Separating seedlings for the first time is anxiety-inducing for many inexperienced gardeners. What if you break the stem? What if you break the roots? What if the plant doesn’t recover? These are all relevant questions, although, fortunately, separating seedlings is a lot easier than it looks. To safely separate young seedlings, make sure the soil…
For the past two years, I’ve successfully started and grown all my seedlings in an unheated room, under grow lights. It took some work to provide the additional heat (early spring is still very cold here in zone 6B), but I believe I’ve discovered the best setup so far and I want to share it…
Introduction: What are blackfly? Blackfly is a general classification for over 2,000 different species of flies in the family Simuliidae (which includes aphids, midges, mosquitos, and lakefly). The only trait they share is that they are all black or dark grey. What most gardeners are referring to when they talk about blackfly on broad beans…
Beans and onions shouldn’t be planted together. That’s the conventional wisdom. It’s accepted in gardening textbooks, and it’s taught in horticultural schools across the world, but, why can’t onions and beans be planted together? From my experience, beans and onions work well together, so I was amazed to learn that there was in fact a…
You may have heard about the miracle-working properties of sand as more and more people ditch traditional horticultural materials for simple builders sand in their garden. With promises of better drainage and improved native soils, you might be ready to make the switch too.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but peat pots only recently came into my life. I’d been gardening for several years before I even knew that peat pots existed. When peat pots finally did come to my attention, I jumped on the opportunity to use a more sustainable growing medium in my garden. The short…