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Pests & Diseases

How Does Lettuce Get E. coli and How to Prevent it in a Home Garden

I love lettuce. It’s so easy to grow, it’s ready to harvest pretty quickly, and the multitude of varieties have so many different qualities. Who can deny the appeal of crunchy, slightly sweet lettuce on a sandwich? I also admit there’s something that bugs me: How does lettuce get E. coli?

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Pests & Diseases

10 Common Garden Bugs That Are Actually Good for Your Plants

You can’t talk about gardening without talking about bugs. There are a lot of bugs that will destroy a garden if you let them. Aphids, whiteflies, cabbage worms – I could list plenty. What we don’t talk about very much, however, are some of the common garden bugs that are beneficial to our plants.

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Pests & Diseases

13 Deadly Vegetable Garden Pests

I’m just going to say it: There is a lot that can go wrong with a garden. Somehow, we humans have cultivated vegetables for about 10,000 years. But a few of the wrong vegetable garden pests, and all your tilling, sowing, weeding, mulching, and watering turns into a waste almost while you watch.

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Pests & Diseases

What Are These White Tiny Bugs on Plants in my Garden?

Gardening is a truly fascinating hobby. It’s biology, nature, outside time, and a little bit of zen all mixed together. And the results end up on your dinner table. Not bad. How cool is it that a handful of tiny little seeds will give you an abundance of vegetables and herbs a few months after you plant them? Except, sometimes gardening is a confusing and frustrating experience. Like when your formerly thriving garden now has white tiny bugs on plants from tomatoes to cucumbers to eggplants. And they’re eating away at what was supposed to be your dinner.

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Pests & Diseases

How to Treat Anthracnose Fungus in Strawberries

I love strawberries. They’re the perfect little fruit, too. You can cool off on a hot day with a glass of strawberry lemonade. They make a wonderfully sweet addition to yogurt at breakfast. Strawberries work well in a salad with a splash of balsamic vinaigrette. And, of course, you can never go wrong with a strawberry and rhubarb pie!

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Pests & Diseases

What’s the Deal with Flies Eating Plants?

I love gardening. I also sometimes hate gardening. Well, hate might be a strong word. But we all have those immensely frustrating moments when it seems like everything goes wrong. Roots rotting. Leaves withering. Flies eating plants. Deer eating tomatoes.

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Pests & Diseases

How to Deter Slugs and Grubs in a Vegetable Garden

In the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, the protagonist, Dorothy, and her friends, the Tin Man and Scarecrow, walk through a dark forest, fearing that they may get eaten by “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” I’m pretty sure slugs and grubs aren’t on their minds at all.  If you haven’t seen the movie, […]

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Pests & Diseases

The Best Organic DIY Insecticide for Indoor and Hydroponic Food Gardens

I love my indoor garden for several reasons, but mostly because I don’t love outdoor garden pests. Well, maybe except for those cute rabbits that I always plant a little extra for in my outdoor garden. I also don’t love using harsh chemicals on my vegetables. It’s beyond me how they can kill insects yet be perfectly benign otherwise. Granted, I’m not a chemist, and maybe I’ve watched a few too many episodes of X-Files, but I prefer the DIY insecticide approach. 

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Pests & Diseases

How to Make Eco-Friendly Slug Repellent at Home

How could something so helpless like a slug cause so much damage in your garden? You might not always know you have a slug problem right away because slugs only come around at night and when it’s cloudy and rainy. But you’ll definitely notice their damage. You’ll see holes and jagged edges on your vegetable leaves and stems. You can tell if the slug damage is fresh by how rough the edges of the holes or bite marks look.

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Pests & Diseases

10 Helpful Plants for Bug Control in Your Kitchen Garden

The joy of growing a kitchen garden in your yard is imagining the delicious recipes and meals you’ll create using your home-grown herbs and vegetables. Do you know what gets in the way of that joy? Bugs. Gross, invasive, plant-eating, vegetable-killing bugs! I’m looking at you, Tomato Hornworm! I’ll never forget the first time I grew a large crop of tomatoes. I would pop outside to check on my kitchen garden and see that some of my tomatoes had been chewed, and others were missing leaves or stems were completely bare.

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