What Plants Need: Water

What Plants Need: Water

Watering The Garden It’s no secret that a consistent supply of water is a necessity for a healthy garden or landscape. Even desert plants need water occasionally. The questions are, how much and how often. Although there is considerable variation from plant to plant and location to location, the general rule of thumb that American gardeners…

Gardening Through El Niño

Gardening Through El Niño

Variable Climate, Consistent Garden It’s no secret that weird weather is the norm these days, case in point: one of the strongest “El Niño” patterns in decades is developing before our eyes. This phenomenon will likely have an effect on weather conditions for several months, particularly late fall through winter, with a trend of warm,…

Growing With Green Manure

Growing With Green Manure

Green Manure Cover Crop Cover cropping is a well known practice, and the current groundswell of interest in backyard organic gardening has everyone doing it. It is pretty common to find field peas, oats, buckwheat and other traditional agricultural cover crops in garden centers, packed in small packets to sow in plots as small as fifty…