That cottage garden you’ve been tending for years? It may already be one of the most hazardous spaces in your yard. The plants most likely to send a child or a pet to the emergency room aren’t the exotic specimens or the ones marked with warning labels at the nursery. They’re the classics: the same…
One morning, you walk out to check on your beans, and the leaves look like green lace with ragged holes, bare stems, whole sections stripped overnight. You didn’t see it coming. But something did. Grasshoppers are among the most destructive garden pests in the United States, and they operate fast. As Colorado State University Extension…
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…
Most gardeners put their tools away in August, convinced the growing season is winding down. That single assumption may be costing you hundreds of dollars every year. The vegetables you plant right now, in the final days of summer, will produce some of the best food your garden has ever grown. Fall gardens are actually…
Most people picture a wildfire as a wall of flame rolling down a hillside. That image is wrong, and it may be the reason your home is at risk right now. The truth is, the majority of homes lost to wildfire never make direct contact with the blaze at all. They ignite from embers; tiny,…
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…
Every spring, millions of home gardeners load up their carts with perennials at full retail price, take them home, plant them in warming soil, and congratulate themselves on a productive weekend. What most of them never learn is that the same coneflower, the same black-eyed Susan, the same daylily would have cost half as much,…
The most beautiful gardens you will see next spring are not being planned in March. They are being planted right now, in the fall, by gardeners who know something most people do not: the perennials that go into the ground this season will come back next year with deeper roots, stronger stems, and more blooms…
You’ve tried cutting them into fun shapes, hiding them in smoothies, and you’ve offered sticker charts, dessert bribes, and the classic “just one more bite” negotiation that ends in tears on both sides. And still, the peas sit untouched at the edge of the plate. If you want to turn a picky eater into a…