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 ...

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 ...

This lawn has been seeded with an all-in-one product that has fertilizer and mulch mixed in with the grass seed. Q: We're about to put down grass seed for a new lawn, and it was recommended to us that ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When it's time to freshen up the mulch in your garden or flower beds, you might find yourself second-guessing your usual choice.

Right under our collective noses - and probably in your very own yard - is a great gardening tool that we have typically shunned. Pine straw. Raked up often to be disposed of, this all-natural, ...

As a little boy growing up on a Minnesota farm, Joel Karsten wondered why the healthiest weeds seemed to be ones growing out of broken down straw bales. Years later, after earning a degree in ...

Mulching in the fall benefits most plants in your garden, but it is especially critical for some plants more than others. Mulching insulates the soil, suppresses weeds, and adds nutrients to the soil, ...

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.

A. Does pine straw make a good mulch to use with tomato plants in a raised bed? — R. Jeffers, Virginia Beach Q. Like any mulch, pine straw has pros and cons. Among the pros: It’s lightweight and ...

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 ...

A recent conversation with Carol Reese took me back, way back to my earliest days as a gardener. Carol, who retired in 2021 from a distinguished career as a horticultural extension specialist in the ...