Your mail carrier spends all day passing boring metal boxes stuck in patchy turf. Let’s trade the weeds for tough, jaw-dropping blooms and give that little curbside box something better to sit in than sad grass and sunbaked dirt. One quick rule: don’t plant a curbside jungle! The mailbox still needs to be easy to…
Deer eat anything when famished (like me), but they loathe fuzzy textures, bitter sap, prickly stems, and intense aromatic oils (exactly like me!). Want a summer bed that stacks the odds against my doe-eyed brethren and still keeps the color loud? These are the heavy hitters I’d start with. Stink Out the Free-Loaders Deer have…
I’ve spent more time arguing with stubborn soil and dramatic shrubs than I have talking to actual people lately, so yeah, I can give it to you straight. Azaleas are gorgeous when they’re happy, but they’re not the kind of shrub you can ignore and hope for the best. If you want stronger roots, brighter…
One of my friends, a professional engineer but amateur gardener, once said: clematis are high-output machines with terrible cooling systems. She started talking about root-zone thermoregulation and nutrient density; all I heard was blah blah blah… What I do know from growing them is this: keep their roots cool, water them deeply, feed them like…
Every spring, the internet collective decides a handful of magnesium sulfate cures everything from pests to a bad marriage. It won’t… Epsom salt is a cheap compound, not a miracle powder handed down by Demeter herself! And yet, nine plant groups can actually benefit from it if you apply it the way the gods of…
Tomato plants can get heavy fast, especially once the fruit starts filling out. Give them the right support early, and you’ll avoid sagging stems, snapped branches, and tomatoes dragging through the soil. Here are eleven sturdy, field-tested setups that keep plants upright and make harvest season a whole lot less chaotic. If you’re also sorting…