Usually when rose petals turn brown, it’s just because a healthy blossom has reached the end of its natural lifetime. Sometimes though, it happens because something malign is cutting short your blooms in their prime. And when…
Whether you’re tending frequently to a fast-working hot compost heap, or leaving a slow, cold compost pile breakdown at a leisurely pace, you need to be able to recognize when decomposition is complete. What does finished compost…
We want our pumpkins to last until Halloween for our grandchildren, and you probably want your pumpkins in great condition for the big event too! But in a good summer, pumpkins may be ripe long before Halloween….
Are you sure you’re recycling everything you possibly can on your compost heap? After all, the more material you put in, the more black gold you’ll get out later! If you’d like to save your kitchen waste…
A healthy, efficient compost pile should have very little odor. And the finished compost should smell sweet and earthy when you dig it out. If your pile has a nasty smell that hits you before you even…
Composting wood chips and shavings is a little trickier than composting softer materials, but it can be done. If you have a surplus of woody material from animal bedding, pruning trees and shrubs in your yard, or…
Your compost pile is just sitting there. Doing nothing. A big heap of all the things you added to it, looking exactly the same as they did the day you dumped them on the pile. You on…
Pothos is often described as being ‘beginner-friendly’, ‘immune to neglect’, and even ‘impossible to kill’. So wilting pothos, when it happens, can feel like a rather damning result of our care. Was life on our windowsill really…
Most dogs love playing in the yard. But it’s not always a benign environment for them. The plants we choose because they’re pretty or productive can trigger allergies, cause skin irritation, or even poison our dogs. If…
Deciding where to locate a compost pile is an important business. It’s not the prettiest garden feature so I’m always tempted to put my compost pile in an unloved, unused, out-of-sight part of the yard! But I…
