What are your options with organic fertilizers? Turns out there are quite a few good ones. For the gardener new to the idea of organics, the array of options often made available can be confusing. There are dozens of organic fertilizers available, each with different … [Read more...]
Can Vinegar Kill Weeds?
Can vinegar kill weeds? Yes, it most certainly can. But there's a little bit more to it than just taking a bottle of vinegar from your kitchen and using that in the garden. Here's the scoop. Vinegar is an acid, also known as acetic acid. It works as a contact weed … [Read more...]
Growing a Green Garden
Nowadays, green usually refers to environmentally friendly. When referring to a garden, though, it can have a double meaning. Can you think of a better place to go green than in your garden? Not only is it one of America's favorite (and healthiest) hobbies, but growing a garden … [Read more...]
How to Keep Weeds Out of Your Lawn the Organic Way
Having a perfectly green and weed free lawn is close to an obsession in the United States. For many years, chemical treatments have been largely considered to be acceptable. Recently, there has been more focus on green methods and protecting the environment. As a result, more … [Read more...]
Plant a Three Sisters Garden
The three sisters of gardening are corn, pole beans, and squash. They work together to solve many of the problems of gardens. The stalks provide support for the beans, the beans add the nitrogen to the soil that the corn needs in order to grow, and the squash vines create a … [Read more...]
How to Control Snails and Slugs in the Garden
Snails and slugs can destroy a garden faster than just about anything, so it’s very important for gardeners to understand their habits in order to control them. Snails and slugs are both mollusks, and very similar to each other; the big difference is that snails have shells. Both … [Read more...]
Bat Houses are Good for the Garden
Most of us grow up with scary stories about bats that portray these mammals as evil creatures that fly in your hair and do bad deeds. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Bats like to be left alone, and perform miracles of insect control. As a major predator of … [Read more...]
How to Spot and Get Rid of Aphids with Organic Methods
How to Identify Aphids Your prize winning roses are looking a little worn. Or the tomatoes and beans just aren’t what they should be. Be warned – you may be experiencing an aphid infestation. Aphids feast on many different plants, from flowering shrubs to vegetables, annuals and … [Read more...]
Raising Backyard Chickens
If you’ve ever had a fresh egg from a backyard chicken, you know it is superior to anything you can buy in the grocery store. The yolks are much more brightly colored and tend to look almost orange in comparison to the pale yellow yolks of a store bought egg. Benefits of Raising … [Read more...]
Using Organic Fertilizers in the Garden
Fertility is a word that brings to mind the lushness of crops in the sunlight, an abundance of food, and the loveliness of growth. True crop fertility is a wonderful thing. However, since the green revolution we’ve associated fertility with fertilizer. What is a fertilizer, and … [Read more...]
How to Feed Your Lawn Without Chemicals
You can grow a healthy lawn without using synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Chemical-free fertilizers stimulate the healthy growth of roots and blades while they improve the drainage, aeration, and water-holding capacity of the soil. A healthy lawn starts with … [Read more...]
Organic Pest Control in the Garden
Got bugs? Of course you do. If your garden is like most gardens, bugs abound, and this is not altogether a bad thing. Many invertebrates are actually beneficial for gardens. Worms till and aerate the soil. Bees pollinate our crops. Yet we do need to find ways to stop bugs from … [Read more...]
Organic Garden Seeds
It’s easy to understand the benefits of organic vegetables and fruit. After all, these foods are going into our bodies. We don’t want to eat chemicals that are toxic to other animals, and we want to eat plants that are grown in healthy soil, because healthy soil yields nutritious … [Read more...]
Crop Rotation
What do you think of when you hear the words, “Crop Rotation?” No, it’s not spinning your corn in circles to increase yields. It’s not some arcane wizardry of the fields. Crop rotation is a method of improving your soil, increasing your crops’ resistance to pests and increasing … [Read more...]
Organic Weed Control
What is a weed? By definition, a weed is an unwanted plant. While we might adore dandelions when the children pick them for crowns, we don’t always want them in our gardens. The Best Way to Avoid Weeds Weeds are telling you something. If you watch them closely, you can … [Read more...]
Healthy, Organic Soil
To many, soil is simply the stuff that you plant in. It’s brown, and sometimes it’s damp and sticky. Sometimes you may add fertilizers to it, but that’s entirely incidental. The fertilizers are meant for the plants, not for the soil. However, thinking about plants without … [Read more...]
Using Compost in the Organic Garden
Is your soil looking lackluster? Rich, earthy compost is just the right tonic for your garden beds. What is compost? It’s a mixture of whatever goes into the compost bin, all decomposed into useful, rich humus by big animals like worms and microorganisms like friendly bacteria. … [Read more...]
Companion Planting
Friends help friends. They stick up for each other and they hang out well together. Some plants are extremely good friends, inviting beneficial insects to visit the other plants in the garden and warding off diseases. These are companion plants, the friendly pairings and more … [Read more...]
Environmental Benefits of Organic Gardening
Why garden organically? Organic gardening is a whole new technique to learn, full of terminology and techniques that may not be familiar to the conventional gardener. Is it worthwhile to learn these techniques? Of course! Organic gardening has profound environmental and health … [Read more...]
Why Grow Organic Food?
We hear it constantly these days, it seems, “Go organic. Live sustainably. Green, green, green!” When you’re pursuing a more environmentally-conscious lifestyle, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the exhortations to go green, and it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the … [Read more...]