Two birds have just chimed in to an unusually noisy competition: the race to be considered the loudest bird in the world. The bare-throated bellbird and red-legged seriema can both produce calls that exceed 120 decibels, according to a new University of Massachusetts Amherst study published in Evolution. That puts them alongside the white bellbird,…
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,…
Cracks, a damaged fence, and other assorted problems around a 130-year-old home all led one Australian homeowner to point the finger of blame at six trees growing next door. Catherine Armstrong took neighboring property owners to court seeking removal of the trees and A$23,650.86 in repair costs, or about $16,500 USD. According to the Land…
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…
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 most expensive moment in your vegetable garden isn’t spring planting. It’s the last few weeks of the fall garden harvest, when everything comes in at once, and a startling share of it never reaches the table. Most fall garden harvest ideas you’ll find are about recipes and porch displays: squash soup, apple centerpieces, and…