Vermicomposting, or composting with worms, is an excellent alternative to traditional composting. Composting at home is a surefire way to increase the produce yield of your garden while reducing your carbon footprint by repurposing old kitchen scraps. But while you may have heard about cold ...
How to Plant a Pollinator Garden (And Why You Should)
What is a Pollinator? When talking about pollinator gardens and habitats, a pollinator is usually an insect but can be a small bird or other critters. As part of its regular activities, any animal or insect that transfers pollen from one flower to another is a pollinator. Common examples ...
11 DIY Homemade Plant Fertilizers (With Recipes)
One of the joys of gardening or caring for houseplants is watching that plant grow, thrive, and maybe even flower or yield fruit. Sometimes, our plants, whether in the garden or a container in our home, are not getting everything they need from the soil and need a little boost to their diet of ...
How to Choose Plants and Seeds for Seed Saving and Self Sufficiency
If you’re gardening with an eye toward future seed saving, you’ll need to be selective in choosing the plants and seeds that you plant. Not all seeds can be saved from all the plants that are out there—at least not with good production and results in the future. At the planting stage, there are a ...
12 Tips for Planting Fruit Trees + How To Do It
Spring is the time for starting seeds, cleaning the garage, and picking out new patio furniture cushions. It is also the time to plant new fruit trees. Garden centers and nurseries are awash with containerized stock, begging to be crammed in the car and brought home. With so many orchard ...
Growing a Garden for Survival and Self-Sufficiency: Plant Selection
If you can grow and produce your own food, you will never have to worry about whether there will be food there for you. You won’t be stressed when the grocery store shelves start looking bare, when shortages get shorter, or when prices rise to the point of being unaffordable. More and more, ...
How to Use Paper as Weed Control in the Garden
Paper (including cardboard and other paper products) is great for use in the garden. Most of us have far too much of it laying around, so why not make the most of it and make our gardening lives better? Though there are several ways to use paper in gardening, one of the best ways to use paper in ...
10 Things Smart Gardeners Do in May
Ah, May. It’s the month we gardeners have been waiting for! If you’re warm and lucky you’ve got your garden well under way and the weather is moderating. If you’re in a more northern clime, your perennial trees and plants are waking up and you’re just about ready to take off running (or ...
18 North American Native Perennials
Native perennial plants and flowers deserve a treasured place in any landscape. Perennials native to North America play a vital role in increasing garden health, improving the environment, and adding beauty. These native perennials grow naturally in North America; they're adaptable, low ...
7 Sustainable Gardening Practices and Why They're Important
If you've heard of sustainable gardening, you may be wondering what it is, why it's such a hot topic at the moment, and whether it's worth knowing. There's a good reason to start sustainable gardening, and it's really quite simple to do once you know the basics. Sustainable gardening techniques are ...