If you’ve ever harvested a pot full of bitter, hollow cucumbers after a summer of work, you already know how wrong this vegetable can go. Container cucumbers have a reputation for being finicky, and for a lot of gardeners, that reputation is earned. Not because cucumbers are actually difficult, but because most people are repeating …
Gardening
Most gardeners are quietly draining their budgets every spring on things that expert horticulturalists say you never needed in the first place. Expensive nursery transplants, the custom raised bed frames, and the bagged compost at $18 a bag start to add up. The gap between a money-saving garden and a money-draining one almost always comes …
Watching a hummingbird hover delicately at a flower, its tiny wings beating up to 80 times per second, ranks among gardening’s most magical moments. These jewel-toned aerial acrobats don’t visit flowers randomly—they’ve co-evolved with specific bloom shapes that perfectly match their feeding anatomy. Tubular flowers, with their elongated throats and hidden nectar reserves, create the …
While grass lawns certainly have their place, such as play spaces for children and pets, they also require upkeep that drains our time and negatively affects the natural environment. How many hours and gallons of gas are spent mowing unused spaces? These low-traffic sections of the yard can be replaced with grass alternatives for lawns …
Watching colorful finches and cardinals flock to a backyard brings a quiet joy to morning routines. People spend lots of money on seeds and stations to support local wildlife and bring nature closer to their windows. However, feeding wild animals alters natural behaviors and ecosystems in ways most homeowners never notice. Providing an artificial food …
Most gardeners do not lose their spring garden on the last frost date – they lose it on the first warm Saturday in April, when enthusiasm outpaces timing and a season of careful preparation gets undone in a single afternoon. The first buds appear, the sun stays out for three days in a row, and …
Here is a mistake more home gardeners make than any other in spring: they wait. They watch the forecast, they fuss over the date, and they hold off planting until the weather feels safely warm. By the time they finally put seeds in the ground, the cool-season window has already closed. The crops that should …
Your grandmother never paid $8 for a pint of blueberries. She didn’t have to. Neither did she spend $5 on a bunch of rosemary that goes limp in the refrigerator before the week is out. She grew them herself, in a patch of ground behind the house that fed her family for twenty years without …
Discovering wildlife in your backyard can be one of the joys of gardening and homeownership. From busy squirrels to colorful birds, these visitors often add a touch of nature to our personal green spaces. However, not all creatures are welcome guests. While many common garden snakes are harmless and even beneficial, helping to control rodent …
My attempts at growing brassicas, or members of the cabbage family, have been all but thwarted by pests like cabbage loopers, cabbageworms, and harlequin beetles. And when the ravaged plants have finally had time to recover and begin producing, they bolt instead, because the summer heat has set in. While any of a slew of …