The average American household throws away nearly a third of the fresh herbs it buys. That $4 clamshell of basil sitting in your refrigerator right now? Most of it will end up in the trash before the week is out. Meanwhile, your grandmother kept a single pot of parsley on her kitchen windowsill for years…
Something is shifting in backyards across the country. People are ditching the traditional vegetable patch in favor of something smaller, smarter, and a lot more beautiful. Kitchen gardens, once a relic of the past, are becoming popular again, and once you understand their appeal, you’ll want to add one to your landscape, too. A kitchen…
Your first frost date is not the day frost arrives. It is closer to a coin toss, and every October gardener loses their tomatoes, basil, and favorite potted plants because they read that date as a promise. The Old Farmer’s Almanac builds its frost dates from historical climate data using a 30 percent probability threshold,…
A backyard beehive will not save the bees, it will rarely save you money on honey, and, in several states, you are out of compliance with the law the moment you set up a single unregistered colony. That is not what the glossy starter kits promise. They sell a daydream: a humming garden, jars of…
The most expensive thing you bring home from a yard sale this fall might cost you fifty cents. It won’t be the chipped urn or the rusty rake. It will be the “bargain” that quietly leaches something into your vegetable bed or carries an invasive pest into soil you spent years building. Fall is prime…
The coffee grounds and carrot peels you scraped into the trash this morning are the raw ingredients for a fertilizer that sells for as much as $7 a pound, and, in a growing number of places, throwing them away can now get you fined. That sounds like an exaggeration. It isn’t. Vermont made food scraps…
That jar of home-canned pumpkin puree tucked in the back of your pantry is one of the few things food safety scientists say no home kitchen can make safely, no matter how carefully you follow the recipe. It isn’t the only habit that has quietly fallen out of favor. Many preservation methods passed down on…
The most expensive thing in your garden this year might be something you got for free. A truckload of “free” manure can carry a weedkiller that curls every tomato it touches, and the clump of groundcover a neighbor hands over the fence may be a plant your state has banned from being shared at all….
The biggest threat to your fall foliage trip this October isn’t rain, wind, or an early frost. It’s a $5 parking tag you didn’t know you needed. Several of America’s most famous leaf-peeping destinations have quietly rewritten the rules. The country’s most visited national park now cites cars without a printed parking tag. Maine’s best-known…