I’m old enough to remember having to scrape the bugs off the windshield every time we filled up with gas in the summertime. Insects were numerous, especially in the evening. Where did they all go? I also remember an advertising slogan that said, “The only good bug is a dead bug”. Wrong! Something like 80%
Published by Storey Publishing in 2015, this book by David A. Bainbridge provides numerous low cost solutions to water efficiency in a garden. Although written from the perspective of a scientist who works in the Sonoran desert in the Arizona, there are many ideas that are adaptable to the home garden. Given that water is
I recall many years ago when our kids were little we visited an elderly neighbour who gave a great piece of advice. “We never restrict our kids in the garden.” That was a great lesson for me. We tried to raise our own children with the same view in mind. My granddaughter and I planted
Your first job would be to decide if your flowering deciduous shrub needs pruning, You will need to step back and look at your shrub and determine what kind of look do you want. Do you want a compact, bushier, one that produces more flowers, blooms longer, or a shrub that has a more natural
Containers provide great flexibility in a garden-they allow you to garden in a restricted space and grow plants which require specialized soils. Containers can also be used to restrict the growth of plants that might otherwise take over the garden, such as lemon thyme or mint. However, providing adequate water to containers provides some challenges.
Insects need food sources and shelter with different types of foliage, at different times of year, at different heights, etc. When you mix diverse plants together, you bring layers of color, shapes, sizes, varieties, and textures – which means a greater diversity of garden predators too. A greater diversity of predators in your garden, means
A quote from Pam Penick’s excellent book ‘The Water-Saving Garden’:“… we design our homes and grade our property to shed water and then pay to pipe it back in and spray it across our yards when rainfall is scarce – and often even when it isn’t. With a heedlessness born of cheap, plentiful water –
Did you know that the earth needs 500 years to produce 1 inch of topsoil? David Montgomery, a geologist and professor at The University of Washington, posits that soil is the most overlooked and crucial material on earth. He presents a cultural history of soil degradation and how soil exhaustion has shaped the course of
In the past, the idea of ‘putting the garden to bed’ for winter meant cutting everything down, pulling out all the annuals, raking every leaf and disposing of them off-site, spreading a load of compost on the beds and labouring to work it into the earth. Too much work! Here’s an environmentally friendly alternative: wait