Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical guides on soil, composting, watering, seeds, pests and the everyday skills that make a garden thrive.
Broadcast complete organic fertilizer or strong compost shallowly over the corn patch till midwinter, or as early in spring as the earth can be worked without making too many clods. Corn will germinat...
Children are more or less observers of nature, and frequently far more so than their elders. This, perhaps, is in a great measure to be accounted for from the fact that childhood is naturally inquisit...
Sour cherries are more easily grown than the sweet varieties, and are less subject to the attacks of fruit enemies. Sweet cherries are troubled by the curculio, or fruit-worm, which attacks also peach...
Cherries have one advantage over the other fruits--they give quicker returns. But, as far as my experience goes, they are not as long-lived. The sour type is hardier, at least north of New Jersey, tha...
I am half tempted to omit entirely any discussion of chemical fertilizers: to give a list of them, tell how to apply them, and let the why and wherefore go. It is, however, such an important subject,...
_Spacing:_ Grow like broccoli, 3 to 4 feet apart. _Sowing date:_ It is easiest to sow in April or early May, minimally fertigate a somewhat gnarly plant through the summer, push it for size in fall an...
The Rose is preeminently the Queen of Flowers. It has no rival in the floral kingdom, and will always stand at the head in the catalogue of Flora's choicest gems. To it alone belongs that subtle perfu...
Without irrigation, most of the plant's water supply is obtained by expansion into new earth that hasn't been desiccated by other competing roots. Eliminating any obstacles to rapid growth of root sys...
Forget those delicate, green supermarket cabbages unless you have unlimited amounts of water. But easiest-to-grow savoy types will do surprisingly well with surprisingly little support. Besides, savoy...