The history books have it wrong. The oldest profession in the world is actually gardening. At least, that’s what I tell myself. People have been cultivating or caring for plants and yards as far back as we can see. If this tells me anything, it’s that you don’t need any fancy tools or materials to …
Nourishing your lawn is an essential step to having a healthy and good-looking lawn. Not only does it make it look good, but it makes it resistant to afternoon football games, barbecues, and other environmental stresses. Unfortunately, most people don’t have any idea about natural alternatives to the chemical fertilizers often used to nourish lawns. …
When the spring season starts, or it is just a relaxed day at home, you may be tempted to work on getting the absolutely perfect tan. However, there are laws and limitations to whether or not you can sunbathe in the nude in your own backyard or whether it is illegal. In general, it is …
I was doing some scientific research for an article I was writing about maggots in your compost when someone on the Composting Subreddit commented “…I just throw whole eggs into my compost, cover them with some leaves, and pee on the whole thing.” Dude on Reddit Wait, you pee on your compost? That was a …
I hate husking corn. Every year my family would cut the corn from thousands of corn cobs to freeze for the winter. I was always astounded at the size of the “waste pile” we created to end up with 2-300 cups of corn. I would no longer be astounded. Since I took up composting I …
Every fall trees such as Oak, Maple, Sycamores, and many others drop their leaves in preparation for the winter season. In nature, leaves provide important ecological services by protecting and nourishing the soils in which trees live. In urban settings they often cause a nuisance, covering lawns, patios, driveways, and any surface you can think …
When my wife and I moved into our current house we were super excited to plant a garden. That is until we saw the soil. Sandy soil with nothing at all to offer vegetable plants. We knew that it would need some serious amending to start producing well for us and composting would be the …
Let’s be serious for a second, soil pH isn’t that important for the average gardener. Unless you have something very wrong with your soil pH and you’re trying to diagnose an issue, you probably don’t need to test it. But you probably already know that. You want to test your soil’s pH because you’re an …
When my wife and I moved into the house we live in now, we had grand hopes of growing a garden. One look at our “soil” set us straight. It wasn’t even fertile enough to grow weeds. It was so sandy and dusty that I needed a drink just looking at it. That little dusty …
If you’ve been composting for any period of time you’ll know that it’s addicting. I hadn’t had a compost tumbler very long before I started throwing in chicken bones, old yogurt, plasticized cardboard, and all sorts of other dumb things. Long story short, my first load of compost was a total waste that I ended …