“Hey Jim, do you feel a draft?” I recently talked about Proper Pruning – Are You Making These Common Pruning Mistakes?. Let’s continue that and talk about proper pruning for diseased branches. Even when covered in disease, leaves are often…
For proper pruning, always use secateurs, not anvil pruners Proper pruning, as we are often told, involves removing the 3 D’s from our trees: Dead, Damaged and Diseased wood, so our organic gardening pruning chores revolve around that. Now pruning…
The 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird shares many anecdotes (some more believable than others) about the fascinating relationship between music and plants. Apparently, the right sounds can produce tremendous improvements in growth,…
Organic Gardening Goal 10 : To encourage the creation and protection of native plant and wildlife habitats. Native gardening is becoming increasingly popular in conventional and organic gardening. The two main reasons generally cited for planting native plants are because…
Organic Gardening Goal 9 : To ensure biological diversity within urban landscapes. The conservation of plants and animals and microorganisms is vital in organic gardening. Biological diversity refers to having different species of plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and protists in…
Organic Gardening Goal 7: To work towards closing the nutrient cycles in ecosystems with regard to organic matter and nutrient cycling. It is generally agreed that it’s often a good idea to bring outside materials into a new garden that…
Organic Gardening Goal 6: To use, as far as possible, renewable, biodegradable and recycled resources from local sources and to minimize waste. Today, I’d like to give some examples of renewable resources and non renewable resources in the garden. In…
Organic Gardening Goal 5: To optimize garden air quality and circulation in the soil, water and atmosphere in support of all life forms. Plants are over 50% air. According to one source, they’re about 44% carbon, most of which comes…
Organic Gardening Goal 4: To practice the responsible use of water, and the protection of water resources. Garden water use. Although not as sexy as getting your hands on the latest organic fertilizer, taking the time to properly water your…
If you haven’t seen Sunday’s post yet, or want to see what people shared there, you can go here. Another short video from 2 days ago…