Grown By You
@gardensbyyou
All the information you need to inspire and learn as you plant, grow, and care for your home garden or landscape your yard. 🌱 Know before you grow.
The advantages of using inorganic gravel mulch includes easy maintenance and safe access to plants, especially in drier climates. Keeping up on your trimming and shaping produces a well-manicured look while potentially reducing water use through maintained shrub size and…
Then You Turn The Leaf Over… For several days, you've noticed that your pepper plants are struggling. First, their leaves started showing speckles. Then they began to wrinkle and turn yellow. Now, they're dying and dropping right off the plant. A close look shows some white webs…
This photograph, showing a male Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis), demonstrates how the simplest of landscape designs often turn out to be the most calming and beautiful. The combination of a rustic rail fence, a basic red bluebird birdhouse, and a background of bright climbing…
Gardeners continuously apply a variety of chemical compounds to their vegetables and flowers: Organic and inorganic fertilizers, mulch, dissolved solids and insoluble compounds in irrigation water, and yes…insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides (also, vitamins,…
Sticky, curly, yellowing leaves? Clouds of tiny white insects flying up when you turn leaves over? Scalelike, gray or yellow eggs on the leaf undersides? You have a severe Whitefly infestation, sucking insects that rob vigor and introduce fungal disease to many plants, including…
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) are North American native trees, open and irregular deciduous trees with fragrant leaves and bark. As landscape ornamentals, they are noted for their attractive bloom: Long, ribbonlike clusters of yellow flowers in spring that develop into purple…
Pomegranate (Punica granatum) trees have become very popular outdoor container trees for those in USDA hardiness zones 8–11, or in cooler climates with winter temperatures as low 10°F (–12°C), where they may be moved indoors in the same manner as Citrus trees for protection over…
The hardy Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) grow at a fast to medium rate in their native range in Scandinavia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. They bear deep-green to purple, oval, lobed leaves that flush to yellow in autumn before they drop. Throughout the temperate…
A small vegetable garden requires only a few sketches with labels to produce great results. We’ll help you design and produce a vegetable garden layout drawing. Use our easy, grid planting template and design approach—it makes best use of your space. The planting diagram allows…
Joseph's Coat or Tampala (Amaranthus tricolor) is a branching, upright herb that reaches 1–4 ft. (30–120 cm) tall when mature. Joseph’s Coat was originally native to tropical Asia. As an ornamental in the flower garden, it's treasured for its alternate and smooth, green, red, or…
We remember it like it was yesterday—the middle of night, on a shortwave broadcast from Cyprus…on the island of Rhodes. The Greeks listening were even more excited that we were.
and on that very day when we landed on the moon I was in Amsterdam
Sweet-Pepper Bush (Clethra alnifolia) are medium- to slow-growing, erect and branching or spreading, stoloniferous deciduous shrubs, up to 8 ft. (2.4 m) tall and wide. They are native to the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain of North America from New Brunswick Canada in the north…
Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) are a few cultivars of exceptionally hardy, erect and fountain-shaped or arching, rhizomatous deciduous ferns. They reach 5–10 ft. (1.5–3 m) tall and 3–4 ft. (90–120 cm) wide when mature. Their primary native range includes temperate North…
Half-true, half myth. Epsom salt (Magnesium Sulfate) dissolves easily in water and releases magnesium ions with a positive charge and sulfate ions with a negative charge. The magnesium ions act similarly to calcium and potassium in the soil. While elemental sulfur acidifies…
Epsom salts ! …
When formerly green shrubs develop yellow leaves with green veins, it's typically a sign of a nutritional deficiency called Iron Chlorosis. The problem isn't that the plant's soil lacks the iron the plant needs, but that the iron in the soil is bound chemically to soil minerals…
What's this plant's problem? Even a sick or dying container plant suffering from improper watering may be revived if it is given prompt treatment. In this case, a flowering plant's foliage exhibits extreme wilting. The first step towards its recovery is finding out whether it…
Hubbard Squash (Cucurbita maxima) are winter-squash suitable for picking and eating fresh or for long-term storage in dark, cool conditions. Enjoy male blossoms picked, washed, patted dry, dipped into batter, and deep fried, as well as the ripe squash themselves. Winter squash…
Do you have the perfect spot in your yard for a Golden Larch (Pseudolarix amabilis)? It has a narrow niche of USDA hardiness zones in which it thrives: Zones 6–7. Additionally, it prefers many hours of cold-winter chill and a full-sun location without crowding from nearby trees…
Responsible organic farmers are revising the old saying, "The only good bug is a dead bug" into an improved modern-day equivalent, "The best garden pest is a pest that never had a chance to hatch…on my vegetables." Every insect or bug has a righteous place in the ecosystem, but…
Container Garden Emergency: When your container plant's food supply runs out, the plant's roots have nowhere to go to get the food they need. The time has come—You must feed your plant. You have confusing choices: Pick from solid, liquid, or water-soluble fertilizers, from…
