I have wanted to do some posts on companion planting for quite some time. There is certainly a lot of nonsense out there about companion planting, but some of the advice seems to make sense. The problem with this topic is that it is vast and complex. So I have ignored it – until now.
This post is an overview of the topic. I will look at some general concepts and try to gain some basic understanding of companion planting. Future posts will look at specific combinations of plants.
Do you have a lot of weeds in your garden? Do you want to know how to get rid of them? Are you making a new garden bed and want to eliminate years of weeding? You have come to the right place.
In this blog I will provide you with solutions for both of these problems. Most people who have a lot of weeds in the garden have made two mistakes. They did not prepare the new garden properly and they are not mulching enough.
In this post I will look at one of the most important criteria you should consider when shopping for an LED grow light, the color spectrum. If you don’t get the right color of light, plants will just not grow well, no matter how much you spend.
If you are looking to get a new grow light, you should really consider LED lights since they are much more energy efficient. That is good for your pocket book as well as the environment. The problem is that selecting the right type of light is no trivial matter. The market is full of products in a wide price range and many manufacturers are making claims that are designed to confuse you.
If you just want a quick answer, head on down to the last section called, The Best Color Spectrum for LED Grow Lights. If you want to understand what you are doing so you can make an intelligent choice, read the whole post. I promise I won’t get too technical on you.
LED lights for home use have become very popular and many people are considering them for growing plants, especially for starting seedlings. It sounds like a great idea. LED lights use very little electricity so they save money, and they don’t produce a lot heat so they can be placed close to your plants. Sounds perfect and many people have started to use them with success. Unfortunately, others have found that they don’t work too well and one reason is that manufacturers don’t tell you the truth about their products. I know that is hard to believe – but it’s true, they go out of their way to confuse you.
In this post I will have a close look at just one aspect of LED grow lights – the truth about watts.
Starting plants from seed is a great hobby and a good way to increase your collection of plants. Most people only think about germinating vegetable seeds and much of the information on the internet is focused on these. But there is a whole other world out there. I am always surprised when people don’t understand that all of the perennials, trees and shrubs originally come from seed.
There is still a lot of mystery around seeds and for many species we still do not understand the best way to germinate them. This allows amateurs and hobbyists to do their own thing. This is great because it adds to the collective knowledge, but it also leads to many myths about starting plants from seed.
Container gardening has become extremely popular and there are all kinds of potting soils you can buy. Gardening in containers is very different than gardening in the ground so it is important to understand the special requirements for potting soil.
If you are looking for a simple solution, where cost is not a factor, and you don’t mind watering a lot, use a name brand potting mix. Almost all of them will produce healthy plants.
If you want a better solution – keep reading.
The Holy Grail in gardening is the perfect, beautiful garden that exists without any maintenance. I see titles for books and blog posts all of the time claiming to be “no-maintenance”. Any real gardener knows that is baloney, but there are things you can do to have a low-maintenance garden.
As gardeners age, maintenance becomes more of a chore, but we don’t want to give up our gardens. Making some simple changes in plant selection and attitude can reduce your workload significantly and allow you to keep the garden longer.
In this post, I will describe 10 things any gardener can do to reduce maintenance to a minimum.
Compost tea is reported to be great for growing plants, and some companies even call it a compost tea fertilizer. What is the NPK value of this magic potion?
I started this post about a year ago, and at that time, there were many products on the market, but I could not find one that provided the compost tea NPK value. I checked again today and was surprised that the number of compost tea products available is down significantly. Maybe it was too expensive to ship all that water around the country? Maybe it did not work, and people stopped buying the product?
Interestingly, the number of commercial DIY kits for making your tea is up significantly. When you click on Google Images for ‘bottles of tea,’ you are taken to pages selling kits. Even with kits, the same question needs to be asked. What is the NPK value of the tea these kits produce? Very few of the manufacturers I looked at provided such information, but many did say their compost ingredients were the best. Easy to say if you don’t give any data.
Even if you are not interested in compost tea, the following discussion will show you how companies are misleading consumers.
There are lots of examples of people trying to use plant leaf characteristics to identify nutrient deficiencies in the soil. This seems to make a lot of sense. If the soil is lacking a specific nutrient, it should show up in the plant and it seems to follow that by examining the physical characteristics of the leaf you should be able to identify the nutrient deficiency.
How reliable is this method of diagnosis? Can you really identify a nutrient deficiency in the soil by looking at plant leaves?
Planting perennials may seem easy but there is more to it than you realize. Planting correctly will ensure larger and healthier plants in the long term.
In the search for a peat moss alternative, coir, also called coco coir, is the one that is most often discussed. Coir is made from the outer husk of coconuts and is a waste product from the coconut industry. Environmentalists are quick to point out that “since it is a waste product, its use is more environmentally friendly than using peat moss.” How can such common-sense logic be wrong?
The horticulture industry is being blamed for depleting peat reserves and environmentalists are calling for a stop on using peat for growing plants. What are the peat moss alternatives? Is there a suitable substitute?
The horticulture industry would have no problems switching to another product instead of peat. After all, most gardeners are quite aware of the importance of preserving our environment. In this post, I will look at several peat moss alternatives to see if there is a viable option.
