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, straw, wood chips, and the like around thousands of blueberry Read more
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 widely spaced food crops, between temporal gaps in food crops. Read more
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 widely spaced food crops, between temporal gaps in food crops. Read more
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 existing vegetation. If the site has persistent weeds with strong Read more
“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 manure placed on top of the existing soil going at Read more
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 that it makes sense why they’re becoming a favorite of Read more
Some Bin Ideas to Get You Started on Your Own All gardeners have their favorite bin styles, and there are countless good ideas—more quality methods and quality bins than could be adequately described on any website. But no gardener’s preferences for his or her own bins are prescriptive for all Read more
To Bin or Not To Bin | To Mix or Not to Mix Whether you use a bin or not, which bin you use, and whether or not you mix your compost on a strict schedule misses the point: that you compost in the first place. And composting first requires Read more
Making Your Own Compost It’s probably become clear that adding cured compost is the best way to increases your soil’s fertility and grow amazingly healthy and productive plants. It has all of the macro-and micro-nutrients plants need and contains the organic matter and humus needed to feed soil microbes, assist Read more
Benefits Applying mulch to your garden is a wonderful way to add organic matter to your soil. Plus, adding mulch has several other very useful benefits. Adding Organic Matter Although it doesn’t typically contribute nearly the volume of organic matter that cured compost adds to your garden, regularly applying mulch Read more