Author: Prime Ram

Everyone in North America probably knows how monarch butterflies and milkweed plants need each other to survive. Female monarchs will only put their eggs on milkweed, and caterpillars eat nothing else. Because of this, protecting milkweed is essential—something also explained in how to grow milkweed successfully. Scientists who study animals have said the monarch butterfly population has steadily gotten smaller over the last ten, twenty, thirty years because of milkweed disappearing all over the place. So, planting milkweed in your own garden is becoming more and more essential to actually protect monarchs.

Why Only Milkweed: The Biology Behind the Dependency

Milkweed plants, belonging to the Asclepias genus, have cardiac glycosides inside them. These are poisonous substances that happen to be created by nature, and they’re harmful to nearly all insects and animals with backbones. Monarch caterpillars are different; they’ve developed the ability to live with these substances, actually storing them within their own bodies. This in turn makes the caterpillars poisonous and unpleasant to creatures that want to eat them, for instance, birds. Because this chemical protection is so important for monarchs to live, they now absolutely need milkweed to eat when they are young. No other plant gives them the specific poisons they require to build up their defense against being eaten. Choosing the right species is important for success. Different varieties grow in different conditions, so selecting the right one ensures healthy plants and better support for monarchs. Understanding plant growth conditions is similar to knowing soil temperature for seeds for optimal results.

 

The Best Milkweed Species for Home Gardens

There are more than seventy kinds of milkweed that originally come from North America and to have a successful garden and good quality place for monarchs to live, you need to choose a type that will thrive in your local weather and the way your garden’s ground is. The most common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) does well in areas from zone 3 to zone 9, needing lots of sun and normal earth. Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is perfectly fine with soggy spots and isn’t quite as prone to rapidly taking over your garden with roots under the surface, something the common milkweed does. Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) has really bright orange flowers, likes dry to average soil and is the prettiest for flower beds. And in the western states, showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) is the main milkweed that monarch butterflies will use to lay eggs on.

What Else Monarchs Need Beyond Milkweed

Monarch butterflies absolutely need milkweed for laying eggs and for their caterpillars to grow, but adult monarchs equally need energy from nectar, and the plants providing it are crucial for the whole population to thrive. Adult monarchs will feed on the nectar of many, many kinds of flowers, but they really like coneflowers (Echinacea), black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia), asters, goldenrod, lantana, zinnias, and Joe-Pye weed. If you put these flowers full of nectar in with your milkweed, you’ll have a proper home for monarchs at all points in their lives. Ecologists who study wildlife suggest having at least ten milkweed plants in a garden, which will feed several caterpillars as they grow, and to include a lot of different nectar flowers that are always in bloom. Creating a balanced garden with multiple plant types ensures a complete habitat, just like improving soil with leaf mold compost supports overall plant growth.

 

Key Takeaway

Monarch butterflies absolutely need milkweed to lay their eggs and for their caterpillars to grow, so milkweed is essential if we want to help monarchs survive. People with gardens can really help by planting at least ten milkweed plants, and including flowers that provide a lot of nectar – such as coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, zinnias – is a good idea. What’s more, if you pick milkweed types that originally come from your area, they’ll do best in your local weather and give monarchs the very best home.

Lots of gardeners are now growing milkweed because it helps monarch butterflies. However, many beginners face issues like poor germination or weak plant growth, similar to challenges covered in seed viability and seed preparation. However, a lot of people who start growing it find the seeds don’t sprout well, or the milkweed quickly takes over their garden, or (and this is what’s most upsetting!) the monarchs don’t even come to the plants. Luckily, almost all of these issues are from a small number of typical errors, and with a bit of knowledge, they’re easily prevented.

Mistake 1: Skipping Cold Stratification

Milkweed seeds usually don’t start to grow because people plant them without doing something called cold stratification. Essentially, this is giving the seed a long time of being cold and wet, which wakes it up from its natural sleep. Outside, milkweed seeds drop in autumn, get cold throughout the winter, and then sprout in the spring. If you try to start the seeds inside and don’t copy that cold period, they won’t come up. Luckily, it’s easy to fix: put the seeds between damp paper towels within a zipped plastic bag and into the fridge for four to six weeks before planting. Or, you could just plant the seeds outside in late fall and allow the winter cold to do the trick.

 

Mistake 2: Choosing the Wrong Species

Different kinds of milkweed act in quite different ways in a garden. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a very enthusiastic spreader, sending out roots underground to cover a lot of ground and quickly taking over a garden unless you stop it. That’s actually good for bringing back meadows or for big yards, but in a little flower bed it will become too much, and your neighbours might not be so pleased. If you don’t have a lot of room, go for milkweed that grows in a bunch, like butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) or swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) – these types stay put and won’t send growth into other parts of your garden. And if you are gardening to help monarchs, it’s best to not use tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) as studies show that because it keeps growing all year in warmer places, monarchs on it get more parasites.

Mistake 3: Expecting Results in the First Year

Most of our naturally occurring milkweeds come back year after year, and when they’re starting out, they spend their first year growing a strong, deep root system instead of lots of leaves and flowers. Because of this, young plants can be quite small and not very impressive, and this often makes people think they haven’t grown at all. Actually, milkweed will normally get two or three times bigger in its second year, and by the third year it’s fully grown and flowering. You really do need to be patient while it gets going, because after that you’ll be rewarded with lots of blooms. A grown milkweed will have many flower heads, which will appeal to monarch butterflies and loads of other pollinators.

Milkweed is a perennial plant that focuses on root growth in its first year. This slow start is normal and similar to understanding plant timelines like days to maturity.

Mistake 4: Removing Caterpillars or Their Damage

If you grow milkweed to get Monarch butterflies to visit, you might be worried when you see caterpillars munching all the leaves off the plant. Monarch caterpillars are seriously hungry and can leave a milkweed plant bare in just a few days. But this is how it’s supposed to happen, and the milkweed will be fine. In fact, milkweed is used to being eaten that much and will usually get a fresh start with new shoots from the bottom once the caterpillars have eaten their fill and turned into chrysalises. Don’t get rid of the caterpillars or spray the plant with anything to kill bugs, not even the natural kinds, because you’re planting the milkweed to help the Monarchs in the first place.

Caterpillars feeding on milkweed is a natural and necessary process. Avoid using pesticides, as they harm beneficial insects. Instead, support natural ecosystems, similar to methods discussed in natural pest control without chemicals.

 

Key Takeaway

To get milkweed to thrive for monarch butterflies, you first need to cold stratify the seeds before putting them in the ground. Then, select milkweed varieties that won’t spread all over the place and that will fit nicely in your garden. You’ll have to be patient for the first year while the plants get going, and you should anticipate that monarch caterpillars will munch on the leaves. Importantly, if you live in a warmer area, don’t use tropical milkweed, as it’s not good for the butterflies. If you do these things, your milkweed garden will be a good home for monarchs by its second or third year of growth.

What houseplant owners ask about most in gardening forums, at plant stores, and with local extension services is why their plant’s leaves are turning yellow. What makes this even more annoying is that yellow leaves can be a symptom of many things – too much water, a lack of food for the plant, or just the plant getting older – and figuring out what’s going on can feel like a shot in the dark, similar to issues seen in how to grow milkweed successfully where plant care mistakes affect growth. Still, when you look at how the yellow is happening on the leaf, which leaves are turning color, and how the plant has been treated, finding the reason is generally quite easy.

1. Overwatering: The Leading Cause

More often than you’d think, houseplants get yellow leaves because of too much water – in fact, it’s the reason for more of them than anything else! If the soil is soggy for a long time, the roots can’t get oxygen and they start to decay. Once the roots are harmed, they can’t bring up water or food for the plant very well, and this results in all the leaves going yellow, usually beginning with the ones at the bottom and that have been on the plant the longest. When you squeeze the earth in the pot, it will usually be very heavy, wet, and might even smell a bit sour or mildewy. What you should do is let the soil dry out between each time you water, and ensure the pot actually has holes in the bottom for the water to drain.

 

2. Insufficient Light

When plants don’t get as much light as they’re supposed to, they can’t make enough chlorophyll (that’s the green stuff that lets them photosynthesize) to keep their leaves healthy. The leaves will slowly lose their rich green color, becoming paler green and then yellow, and the plant will often start to get long and spindly as it strains towards any available light. A change to a sunnier spot or using a special growing lamp will usually fix this in a few weeks, but leaves that have turned very yellow won’t go green again and should be taken off.

3. Natural Leaf Aging

Plants naturally drop their oldest leaves every so often as they grow. If only a couple of the leaves at the very bottom of the plant are turning yellow, and the rest of it is doing well with fresh growth, you don’t have to do anything about it. The plant is just moving goodness from the older leaves to help the new ones grow, which is what it’s supposed to do. Just get rid of the yellow leaves to make your plant look nicer.

4. Nutrient Deficiency

If plants live in the same potting mix for a long time, they’ll use up all the food in it, especially nitrogen and iron. When a plant doesn’t get enough nitrogen, all of the older leaves turn a flat yellow, but the new ones will stay green. Iron problems show in the opposite way: the new leaves are yellow, but the veins in them are green (this is known as interveinal chlorosis), and the older leaves are fine. To stop most yellowing because of a lack of nutrients, feed plants with a good all-purpose liquid houseplant fertilizer regularly during the spring and summer until the beginning of autumn. Lack of nitrogen or iron causes yellowing in specific patterns. This is often due to depleted soil, which is why improving soil quality—like using organic matter such as leaf mold compost—can help restore nutrients.

5. Temperature Stress

If your houseplants get a cold blast from windows, doors or the air conditioner, the leaves on the side getting the cold are likely to turn yellow. Likewise, if you put them right by a heater, they can yellow from being too hot and the air being too dry. Most tropical houseplants like a pretty steady temperature, ideally between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and they do badly if the temperature goes up and down a lot or goes below 55 degrees.

Sudden cold or heat exposure can cause leaves to turn yellow. Extreme conditions affect plant health just like summer heat damage in plants.

6. Root Bound Conditions

When plants stay in the same pot too long, their roots get all wrapped around and around inside, and there’s not much space left for the dirt and water they need. Plants with this problem (often called being ‘root bound’) commonly have yellowing leaves, don’t grow as much as they should, and have water flowing quickly right through the pot since the roots aren’t soaking it up. To see if a plant is root bound, carefully pull it from its pot and look at the roots. If they’ve formed a very thick, complicated tangle, you’ll need to get a new pot that’s one or two inches wider all the way around, and use new potting mix, to help the plant get healthy and grow well again.

 

Key Takeaway

When your indoor plants get yellow leaves, it’s usually because you’ve given them too much water, they aren’t getting enough light, or they’re simply getting older. Figuring out which is happening (and which leaves it is happening to, and how they are turning yellow) will quickly tell you what’s wrong. If you’ve been overwatering, the yellow will be all over the lower leaves, and the soil will be soggy. Too little light causes the plant to slowly lose color everywhere. If it doesn’t have enough nitrogen or iron, the yellowing will happen in a particular way. In most situations, changing how much you water and where you place your plants for light will fix the issue.

Lots of people grow lavender in their gardens because of its wonderfully strong smelling flowers, the fact that bees and butterflies love it, and how you can use it in things like scented bags, flower arrangements, homemade soap, and even cooking. However, a surprising number of gardeners who do manage to grow lavender don’t quite get the hang of when to pick it similar to confusion around what days to maturity really means and this impacts how lovely the smell and look of the dried flowers are. If you harvest before they’re ready, the buds will be a light colour and won’t have much of the oil that makes lavender special. Leave it too long, and the flowers fall apart, losing all their petals while they are drying.

The Ideal Harvest Lavender Window

You’ll get the best lavender harvest when about half to two-thirds of the flowers on a stem are actually open, and the rest are still in tight buds. That’s when the flowers have the most essential oil. To keep the best smell, harvest in the morning, once the dew is gone but before it gets really hot. Environmental factors like heat can reduce oil content, similar to how extreme summer heat damages garden plants. Open flowers are busily making fragrant substances at this time, and those unopened buds have a lot of concentrated oil that’s still locked inside. To keep the best smell, harvest in the morning, once the dew is gone but before it gets really hot and the sun starts to evaporate the oil into the air. Exactly when to do this depends on your climate and the type of lavender, but English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is usually ready for picking in early or middle of summer.

 

How to Cut Lavender Correctly

With nice, clean, sharp pruning shears or garden scissors, cut quite a lot of lavender stems at once, removing around a third of the plant’s height. Make each snip just above where the leaves grow in pairs on the stem (a leaf node) and this will get the plant to spread and make even more stems for flowers later in the year. To keep things tidy and easy to handle, collect the stems into groups of fifty to a hundred, and tie them with a rubber band. The stems will get smaller as they dry, and the rubber band will get tighter around them.

The Best Drying Methods

The easiest and best way to keep lavender is to let it air dry. You should hang bunches of it upside down in a warm, dry, dark spot where air can move around, so an attic, a porch that’s protected from the weather, a closet with a fan, or even a warm garage are all good choices. The dark protects the flower’s purple color and the warmth and moving air stop mold from forming. Depending on how much moisture is in the air, it generally takes two to four weeks for the lavender to be completely dry. If you only want the buds, you can strip them from the stems and store them in sealed jars. Keeping them away from sunlight helps preserve fragrance, just like proper storage improves seed longevity and viability. You’ll know they’re ready when the stems break cleanly and the flower buds feel papery and dry.

If you’re a gardener and want just the dried lavender buds (for things like scented bags, mixed dried flowers, or cooking) you can take the dried flower tops off the stems. Simply run your hand down each stem, which is hanging upside down, and over a clean sheet or into a bowl to collect them. Store these loose buds in sealed glass jars and out of direct sunlight, and they’ll keep their scent for a year or two.

 

Key Takeaway

You’ll get the most essential oil and the best smelling dried lavender if you pick it when about half to two-thirds of the flowers are actually open. Do this in the morning, but wait until the dew has gone. Trimming the stems just above where the leaves grow will get you another flowering. To keep the color and smell, hang bunches of lavender upside down to dry in a warm place that’s not in the light. Lavender buds that are dried and kept in good condition will smell lovely for a year or possibly two.

If you’re growing vegetables at home, changing to drip irrigation is probably the best thing you could do for your garden. It uses a system of tubes and little nozzles that apply water at a low pressure, getting it right to the roots of each plant. This uses 30 to 50 percent less water than sprinklers, and your plants will be stronger and get sick less. When you water from above (with sprinklers) the leaves get wet, and that causes things like powdery mildew, blight, or leaf spot (all fungal diseases) to happen, similar to issues seen in damping off disease Drip irrigation makes sure the leaves stay dry, and the soil around the roots gets a good soaking, so the roots can actually get to the water.

The Basic Components of a Drip System

To set up a drip system for a garden at your house, you need five main parts. First, you’ll link it to your water supply, generally a tap for your garden hose. You’ll also need a pressure regulator; this brings the water pressure down to somewhere between 15 and 25 PSI, which is what drip systems use. A filter is important too, because it keeps the little holes in the system from getting blocked. Then you’ll use half-inch polyethylene mainline tubing, and finally, you’ll have the emitters or drip tape to actually get water to each plant. Luckily, you can find all of these at most garden centres and hardware stores, and a full set for a fairly standard 4 by 8 foot raised bed will likely cost between $30 and $50.

 

Choosing Between Drip Emitters and Drip Tape

Drip emitters are little things you push into holes in your main water line. Each one puts out a set amount of water, most of the time half a gallon or a gallon an hour, and waters one particular plant. Because of this, they are perfect for plants that are fairly far apart from each other, such as tomatoes, peppers, squash and shrubs, and proper spacing also helps avoid problems like leggy seedlings caused by weak growth conditions. Drip tape, sometimes referred to as soaker tape, is a flat, easily bendable tube that already has water emitters along it at set distances, typically six, nine or twelve inches. For crops planted close together, like lettuce, carrots, and radishes, drip tape is a better choice because it’s much easier to get the whole row or bed evenly watered rather than using a drip emitter for each single plant.

Layout and Installation Steps

Setting up a simple drip irrigation system is pretty straightforward. You begin by attaching the pressure regulator and filter to your outdoor tap. Then, take the main tubing from the water source all the way to your garden, holding it in place with landscaping staples. If you have raised beds, put the main tubing along the long side of each one, and then add smaller branch lines or drip tape going across the width. How far apart these lines should be depends on what you’re growing; for leafy greens, 12 inches will do, but larger plants need 18 to 24 inches between lines. Before you finish the lines, run water through all the open ends of the tubing to get rid of any dirt or bits that could block the water coming out. Lastly, seal the ends of each line by capping them or folding and clamping, and once the water is on, make sure the water is flowing out of all the little outlets at the same rate.

How Long to Run Drip Irrigation

People who are just beginning with drip irrigation almost always want to know how long to have the system going and how many times a week to use it. What you’ll do depends on your soil, where you live, and what you are growing. But for most gardens, a good place to start is 20 to 30 minutes each time, two or three times a week while plants are actually growing. Sandy soil lets water go through it quickly, so it will likely need water more often, in shorter bursts. Clay soil holds water for a lot longer, and does well with water less often, but for a longer period. You’re aiming to get about an inch of water to the roots each week, and that’s roughly how much water most vegetable gardens use while they’re growing.

You can easily tell if you need to change your watering schedule by sticking your finger two or three inches into the soil to check for dampness, and healthy growth also depends on factors like good seed viability.

 

Maintenance: Keeping the System Running Smoothly

Drip irrigation doesn’t need a lot of upkeep, but it’s a good idea to look at it now and then. When the growing season starts, get rid of any dirt that’s built up in the pipes by taking off the end bits and letting the water run for a couple of minutes. To make sure the little outlets aren’t blocked, while the system is on, look for a drip from each one. If an outlet is blocked, you can unblock it by letting it sit in vinegar. Also, look at the plastic tubes for splits, bends, or places where rodents have been chewing and swap out any broken pieces. And if you live somewhere that gets freezing temperatures, at the end of the season, get all the water out of the system and bring anything above ground inside to stop it from breaking in the cold.

Key Takeaway

You’ll lose thirty to fifty percent less water with drip irrigation, it won’t wet the leaves (so plants are less likely to get sick), and the water goes straight to the roots, which is where they really use it. A simple setup for a raised garden bed is thirty to fifty dollars and doesn’t need any unusual equipment, and you can put it together in less than an hour. Watering for twenty to thirty minutes, two or three times a week is a good start, and you can change that depending on what kind of soil you have and the weather. To keep it working well for many years, rinse it out and make sure all the little outlets aren’t blocked each year.

Gardeners often call compost “black gold”, and for good reason: it’s a wonderfully rich, dark, and crumbly stuff that makes almost any garden soil much better. However, a lot of people who are starting out are scared of composting, because they think you need complicated setups with exactly the right amounts of things, temperatures to check, and tons of room. But it’s much easier than that. Composting is simply stuff breaking down naturally, and will happen even if you don’t do anything to help. You aren’t trying to build a perfect system, just to help the tiny creatures – microorganisms, fungi, invertebrates – to decompose organic matter quickly. In fact, pretty much any bin, any mix of organic waste, and how much or how little work you put in, will eventually give you compost you can use.

What Goes In: The Simple Brown-and-Green Rule

Things you can compost generally fit into two main types. “Greens” have lots of nitrogen, break down fast, and give the tiny life in the compost protein for them to multiply: think fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, freshly cut grass, and green bits you cut off plants. “Browns” have lots of carbon, decompose more slowly, and supply energy for the whole microbial community – you can use dried leaves, cardboard, newspaper, straw, wood chips, or dead and dried plant stems. Many people say a 30 to 1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen by weight is the perfect way to get a hot compost, but that’s really not important when you are first starting. A good way to get it going is to layer greens and browns, using about the same amount of each, and then allow the pile to break everything down.

 

Choosing a System That Fits the Space

You don’t need a huge garden to compost. People in apartments, or those with small gardens, can easily compost with a worm bin (called vermicomposting) which can be kept under the kitchen sink or on the balcony. A normal plastic container for storage, with holes for air in the sides and lid, will work great as a worm composting setup for two to four people. If you have more space outside, you can have a basic heap, a three-sided container from old wooden pallets, a turning container to get compost quickly, or a compost bin you buy from a store. Really, the best way to compost is the method you’ll actually keep doing – a fancy, pricey turning container that isn’t used is not as good as a free pallet container regularly getting food waste.

What to Avoid Adding to the Pile

Compost will happily accept most stuff from nature, but there are quite a few things you shouldn’t put in your home compost bin. Meat, fish, dairy, and greasy foods will smell terrible as they break down and will draw in rats and mice. You also shouldn’t compost dog or cat poo as it can have germs that could make you ill. If your pile doesn’t get hot enough, diseased plants and weed seeds may not be killed and could go back into your garden to cause trouble. As for things like old treated wood, shiny magazine pages and anything plastic, they simply won’t break down and shouldn’t be used. Most of what a family throws away that can be composted is made up of fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, eggshells, cardboard, paper, and stuff from the garden.

When the Compost Is Ready to Use

Good compost will be a dark brown or black and have a texture that’s nice and crumbly, smelling of lovely, fertile woodland earth, definitely not like anything decaying. You shouldn’t be able to pick out what you originally put in. How long this change happens depends on how you compost; a hot compost heap, if looked after properly, will be ready in four to eight weeks, a tumbler needs two to four months, a simple heap left to do its thing will take six months to a year and worm composting will give you usable worm castings in three to six months. Once it’s done, you can blend it into your garden soil, use it as a layer over plants already in the ground, or include it when you make your own potting mix. Even a little bit of compost, as little as a half inch over a garden bed, will noticeably improve the soil’s structure, how well it holds water, and the life in the soil.

 

Key Takeaway

Basically, to compost you just mix food leftovers and things from the garden in a container that lets air and water get in, and then be patient. Ideally, you’ll use about the same amount of “greens” (like food scraps and freshly cut plants), and “browns” (such as dried leaves, cardboard). This gives the decomposition process what it needs. You can have lots of different setups for this, from a worm bin under your sink for a flat, to a heap out in the yard for a big space. If you leave out meat, milk products, animal poo, and any plants that are sick, the whole thing will stay clean and won’t smell. And what’s left at the end is fantastic for all kinds of garden soil, and it’s free.

Most home gardeners don’t use them, but professional soil tests are amazingly valuable. They typically cost between fifteen and thirty dollars, which isn’t much when you think about how much one bag of plant food can be. A soil test will give you a very accurate reading of your soil’s pH, how much of each important plant food it holds (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and the trace minerals plants need), how much organic material is in it, and very often, it will even tell you what kind of plant food to use for the things you’re hoping to grow. Without these details, applying fertilizer is mostly just a shot in the dark. And studies have repeatedly shown that if you guess at fertilizing, you’ll either not give the plants enough (and they won’t grow well) or give them too much (which is a waste of your money and could harm the life in your soil and any water sources close by).

What the Numbers Mean

pH is the single most important thing your soil test will tell you; it’s how you measure if the soil is too acidic or too alkaline, using a scale of 0 to 14 (7 is neutral). Most vegetables do best with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0, but blueberries and azaleas, plants that like acidic conditions, need between 4.5 and 5.5. If the pH is too high or too low for what you are growing, the nutrients are in the soil, but the plant’s roots can’t actually use them – this is called nutrient lockout. Adding more plant food won’t fix this, only changing the pH will. To raise pH (to make the soil less acidic) you add lime, and to lower it, you can use sulfur or fertilizers that are designed to make the soil more acidic. A good soil test report will tell you exactly how much of these things you need, based on your current pH, what pH you want to get to, and the type of soil you have.

 

How to Collect a Representative Soil Sample

How well a soil test works comes down to how good the soil you send in is. Most agricultural advisors suggest getting bits of soil from lots of places in the garden you want to check, generally five to ten spots. Use a clean trowel or soil probe to get these bits from six to eight inches down. You then thoroughly mix these smaller samples in a clean bucket to make one larger sample that shows the average soil condition for the whole garden. Put about a cup of this mixture into a clean container, or the bag the lab sent. If sections of your garden look noticeably different in terms of soil, are managed differently (for example, the lawn and the vegetable garden), or you’re going to grow plants with very different feeding requirements, you need to send in a separate sample for each of those areas.

When and How Often to Test

Before you plant anything in a new garden, you really should get the soil tested. This gives you a starting point to understand what’s already going on in your ground and will point out anything you need to fix right away. For gardens you’ve had for a while, testing every couple of years or so is a good idea; this way you can see how the pH and the amounts of goodness in the soil are changing. Fall is the perfect time to send in your samples, because then lime, sulfur, or any particular food for the plants the test suggests have plenty of time to mix with the soil before you start growing in spring. Plus, the soil testing services from your county extension office or the soil labs at most state universities aren’t expensive and you’ll usually have your results in fourteen to twenty one days.

The Money-Saving Argument for Testing

Lots of gardeners don’t bother testing their soil, and because of this they end up buying plant food that their soil doesn’t really require, so they are effectively throwing money away on stuff the soil already has enough of. Phosphorus is a typical example: in many gardens in older neighborhoods, there’s already a lot of phosphorus in the soil, built up over time from fertilizers, things for the lawn, and rotting leaves and plants. Putting on more phosphorus isn’t just a waste of money, it can also get in the way of the plant taking up iron and zinc, and this causes the plant to show the signs of lacking iron and zinc, which makes the gardener try to fix it with even more treatments. A soil test stops this from happening. It tells you exactly what the soil needs, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t, so you’ll only spend on things that will noticeably improve your garden.

 

Key Takeaway

Getting your soil professionally tested (and it will be between $15 and $30) will tell you how acidic or alkaline it is (its pH), how many nutrients are in it, and exactly what you should add to it to help your plants – which takes all the uncertainty out of deciding what fertilizer to use. The pH of your soil is the most important thing to know; even if the soil has plenty of nutrients, your plants can’t use them if the pH isn’t right for them to get to the roots. To get a good picture of your whole garden, take samples from several places, mix them together, and ideally get this test done every couple of years, preferably in the autumn. That way, you’ll only spend money on things that will really make your plants grow better.

Using worms to compost, which is called vermicomposting, is the best way to change your kitchen waste into fantastic stuff for your soil. It’s good for a tiny studio flat, a garage in the suburbs, or a classroom at school. If you look after it properly, a worm bin won’t smell, needs under five minutes of your time each week, and will give you a constant flow of worm castings. These castings are a substance full of goodness and garden experts say it’s one of the best natural feeds for plants. Normal compost heaps outside need lots of room, regular mixing and ages to become useful, but a worm bin breaks down food all the time and you can get the castings out every couple of months.

Setting Up the Bin

You can use almost any plastic storage box with a lid, as long as you can’t see inside, to create a typical worm composting system. A size of about 18 inches long, 12 inches wide and 8 inches deep is good for the kitchen scraps of one or two people. Worms and the helpful germs that live with them need air, so you’ll need to make around twenty to thirty holes (using a drill bit that is one eighth of an inch across) in the sides and lid. Also, put holes in the bottom of the box and put a tray under to collect the liquid that comes out (this is called leachate); this stops the worms from being in water and stops bad smells. You fill the box about three-quarters of the way up with wet bedding. Shredded paper, cardboard, or damp coco coir (squeeze it out so it’s like a sponge) are good for bedding, and this gives the worms a place to live and the carbon they require to balance the nitrogen in the food.

 

Choosing and Adding the Worms

The red wiggler worm, scientifically known as Eisenia fetida, is what you use for vermicomposting. Don’t confuse them with regular earthworms you’d dig up in your garden. Red wigglers really love rotting organic stuff, breed fast in smaller areas, and eat about half their own weight in food scraps daily. For a typical bin at home, 500 to 1,000 worms, or about a pound, is a good amount to start with. You can find worms at places selling vermicomposting supplies, bait shops, or even local gardening clubs which raise their own. Once you’ve put the worms into their new bedding, leave them alone for a couple of days, maybe three, before giving them food – this gives them a chance to get used to their surroundings.

Feeding and Maintaining the Bin

Worms will happily eat almost any leftovers from your fruits and veggies, coffee grounds, tea bags (just take the staples out), and broken up eggshells, and a little bit of bread or cereal. You shouldn’t put in much citrus, onion or garlic, though, as their sharpness and powerful ingredients can bother worms in their container. Meat, milk products, and greasy food aren’t for them at all. Each time you feed the worms, you should put the food in a different place in the bedding, this way the rotting is spread around and one spot doesn’t get too soggy or too acidic. Keeping a dry layer of bedding on top stops fruit flies and stops smells from escaping. The bin should be damp, but not full of water. If water is collecting at the bottom, just add more dry bedding to soak it up.

Harvesting Worm Castings

In a couple of months, or maybe three, much of the bedding will have turned into a dark, grainy substance, which is the final form of the worm’s digestion. To collect this, just move everything in the bin to one side. Then add new, damp bedding and food to the now empty space and leave it for another two or three weeks; the worms will move over to the new food. After that, you can easily scoop out the castings from the side they’ve left, and use them in your garden right away. You can put them into potting soil (using 10 to 20 percent castings to soil by volume), turn them into a liquid plant food, or sprinkle them around plants for a slow feed.

 

Key Takeaway

In a couple of months, or maybe three, much of the bedding will have turned into a dark, grainy substance, which is the final form of the worm’s digestion. To collect this, just move everything in the bin to one side. Then add new, damp bedding and food to the now empty space and leave it for another two or three weeks; the worms will move over to the new food. After that, you can easily scoop out the castings from the side they’ve left, and use them in your garden right away. You can put them into potting soil (using 10 to 20 percent castings to soil by volume), turn them into a liquid plant food, or sprinkle them around plants for a slow feed.

Gardening is made much easier, and results are significantly improved, by mulching, but lots of people completely ignore it or don’t pick a mulch that works for them. Good mulch stops weeds growing, keeps water in the soil, prevents the ground temperature from getting too high or low, protects against the washing away of topsoil, and breaks down over time to feed the soil with natural ingredients. However, a bad choice of mulch can unfortunately give homes to bugs, change the soil’s balance in a way you don’t want, or even allow illnesses to develop. Knowing what different mulches are like, what they’re good at and where they fall short allows gardeners to use the best material for a certain plant, the weather where they are and what they are hoping to achieve.

1. Straw

The usual thing to put around your vegetables, a mulch, is straw – that is, the dry stalks left over from wheat, barley, oats and similar grains. It doesn’t weigh much, it’s simple to put down, water gets through to the soil easily, and over the course of a year it breaks down and improves the soil. Straw is especially good for plants that love the heat, such as tomatoes, peppers, and squash, as its pale colour bounces sunlight off the ground instead of soaking it up, so the soil doesn’t get too hot in summer. The main downside is that it sometimes has grains in it that begin to grow, but this is generally a small annoyance and not a big issue.

2. Shredded Leaves

Autumn leaves, once they’ve been chopped up, are a fantastic, free and plentiful mulch for your flowerbeds and vegetable patches. Unlike whole leaves which can get packed down and stop water from getting in, if you go over them with a lawnmower or leaf shredder you’ll get lots of small bits that settle nicely around plants and won’t form clumps. Over six to twelve months these little pieces will break down and add carbon and small amounts of minerals to the soil, minerals the tree originally pulled up from deep down with its roots. They’re particularly good for using around plants that will be in the same place for ages, like perennials, bushes and fruit trees, allowing them to slowly rot down.

 

3. Wood Chips

Arborist wood chips are what you get when tree companies trim or take down trees: they are made of bits of branches, bark, and leaves. And they’re a really good mulch that lasts for a long time for walkways, fancy flowerbeds, and around trees and bushes that are already growing. They break down at a leisurely pace over two or three years, so they’ll keep weeds down for ages and make the earth better. Lots of people believe wood chips steal nitrogen from the ground, but studies show this only happens in a very slim zone where the mulch touches the soil, and it doesn’t bother the roots of the plants below. You shouldn’t dig wood chips into the soil though, because if you do that, they will temporarily lock up nitrogen.

4. Compost

Once compost is fully broken down, you can use it as both something to mulch with and plant food. A layer of it one or two inches thick will stop weeds from growing, help the soil hold water, and deliver goodness to the soil as the rain washes the nutrients down where the roots are. For vegetable patches, compost mulch is excellent. Plants get nourishment right away and it all disappears by the end of the growing season. Its only problem is getting enough of it. Making or buying enough compost to cover big areas can be a long process or cost a lot of money, so compost is best for smaller, carefully looked-after areas of plants, not for covering over an entire garden.

5. Pine Needles (Pine Straw)

Pine needles make a nice, light mulch. Water and air can get through to the soil easily, yet they hold together well enough to not wash away on hills or in places with a lot of wind. They break down slowly and have a bit of an acid quality, which is why blueberries, azaleas, rhododendrons and many other plants that like acidic soil are often covered with them. Lots of people think pine needle mulch really changes the acidity of your garden soil, but studies actually show that isn’t true, or at least the change is very small and is cancelled out as the needles rot. In fact, pine needles are a great general mulch for all sorts of plants, not only those that need acidic conditions.

6. Grass Clippings

You can easily get hold of fresh grass clippings and they are full of nitrogen, breaking down pretty quickly, typically in only a few weeks when it’s warm. If you use them in layers about one or two inches thick, they’re good at stopping weeds for a little while and as they rot they give the soil nitrogen. But if you pile grass clippings on too thickly, they’ll become a horrible, wet, smelly mess that won’t let water through and can cause fungal problems. It’s best to spread them in thin layers and let them dry out before putting any more on. And crucially, don’t ever use grass from lawns that have had weedkiller on them as mulch for your vegetables, because the leftover chemicals could harm what you’re growing to eat.

7. Black Plastic Mulch

Black plastic mulch isn’t a natural product, but lots of people who grow vegetables use it. It heats up the soil more quickly in springtime, almost completely stops weeds from growing, and keeps water in the soil as nothing can evaporate from the surface. This is especially good for plants that really like heat – tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash are all examples – and they’ll do best when the ground is warm. However, plastic won’t break down, so you have to take it all up and get rid of it at the end of the season. It doesn’t enrich the soil with anything natural either, and crucially, rain can’t soak to the roots, meaning you will need to use a drip irrigation system below the plastic to give them enough water.

 

Key Takeaway

What sort of mulch is best really depends on what you need it for. Straw, shredded leaves are both good for use in vegetable gardens. Wood chips are particularly good for paths and for using around trees and bushes that are already growing. Compost both mulches and feeds the soil. Pine needles are a good option for hillsides and plants like blueberries which prefer more acidic soil. Grass clippings give a quick boost of nitrogen to the ground, but don’t use a thick layer. Black plastic is the fastest way to warm the soil for plants that need lots of heat, but you need to use it with a drip irrigation system and take it up at the end of each year. If you spread a 3 or 4 inch layer of any natural mulching material and keep it there all the time your plants are growing, you’ll spend less time on weeding, the water stays in the soil for longer and the soil itself will get better and better.

People often don’t use fertilizer correctly in their home gardens. Lots of gardeners think plants will grow better with more plant food, and because of this, they tend to apply it too frequently, use way too much, or feed the plants at a bad time while they’re growing. This causes all sorts of issues, from destroying the roots and slowing growth to polluting the streams, rivers and other water in the area. If gardeners can understand the typical errors they make with fertilizer, they can use it properly and won’t end up with a good thing doing harm instead.

1. Fertilizing Without a Soil Test

Putting fertilizer on your garden without knowing what’s in the soil is like taking any old medicine and hoping for the best; you haven’t got a diagnosis. In fact, lots of garden soil that’s been around for a while has plenty of phosphorus and potassium, perhaps even too much, because of all the fertilizer, old mulch and compost that has been added to it over time. If you just add a “complete” fertilizer (one with all three of the main foods plants need) to ground that’s only short of nitrogen, you’re throwing your money away on phosphorus and potassium you don’t require and might even cause your plants to have problems getting the balance of nutrients they need to thrive. A soil test will tell you precisely what is missing and how much of it, so you can add exactly what’s needed and get good results with no drawbacks.

2. Using Too Much Fertilizer at Once

When plant roots are really close to a lot of fertilizer, the fertilizer’s ‘saltiness’ causes damage by pulling water from the roots instead of letting water go in. This looks a lot like the plant is suffering from a terrible dry spell: the edges of the leaves turn brown and get crunchy, the plant wilts even if the soil is wet, and if it’s very bad, the roots will die entirely. This is known as fertilizer burn and happens most of the time because of granules being put right next to the plant’s stem, or because someone has made liquid plant food stronger than the instructions on the container say to. To give plants food regularly but safely, follow the amount on the label exactly or, even better, use half as much of the recommended amount, more often.

 

3. Applying Nitrogen-Heavy Fertilizer During Fruiting

Young plants really benefit from nitrogen, and it helps them make lots of healthy leaves and strong stems as they get going. However, when they start to flower and form fruit, too much nitrogen will send the energy back into growing leaves instead of making fruit. You’ll often find tomato plants that are given a lot of nitrogen when the fruit is developing have a huge amount of dark green growth but very few tomatoes. So, as soon as you see the beginnings of flowers, a fertilizer that has less nitrogen but more phosphorus, potassium is best. This way it will help the plant with flowers and fruit, and it won’t push it to make a lot of extra leaves.

4. Fertilizing Dormant or Stressed Plants

Don’t fertilize plants that are resting for the season (like deciduous trees in winter), ones you’ve just planted, those that are very thirsty from drought, or those getting over problems with bugs or illness. Plants that are dormant can’t take in food, so the fertilizer just runs off or builds up in the soil and could become too strong. And plants already under a lot of strain need water, a bit of time to get better, and to be kept steady; fertilizer makes them work harder internally when they’re already having a hard time doing even the basics. Instead, feed plants when they are busily growing and can use the nutrients right away.

5. Relying Solely on Synthetic Fertilizers Without Building Soil Health

Plants can take up synthetic fertilizers straight away because the plant food is in a form dissolved in water, and this gives them a much faster burst of growth than you’d get with something organic. But synthetic feeds don’t do anything for the soil itself; they add no organic stuff, don’t nourish the tiny life in the soil, and don’t make the soil’s shape or arrangement better. If you use only synthetic fertilizer for ages, you’ll actually harm the life within the soil, it will hold onto less water, and become much more solid. Really good, productive gardens use synthetic fertilizers carefully, for a quick pick-me-up when a plant needs it, but also continually improve the soil for the long haul with compost, mulch, plants grown to improve the soil (cover crops), and other natural things which provide food for the community of life in the soil that keeps it fertile.

 

Key Takeaway

When people mess up with fertilizer, they usually do one of five things: they don’t bother to test their soil, they give plants a huge dose all at once, they add nitrogen while the plant is making fruit, they fertilize plants that are already struggling or are doing nothing (being dormant), or they only use man-made fertilizer. And all of these things actually do the opposite of what you’d hope for in the garden. Testing the soil removes all uncertainty, using fertilizer at about half the recommended strength stops it from burning the plant, giving the fertilizer at the right time in the plant’s development gets the best results, and a mix of specific man-made feeds with continuously improving the soil with organic matter gives you a garden that is reliably fruitful, year after year.