Good soil is the foundation of a healthy, high-yielding vegetable garden. If your plants just don’t seem to grow well or produce much no matter how much careful planning and tending you do, it’s likely the problem isn’t your routine (or the color of your thumb!) It’s time to look deeper and investigate what’s going…
Have you struggled with your veggie plants growing poorly and not doing much, even though you put out fertilizer and took good care of them? If you’ve seen mysterious signs of nutrient deficiency in your garden, like yellowing or discolored leaves, stunted growth, and low production, your soil’s pH level could be part of the…
Compost is one of the best things you can do for your garden soil, especially if you garden organically. It conditions your soil with organic matter, which helps with drainage and compaction problems. It’s also a great slow-release fertilizer, offering the full spectrum of nutrients and important minerals plants need for healthy growth. You’ll pay…
Maintaining a hot compost pile sounds easy enough, until it isn’t. For me, at least, turning the compost every few days is a chore that ends up on the backburner, especially during the spring and summer growing season. “I’ll turn it tomorrow” gets stuck on an endless loop. So, yeah, making homemade compost has always…
Trench composting, sometimes called dig and drop composting or direct composting, is a simple way to bypass the compost heap/bin and let compost happen right where you want the finished product to be: in the garden. This composting method is a one and done job. Dig a hole or trench, drop in the compostables, and…
Farmers everywhere, conventional and organic alike, have started to embrace cover crops for their benefits in the field. Cover cropping helps prevent erosion, keeps the soil loose and aerated over the off-season, and provides nutrients and organic matter to reduce fertilizer needs. Cover crops aren’t just a thing for the pros, though. They’re just as…
