Gardening has its ups and downs. You can't control everything about your garden; the weather and the pests are going to do what they're going to do. This uncertainty is part of what makes gardening interesting and what makes successes feel so good.

When you have a gardening success, you have conquered nature, itself!

(well, sort of)

As a new gardener, it's easy to get overwhelmed with all the variables in gardening. There's so much to...

Garden fertilizers are chemicals added to improve the growth performance of crops. 

Most people know about a few fertilizers, such as Miracle Gro or Jobe's. Just walk into a big box home and garden store and behold all the different types of fertilizers available! You'll find even more choices online. Some fertilizers are organic, and others are . 

I prefer an organic approach, and I use fertilizers. Organic fertilizers...

As I write this, we are about 8 weeks into the COVID-19 / Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. We are starting some tentative steps to reopen businesses and our society. It looks, however, like social distancing is going to be with us for a long while.

I was so worried that our community garden wouldn't open! It's a community group, so the natural reaction would be that people aren't allowed to congregate, so shut it down!

Thankfully, cooler...

Plant labels are important. You think you'll remember where you planted everything and which varieties are where, but it's so easy to forget or get mixed up! 

I recommend using durable plant labels made of metal or plastic.

Many starter plants come with a thin plastic plant label stuck in the pot or six-pack. I do not recommend you use them. They look nice when you first put them in, but my experience is that after a month or two...

How to Build a Poultry Netting Fence

Building the fence is probably the hardest physical work you will have to do.  If you can recruit a helper or two, it makes the work much easier. It's really worth the effort to do a good job.  Good fence building now will mean you never have to touch it for the rest of the season!

Dig a Trench

This is a critically important step if your plot is right at ground level! You are...

Make no mistake… gardening involves physical work. If you’re not willing to sweat a little, maybe gardening isn’t for you. The physical work is also one of the benefits of gardening, though. It’s exercise with a purpose.

Activity

When working on your plot, you'll need to do the following

1. Sitting and kneeling on the ground and getting up again. It’s not just once  – sometimes you have to get up...

When I talk to people about gardening, sometimes they'll tell me,

"I have a black thumb!"

They mean that they can't garden, that they have no natural ability to garden. Do you know what I think about that?

What a load of manure!

Gardening is a skill, like so many other skills. Once you couldn't ride a bike... but likely you really wanted to. So, what did you do? You got a bike, you had someone help you get started, and then you practiced,...