When it’s time to remove a tree

...fraid to be ruthless in achieving your vision, but one of the realities of gardening is that most of us are not ruthless and often live with less than ideal situations because we don’t want to make those changes. Or we make the changes, but feel bad as we do it. This dynamic is interesting, because we are told by our culture that we can do whatever we want to nature, because nature is just a pile of insensate matter for us to work our will upon. F...

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Straw Bale Garden Update: Success!

...input of outside resources in the form of straw and fertilizer, straw bale gardening is a great solution for beginning gardeners or for those cursed with bad soil. And the skunks that have decimated my previous vegetable gardens are unable to get up on the bales. I’m considering trying another straw bale garden during our winter season. And I’m also pondering building boxes to put the bales in to make the garden look a bit neater. Compare the stra...

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Straw Bale Garden: What I Learned

...ost! My future in straw bale gardening I’ve decided to continue straw bale gardening on a smaller scale. I’m going to build some raised beds and fill them with soil, but I’m leaving room for two bales to grow nitrogen hungry crops, principally squash. I’m also planning on building a box to hold those bales so I don’t have to stake them every season. Like most things in life it’s not an either/or proposition. You can have a conventional vegetable g...

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090 Garden Myths: Nitrogen, Roundup, Compost Tea

...guest is Robert Pavlis. We touch on a number of controversial, hot-button gardening topics such as synthetic fertilizers, roundup and compost tea. Robert maintains a six acre garden near Guelph, Ontario all by himself, he’s a master gardener and a speaker. He has a background in chemistry and biochemistry and runs two blogs: gardenmyths.com and gardenfundamentals.com. During the show we also discuss the “whys” of gardening, mosquito prevention, s...

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What Does California’s Prop 64 Say About Home Marijuana Cultivation?

...lights, fertilizers and growing mediums. Marijuana is the elephant in the gardening bedroom. I strongly suspect that the majority of money spent on fertilizers and gardening related products are for growing pot not petunias. This November, Californians will vote on Proposition 64 which will legalize marijuana for adults over 21. I thought I’d take a look at the text of the law to see what it says about home cultivation. Currently, qualified patie...

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