There seems to be a big surge in interest for attracting dragonflies to gardens and many online sources are suggesting the best plants for the job. Titles include, 12 Best Plants to Attract Dragonflies and Best Plants to Create a Dragonfly Garden. The lists include things like rudbeckia, milkweed, yarrow and sage.
But do plants really attract dragonflies? And if they do, which plants work best?
You have probably heard the name; hugelkultur gardening (pronounced Hoo-gul-culture), but few people have actually tried it. It is also now being used to make hugelkultur raised beds.
Is this a gardening technique that you should try? What does the science say about it? Should we all stop what we are doing and make hugels?
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Dragonflies are great aerial acrobats and fun to watch. They are a nice addition to any garden and they eat large numbers of mosquitoes. The best way to attract them to your garden is to create a dragonfly pond which will give them a place to breed and raise their young.
In this post I’ll provide the information you need to build such a wildlife pond.
Banana peels are great for your plants, or at least that is what the internet says. You should bury some peels in the bottom of the hole when planting roses. You can add them to water and let them sit for a few days to make banana peel tea, an excellent fertilizer for indoor plants. Try drying them into a black leather and then crushing them to make banana skin powder which is great for the garden. I even found one web page that makes a fertilizer spray out of them.
Eating banana peels is also a hot topic and they reportedly provide all kinds of health benefits and even whiten teeth.
Lets have a look at the reality of banana peels for plants. Are they better than just another source of organic matter?
A few times a year I’ll see a meme float through social media telling gardeners they can die from soil borne diseases. The most recent of these was one for Legionnaires’ disease in New Zealand. I have also seen them for Tetanus, and I recently got my booster shot, just to be sure. For years I’ve been reading that sphagnum peat moss also carries a nasty bug.
As I write this, the news is saturated with information about the coronavirus and people are suiting up with masks and body armor. Should gardeners be doing the same thing when they head out into the garden? Should we wear masks and latex gloves to stay safe?
I decided to write a blog post about soil borne diseases that gardeners can get and try to uncover the myths about them. I expected to find 4 or 5 diseases and write a bit about each one so that I could try to understand this problem better.
You will be very surprised at what I found.
It is becoming popular to ascribe human characteristics to plants and the latest headlines say, Scientists Discover That Trees Have A “Heartbeat”. Imagine that, soon trees will be falling in love with each other.
Plants are extremely interesting organisms, but this habit of making them sound animal-like is confusing a lot of people. In a Facebook Group, gardeners started to question the harm we do to trees when we prune them – does it affect their heat? Do they feel pain?
This myth has a very clear beginning and illustrates how many modern day myths get started.
Edraianthus horvatii is a small companula-like plant with vivid blue flowers. It is not very common in gardens but deserves more attention.
You have probably heard the story that grass is greener after a lightning storm, but is this really true?
How can lightning affect the color of your lawn? Let’s shed some light on this story.
Humic Substances like humic acid are being promoted as important organic material that should be added to gardens to improve soil health. All gardeners have heard of humus, that friable, black gold that we all wish we had. Since you can’t buy humus, companies have started to provide the next best thing – humic substances.
You might think that humus and humic substances are the same thing, but they are not. We need to treat these two as separate products and evaluate each on its own merits.
In this post I will do a deep dive underground to better understand humic substances, humic acid and humates.
Indoor plants are not too fussy about the water they get, but certain conditions like pH, alkalinity, hardness, chlorine, and sodium levels are a concern. If the water is not suitable, plants fail to grow properly and may die. Many gardeners blame themselves for having black thumbs when, in fact, their problem is “black” water.
In this post, I will discuss things that you can do to try and correct any water issues you might have.
You have probably seen the memes showing you how to grow seeds in ice cream cones. There are lots of pictures on the internet, especially in places like Pinterest, showing nicely grown seedlings like the one pictured below.
The whole idea did not make sense to me, but who knows, maybe it’s a good idea and I’m just jealous that I didn’t think of it first.
I had to try it!
There are many different sources of water that can be used for plants including tap water, reverse osmosis water, softened water, and rain water. What are the differences between these and which are the best ones for plants?
When someone says, ” I just use tap water for my plants” you really have no idea what type of water they are using. It could be water straight from a municipal service or from a well. It could also be water that has gone through a softening process or a reverse osmosis system. It could be naturally hard or soft or it might contain a lot of sodium chloride. All of these can come out of a water tap.
In this post I will discuss the various types of water and how they affect plants. In a future post I will give some practical advice for solving problems you might have.
