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  • Home
  • Big Ideas
    • Why Garden?
    • Everyone Can Garden
    • Gardening Can Be Easy
    • The Four Main Needs of All Garden Plants
    • Who’s This For?
    • Why Now?
    • Who Are We?
    • My Voice, the Benefits, and an Homage to the Greats
  • Big Secrets
    • The True Core of All Great Gardeners:
    • The Fundamentals of Gardening
    • Immense Amounts of Sunlight
    • Perfect Soil
    • Building Soil
    • The Right Amount of Water
    • Growing Temperature
    • Layout and Spacing
    • Companion Planting
  • Sun
    • There’s Nothing Like Sunlight!
    • What Green-Thumbed Gardeners Know About Sunlight
    • How Much Sunlight Do Garden Plants Really Need?
    • Why Garden Plants Need So Much
    • Finding A Spot That Gets Enough Sun — The First Steps: Marking Out Your Spot, Orienting Yourself, and Choosing a Method
    • The Two Easiest Ways to Find Your Sunniest Spot
    • Three More Easy Ways to Find Your Sunniest Spot
    • Making Your Own Sunstick to Quickly and Accurately Find Your Sunniest Spot
    • What If You Don’t Have Enough Sun?
    • Orienting Yourself
    • Using a Compass
    • Why Northeast and Northwest Instead of Just East and West?
  • Soil
    • Amazing Soil
      • A Gardener’s Relationship with Soil
      • Perfect Soil
      • Rich
      • Full of Organic Matter
      • Well-Drained
      • Well-Loosened
      • Deep
    • Lessons from Our Roots
    • Building Soil
    • Adding Organic Matter to Build Soil
      • Compost
        • Adding Cured Compost
        • Making Your Own Compost
        • To Bin or Not To Bin | To Mix or Not to Mix
        • Some Bin Ideas to Get You Started on Your Own
      • Mulch
        • Benefits
        • For Each Season
        • Mulching Cool- and Warm-Season Plants
        • Mulching to Create “Perfect” Soil Microclimates
        • What’s the Best Mulch?
        • My Own Mulch Epiphanies
      • Cover Crops
        • 20 Reasons to Grow Cover Crops
        • Growing Cover Crops
    • Bed Preparation That Builds Soil in the Process
      • Building Healthy Soil by Adding Organic Matter and Loosening It
      • Digging/Tilling Methods
      • Trenching, Bastard Trenching, and Double Digging—An Overview
      • Trenching
      • Bastard Trenching
      • Double Digging
      • Double Digging’s Finer Points
      • Loosening Soil with a Digging Fork
      • Tilling and Raking Your Own Mounded Beds
      • Tilling Only but Keeping Beds with Paths
      • “No Dig”/“No-Till” Methods
      • Pros and Cons of “No-Dig” / “No-Till” Methods
      • “No-Dig” / “No-Till”: Adding 6″ of Cured Compost
      • Building Raised Beds
    • Clearing Your Spot
      • Dealing with Sod & Persistent Weeds
      • Clearing Existing Vegetation for “No-Dig” / “No-Till” Beds
  • Water
    • The Basics: How Much and How Deeply?
    • The Biggest, Best Secrets: A Conservation Perspective, Mulch, Soil Loosening, & Cover Crops
    • The Power of Mulch
    • What’s the Best Mulch?
    • Straw versus Hay
    • Mulching Cool- and Warm-Season Plants
    • Mulching to Create “Perfect” Microclimates
    • Speaking of Mulch: Contrasting Alliums
    • Should I Water, and What’s the Best Way to Water?
  • Temperature
    • The Basics: Cool- vs. Warm-Season Plants
    • Planting Times
    • Frost Dates
    • Mulching Cool- and Warm-Season Plants
    • Mulching to Create “Perfect” Soil Microclimates
  • Layout & Spacing
    • Past Paradigms
    • Planting in Beds
    • How Big of Beds?
    • In Bed Spacing
    • Sidebar: Offset Spacing
    • The Benefits of Planting in Beds
  • Companions
    • Companion Planting—An Overview
    • Easy Companion Groupings to Get Started
    • Companion Planting Chart
    • Our Favorites
  • “Little” Secrets
    • Seed and Plant Selection
    • Starting Your Own Seedlings
      • Starting Your Own Seedlings — Part 1: Why Do It Yourself?
      • Starting Your Own Seedlings — Part 2: Soil and Containers
      • Starting Your Own Seedlings — Part 3: Planting Depth, Watering, Light, and Heat
    • Hardening Off Seedlings
    • Crop Rotations
    • Transplanting
    • Lessons from Our Roots
  • Blog

The Simple Fundamentals and Joy of Great Gardening

Big Ideas

Is Every Person Born to Garden?

Everyone Can Garden Many people think gardening isn’t for them. They just can’t do it. If you have the deep desire to garden, however, few things could be farther from the truth. In fact, everyone with that passion can learn Read more…

By juddlefeber, 2 yearsJune 15, 2023 ago
Big Ideas

Why Garden?

Why Garden? “Why garden? What’s the point? A person can get everything cheaper and easier from the grocery store.” Yet there’s a pull to nurture our own plants in the soil that many of us would have a hard time Read more…

By juddlefeber, 2 yearsJune 14, 2023 ago
Big Secrets

Mulching for the Season

Mulching for the Season During the Growing Season: Temperature and Moisture During the growing season, then, think of mulch as a moisture and temperature regulator for your soil. Use it to regulate your soil’s moisture and temperature like you use Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsNovember 17, 2022 ago
Big Secrets

My Own Mulch Epiphanies

My Own Mulch Epiphanies I’ve known about the power of mulch my entire life, perhaps more than I wanted to in my early years. When I was growing up, my siblings and I spent countless hours shoveling and spreading sawdust, Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsNovember 17, 2022 ago
Big Secrets

Growing Cover Crops

What Are Cover Crops? Cover crops are crops like wheat, oats, rye, forage radishes, clovers, and vetches that are grown to blanket, or cover, and protect the soil when the soil would otherwise be bare during the garden’s offseason, between Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsNovember 10, 2022 ago
Big Ideas

20 Reasons to Grow Cover Crops

What Are Cover Crops? Cover crops are crops like wheat, oats, rye, forage radishes, clovers, and vetches that are grown to blanket, or cover, and protect the soil when the soil would otherwise be bare during the garden’s offseason, between Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsNovember 8, 2022 ago
Big Ideas

Clearing Existing Vegetation for “No-Dig” / “No-Till” Beds

Clearing Existing Vegetation for “No-Dig”/”No-Till” Beds Just like for tilling and digging methods, the first step in making a “no-dig” or “no-till” bed is to decide how you want to clear the area you intend as a bed of its Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsJuly 11, 2022 ago
Big Secrets

“No-Dig” / “No-Till”: Adding 6″ of Cured Compost

“No-Dig”/”No-Till”: Adding 6″ of Cured Compost Gardeners have been planting in compost heaped on top of the soil for at least as long as people have recorded such things. French Intensive gardeners were planting in 18 inches of cured horse Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsJuly 11, 2022 ago
Bed Preparation

Pros and Cons of “No-Dig” / “No-Till” Methods

Benefits and Detriments of “No-Dig” / “No-Till” Methods “No-dig” or “no-till” methods date back centuries but have been increasing in popularity in recent years due to their simplicity and effectiveness. In fact, “no-dig” or “no-till” beds have so many benefits Read more…

By juddlefeber, 3 yearsJuly 8, 2022 ago
Big Secrets

Our Favorites

For anything in the garden, one cannot prescribe or proscribe specific choices. It’s not the point. In fact, I’d say it’s the opposite. There’s too much variability in climate, plant combinations, time of planting, and, most importantly, gardeners’ own personal Read more…

By juddlefeber, 4 yearsMarch 23, 2021 ago

Posts pagination

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  • Home
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  • Soil
  • Water
  • Temperature
  • Layout & Spacing
  • Companions
  • “Little” Secrets
  • Blog
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