What happens when common sense clashes with science?
A lot of gardening information is based on information provided by others. This mostly comes from past experience and common sense. But past experience is largely based on previous common sense. Great, great granddad thought double digging made sense, he tried it, it worked – whatever that means – and it has been passed down through the ages.
What happens when new science provides facts that disagrees with common sense? What do we do?
How to get rid of slugs and snails in the garden, is one of the most asked questions, especially by people gardening in wetter climates. They can cause huge amounts of damage as they eat up your plants.
Check the internet and you will find plenty of home remedies and DIY projects for getting rid of slugs and snails. The problem is that most of them either don’t work or have a limited effect on slugs. What does work?
It’s almost time to start buying seeds and it’s easy to find all sorts of unusual seeds. The rainbow tomatoes shown below are very popular, but what kind of tomatoes do they produce?
What about blue strawberries and purple pumpkins – they sound delicious. The one I am really interested in is the new vegan burger tree seed.
Sheet mulching, also called lasagna method or lasagna gardening, is a popular technique for creating a new garden. Some people even use it as an annual mulching system to keep weeds down.
Lots of people claim success with the technique because it does kill grass and weed plants. Others claim that sheet mulching reduces the oxygen levels in the soil, thereby harming the biology in the soil. Which side of the argument is correct? Should you be using sheet mulching in the garden?
How do you winterize pond plants? Pond plants seem to be segregated into their own little class of plants, but they are not all that different from regular plants. Non-hardy garden plants need protection in winter and so do non-hardy pond plants. The hardy ones in both groups can be mostly left alone.
This is the first of a two part post that will provide detailed information on how to winterize pond plants. This post will provide general information that applies to all pond plants. Part II will provide more detailed information on some specific plants.
The great debate about Roundup causing cancer had a major shakeup in August 2018, when a court ruling went against Monsanto (parent company is Bayer) and awarded $289 million to Dewayne Johnson because Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The courts have reduced the settlement to $78 million and Monsanto is appealing that.
A few months later two more lawsuits reached the same conclusion.
For the general public this was proof positive that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup causes cancer.
But what are the facts?
Incarvillea mairei, looks very tropical with its large pink flowers. It’s hard to believe that such a plant is hardy to zone 3.
Fall leaves are a great resource of nutrients for the garden, but if you use them incorrectly, they can rob your soil of nitrogen and make it difficult for plants to grow. This is especially true in a vegetable garden where you are trying to grow things quickly from seed.
In this post I discuss the decomposition of fall leaves and explain how to properly use them in the garden. In the process you might discover some interesting things about your compost pile.
Seedling Heat Mats are used by quite a few people and many web sites suggest that they are required for germination. But other people never use them; so are they really necessary? What, if any advantage do they offer? Can you grow better plants if you use a seedling heating mat to germinate seeds?
In this post I will look at the truth about seedling heat mats.
How often should I water? This is one of the most common questions new gardeners ask. It sounds like a good question, and on social media, lots of people will supply an answer.
They are all wrong.
Duckweed and watermeal can cause big problems in a pond and they can be difficult to control. This post looks at 10 different ways to control or elliminate duckweed from your pond and evaluates their pros and cons so that you can select the best method.
Lots of people take their left over tea and pour it over the soil of houseplants thinking that it does some good. Tea obviously contains chemicals and they might be good for plants. What about the milk, and sugar? Does it help plants grow?
Are any of the chemicals harmful to plants? Will the mixture cause bacteria or mold to grow in the soil? Sit back, have a cuppa and lets explore this habit of adding tea to houseplants.
