Build Your Soil & Soul with Late Summer Cover Crops

Once I considered writing a book called Farm, Yard, Garden. The premise would be that farming and horticulture are based on the same science but used for different goals.   What a mistake that would have been. Big agriculture and my farm, yard, or garden have almost nothing in common. Being a part of, a…

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Making Soil Better with Mushrooms

When you dig up a plant, you get plant, roots and dirt.  If you take that plant away, you leave a hole. In field nurseries or turf farms, we do that over and over and over and leave a big hole.  Filling that hole can be a big problem.  Buying top soil is expensive.  It…

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Must Have Happy Flower for Fall Seed-in

From mid-march all the way through May everyone who sees any garden I’ve designed wants that cheerful, easy to grow wildflower that I call Moroccan Toadflax.  I like that name since this little plant looks like our native called toadflax, or field flax (there’s an essay about that lovely little wildflower in this book). But…

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Better Than Boiled Peanuts?

I understood immediately when he said, ‘taste this’ that Mr. Ben wasn’t trying to trick me or wait to laugh as I grimaced. He was sharing.  Now, he and I know and we know each other knows, the taste of the amber colored jelly that fills the bean pods of Kentucky Coffee Tree. He told…

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