Millet

Millet failing to germinate, lodging before harvest, or birds stripping seed heads? Here’s the specific fix for each — diagnosed by cause.

If you’ve ever looked at a tray of ornamental millet seedlings at the nursery and wondered how one species can produce such wildly different plants, you’re asking the right question. Ornamental millet varieties span a remarkable visual range: from the brooding, near-black plumes of Purple Majesty to the sunburst-striped foliage of Jester and the understated jade-green spikes of Jade Princess. …

Ornamental millet does something most garden annuals struggle to accomplish: it gets better as summer turns to fall. Those dramatic seed heads — arching in deep purple, burgundy, or bronze — reach their peak exactly when most borders start looking tired. But millet truly shines when you stop treating it as a standalone accent and start pairing it with the …

A bag of pricey ‘gourmet’ birdseed was the beginning of it all. One afternoon, as I was filling my feeder, I stopped to admire the stunning pearly orbs that were mixed in with the sunflower seeds. ‘I bet I can grow that,’ came to mind. I was immediately captivated by the science of these extraordinarily resilient grasses after my inquisitiveness …