organic home garden

New to gardening? Want to make yours more sustainable? Whatever the case, here are four tips I advise for creating a sustainable garden you can be proud of.  

Overwatering isn't just bad for plants: It's also bad for the environment. We only have so much water on this earth, and it's imperative we do our best to conserve what we have. Here are five ways to save water in your garden. 

Believe it or not, you can actually bring zero waste into your gardening practices. Sometimes, even gardening can be wasteful, after all. Here are a few ways to make it as sustainable, and waste free, as possible. 

Growing herbs is often the gateway to becoming a gardener and eventually starting a vegetable garden.

As you plan your garden for this year, consider what type of gardener you are—or want to be. Some folks love spending meditative hours in the garden, pruning and weeding and maintaining plants. Others (like me, this year) may prefer to “sow and go”—to set seeds and watch the magic happen without extensive investment of time and energy.

The conventional methods of putting the garden away involve pulling up your hard-grown plants and tilling your soil. While this method works for a few seasons, permaculture has a longer-term view of soil health. Tilling the soil destroys much of the delicate soil structures that allow for high levels of biodiversity. There are little pockets of water and air in the soil where nutrient-carrying mycorrhizal fungi can grow and beneficial insects can reside.

There’s nothing more heavenly than biting into a juicy peach, freshly plucked off the tree in your backyard. Here are some valuable tips on how to grow and care for your peach tree for a great harvest every year.

More than termites, rats, and wasps, Argentine ants might actually be the worst pests in the world. Based on their size alone, they might appear innocuous: worker ants are between 1.6 and 2.8 mm long, while queens are no bigger than 6.4 mm. Despite their tiny size, they’re major disruptors of native ant species. While they’ve only lived in the United States for little more than 120 years, they can be found across the nation with large populations in moderate climates like Southern California.

Adding color and beauty to gardens is something flowers do best, but let’s not forget that some flowers give us some fantastic fragrances, too. Flowers are nature’s perfume, and each variety has its own special scent. Check out these 15 fragrant flowers to grow for your outdoor garden.

In ancient practices, certain Ayurvedic medicines called bhasmas or paks could only be made on the fire of cow dung cakes. During this time, cows were left free to roam in forest meadows where they ate sweet grass, gave nutritious milk and their dung fertilized the forest further. While the same might not hold true today, cow dung – when composted – makes great slow-release manure for your garden and backyard.