Categories
Container Gardening

Making Food-Safe DIY Window Box Planters Fit for a Home Chef

I love window boxes – especially those DIY window box planters I come across now and then. They’re just bursting with personality. I saw a fantastic steampunk window box a few years ago that I wish I would have taken a picture of. The box itself was ordinary, but it was embellished with these amazingly detailed metal gears, copper piping, and even a few pocket watches thrown in for good measure. Naturally, there was garlic growing in the box.

Categories
Seeds & Seedlings

How to Clone Vegetables from Cuttings

If we can clone sheep, we can learn how to clone vegetables. At least, that’s my unofficial stance on the matter, since I have no idea how to clone a sheep. Besides, I have no great desire to clone a sheep. No matter. I do know how to clone vegetables, and it’s actually pretty easy. […]

Categories
Composting

Tips for Managing Bugs in Compost Bins

I don’t want to write about bugs in compost bins any more than you want to read about it, but it happens, so here we are. Don’t worry; I’m not going to get into the creepy-crawly details. For your sake and mine, we’ll keep it vague. I’m still emotionally scarred from that scene in The Lost […]

Categories
Garden Design

7 Creative Vegetable Garden Border Fence Ideas

Good fences make good neighbors, but can they make good gardens, too? A vegetable garden border fence can accomplish a few different goals all at once. For one, it can keep rabbits and other critters from wreaking havoc on your vegetables.

Categories
Garden Tools

This Countertop Compost Machine Turns Scraps into Compost in a Few Hours

Update: I recently received the new Lomi Bloom and have included additional notes on the bonus features of this updated device in my review below. Long sorry short, I love the new mossy sage color and the view window at the top.  It’s safe to say there’s no gardening gadget or device I love more […]

Categories
Soil & Fertilizer

5 Benefits of Worm Castings for Indoor Plants

Let’s just get this out of the way: Worm Castings = Worm Poop. But, “castings” is a much more civilized way of describing the digested waste of your garden variety earthworm so we’ll just stick with that!

Categories
Container Gardening

What Can You Grow in Deck Rail Planters?

I’ve always loved deck rail planters and window boxes. They’re kind of quaint, and they can bring some natural beauty to a space that’s usually ignored. It’s always nice to walk by a house and see lots of colorful flowers hanging over the railings of a front porch or balcony.

Categories
Seeds & Seedlings

How to Germinate Seeds More Quickly

The other day, a friend of mine was working on a science project with her elementary schooler. It was the classic, but still really cool, experiment where you learn how to germinate seeds and watch them grow into little seedlings. They had a little problem, though. The seeds that they were originally trying to use would not germinate. At all.

Categories
Growing Fruits & Berries

Growing Black Raspberry vs. Blackberry vs. Mulberry: Which is Best?

“Here we go ’round the mulberry bush on a cold and frosty morning.” So goes the children’s song that’s usually accompanied by a skipping dance and some playful laughs. But did you know the song was, by some accounts, not about a mulberry bush, but a bramble? This leads us to the issue of black […]

Categories
Vegetable Gardening

7 Shallow Root Vegetables That Grow Great in Containers and Tough Spots

Nice as it would be, we don’t all have big plots of land and healthy, rich soil to grow our gardens. Heck, some of us don’t have any land at all, so we stick to container gardens on the balcony or front porch. Even though that may seem limiting, there are a lot of shallow root vegetables that work in containers or those tough spots that don’t seem useful for growing anything.