I am sure you have seen the memes on social media; Dandelions are the first food for bees. “Don’t pick dandelions and save the honey bee”. How important are these dandelions to bees, and which bees are we talking about? Is it their first food? Do bees actually use the pollen and nectar from dandelions?
Just because social media says its true, does not mean it is. Lets uncover the truth behind this new craze to save the dandelions.
What is the difference between green beans, string beans, pole beans, and runner beans? I sort of know which is which, but when I tried to define the terms, things got very confusing. We use a lot of different terms for beans.
After a little research, things got even more confusing since there are also French beans, snap beans, and snaps. And what about those yellow wax beans? Are soybeans real beans?
This post is full of beans!
I just returned from the grocery store and they had blue orchids for sale; both dendrobium and phalaenopsis. These colors are not natural on orchids so I decided to find out how they are produced. How long will the colors last? Do they need any special care?
Growing food in plastic containers is on the rise, but is this a safe practice? What about the chemicals that leach out of plastic – are they absorbed by the soil or the food? Do they cause a health risk?
There is a great movement towards organic gardening to grow healthy food locally, and for smaller back yards and balconies it’s attractive to grow food in small containers. I’ve even seen pictures of people grow vegetables right in the bag that contained the soil they bought. This is all so simple but is it a healthy way to produce food? Is it still organic if you grow in plastic?
Social media is convinced that gelatin powder is a great fertilizer for plants. It is easy to use, organic, and has a high level of nitrogen. Seems perfect for houseplants and the garden.
Is this just another myth, or is there something to this advice?
Praying mantis egg cases are now being sold in many locations. The eggs are easy to hatch allowing you to add this natural pest control system to your garden.
Are these native praying mantis? Do they stay in your garden? Are they a good option for controlling pests in your garden? Before buying a praying mantis egg case read this post and get the facts.
Ddecatheon pulchellum, the shooting star, has unusually shaped flowers that stand out in the garden. It is not common in nurseries but it is easy to grow from seed.
The information in this post is for Dodecatheon pulchellum, but I can’t be certain the pictures are of that species. The seed was obtained from the ORG&HP society seed exchange, labeled as D. jeffreyi, but I think that name is incorrect. Dodecantheon species are all very similar, and even D. pulchellum is quite variable. The pictures may also be a garden hybrid. In any event, all Dodecatheons are great plants.
A few years ago I saw my first posting about the use of neonicotinoides (neonics) on horticultural plants. I knew people were concerned about using this stuff in agriculture, but it was a surprise that it was also a concern on horticultural plants.
Soon after, a study was made that verified neonics were not only used on plants, but that lab testing found trace amounts in plants for sale to consumers. Around the same time, memes were popping up all over the place. The cry was loud, “stop killing pollinators by selling us sprayed plants.
It is spring here, and uninformed people are again sharing the same memes and trying to convince new gardeners of the dangers posed by neonics. But what is the reality here? How much of a danger are these plants? Should you stop buying plants so you don’t poison pollinators. Lets have a look.
This is a great tropical looking plant, that is easy to grow, and makes a big statement especially in colder climates where such large growth is hard to come by. And even better, it is so easy to overwinter.
Everybody wants to grow nutritious food and it has become common to measure nutrient density with a Brix refractometer. High Brix is equated to highly nutritious food, but is this really true?
Brix readings have been used in agriculture for many years but is there a reason for gardeners to bother making this measurement? What does it tell you about the quality of food? I’ll answer these and other questions in this post as I take you down the yellow brix road.
You sow beet seed in the garden, and they come up too thick. So next year you plant less seed, and what happens? They grow too thick and need thinning again. Why is it that beet seed can’t be sown so that it does not need to be thinned?
I decided to have a close look at beet seed and in this post I’ll explain why beet seed is always planted too thick. I’ll also introduce you to a couple of new cultivars that don’t need to be thinned and tell you about my favorite heirloom beet which I have been growing for 30 years.
Potato towers are a hot topic, probably because a lot of people have smaller backyards and they want to produce as much food as they can. The ads are very seductive: “Grow 100 pounds of potatoes in a 4 x 4 ft tower.” And then there are the pictures of someone opening a small container and having dozens of large potatoes falling out. I never knew gardening was so easy.
There are two approaches to finding out if potato towers actually work. One is to look for actual studies that compare potato towers to other forms of growing potatoes, and the other is to try and understand how potatoes grow. After all, humans have been growing them for hundreds of years, so we do know something about them. I’ll take both approaches in this post.
