What you do to your garden in the autumn really impacts how well it does next spring. If you just walk away from a garden after the final harvest, leaving the old plants in place, the earth uncovered for the winter rains and freezing, and your tools to get rusty, then you’ll have a lot…
That time from when the last really harsh freeze is over until you do your main planting is hugely important; it’s what makes the difference between a garden that does well and one that doesn’t. Gardeners who’ve been at it for a while use these three to six weeks (the length of time changes with…
Knowing if your garden soil is mainly sand, silt, or clay is helpful for all gardeners. This is because it has a big effect on how often you’ll need to water, how well the soil drains, what you should add to it to improve it, and which plants will grow well. Soil texture can be…
People really don’t understand fertilizer when they garden at home. Loads of gardeners think the way to get better growth is to use more fertilizer, and experts who study soil say this is actually one of the worst things a beginner can do to their plants. Putting on too much fertilizer can actually scorch the…
Any one gardening technique that stopped weeds, saved water, kept the soil at a good temperature, stopped soil from washing away, lessened plant illness and provided food for the life in the soil all at once and with very little work after you’ve done it, would be something all sensible gardeners would do. Mulching is…
It’s like taking medication with no idea of what’s wrong with you when you put fertilizer, lime, sulfur or compost onto your garden soil before discovering what’s in the soil already. It might help, it might not do a thing, or it could actually make things worse. A really good soil test from your county…
Gardeners often refer to compost as “black gold,” and with good reason. It’s what happens when you change food leftovers, bits from the garden, and other natural stuff into a lovely dark, crumbly addition to your soil. Once it’s finished, compost makes the soil itself better, provides nutrients to plants slowly, helps sandy soil hold…
Actually getting seeds going isn’t hard, yet the amount of advice you’ll find on the internet (and a lot of it that doesn’t agree, is old news, or isn’t based on any real proof) causes lots of gardeners to do things that are way too complicated or actually make starting seeds harder. Some popular seed…
Even gardeners who’ve been doing this for a long time will find their patience tried while waiting for seeds to sprout. Quite a few plants won’t show anything growing up from the earth for between two and three weeks, and this makes the person growing them look at nothing but empty soil and worry if…
It looks easy for a seed to start growing: you put one in the ground, give it water, and after a little or longer time, a little green shoot comes up. But a lot of complicated chemical stuff happens under the dirt, and it all needs the right amount of things in the environment to…
