Garden centers and nurseries are beautiful places, but they can also be very confusing, especially for new gardeners. Shelves filled with fertilizer choices are enough to make your head spin. What’s in all of those bags and bottles of fertilizer anyway? What do the fertilizer numbers on the package mean? And does it really matter which one you choose for your garden? Let’s take a close look at plant fertilizer numbers and how they can help you grow your best garden ever.
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The Fish Pepper: How to grow this fascinating heirloom vegetable
The first time I ate a fish pepper, I fell in love. Fish peppers are medium-hot with a fiery bite that falls somewhere between a jalapeño and a cayenne. They’re very easy to grow in gardens and containers and the plants are not only productive, but also ornamental with pretty variegated leaves and fruits.
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The best early spring flowering shrubs for your garden
Light up the spring garden with easy-to-grow early spring flowering shrubs like azaleas, lilacs, forsythia, and fothergilla. These spring stunners provide eye-catching flowers for you as well as pollen and nectar for the early bees and beneficial insects. While certain spring shrubs can grow quite large, many of newer cultivars are extremely compact, making them perfect for small space gardens or tucking between perennials.
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Mulch calculator: How to determine the amount of mulch you need
Mulching is an essential spring chore for every gardener. Whether you’re mulching the vegetable garden to cut down on watering, dressing up your flower beds, mulching a playground, or hoping to keep weeds at bay in shrub plantings, it’s important to know how much mulch you need for the job. Getting stuck with too little mulch – or worse, too much! – due to poor estimations has caused plenty of gardeners to scratch their head in confusion. This article introduces mulch calculator formulas you can use to purchase the perfect amount of mulch for your garden each and every time.
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Coreopsis ‘Zagreb’ and other tickseed varieties that look cheerful in the garden
Coreopsis ‘Zagreb’ is a dependable, drought-tolerant perennial in my front yard garden. I bought a couple of tiny plants at a native plant sale a few years ago because my first house had them in the garden. They have since spread into a decent little sunny swath of yellow, surrounded by lavender, catmint, and black-eyed Susans. I’ve since discovered many varieties of coreopsis—‘Solar Dance’ is in my list of favourite yellow perennial flowers.
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The best herbs to start from seed for garden beds and containers
The first seeds I ever started were herbs: basil, lemon balm, chamomile, and parsley. I was amazed at how easy it was to grow my own herbs and quickly caught the gardening bug. In the below article, you’ll discover my favorite herbs to start from seed. Many popular culinary herbs are a snap to grow from seeds that are started indoors or direct seeded, but others are better purchased as transplants. Why? Some, like thyme are super slow to grow from seed while others, like mint, have varieties that don’t come true to type when grown from seed. Read on to discover the best herbs to start from seed.
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