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Martha Stewart has one passion that rivals — if not surpasses — her love of cooking. While she’s best known for elegant entertaining and expert advice on hosting a memorable dinner party, Stewart isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty — literally. The culinary icon is also an avid gardener who has devoted hundreds of segments on her television shows, and even an entire series, to the art of growing just about anything green.
Today, Stewart’s primary residence is a 1925 farmhouse in Bedford, New York, surrounded by more than 150 acres of land that include greenhouses, orchards, gardens, and farm animals. This property is a testament to her love of agriculture, and although Stewart has staff to help manage the large operation, she’s always been a hands-on gardener; she has even shared that she likes to be out in the garden as early as 6 a.m., pulling weeds as the sun rises.
Most of us don’t have an entire farm to plant on, but Martha Stewart has shared countless gardening tips over the years that work for even the smallest backyard gardens and planter boxes. We’ve rounded up three of her top pieces of advice for beginner gardeners to help anyone hoping to cultivate fresh herbs, vegetables, and fruits this spring or summer.
Source your seeds from around the world
When deciding which plants to grow, you’re most likely looking through a small selection of seeds available at your local gardening store. In a video tutorial shared on CBS Sunday Morning in 2025, Stewart points out that this is perfectly fine but suggests trying a different approach that lets you access any kind of seed you can imagine: browsing a seed catalog.
“I find that perusing catalogs from all over the world is really the nicest way to get your seeds,” the entertaining pro explains. “When I go to Paris, I go right to the Île de la Cité and to a not-so-little store called Vilmorin, and I buy every kind of vegetable seed.”
Related: How to Be an Imperfectly Joyful Gardener, Even if You’ve Never Done It Before
You don’t need to go to Paris to access the kind of seed library that Vilmorin has. As Stewart notes, seed catalogs offer a much wider array of plant types to choose from than what you’ll usually see at a local store, and these inventories make it easy to consider and plan your garden layout in advance. You can request copies of seed catalogs online or, in some cases, even view them via websites.
Test your soil quality
One of the most common mistakes new gardeners make is overlooking the quality of their soil. As novices we may consider how often to water plants, strategies for keeping bugs away, and the amount of sunlight in the garden, but Stewart wants to remind everyone that what’s in the soil is just as important.
While speaking with The Spruce in 2025, the businesswoman emphasized that you should “have the soil tested, first of all. It’s very important. I send my soil every single year or two to the county extension at Cornell University, and they test my soil, and they tell me what’s lacking or what I have too much of in the soil. It’s a very good thing to do.”
Testing the soil will give you greater insight into its nutrient levels and pH, which are essential for plant growth. This doesn’t have to be expensive — DIY soil test kits are available online for less than $20. Additionally, testing your garden’s soil saves money in the long run by helping you determine the best fertilizer, eliminating guesswork and trial and error.
Start with something easy
Like any other hobby — such as knitting or playing chess — gardening takes time to perfect. Martha Stewart has emphasized in multiple interviews that beginner gardeners should start small and gradually expand to larger plots and crops; even she didn’t start out with more than a hundred acres to tend.
This strategy extends to the crops you choose to plant. Attempting to cultivate produce that’s very temperamental (like cauliflower, which is sensitive to temperature changes) or takes a long time to mature (like fruit trees) isn’t the best choice for your first stab at gardening. Stewart suggests a better place to start: try growing some lettuce.
Related: 5 Tips for Starting an Edible Indoor Garden, According to a Plant Expert
She explains in a 2013 YouTube interview that “a great vegetable to grow is lettuce. You can plant all kinds of lettuce, and there are hundreds of varieties. Lettuce is so rewarding because you can pick it as leaves or you can let some of it go to heads…”
Better yet, lettuce is one of the fastest edible crops you can grow. If you start lettuce from seeds, you’ll likely be able to harvest it in about 30 to 60 days, especially if you choose a quick-growing variety like a loose-leaf lettuce. That means fresh salads with homegrown greens are just over a month away.
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