Grow

Love plants but hate bugs? Try planting these garden-friendly, bug-deterring plants to make your green patch healthy, blooming and bad-bug free...

Getting picky eaters to eat their fruits and veggies without a fuss can be a challenge. Peas, broccoli -- basically anything green -- looks unappealing and unappetizing. If it doesn't come smothered in ketchup, then it's not edible. It can be difficult to get kids to eat healthy, and even more difficult to explain why they need to.

This is an eco-friendly, organic method known as “sheet composting” which allows you to grow your food organically without digging or tilling up soil. If I’ve piqued your interest, allow me tell you more about this organic gardening method and how to start it in just 10 basic steps.

Tools you may need:

Gloves

Gardening Hose

Newspaper, Cardboard, or Burlap Sacks

Wheel Barrel or Bucket (for carrying organic material)

Gardening Shovel

There are more than 500 seed libraries across the country in 46 states and 15 countries. Such libraries allow people to grow food and contribute back to the community. Like the seed library in Richmond, California, they create a web of integrated, food- and community-focused farming. These libraries create local models for sustainability. People learn seed saving techniques and how to promote rare and unusual plant varieties.

One of the most important things we can try to do is conserve resources. Water is the most valuable and scarce resource. It's important for sustaining both the life in the world, and in your garden. It’s a precious thing you definitely don’t want to waste. Need some ideas on how to keep from wasting water while gardening? Here are seven easy tips that will help better conserve water in your home garden.

Tip 1

Reconnect to Your Roots: 3 Mental and Physical Benefits of Home Grown Food (+ Tips for Apartment Dwellers)

Sometimes, when people dabble in gardening, they get frustrated all too quickly and quit altogether. If your garden is not looking quite as nicely as you’d like it to, or you’ve come across a problem you can’t seem to fix, don’t convince yourself that you haven’t been blessed with a green thumb just yet. Before you seek out a plethora of gardening chemicals, take a look around your house first.

Do you want a healthy, environmental friendly, organic way to condition the soil for your home garden? In order to grow anything organic successfully, the soil needs to contain an adequate amount of nutrients and minerals. Essentially, the soil needs to be broken down into organic matter known as compost. With time, you can create your own compost by making a compost pile. For those who would like to know how, here are seven basic steps for creating a compost pile.

Basic Tools:

Seed saving, or the collecting and preserving of seeds from wild or agricultural plants, is a practice that dates back to the origin of farming.

It was by learning to save seeds from the plants we used that we were able to start cultivating crops, rather than going out and foraging for them in the wild. Simultaneously, the practice allowed people to bring their favored crops with them wherever they went. 

We all eat (or at least try to eat) a lot of fruits and vegetables. Now, if you really are a produce nut, you may have noticed your grocery bill isn’t nearly as cheap as you’d like it to be, and your trash can seems to fill up again just as soon as you’ve successfully convinced someone to take the trash out. I’m well aware of the fact that some people don’t compile as much trash because, believe it or not, I’ve actually met someone who eats the entire kiwi (furry skin and all), and pickling watermelon rinds is a thing. Plus, I’d like to praise all the composters out there.