There are only about a billion kinds of fertilizer – liquid, granular, slow release, quick release, etc. It can get confusing. Here are some basic tips on how to read the bags and what to use when.
Kevin
There are only about a billion kinds of fertilizer – liquid, granular, slow release, quick release, etc. It can get confusing. Here are some basic tips on how to read the bags and what to use when.
Kevin
When you throw away paper towels or fallen leaves in the fall, you are throwing away free food for you yard and garden. You can use those same garbage cans to make beautiful compost right out your back door. Here’s how!
Kevin
Vines are one of the most cost-effective and versatile plants you have a your disposal. And most of them grow pretty fast, so they make quick impact. I use them many ways around my yard. Watch this video for some ideas.
Kevin
Ever see those gorgeous trees in a park that look like great floating green clouds? Here’s how to get them.
Kevin
Growing food in pots and other containers is one of the easiest and most creative ways to garden, especially for beginners. Watch this video for a primer.
Happy (container) gardening!
Kevin
In all my years in the property maintenance and landscaping business, I saw so many people watering their grass improperly. Watch this for happier grass and a lower water bill.
Grass on!
Kevin
No matter how well you care for your grass, you will eventually get some bad spots. No worries, here’s how to fix ’em.
Happy yarding!
Kevin
If you follow this blog or my YouTube channel—or if you are a fellow yard lover and HomeDabbler— you know how emotionally invested you become in your outside spaces. I’ve always thought of mine as a living work of art that I get to live inside of.
It’s intensely personal, at least to me. When we moved in to our house more than 15 years ago, there was only one tree in our front yard, a tall pine. Since then, I have planted more than 40 others, and some are now more than a decade old, just beautiful. I also have the biggest river birch I have ever seen in my back yard (clearly, I’m obsessed with trees).
I shoot my videos in my yard as much as possible, first to use as a teaching tool, but also because I just think it’s pretty.
Some of you may know that I live in Panama City, Florida. On October 10, we took a direct hit from the third-strongest hurricane in recorded history. In fact, the eye passed directly over my home.
It was scary as hell. Fortunately, my family and I are okay, at least physically. But my yard was wrecked. It’s why I haven’t posted any videos lately. My whole town has been digging out (side note: if you would like to know what it has been like here in Panama City since the storm, I was fortunate to write an article about it for the Washington Post).
Anyhow, I don’t want to bum you out. We’ll be fine. I have to admit that I’m heartbroken over my yard, though. A big chunk of my life went into it. Nevertheless, I can (and will) build it back again and this time you’ll do it with me.
Below are some before and after pics of where I shot some of my videos, for reference.
I have a pretty clean slate to work with now. So, send your video ideas my way and let’s make another living artwork together.
Kevin
It’s frustrating, I know.
Gardening is personal. First of all, it’s manual labor, and any work done with our hands is somehow more special to us. But gardening is more. It is care taking. You choose which seeds to bring to life, prepared their bed, arranged the conditions for their birth. You feed, water, tend. It’s personal.
Then it happens. Drought, blight, bugs. Heat wave, cold snap. And it’s over; your garden fails.
If you’ve gardened long, you’ve experienced it. For you non-gardeners, you should. Everyone should. Gardening teaches many valuable life lessons; A failed garden teaches a couple as well.
Namely, that food is precious and hard as hell to grow.
Until quite recently, food scarcity was real in America. There are those among us whose living memory includes food rationing and gardening not-as-a-hobby (Victory Gardens, for example). Food was cherished because people knew how hard it was to come by.
Not anymore, at least not in America. Somehow, we’ve created a situation where we have so much food at hand that we literally throw a third of it away and have a raging obesity epidemic, simultaneously.
That’s unique in human history. There have never been a people who, in their entire lifespan, will never go to bed wondering if there will be breakfast. Until us.
That’s not just noteworthy; it’s near miraculous. But how did it happen?
By tinkering with our food.
Modern farming practices and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture represent the largest leap forward in the practice of feeding humans since we figured out how to crossbreed corn 10,000 years ago.
For those readers familiar with the GMO debate, you know how polarized and polarizing it is. And you may be surprised that, as a home gardening and husbandry advocate, I would commend GMOs.
But I do. In short, I think this technology has the potential to save humanity.
I’m not an alarmist. I don’t think we are on the brink of extinction by any means. But our global population is growing while our farmable land isn’t. Our human family will simply have more mouths to feed with the same resources.
GMOs like Golden Rice, Bt Corn, and cassava that is resistant to brown streak represent life-saving advances to people everywhere. GMOs are reducing the need for pesticides and irrigation, and making certain staple crops more resistant to weather extremes. Add this to the fact that there is no evidence that GMOs are harmful to humans and I gladly sow them in my garden.
I understand the apprehension about GMOs. We’re toying with nature, and we don’t always do that well. There are risks and unknowns and issues raised by very smart people (Michael Pollan is my favorite).
But we also get it right a lot. In fact, most of the food in your pantry right now is the result of human intervention in crop development, even if your cabinets only hold organic and non-GMO food.
I think the bottom line for those of us in blessedly developed countries is that we can afford to be choosy. We can shop in the organic section of our supermarket and then throw 30 percent of the food away, even though organic farming requires more land than conventional. We have more options because we don’t have to feed our families solely out of our gardens.
If we did, I think we would feel the same as Lilian Ziro, a Kenyan woman who does have to feed her family from her land, when she was quoted in a Business Daily article about GMO cassava.
“I don’t know much about GMOs or what it really means, but if it will save my cassava, then I will happily plant it.”
I will probably always garden, but (thank goodness) not for survival. When mine fails, it’s frustrating but not crucial. I just kick the dirt and go to the grocery. But I think my, and your, garden should periodically fail to remind us that not everyone can do that.
Food is precious and hard as hell to grow.
Bon appetit,
Kevin
P.S. – I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s books and documentaries Cooked and In Defense of Food.
Call ’em horn worms, tobacco worms, or mater bugs, I hate their guts.
And if you’ve tried raising tomatoes without chemical insecticides, so do you. In my nearly 20 years of gardening, I’ve tried a lot – picking, diatomaceous earth, extra tilling, crushed egg shells, hoping, praying, pleading, and yes, chemical insecticides (gotta give it to them, they get rid of the little scourges).
Maybe it’s where I live (North Florida), but I’ve never been able to get them completely off of my beloved red balls of sunshine.
I have a semi-fix. Not perfect, but realistic if you have a bigg-ish garden (more than 3 tomato plants). It’s a two-prong approach.
This is especially fun if you have chickens. It’s deeply satisfying to find those demonic tubes of goo and flick them into the run. The girls make short work of them.
In fact, if you only have a plant or two, have the time, and your weather isn’t completely miserable in the heat of summer (it is for me), a daily picking will almost completely control worms. It takes a while to get good at spotting them, but once you do you can scan your bushes pretty quickly.
That’s why I say intermittent. I have neither the time nor inclination to stand in the swampy Florida air picking worms every day, so I do it as often as possible.
Bt is a natural insecticide, a bacterium actually, that only affects the worms. It won’t hurt people, pets, or beneficial insects like bees or butterflies. I’ve had moderate success with Bt – it slowed the worms, didn’t eradicate them.
You can buy Bt on Amazon (prime!).
Unless you go full chemical attack, you’re gonna lose some tomatoes. Sorry. But with regular Bt spray and some therapeutic picking (get ’em girls!), you’ll get most of the worms without spraying chemicals.
Note: If you have no problem with chemicals, then ignore everything I’ve just said and use Sevin dust. Your worms will vanish.
I’d love to hear if something worked for you. Comment please!
Kevin
