Lots of gardeners are now growing milkweed because it helps monarch butterflies. However, many beginners face issues like poor germination or weak plant growth, similar to challenges covered in seed viability and seed preparation. However, a lot of people who start growing it find the seeds don’t sprout well, or the milkweed quickly takes over…
Everyone in North America probably knows how monarch butterflies and milkweed plants need each other to survive. Female monarchs will only put their eggs on milkweed, and caterpillars eat nothing else. Because of this, protecting milkweed is essential—something also explained in how to grow milkweed successfully. Scientists who study animals have said the monarch butterfly population…
Aphids are a really frequent and annoying problem for home gardeners. These tiny pests damage plants by sucking sap and spreading disease, similar to plant health issues explained in Why Houseplant Leaves Turn Yellow, when plants are under stress. You’ll find these little, squishy bugs in groups on the backs of leaves and on new,…
When summer gets really hot, going over 90 and even 100 degrees in lots of places, plants in the garden get a lot of heat problems. These heat-related problems can sometimes look similar to other issues, like those explained in why houseplant leaves turn yellow when plants are under stress. These aren’t always obvious even…
Each fall, people who own homes collect millions of tons of leaves and get rid of them, and in doing so they’re unknowingly getting rid of something really good for your garden. Leaf mold is what you get when leaves slowly break down; it’s dark and falls apart into little pieces and gardeners who have…
How far apart you plant your strawberries doesn’t seem hugely important, but studies on farms have repeatedly demonstrated that it’s one of the biggest things influencing how big your berries get, how much fruit you harvest, and how well your plants do. If they’re too close together, the plants will battle for sun, water and…
All vegetable gardens require nitrogen, because it’s the nutrient that most directly causes plants to grow lots of green leaves and to be generally healthy. Buying and using nitrogen fertilizer every year costs a lot, and over the long term, chemically made nitrogen fertilizer can harm the life in your soil. Luckily, for millions of…
Buying strawberry plants with nothing on their roots (they’re asleep, as it were, and don’t have any soil around the roots) is the cheapest and most common way to start a whole new lot of strawberries. Twenty-five of these ‘bare root’ plants will generally cost you less than just one strawberry in a pot at…
You’ll find a ‘days to maturity’ number on almost all seed packets at garden centers: 60 days for bush beans, 75 for tomatoes, 30 for radishes. Lots of gardeners take this number as a promise, beginning the count from the day they plant and fully anticipating being able to gather their vegetables in precisely that…
You can harvest pumpkins and winter squash in September or October and enjoy them for food all the way through January, February or even March if you get them ready correctly after pulling them from the garden. This preparation, called curing, is straightforward but really important. It makes the outer skin thicker, allows little scrapes…
