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.
Society has been planting trees for hundreds of years and yet we still don’t know how to do it properly. The average landscape tree is not planted correctly – but that long discussion is for another post. Today I would like to show you what happens when you do not remove string, burlap and wire baskets.
In a previous post I discussed the pros and cons of using raised garden beds. If you have decided to make raised garden beds there are many options for making the walls, including concrete blocks, different types of lumber, galvanized metal and even old branches.
Each option will make good walls for the bed but some of them have health or environmental concerns that you should be aware of. Price may also be a consideration.
At the end of this post I will also have a quick look at materials you might consider placing at the bottom of the bed and the soil you should use inside the bed.
The holly 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 work load 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.
Spring is the best time to cleanup your garden. What do you need to do? How should you do it? What should you not do? In this post I will discuss early spring cleanup and point you in the right direction.
Spring is a special time for gardeners. The world is coming to life, and the warm days get our blood boiling – we need to get out there and do something. The problem is that at this time of year many people do work in their garden that does not need to be done and some of it actually damages soil and plants.
You have decided to make raised beds and now need to fill them with soil. What is the best soil for raised beds? How often does it need to be replaced? How much compost should be added? Should you mix in some garden soil? I’ll answers these and other question in this post.
Before we start, lets define the term raised beds. I discussed raised beds in Raised Beds – Pros & Cons, and defined them as having walls. I will continue to use this definition in this post.
Raised beds are becoming more popular, but do they make sense for the garden? What benefits do they provide? Will they grow more food than convention low beds? Does a raised bed need to have side walls? What is the best building material and soil for raised beds? In this and the following posts I will try to answer all of these questions so that you can make an informed decision about adding raised beds to your garden.
Cleaning up the garden in fall is a tradition as we get ready for winter. Rake the leaves, cut back perennials, cut the grass short – there is lots to do in the fall. The reality is that most of the fall cleanup jobs are not good for the environment. People clean up their gardens in fall for aesthetic reasons, not because it is good for the plants or the garden.
It’s time to rethink the whole process of fall cleanup.
Organic Gardening – What is it? This should be a simple question, and many of you may think you know the answer, but the answer is more complicated than you think.
I consider myself an organic gardener – but some of you won’t agree because I do use some Roundup.
Can you garden organically and still use Roundup? Can you be ‘sort of’ organic and still consider yourself an organic gardener? Do organic gardeners make the best environmental choices?
There are two types of secateurs, also called pruners; bypass and anvil. If you are using an anvil pruner for most of your pruning needs – you are using the wrong tool.
This garden tool is designed for weeding and loosening the surface of your soil. You see them everywhere and I always wondered why people buy them??? I’ve never found any use for them.
