If you have plants in your garden that are struggling, you are not alone. Even experienced gardeners have challenges in the garden. Being able to quickly identify and troubleshoot plant problems is an important gardening skill. The first step is to observe- spend a few minutes walking through your garden every day to look for signs of trouble: Plant wilting Plant wilting can be a sign of a suffering plant, but not always....

Looking for some ways to change up your watering routine? Having troubles with root rot in your container plants or seedling trays? The way that you’re watering could be part of the problem - and we have just the alternative! Bottom watering is a highly recommended practice that may be just the change you need. What is Bottom Watering? Most people’s watering strategy is top watering: pouring the water on or around the plant to water the top of the soil and let it drain down....

The taste of a sun-ripened tomato fresh from the garden can’t be beat. But tomato plants need a little extra support to perform at their best. Many types of tomatoes benefit from trellising- adding structural support to help them grow upright instead of sprawling out. Why trellis tomatoes? Trellising tomato plants helps to: Keep the foliage up off the ground which, along with pruning, helps prevent soil-borne diseases Increase airflow around the plant, which also helps reduce the spread of disease Maximize garden space, as the plants can be grown closer together than if they were allowed to grow wild Provide extra support for plants that are heavily fruit-laden, so they don’t flop over or end up with broken branches While you can let your tomato plants grow au naturel, for many tomato varieties trellising is important for healthy plants and abundant harvests....

Heading off on vacation? Don’t forget about your garden in your vacation planning! Planning for your garden’s care while you’re away will help ensure your plants stay healthy and keep on producing. Will my garden survive while I’m away? If you’re only going away for a couple days, your plants might be fine without any special attention. But, it can still be helpful to take steps to be sure your plants survive....

Weeds. They’re pesky and hard to manage, but crucial to deal with to have a successful garden. We put in so much work weeding our gardens, so making sure that we are actually removing weeds seems like the obvious but important step. Have you ever wondered whether you’ve confused a newly planted seedling with a weed? Spotting whether the plant in your garden was the one you intentionally planted is an important tool for gardeners to have....

Gardeners spend a good part of the year eagerly anticipating the prime growing season. All of a sudden the season sets in and it’s a sprint to get the first plants and seeds in the ground- and before we know it the early-season hustle is over. The growing season can sneak up on even the most enthusiastic gardener. New gardeners just getting inspired to start a garden might be discouraged to find out the season is already well underway....

The first time your hear a gardener use the word ‘bolting’ in the same sentence as ‘plants’ it can be a bit of a head-scratcher (…are they running away?) In the gardening world, bolting refers to a non-fruiting plant that has started to produce flowers and seeds- also known as ‘going to seed’. Gardeners often see bolting as a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be! What is bolting? When a plant bolts it focuses all its energy on producing flowers and seeds, instead of growing new, lush leaves or larger roots....

The fruits and vegetables you can eat come from unique parts of their plants. In your everyday life you eat everything from the roots to stems to leaves. Some angiosperms, or flowering plants, yield fruit. Though some of the things you may think of as “fruits” aren’t truly fruit as we expect. Conversely, some plant parts we consider “vegetables” are actually botanically fruits. In some circumstances, you eat parts of a plant that contain other parts that are actually inedible....

Weeds are something that every gardener deals with. If you don’t enjoy weeding (like many gardeners), it can be a challenge to contend with weeds. But weeding doesn’t have to be an all-out struggle; there are smart strategies you can use to keep garden weeds in check. Why are weeds in the garden ‘bad’? Weeds aren’t all bad. In nature, weeds cover and reclaim bare soil. They are amazingly well-adapted to grow under the harshest conditions (have you ever seen a weed growing out the tiniest crack in the sidewalk and thought…how?...

As plants grow, they use nutrients from the soil which can eventually become depleted if they are not replenished. Since we usually harvest our veggie garden produce rather than letting the plants decompose back into the soil, soil nutrients can dwindle over time. Fertilizer adds soil nutrients that are lacking so that new plants can grow. You might only think of fertilizer as the little granules that come in bags from the garden center, but there are many different options to add nutrients to your soil!...