Starting a vegetable garden can be a rewarding prospect for any homeowner. In addition to having fresh veggies on the ready, digging in the dirt has big health benefits. Though yanking out weeds might ...

Most people wouldn’t lament the fact that they had run out of partially rotten straw, primarily because they wouldn’t keep the stuff around in the first place. But I do and I did run out, and for me, ...

Summer has definitely arrived. With temperatures reaching the high 90s and 100s every day, water is quickly lost from soils and plants. Evapotranspiration is the agricultural term for the total amount ...

Cold weather is on the way, so it’s important to take one last look at your yard and garden to make sure everything is tucked ...

Getting your garden ready for fall and winter is key to ensuring healthy soil and a strong start next spring. To prepare your ...

Do you utilize mulch in the garden? If you do, that’s great! If you don’t, you should consider adding mulch to the garden, as there are many benefits. Benefits of mulch include preserving moisture, ...

Mulch isn”t the most exciting garden topic — after all, what can you say about something that just lies on the ground? But savvy gardeners know that putting down a layer of wood chips, bark, straw or ...

Peppers, tomatoes and cabbage getting started, soon after being planted in straw bales. Growing vegetables out of straw bales is a hot topic lately after a web-site and Facebook frenzy led to a book ...

Wood mulch and wood chips will mat down to make a firm but spongy surface for your garden paths and around playsets. Pine straw is too slippery to walk on, so skip it when mulching these high-traffic ...

I love discovering new, useful things for the garden. My most recent find is pine straw mulch. For years, I’ve used white pine needles (Pinus strobus) to bed down my strawberry patch for the winter.

A recent conversation with Carol Reese took me back, way back to my earliest days as a gardener. Carol, who retired in 2021 from a distinguished career as a horticultural extension specialist in the ...

Slouching like a gardener on a hot summer afternoon, my straw bales are sagging under the weight of their growing load. Four humongous squash plants form a green umbrella with their large leaves, ...