Every summer, millions of homeowners dump bag after bag of fertilizer onto their lawns, run their sprinklers faithfully, and still watch the grass turn brown. The secret most of them never learn is that their soil pH is off, which means the nutrients are being chemically locked out of the grass roots before they ever …

Most backyard bird feeders are not bird sanctuaries. They are, by nearly every measure that conservation biologists use, the fast food drive-through of the avian world: convenient for the customer, questionable in its health outcomes, and decidedly more beneficial to the franchise than to anyone it claims to serve. That may sound harsh, especially for …

Right now, while you are inside waiting for the heat to break, something quiet and destructive is happening in your garden. Squash bugs are laying eggs in the debris you left around your zucchini. Fungal spores are spreading through the leaf litter you meant to clean up last weekend. And every weed you walked past …

Your joints ache, your knees protest, and somewhere along the way, someone told you that gardening was a young person’s game. That someone was wrong, and a University of Arkansas study of more than 3,300 women proves it. Researchers found that women over 50 who gardened at least once a week had higher bone density …

You are almost certainly spending more money at the grocery store on worse produce than you can find at the farmer’s market right now. The tomatoes in your grocery store cart were picked green two weeks ago in another state, gassed with ethylene to turn red, and priced higher per pound than the vine-ripened heirlooms …

Your grandmother never paid $8 for a pint of blueberries. Nor did she spend $5 on a bunch of rosemary that goes limp in the refrigerator before the week is out. She didn’t have to. She grew them herself, in a patch of ground behind the house that fed her family for twenty years without …

Before there were supplements, there were gardens. For most of human history, the pharmacy was a patch of soil near the kitchen door: a few square feet of thyme, chamomile, and feverfew, tended by women who knew exactly which leaf to reach for when a fever spiked or a stomach ached. That knowledge wasn’t written …

If you’re watering your drought-resistant perennials every few days out of habit, you are actively working against them. Most gardeners discover this the hard way, after years of dragging a hose to plants that were quietly begging to be left alone. The great irony of drought-tolerant gardening is that overwatering is the primary killer of …

Are you sitting at home, reading this article while nursing a sore lower back from an afternoon in the garden? When I think of spending time gardening, I imagine images of blooming flowers, warm rays of sunshine, cold glasses of iced tea, and wide-brimmed hats. However, if you’ve ever hobbled back into the house with …

That gorgeous tree shading your back patio might be writing you a bill that you can’t afford. Foundation damage caused by tree roots is one of the most expensive and least visible threats to a home, and most homeowners never see it coming until doors stop closing, basement walls crack, or a home inspector delivers …