I want to share with you some tips about growing your own rosemary and potatoes. Both are easy to do, and require little maintenance throughout the growing season.

A classic culinary herb, rosemary makes a great dry rub ingredient for meats, brings out the savory flavor highlights of beans and lentils, gives flavor momentum to breads, and pairs beautifully with lemon in sweet cakes and custards.

The last crop to go into the garden, garlic is planted in fall and harvested the following summer. Flavorful, nutritious, and helpful for warding off vampires, garlic also is easy to grow as long as you plant varieties suited to your climate. Fertile, well-drained soils with a near-neutral pH between 6.5 and 7.0 are best for growing garlic.

A fast-growing annual, cilantro thrives in cool weather. You will find seeds widely available on retail seed racks and in mail-order catalogs. Among named varieties, “Santo” is a little slower to bolt than the species (wild) cilantro, and “Festival” and “Janta” have large leaves that help them grow quickly to a mature size. When sown in fall, established plants of any variety often survive winter in U.S. Department of Agriculture Zones 7 and 8. Where hard freezes are frequent, the plants need the protection of a plastic tunnel. In all climates, sow seeds at least twice a year where you want the plants to grow — first thing in spring and again in late summer, for a fall crop. Choose a sunny spot, and use only a little fertilizer — too much can make the leaves taste bland.

For many people, lawn maintenance is a laborious chore. Every weekend finds us trudging to the garage and fighting to start our reluctant, gas-powered rotary mower. Then we push the snarling little demon over wet, slippery grass, never minding the half-inch thick cutter blade whirling at 2500 rpm just inches from our tender toes. Why do we do it? And how can we stop doing it? A low-maintenance lawn is easier to achieve than you think.