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 ...

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.

Worried about the winter frost? Need to keep your precious plants protected until spring comes around? Well, we've got one ...

In some areas of the country, the choice between mulching with pine needles and wood mulch is a tough one. Since the 1980s, pine straw has been the favorite mulch in the South. It is inexpensive, ...

Peppers, tomatoes and cabbage getting started, soon after being planted in straw bales. Growing vegetables out of straw bales is a hot topic lately after a web-site and Facebook frenzy led to a book ...

To help your perennials survive the winter, our pro gardener explains which of these you should mulch after the first hard ...

Local gardeners are experimenting with straw bales, taking advantage of the internal composting to help their garden grow. As a little boy growing up on a Minnesota farm, Joel Karsten wondered why the ...

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 ...

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 ...