Growing marginally hardy or non-hardy plants in cold climates usually involves growing them in containers and moving them indoors before winter. Everyone loves to see houseplants flourish when grown outside during warmer months – but no one likes bugs hitchhiking back inside! Fortunately, there are ways to remove unwelcome insects before they enter your home.
I recently asked our Facebook Group, Garden Fundamentals, what they used for washing fruits and vegetables and I got quite a range of answers. Some did not wash most items. Quite a few used just water and many used a type of soap. Vinegar and baking soda were also popular for washing fruits and vegetables.
What does the science say about different washing solutions for fruits and vegetables?
Paper and cardboard provide a good carbon source for composting, and they are also used for sheet mulching and lasagna gardening, but is it safe to use paper and cardboard in the garden?
Bleached paper contains chlorine and dioxin, a known carcinogen. Inks contain heavy metals, and BPA is used in some types of paper. Much of this paper is recycled, and the recycled paper contains these various chemicals. Is it safe to compost paper and cardboard?
Clematis terniflora, the sweet autumn clematis, is a great plant for the fall garden. It is flowering right now in a large swath that covers a mature lilac and some neighboring plants as well. It is easy to grow and flowers every year.
Everyone loves fresh veggies but the amount of work that goes into a vegetable garden is a lot less appealing. Perennial vegetables are gaining popularity as a lower-maintenance alternative to conventional annual crops. You can plant perennial vegetables once and enjoy harvests for years to come.
This is not a new concept – many parts of the world rely on perennial vegetables, like cassava and taro, that live for many years and can be maintained and harvested by hand. Many annuals in the north are grown as perennials in warm, southern climates. Still, there are many wonderful perennial vegetables that grow well in colder climates.
To prune or not to prune suckers on tomatoes – the age old debate continues – until now!
There are two distinct camps here. Some people prune suckers on tomatoes so that they end up with a single stem and they claim that is best. Others don’t prune suckers at all and they claim their method is best. And then there are the ones that sit on fence and sucker to two or three stems. In this blog I’ll tell you the best way to prune tomatoes.
I have grown Alyssoides utriculata for a number of years and I never see it mentioned in discussions. It really does deserve more attention. It is bright yellow, very easy to grow, seems long lived and makes really unusual seed heads. Consider this one for your rock garden.
Over the last 20 years, there have been a number of news reports about herbicide-contaminated manure, compost, straw, and organic fertilizer. This is a real problem for gardeners because such products will harm and even kill your plants. The danger is real!
I’ll answer all of these questions in this post. Every gardener should read it
Is organic food better? I know you have heard the marketing. It is more nutritious. It is healthier. It is better for the environment. But is any of that really true? How much of this is marketing hype by both companies and pro-organic groups, and what is the real science behind organic food?
Let’s get the facts about organic food.
Gardeners have been using fertilizer for many years and everyone recommends a particular ratio for each plant type. The rose society suggests, “6-12-6 is considered a Balanced Rose Food, as it supplies the basic ingredients in proportions beneficial to roses on a continual basis.” For tomatoes Burpee recommends, “such as 10-10-10, or where the middle number (phosphorus) is larger than the first number (nitrogen), such as 2-3-1″. Which is it, a 10-10-10 or a 2-3-1? I guess they don’t really know?
If you look at fertilizer supplies at your local nursery you will find numerous products labeled as rose fertilizer and each one has a different ratio. The same for tomato fertilizer – each manufacturer has their onw formula. Fertilizer for house plants or orchids is just as bad.
Here is a fundamental question:
Do different plants need different fertilizer formulations?
Almost everything you have read certainly suggests this is true, but does the science support this? Or is it more correct to say that most plants use exactly the same ratio of nutrients? After all, the biochemistry of all terrestrial plants is very similar.
In this post I will try to answer the question, what is the best NPK fertilizer ratio for plants?
Do you ever feel like you live in the wrong gardening zone? Do you live in a cold zone but crave the dramatic and lush look of a tropical garden?
The tropical look is sure to stand out and goes perfectly with hot summers, especially if your backyard has a lounge area or pool. There are lists of so-called cold-hardy tropical plants online, but many of them can only survive up to zones 7 or 8, which is considered warm by northern gardeners! This article will describe tropical-looking plants that can survive down to at least Zone 5.
One of the most frustrating things that happens to gardeners is putting in the effort to grow beautiful, healthy plants, only to have them chewed up by pests. You may have noticed that some of the leaves on your plants look skeletal – that is, most of the leaf tissue has been eaten, leaving behind the veins and petiole. This is likely the work of Japanese beetles. Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) are a particularly persistent invasive species that’s become a major pest in the garden. Even government-run control programs have failed to fully suppress populations, so gardeners should be prepared to keep this pest out of the garden.
This article will review various control methods to see which ones are best.
