Starting a vegetable garden can be a rewarding prospect for any homeowner. In addition to having fresh veggies on the ready, digging in the dirt has big health benefits. Though yanking out weeds might ...

Summer has definitely arrived. With temperatures reaching the high 90s and 100s every day, water is quickly lost from soils and plants. Evapotranspiration is the agricultural term for the total amount ...

Straw is the dried stems left after wheat or oats (or other grains) have been harvested. Once the grain is removed, the dried stalks are bundled into bales. Ideally there will be very few seeds or ...

I love discovering new, useful things for the garden. My most recent find is pine straw mulch. For years, I’ve used white pine needles (Pinus strobus) to bed down my strawberry patch for the winter.

Mulch is a good friend to gardens. It helps soil hold moisture, keeps plant roots cool on hot days, and discourages weeds from sprouting. Many types of mulch add beneficial substances to the earth as ...

I love to garden, but I don’t like to do work needlessly. If I can find a gardening technique that saves me time, effort and money — well, I’m there. And you can’t find a better example of this than ...

Wood mulch and wood chips will mat down to make a firm but spongy surface for your garden paths and around playsets. Pine straw is too slippery to walk on, so skip it when mulching these high-traffic ...

Nowadays people use the terms hay and straw interchangeably, and in most cases, it makes no difference whatsoever. For example, we say we were on a hayride at a get-together even though the wagons are ...

Have you ever wondered why some gardens bounce back so quickly after winter while others struggle? The secret often comes down to the mulch you choose when the cold sets in. Winter mulching does more ...