Chelsea Green Blog
Gardening
A Nourishing Recipe to Boost Seedling Growth
You don’t need to use chemicals or other unnatural ingredients to give your seedlings a boost. Just use a combination of seaweed, apple cider vinegar, and other nontoxic ingredients create the perfect blend. Each recipe can be modified to complement the soil and climate for the best-producing crops. The following is an excerpt from No-Till Intensive…
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How to Grow and Maintain Fruit Trees: General Fruit Tree Management
Thinking of growing fruit trees? While it’s no small undertaking, fruit trees are much more forgiving than annual crops once established. Fruits like apples, apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines, pears, pluots, and plums can easily be grown on trees in your backyard — you just need to know the correct management practices before you get started.…
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Mulching 101: Why Mulch Matters
Mulch is essential to soil health because it acts as a barrier against water loss and heat, reduces weeds, improves soil structure, and provides a habitat for animals. Once you’ve found the right method for your garden or homestead, mulching is an easy way to boost your soil’s health. Plus, it’s fairly inexpensive if you collect…
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Food for Your Garden: Starting a Traditional Compost Pile in Your Yard
As a society, we make a lot of waste, especially in this culture of on-the-go single-serve disposables. What can we do to reduce our waste? Use less, recycle and reuse packaging materials, and compost your organic waste. And if you’re a gardener, there’s no reason to throw away this beneficial (and cheap!) source of nourishment…
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5 Uses for the Mighty Woodchip
Very often, the best things come in small packages, and the humble woodchip is no exception. We’re all familiar with the use of woodchips in mulch, and while they are an excellent mulching material, woodchips have many other uses. Think mushroom growing material and animal bedding; think plant propagation and soil amendments — the list goes…
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How to Design Your Own Container Garden
Want to create your own garden, but don’t think you’d have the room for it? Think again. According to Mark Ridsdill Smith, author of The Vertical Veg to Container Gardening and creator of the Vertical Veg website, almost any small space can transform into a garden with a little bit of soil, seeds, and inspiration. In…
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Weeding: Work Smarter, Not Harder
Weeds are the bane of every farmer and gardener’s existence. But before you go crusading against the weeds in your garden this year, take a moment to read what author Bryan O’Hara has to say about dealing with these pesky plants. The following is an excerpt from No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture by Bryan O’Hara. It…
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How to Grow Healthy Plants: Strengthening Your Farm or Garden’s Immune System
Searching for tips on how to grow healthy plants? Look no further. The Ecological Farm is the go-to guide for ecological growing, with a unique focus on reduced tillage, minimizing farm and garden inputs, and pest control. The excerpt below offers advice on how to improve your farm or garden’s immune system through providing optimal…
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Vermicast 101: Good for Soil and Plants
Worms aren’t just the squiggly, pink creatures found on the sidewalk after it rains. They are so much more than that. These highly regarded specimens play a vital role in enhancing our soils and revitalizing the health of the plants we need to survive. But how do we get them to work their magic? Through…
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The Process of Growing Grain: Dealing With Weeds
Want to grow grains this spring, but weeds keep getting in the way? With the right tools and practices, you can keep weeds from affecting your grains and handle them without hurting the environment. In the passage below, farming expert Jack Lazor explains the characteristics of the weeds that might appear along the way and offers…
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Grass: Nothing Can Grow Without Love
If you take a walk around your neighborhood in the spring and summertime, chances are you’ll catch someone mowing their lawn or treating their grass with chemicals. Homeowners around the country are fixated on ensuring that their lawn looks clean and maintained at all times — but the process of beautifying a lawn may just…
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Why You Should Try Container Gardening
There are countless reasons to grow at home, from eating more healthily to saving money on your grocery bills. We can’t list them all here, but we can outline three very good reasons to try container gardening. (If you’d like more, take a look at The Vertical Veg Guide to Container Gardening. Mark Ridsdill Smith…
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Say Goodbye to Mowing! Turn Your Lawn Into a Meadow
Living sustainably and ecologically requires less work than you may think; in fact, it may involve less work than you’re currently doing. Saying goodbye to your lawn mower and converting your lawn into a meadow allows you to create a space to help pollinators and natural plant species! The following is an excerpt from The Ecological…
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10 Easy-to-Grow Flowers for Pest Control
It’s difficult to know what flowers are best for your garden — and even then, which flowers are easy to care for. Some flowers, like Dandelions and Sunflowers, are incredibly easy, as long as you have plenty of sunlight. While other flowers, like marigolds, have so many different variations that are each easy to grow in…
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How to Create A Rodent-Free Planting Bed
Are rodents like mice and squirrels ruining the vegetables and crops you’ve worked hard to cultivate? Fear not! Expert gardener Dani Baker has offered a few tips to help you keep a rodent-free planting bed this growing season. The following is an excerpt from The Home-Scale Forest Garden by Dani Baker. It has been adapted for the…
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15 Questions to Ask When Designing Your Garden
There are a lot of things to take into consideration when designing your garden: When to plant, where to plant, how to plant, and so on. In order to answer these questions, you first have to answer a much broader one: “How can I work with nature to make this garden regenerative and sustainable?” If…
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Get Started With Tillage: Choosing the Right Crops
Interested in getting started with tillage? All you’ll need is a spot, some soil, and some crops to make your vision a reality. But deciding exactly which crops should make the cut might actually take more work than you think. When it comes to deciding on which crops to till, it’s important to keep in…
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What and When to Grow in Containers
If you’re new to container gardening, knowing what and when to sow seeds can feel overwhelming. Never fear! Below is a list of easy seasonal projects plus a rundown of what an entire year of container gardening can look like. Get ready to grow in containers! The following is an excerpt from The Vertical Veg Guide…
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Ditch the Pots, Use Soil Blocks!
What’s a cheaper, easier, and surprisingly more efficient way to start your seedlings? Soil blocks! If you’ve never used them before, read on to find out how soil blocks work, how you make them, and what advantages they offer over traditional pots and trays. The following is an excerpt from The New Organic Grower by…
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How to Start Seedlings in a Cold Frame: Gardening Tips from Eliot Coleman
Are you ready to get a jump-start on the gardening season? With a cold frame, you can get started now. A cold frame harnesses the sun’s heat before it’s warm enough to let unprotected seedlings growing outside. Essentially, it consists of a garden bed surrounded by an angled frame and covered with a pane of…
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How to Open A Sacred Space
When individuals embark on a Shamanic journey, opening a sacred space is first step they should take. But what exactly does it mean to open a sacred space? And how does it work? In her latest book, author and gardening expert Maria Rodale explains how this simple practice can enhance journeys and help strengthen our connection to…
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Magic Within Every Garden: Sharing the Love
When we garden, we establish a close relationship with every element: the plants, the soil, and even the creatures that interact with them. And while some elements of this activity are less-than-glamourous, the collaboration cultivated between the garden and gardener is one of pure beauty. In the excerpt below, author Maria Rodale discusses how simply changing…
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Survive the Winter Blues: Grow, Eat and Plan
There is no denying it: the days are short and unless you planned for a winter garden, fresh vegetables from your backyard have long passed. But don’t let the winter blues get you down. There are plenty of recipes to last you through the cold season and into the ‘hungry gap’. We’re sharing a few…
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Seeds of Hope: Striving For A Sustainable Future
Over the years, many of our world’s most flavorful vegetables have become extinct for a variety of reasons; however, these lost crops and their seeds may be the secret to gaining global food security and achieving a higher level of overall wellness. So how can we get them back? What can we do to ensure…
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Chelsea Green Staff Picks for Your 2023 Reading List
From the enlightening and thought-provoking to the quirky and fun, we, the Chelsea Green employee-owners, have the perfect list to get you started on your next read! And if you’re looking for more, you can check out our full list of staff picks here! Mini-Forest Revolution We’ve long heard that we need to plant…
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