PEPPER SEED STARTING
Growing Peppers From Seed: The Complete Guide
Grow peppers from seed through harvest with warm germination, strong seedlings, soil preparation, transplant timing, steady moisture, sensible fertility, fruit-set troubleshooting, disease prevention, and harvest care.
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CUCUMBER SEED STARTING
Growing Cucumbers From Seed: The Complete Guide
Grow cucumbers from seed with warm-soil timing, direct sowing or careful transplanting, steady moisture, trellising, pollination, and frequent harvest.
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LETTUCE GROWING
Growing Lettuce From Seed: The Complete Guide
Grow leaf lettuce and romaine from shallow sowing through harvest. Plan for cool weather, choose your harvest style, keep moisture steady, and make room for a second crop.
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SEED STARTING
Growing Four Annual Herbs From Seed: Basil, Shiso, Cilantro & Dill
Start basil, shiso, cilantro, and dill with a crop-specific plan. Learn when to start indoors or direct sow, how to manage light and moisture, when to thin and transplant, and how to plan the first harvest.
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SEED STARTING
Growing Four Annual Flowers From Seed
Grow annual flowers from seed with a crop-by-crop plan for sowing, germination, thinning, transplanting, soil preparation, watering, pinching, bloom care, cutting, troubleshooting, and seed saving.
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GARDEN BASICS
What “Days to Maturity” Actually Means for Tomatoes and Other Garden Crops
Days to maturity is a planning estimate, not a harvest appointment. Learn when the count starts, how transplanted and direct-sown crops differ, and how weather, containers, and transplant stress change the real timeline.
Read the guideTomato variety guides
TOMATO GUIDE
Black Krim Tomato Growing Guide
Black Krim is a dark, indeterminate heirloom slicer with dramatic color and a reputation for rich flavor. Here is how to recognize ripe fruit, reduce cracking, support the vine, and decide if it belongs in your garden.
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TOMATO GUIDE
Black Cherry Tomato Growing Guide
Black Cherry produces small dusky tomatoes on a full-size indeterminate vine. Learn how the plant grows, how to judge ripeness, what causes splitting, and whether it fits your garden.
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TOMATO GUIDE
Yellow Pear Tomato Growing Guide
Grow small yellow pear-shaped tomatoes on a full-size vine. Learn sowing, support, ripeness, cracking, containers, seed saving, and how Yellow Pear compares with the other four Hollowstead tomatoes.
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BICOLOR HEIRLOOM
Growing Pineapple Tomatoes: A Bicolor Heirloom Guide
Grow large yellow-and-red Pineapple tomatoes with a warm start, steady watering, strong support, and a patient harvest. Compare this bicolor slicer with the other Hollowstead tomato varieties.
Read the guideBean variety guides
BEAN VARIETY GUIDE
Royal Burgundy Bush Bean Growing Guide
Royal Burgundy is a compact purple-podded snap bean that needs no climbing trellis. Learn when to sow it, how the bush habit changes garden planning, when to harvest, and why the pods turn green when cooked.
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BEAN VARIETY GUIDE
Red Noodle Yard Long Bean Growing Guide
Red Noodle is a heat-loving yardlong bean with vigorous vines and burgundy-red pods. Learn how warm it wants to be, how much trellis to build, when to sow, and how to judge the best harvest stage.
Read the guidePepper variety guides
PEPPER VARIETY GUIDE
Jimmy Nardello Pepper Growing Guide
Grow Jimmy Nardello from warm seed start to fully red harvest, with variety-specific guidance on growth habit, support, watering, fruit load, containers, frying quality, and seed saving.
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PEPPER VARIETY GUIDE
Fish Pepper Growing Guide
Grow Fish Pepper with guidance on its normal variegation, warm seed starting, compact habit, canopy care, multicolor harvest stages, containers, Chesapeake history, and seed saving.
Read the guideCucumber variety guides
CUCUMBER VARIETY GUIDE
Lemon Cucumber Growing Guide
Lemon Cucumber produces round fruit that ripens from pale green toward lemon yellow. Learn sowing, spacing, vine support, pollination, watering, and the best harvest stage.
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CUCUMBER GUIDE
Marketmore 76 Cucumber Growing Guide
Grow Marketmore 76 for dark-green slicing cucumbers. Learn warm-soil sowing, trellising, pollination, harvest size, watering, common problems, and saving seed.
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CUCUMBER GUIDE
National Pickling Cucumber Growing Guide
Grow National Pickling for frequent harvests of small, firm cucumbers. Learn planting, pollination, harvest sizes, planning pickle batches, common problems and seed saving.
Read the guideLettuce variety guides
LETTUCE GUIDE
Red Sails Lettuce Growing Guide
Grow Red Sails for red-bronze, ruffled leaf lettuce. Learn shallow sowing, full-plant spacing, repeat leaf harvests, cool-season timing, containers and seed saving.
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LETTUCE GUIDE
Parris Island Cos Lettuce Growing Guide
Grow Parris Island Cos for upright romaine heads or earlier leaf harvests. Learn shallow sowing, full-head spacing, cool-season timing, harvesting, problems and seed saving.
Read the guideHerb variety guides
THAI BASIL GUIDE
Thai Basil Growing Guide
Grow Thai basil for fragrant summer leaves and distinctive purple stems. Learn how to start seed, manage warmth and moisture, pinch for branching, handle flower spikes, and harvest for the kitchen.
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SHISO GUIDE
Green Shiso Growing Guide
Green shiso rewards a patient start with a vigorous warm-season leaf crop. Learn how to sow fresh seed, manage slower germination, pinch for branching, and harvest tender leaves.
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CILANTRO GUIDE
Slow Bolt Cilantro Growing Guide
Grow Slow Bolt cilantro as a cool-season leaf crop, then let selected plants finish for coriander seed. Learn succession sowing, harvest timing, heat management, bolting, and container care.
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DILL GUIDE
Mammoth Long Island Dill Growing Guide
Mammoth dill is a tall annual for feathery foliage, yellow umbels, and later seed. Learn direct sowing, spacing, staking, leaf harvest, flower harvest, and mature seed collection.
Read the guideFlower variety guides
SUNFLOWER GUIDE
Lemon Queen Sunflower Growing Guide
Grow Lemon Queen sunflower as a tall, branching annual for pale-yellow blooms, cut stems, pollinator value, succession sowings, mature seed heads, and intentional seed saving.
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COSMOS GUIDE
Sensation Mixture Cosmos Growing Guide
Grow Sensation cosmos for tall, airy summer color and cut flowers with direct sowing, modest fertility, pinching, support, repeated harvest, deadheading, and seed saving.
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ZINNIA GUIDE
California Giant Mix Zinnia Growing Guide
Grow California Giant Mix zinnias for tall summer color and cutting stems with warm-soil sowing, spacing, pinching, support, base watering, disease prevention, harvesting, and seed saving.
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CALENDULA GUIDE
Zeolights Calendula Growing Guide
Grow Zeolights calendula as a productive cool-season flower with spring and fall sowing, summer heat management, regular harvest, edible petals, drying, deadheading, and seed saving.
Read the guideSeedling & troubleshooting
TROUBLESHOOTING
Tomato Seedlings Are Leggy: Causes, Fixes & Prevention
Leggy tomato seedlings usually mean the plant is growing faster than the available light can support. Learn how to diagnose the cause, rescue recoverable plants, and prevent the problem next time.
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TRANSPLANTING
How to Harden Off Tomato Seedlings Without Stunting Them
Indoor tomato seedlings need time to adjust to full sun, wind, temperature swings, and faster drying. This guide explains a flexible hardening-off process that protects plants without deliberately starving or stunting them.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Pepper Seeds Take So Long to Germinate
Troubleshoot slow pepper germination by checking root-zone temperature, moisture and oxygen, sowing depth, seed age, heat-mat use, damping-off symptoms, and when to start a backup sowing.
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TRANSPLANTING
How to Harden Off and Transplant Pepper Seedlings
Move pepper seedlings outdoors with a flexible hardening timeline, readiness checks, sun and wind progression, warm-weather transplant timing, correct depth and spacing, and first-week stress care.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Pepper Flowers Fall Off or Don’t Set Fruit
Diagnose pepper blossom drop with temperature thresholds, moisture and fertility checks, pollination context, early-flower guidance, container heat clues, and a fast fruit-set decision chart.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Cucumbers Turn Bitter, Yellow, or Misshapen
Bitter flavor, yellow fruit, and crooked cucumbers are useful clues. Learn how stress, overripeness, water, and incomplete pollination affect fruit quality and what to change.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Herbs Bolt — and What to Do About It
Bolting is the shift from leafy growth to flowers and seed. Learn why heat, long days, maturity, water stress, and root stress push herbs to flower and what actually helps extend the leaf harvest.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
Why Flowers Don’t Bloom — or Bloom Poorly
Troubleshoot weak or missing flowers in a logical order by checking maturity, season, sun, water, roots, fertility, spacing, weather, pests, disease, and harvest practices.
Read the guideTomato growing skills
CONTAINER TOMATOES
Growing Tomatoes in Containers: Pots, Support, and Watering
Plan pots, support, and watering for all five Hollowstead tomatoes, including Yellow Pear and Pineapple. Compare growth habits, choose a generous root volume, and check moisture daily.
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TOMATO SUPPORT & PRUNING
How to Support and Prune Indeterminate Tomatoes
Choose a cage, stake, or string system for Black Krim, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear, or Pineapple. Identify suckers, keep useful foliage, and distinguish indeterminate training from determinate care.
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TOMATO & PEPPER PROBLEMS
Blossom-End Rot in Tomatoes and Peppers: What to Check
A dark fruit tip calls for a diagnosis, not an automatic dose of calcium. Check symptom location, root-zone moisture, and feeding history, then protect the next developing fruit.
Read the guideBean growing skills
BEAN COMPARISON
Bush Beans vs. Pole Beans vs. Yardlong Beans
Bush, pole, and yardlong beans can all produce tender pods, but they use the garden very differently. Compare support, space, harvest pattern, summer heat preference, and the situations where each growth habit makes sense.
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TRELLISING
How to Trellis Pole and Yardlong Beans
Build bean support before the vines need it. Compare teepees, row trellises, panels, and arches; learn how tall to build for pole versus yardlong beans; and plan anchoring, training, spacing, and harvest access.
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HARVEST GUIDE
When and How to Harvest Beans
Bean harvest quality depends more on pod stage than the date on a packet. Learn the cues for tender snap beans and yardlong beans, how often to pick, how to avoid breaking stems, and when a pod has moved toward shell or dry-bean maturity.
Read the guidePepper growing skills
HARVEST GUIDE
When and How to Harvest Peppers
Choose the right pepper harvest stage for green eating, full ripe flavor, continued production, storage, or seed saving, with specific cues for Jimmy Nardello and Fish Pepper.
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CONTAINER GUIDE
Growing Peppers in Containers
Grow productive peppers in containers with enough root volume, airy potting mix, drainage, sun, steady water, moderate fertilizer, branch support, root-zone heat management, and troubleshooting.
Read the guideCucumber growing skills
CUCUMBER COMPARISON
Lemon vs. Marketmore 76 vs. National Pickling Cucumbers
Choose among Hollowstead’s three cucumbers by fruit shape, kitchen use and harvest routine. Compare Lemon, Marketmore 76 and National Pickling without overlooking their shared vine, water and pollination needs.
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TRELLISING
How to Trellis Cucumbers
Train cucumber vines vertically with a row trellis, teepee, panel, or fence. Learn support height, anchoring, planting layout, vine training, and harvest access.
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POLLINATION GUIDE
Cucumber Pollination: Why Flowers Don’t Make Fruit
Learn the difference between male and female cucumber flowers, how bees create fruit set, why fruit sometimes aborts or grows misshapen, and when hand pollination helps.
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CONTAINER GUIDE
Growing Cucumbers in Containers
Grow cucumbers on a patio or small space with enough root volume, a draining potting mix, full sun, steady moisture, vertical support, and frequent harvest.
Read the guideLettuce growing & harvest skills
GERMINATION HELP
Why Lettuce Seeds Don’t Germinate
Work through lettuce seed failures by checking the seed zone, sowing depth, moisture, and seed lot. Use a small controlled test to decide whether to wait, change conditions, or restart.
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CONTAINER GROWING
Growing Lettuce in Containers
Build a manageable lettuce container with the right mix, drainage, spacing, and light. Learn how to water a shallow-rooted crop and plan pots for baby leaves or finished heads.
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SEASONAL PLANNING
Succession Planting Lettuce for Spring and Fall
Turn lettuce into manageable batches instead of one oversized harvest. Build a flexible sowing cycle, work backward for fall, and adjust the plan to weather, growth, and how much you eat.
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HARVEST GUIDE
How to Harvest Leaf Lettuce and Romaine
Choose between outer leaves, baby-leaf cuts, and finished romaine heads. Learn where to cut, what to leave for regrowth, when quality is slipping, and how to handle fresh lettuce safely.
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HEAT & BOLTING
Why Lettuce Bolts or Turns Bitter
Learn the difference between a forming romaine head and a rising flower stalk, why heat and season matter, and when to harvest, replace, or deliberately keep lettuce for seed.
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PLANT PROBLEM GUIDE
Lettuce Pests and Common Growing Problems
Read lettuce damage before treating it. Compare aphids, slug and caterpillar feeding, seedling collapse, tipburn, mildew, and crown rot, with practical steps for a raw salad crop.
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SEED SAVING
How to Save Lettuce Seeds
Reserve healthy lettuce plants, let them flower, and collect dry seedheads as they mature. Learn how selection, isolation, careful cleaning, labels, and a later test preserve a useful seed lot.
Read the guideHerb growing & harvest skills
GARDEN PLANNING
Succession Planting Herbs for a Longer Harvest
Avoid one huge herb planting followed by an empty gap. Learn how to stagger cilantro, dill, basil, and shiso sowings, overlap generations, use containers, and track the intervals that work in your garden.
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HARVEST GUIDE
When and How to Harvest Herbs
Harvest basil, cilantro, dill, and shiso without cutting away the plant’s future. Learn when to pinch, snip, gather leaves, harvest flowers, and leave stems for mature seed.
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CONTAINER GUIDE
Growing Herbs in Containers
Grow herbs on a patio, porch, or small space with the right pot, drainage, potting mix, sun, watering, feeding, airflow, and harvest routine.
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PRESERVING HERBS
How to Dry and Preserve Garden Herbs
Preserve garden herbs safely with air drying, dehydrator drying, freezing, and dry storage. Learn when to harvest, how to avoid mold, and how to store dried leaves and seed.
Read the guideFlower growing & harvest skills
GARDEN PLANNING
Succession Planting Flowers for Continuous Blooms
Build continuous flower harvests with repeat sowings, overlapping generations, crop-specific intervals, frost-date planning, bed resets, and records for sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, and calendula.
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FLOWER CARE
How to Deadhead Flowers for More Blooms
Deadhead annual flowers more precisely by learning where to cut, how each crop responds, how often to revisit plants, what diseased material to remove, and when to stop for seed saving.
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HARVEST GUIDE
When and How to Cut Flowers for Bouquets
Harvest better homegrown bouquets by cutting at the right flower stage, using clean tools and buckets, conditioning stems quickly, protecting foliage from vase water, and managing vase conditions.
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CONTAINER GUIDE
Growing Flowers in Containers
Grow annual flowers in containers by matching mature plant size to root volume, drainage, potting mix, sun, watering, fertility, support, and a crop-specific container strategy.
Read the guideHollowstead Growing Notes
A little help for your next growing season
Practical sowing advice, help choosing seeds, and occasional Hollowstead shop news. Usually one or two emails a month, plus a short welcome note.
Choose your topics and frequency after you confirm. Our guides and planting calendar are always free.