Plant identification apps for phones and tablets have become very popular, but they are not all created equally. In this article, I will compare 7 popular apps to see which ones perform best.
I’ll also provide pros and cons for each app.
GMO food labeling compliance became mandatory starting June 23, 2025, but if you look at the label on processed food in the US, you won’t see a GMO label.
The reason for this is that the FDA has decided to use a different term. The food will be labeled as “Contains a Bioengineered food ingredient”. The word Bioengineered (BE) is replacing the term GMO.
The general public has been asking for GMO labeling on food for many years. After spending many millions of dollars, they now have their wish.
I’ve been writing about garden myths for about 15 years, and there are still many more that need attention. I have over 300 started posts that could be finished.
However….. I am also interested in a wider range of myths and it is time to widen the scope of my myth busting.
You might have noticed I have started writing about food and food nutrition myths, and even climate change. So far I have dabbled in these but now it’s time to follow this interest more deeply.
I have decided to start a new venture called Reality Time.
Spider mites are one of the most common and frustrating pests an indoor gardener can encounter. They can be hard to control if you don’t understand the pest and use the right techniques to control it.
Unfortunately, a lot of the information online is wrong, which causes unnecessary frustration and lost plants.
Have you ever wondered why some seeds sprout instantly, while others need weeks of cold stratification, or maybe just refuse to germinate at all? What about when you cut open a ripe tomato and find little sprouts already growing inside? Why does that happen?
Well, the secret behind all this behavior boils down to one powerful chemical compound: Abscisic Acid, or ABA. Think of ABA as the seed’s internal timing mechanism. Today, we’re diving into how this hormone acts as a powerful brake, and crucially, how you can release that brake to get faster, healthier germination.
Is your tap water suitable for plants? Unless you know something about both hardness and alkalinity, you can’t tell if your tap water should be used.
Is RO water, distilled water, or rainwater suitable for plants? You probably think it is, but they also have problems that relate to hardness and alkalinity.
Let’s have a closer look at water and these two properties.
I know that many of you think that this question has already been settled and that 97% of scientists agree that global warming is anthropogenic, i.e., it is human-caused.
The question is far from being settled
The goal for this post is to present some of the arguments presented by both sides of the debate.
Gardeners talk a lot about dynamic accumulators, and they are important for techniques such as permaculture and regenerative agriculture. The problem was that we didn’t have an accepted definition for them – nobody agreed on what they were.
The science of dynamic accumulators has recently advanced, and we now have a proper definition, an extensive database of possible candidates, as well as some research supporting claims about them. There is also new testing of weed teas made from them.
This may become more important to gardeners than you realize.
Is fish fertilizer better than a synthetic fertilizer like Miracle-Gro?
If you read the advertising for fish fertilizer, you might conclude that it will grow much better plants, but those same products don’t show you any data to support the claims. Where is the proof?
I decided to run my own test to see if fish fertilizer grows bigger tomato plants.
This post uses affiliate links
Lots of people in warmer climates grow Streptocarpus outdoors, but what about growing them outdoors in colder climates where winter is so cold that they won’t survive?
It does not seem to be a common practice, but since I do a lot of outdoor gardening in zone 5, I had to try it. Here is what I have learned.
Purchase Streptocarpus seeds, leaves, and plants.
Is climate change real? Is the Earth warming? Are humans the main cause of warming?
If you are like me, you believed all of the headlines. Global warming is mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels. This heating phenomenon is causing huge changes in the climate. Ice caps are melting, reefs are bleaching and dying, the sea level is rising, the intensity of storms is worse, there are more forest fires, etc.
You would have to be living in a cave not to know this is all happening. It is on the news almost every night.
A few years ago, I started looking at the scientific data. In summary:
There is almost no data to support the catastrophic headlines you see.
However, there is a lot of published data to show that the climate is not changing at alarming rates.
What if all of the information you have been fed is wrong?
It means that most of the government efforts, using your hard-earned tax money, are a waste. It means alternative energy sources won’t solve anything. It means governments and society are doing the wrong things to make our future better.
This is so serious that we all need to start asking questions. We need to demand data to support the news claims.
The purpose of this blog post is to collect and summarize the data we do know. The post will be published shortly, but I will continually add new data as I find it. In some ways, it is a documentation of my journey towards the truth. If you find some data, for or against climate change, please let me know in the comments, and I will add it.
The common advice for growing streptocarpus is to plant fairly shallow. Soil should not go much higher than the top of the root ball, or the plant will rot and die.
However, you are also told that to propagate the plant vegetatively, you should take a leaf or part of a leaf and plant it an inch or two deep. I usually plant these leaves about an inch deep, and they grow just fine.
Streptocarpus are also known to form plantlets from roots, deep in the pot (see image further down in this post). These grow underground for quite a long time before the tips reach above the surface of the soil.
How can all of this conflicting information be correct? Is this another Streptocarpus myth? I decided to test the claim that planting deep will cause Streptocarpus to rot and die.
