Patio containers do not have to choose between looking good and putting food on the table. Instead of filling every empty pot with another ornamental annual, gardeners can tuck edible plants into those sunny spaces and get flowers, foliage, fruit, or fresh herbs in return. The trick involves choosing plants that enjoy container life and…
Snakes in the Garden Aren’t Always Bad — Here’s When You Should Be Concerned
A snake sliding through the garden can turn a peaceful morning of tomato picking into a full-blown staring contest. But before grabbing a shovel or sprinting for the shed, take a breath: many snakes provide useful pest control by eating mice, voles, insects, frogs, and other small animals. In fact, some gardeners have a perfectly…
His HOA Approved His Front-Yard Food Forest — Then a New Board Fined Him $750
A front yard usually comes with an unspoken suburban assignment: grass, a few shrubs, maybe a tree that behaves itself. Michael Sherman of Chino, California, had a different idea, turning his lawn into a productive food forest filled with passionfruit, radishes, calendulas, sunflowers, aloe vera, Swiss chard and banana trees. His HOA initially approved the…
6 Ways to Protect Young Trees From String-Trimmer Damage
A string trimmer can turn a tidy lawn into a masterpiece, but that same spinning line can deliver a surprisingly nasty wallop to a young tree. One careless pass around a thin trunk can strip bark, expose living tissue, and create an injury that may cause problems long after the grass has grown back. Protecting…
7 Plants You Should Think Twice About Touching With Bare Hands
Gardening usually involves getting a little dirt under the fingernails, but some plants can make that hands-on approach a genuinely bad idea. Certain species can sting instantly, trigger an itchy rash hours later, or leave skin dangerously sensitive to sunlight. A pair of gloves can turn a questionable gardening decision into a very uneventful afternoon….
Can You Use Old Window Screens to Dry Garden Seeds?
An old window screen can become a surprisingly useful seed-drying rack. Instead of spreading seeds across a plate, paper towel, or cookie sheet where moisture can linger underneath, a clean screen lets air move around the seeds from multiple directions. That simple bit of airflow makes the humble window screen a clever piece of garden…
8 Garden Tasks That Become Easier in the Final Week of August
The final week of August gives the garden a funny little shift in personality. Summer still has plenty of heat left, but the calendar has started whispering about fall, which makes this an excellent time to tackle jobs that feel much harder when September arrives in a rush. Some tasks simply become easier because plants…
That “Weed” in Your Yard Could Leave You With Painful Blisters
A harmless-looking weed can turn a routine afternoon of pulling plants into a very unpleasant skin problem, especially if you encounter wild parsnip or giant hogweed. These plants contain compounds that can make skin unusually sensitive to ultraviolet light, so a little plant sap followed by sunshine can produce redness and blistering that looks remarkably…
Those Beautiful Seeds You Found Online May Be Fake — Here’s How to Tell
Those beautiful seeds you found online may be fake, and the most convincing part of the listing might be the photograph. AI-generated images now make it remarkably easy for dishonest sellers to show enormous flowers, bizarre colors, impossible shapes, and plants that look as if someone crossed a rose with a fireworks display. Moneywise recently…
What Is Causing Mushrooms to Appear Around Raised Beds?
Mushrooms appearing around raised beds can look like tiny garden intruders, especially when a neat vegetable patch suddenly develops a crop of little caps overnight. In most cases, though, those mushrooms point to something much less alarming: moist conditions and fungi breaking down organic material in the soil or mulch. The mushroom itself represents only…