Growing strawberries in a home garden almost guarantees a visit from hungry pests. Slugs, strawberry bud weevils, tarnished plant bugs, spittlebugs, and strawberry sap bugs all feed on the plants, and birds take their share of the ripe fruit. Before any control method works well, the planting site needs stable soil and good drainage, because […]
Plants are meant to grow, and when a houseplant outgrows its pot, the container starts working against it. Visible roots pushing through the drainage holes, soil that stays wet for days, and a plant that looks top-heavy all point to the same fix: a larger pot and fresh potting mix. How often that fix is
Construction is adopting new materials and digital workflows at a pace the industry has not seen in decades. Building envelopes now generate power, project data moves through cloud platforms, and field crews report progress from tablets instead of paper logs. A useful way to track the change is to follow one innovation at a time,
Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) are herbaceous perennials grown for their large, brightly colored blooms, with petals that look like crepe paper and a dark blotch at the base of each one. The most familiar flowers are orange, as on ‘Prince of Orange’, and red, as on ‘Livermere’, but cultivars also come in peach, maroon, and
Planting herbs in pots is popular and convenient because containers are easy to maintain, with fewer weeds and fewer soil-borne pests to bother the crop. You can grow almost any herb in a container, but if you are mixing herbs in the same pot you need to group plants with similar water, light, and soil
Pick up a leaf dotted with bumps or trailing odd protrusions and the first thought is disease or buried insect eggs. In most cases these are leaf galls, the plant’s own response to irritation, and the organism that caused them has long since moved on. The same diagnostic discipline applies around the house: a fogged
Standing water in a yard causes more problems than soggy shoes. Puddles become mosquito breeding grounds, wet lawns track mud into the house, grass refuses to grow in saturated soil, and moss takes over the bare patches. Excess water can even threaten the foundation of the house. Two causes explain most pooling: poorly draining soil
Every pool should be cleaned regularly to maintain its crystal-clear appearance. Cleaning covers three jobs: testing and balancing the chemical levels, maintaining the filter system, and cleaning the pool itself. A homeowner can handle all three with the right routine, and done weekly the entire job takes under an hour and keeps the pool ready
Palm trees cannot usually be propagated by air layering, cuttings, or division the way other trees are grown. Because of how they grow, the only reliable way to start a new palm is from seed. Germination is slow and uneven, and the process tests patience more than most garden projects, but the payoff is a
A dry creek bed is a shallow trench lined with landscape fabric and filled with boulders and stones of various sizes. During wet weather, excess surface water is channeled down the bed to a suitable exit or collection point where it can percolate into the soil. That simple arrangement keeps pools of water from forming
