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How to Make Liquid Fertilizer from a Granular Organic
After sharing recipes for making your own granular organic fertilizer from inexpensive bulk ingredients, I’ve gotten a number of questions from readers asking how to convert a dry organic fertilizer into a liquid. Why would you want to? Liquid fertilizer is fast-acting. A liquid fertilizer can be faster acting than a dry or granular fertilizer,…
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Fabulously Fastigiate: Narrow Plants for Skinny Spaces
Most gardeners have one of “those” spaces: an awkward, skinny location where you need that most unusual of plants, one that grows much taller than it does wide. We call these plants “fastigiate”, which means tall and narrow, or tower-like. Usually these spots in the garden are created by fences or walls, but you can…
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Tomato Blight: Organic Treatment for Early and Late Blight
You have visions of homegrown tomatoes dancing in your head. . . Homemade tomato sauce canned and stacked neatly on shelves, stewed tomatoes in jars, tomatoes on salads and just taking a big juicy bite out of one straight out of the garden – you can almost taste it! You go out to your garden…
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Gardening Books on Kindle Unlimited: My Top Picks
Since I’ve primarily become a digital reader, I’ve really enjoyed getting to dig into gardening books, both old favorites and new discoveries, with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Kindle Unlimited allows you to read a wide selection of books from participating authors and publishers for free, with your subscription price of $9.99 a month. While the…
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Kindle Gardening Books for $4 or Less
After reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, I’ve been even more enthused to simultaneously save money and space by reading digitally. Digital gardening books look fantastic on an iPad, or you can always read them on your computer screen, especially reference books which are…
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Repairing and Preventing Snow Damage in the Landscape
Split bark, broken branches, and winter burned foliage – it’s enough to make any gardener long to take refuge in a warmer climate. However, a little knowledge can go a long way towards preventing and repairing storm damage. By treating your plants properly in summer and fall, you can help plants harden off and become immune…
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DIY Bird Seed Blends for Feeding Wild Birds (and a Guide to the Best Seeds)
Feeding wild birds is a rewarding pastime and a wonderful way to identify different birds in your area, which is good information to have if you are planning to use native plants in your garden to attract specific species. It’s also a great way to share a love of wildlife with children who may be…
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Landscape Designer’s Tools of the Trade: Best Measuring Tools
We’re coming up on that time of the year when most of us are doing more armchair gardening and garden planning than actual outside, in-the-dirt gardening, and one of the biggest challenges people encounter when they start measuring or plotting out their garden to create an overall plan is that their tools are woefully inadequate…
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2015 Gardening Trend Predictions
Drumroll please! As we jump into a new year, it’s a North Coast Gardening tradition to take a wild and sometimes partially-accurate stab at guessing the hottest trends in the upcoming year, if only so that we can all look back at the end of said year and have a laugh. Fun, right? Let’s jump…
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Beguiling Bergenias: 5 Varieties for Dry Shade
While many gardeners find shade challenging enough, add in dry soil and deer, and the list of plants which will perform gets shorter and shorter. Yet Bergenia, an unassuming perennial with leathery evergreen leaves, does admirably under all of these conditions. Though you may have grown Bergenia in the past and been unimpressed by its tendency…
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Amazon Deals: The Drunken Botanist and Sunset Magazine
This is just a quick post to let you guys know that I discovered two great deals on Amazon today. Amy Stewart’s latest on sale Fans of Amy Stewart will be thrilled to know that the digital version of The Drunken Botanist is on sale for only $1.99. Yes people, for the princely sum of…