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.
What are termed the raw materials from which the universally known "mixed fertilizers" are made up, are organic or inorganic substances which contain nitrogen, phosphoric acid or potash in fairly defi...
Red Dutch, while older and smaller than some of the newer varieties, is hardier and not so likely to be hurt by the borer. London Market, Fay's Prolific, Perfection (new), and Prince Albert, are good...
Another source of organic manures, altogether too little appreciated, is what is termed "green manuring"--the plowing under of growing crops to enrich the land. Even in the home garden this system sho...
Maintaining topsoil humus content in the 4 to 5 percent range is vital to plant health, vital to growing more nutritious food, and essential to bringing the soil into that state of easy workability an...
There's no point in elaborate methods--trellising, pruning, or training--with dry-gardened tomato vines. Their root systems must be allowed to control all the space they can without competition, so al...
reader will be referred to a specific company only for varieties that are not widely available. I have again come to appreciate the older style of vegetable-- sprawling, large framed, later maturing,...
The garden vegetables may be considered in three groups, in each of which the various varieties are given somewhat similar treatment: the root crops, such as beets and carrots; the leaf crops, such as...
Many a home gardener who has succeeded well with vegetables is, for some reason or other, still fearsome about trying his hand at growing his own fruit. This is all a mistake; the initial expense is v...
The food of plants consists of chemical elements, or rather, of numerous substances which contain these elements in greater or less degrees. There is not room here to go into the interesting science o...