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Gardening Basics: How to Amend Soil
We’ve talked about why composty soil, good watering habits, and a thick layer of mulch are important if you want to garden more organically; it’s all about giving your plants a foundation of good health so that pest problems will be few and far between. Today we’ll talk about how to know whether you need…
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Soil, Water, and Mulch: The Three Key Steps to a Healthy Organic Garden
As a professional landscaper, I get to see and diagnose a lot of garden issues. I find many people at wits’ end, spraying for pest problems and dealing with unhappy plants. Most of the time, the pest problem or grumpy plant shouldn’t be looked at as the problem itself – more accurately, they are symptoms…
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Lost Coast Daily Painters
Many gardeners are also fans of art, and it makes sense – what is gardening if not the pursuit of beauty? So you might be interested to know that local garden writer Amy Stewart has started Lost Coast Daily Painters with other local artists, including Susan Fox of the garden blog Digging Dow’s Prairie. They…
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Is Landscape Fabric/ Weed Barrier Right for You?
One of the biggest barriers to organic gardening success, and I mean that literally, is landscape fabric. Any kind of fabric or plastic that keeps weeds down will also keep fallen leaves or mulch from adding organic matter to your soil, leaving behind a hardened, dead zone where plants struggle to survive. Now, that’s not…
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Organic Snail and Slug Control: How to Kill Snails and Slugs Naturally
Snails and slugs are one of the most common pests in the garden, and the traditional pesticide treatment for them is particularly nasty. If you are transitioning to an organic garden, treating snails and slugs differently is an easy (and still highly effective) change that will have a great impact on your family’s health and…
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Organic Gardening 101: How to Begin Gardening Naturally and Have Happier Plants
I’ve been asked a lot lately about organics in the garden. “How do I kill snails around my vegetable starts?” is a common question. “Does anything organic really work on roses?” I even spoke with one gardener who felt chained to her Miracle-Gro routine – having to laboriously water it in every two weeks. It…
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Wicked Plants Contest Winner!
All right Amy Stewart fans, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for – the winner of the autographed copy of Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants is: Monica the Garden Faerie! Monica, I’ll be emailing you today to find out where to send your book! While the drawing itself was random (I had my Memorial Day…
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“I Grow Good Weed”, A Soil Knife Review
My new blogging friend Karl wrote me recently to rave about his favorite gardening tool, the Fiskars Big Grip Knife. It just so happened that I had just recorded a video and written my own review of my two favorite weeding tools, and after I included his review with mine, he wrote a follow-up post…
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Welcome to the Institute of Rude Awakenings by Dr Leda Horticulture
I’m honored and pleased to be able to share with you the writing of my favorite garden humorist, Dr Leda Horticulture. Regan Nursery, the finest place to buy bare root roses online, and a gorgeous full-service garden center serving the San Francisco Bay Area, has given us permission to reprint Dr Leda’s articles from their…
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Miller Farms’ Yvonne C. Shares her Pruning Shear Love
Miller farms Nursery’s Yvonne C. waxed poetical about her favorite pruning shears in the latest nursery newsletter: I love my Felcos. I always have these handy. Why do I like them so much? Well, it makes pruning so easy. I use them everyday in the nursery, then go home and use them some more. Yvonne…
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Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Book has Arrived! (with Video and a Contest!)
Read to the end of the article to find out how you can win an autographed copy of Wicked Plants! Y’all know by now what a huge fan I am of Amy Stewart and her writing. As a plant geek, I love how accurate she is about the plants’ details (so many writers get basic…