How much gardening media is consumed with pest control topics? Gardening store shelves are filled with pesticides, and organic gardening books are full of tactics to beat bugs with more natural tools. But having a bug-free garden is a bad thing. Here are some good bugs for the garden.

Why are Bugs Beneficial to a Garden?

Your garden is an ecosystem that relies on healthy soil. And bugs play a massive part in maintaining the soil. So much so that some soil scientists argue that invertebrate life can indicate healthy soil. Bugs can add organic matter to the soil, increase aeration, change the pH, increase drainage, and even deter other bugs from coming into your garden.

What Bugs are Good for the Garden?

Of course, there are some bugs you want to keep out of the garden, but what invertebrates are beneficial for the garden?

Worms

They eat all the organic matter that falls to the ground and becomes incorporated into the soil. This means they take nutrients that plants can’t use and turn them into something they can. They also aerate the soil as they move through it. This can bring much need oxygen into the soil and increase the area’s drainage. If you start working in the soil and notice the soil is gathered into tiny little pebbles, you probably have a good amount of worms in the ground.

If you want to bring more worms into your garden, you can buy them and introduce them. But please be careful. Buy worms that are native to your area so they will be adapted to live in the area. For North America, the most popular type is Red Wigglers (Eisenia Foetida).

Wolf Spiders

Wolf spiders get big and are quite capable of giving you a scare when you find one in the garden. But you have nothing to fear.

They will not hurt the plants or you and are not venomous. But they are predators that live on the ground without a web and will eat the bugs in your garden that will eat your plants. So they are like free pest control. And in the fall, you may see a mother wolf spider carrying dozens of babies on her back. It was pretty shocking the first time I saw it, but it is a great way to know they were doing their job and eating plenty of pests.

Garden Spiders

These are typically big, bright yellow, and black in North America. They spin webs to trap pests to eat them. They are usually very calm and fun to watch while spinning their webs.

Lady Bugs

Lady bugs (not to be confused with Asian Lady Beetles) eat aphids, and they do it aggressively. They eat scale, mealybugs, mites, eggs, and other soft-body invertebrates. To make your garden place ladybugs want to be, you should plant things with yellow or white flowers like dill, cilantro, fennel, or chives.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to create a healthy and thriving garden, you need to welcome good bugs into the mix. These beneficial insects will help keep harmful pests in check, while also pollinating your plants and providing other important services. So don’t be afraid to let them in – your garden will be all the better for it.

Read More:

Could I Make Money With Worm Farming? – Frugal Gardening

Ladybugs Versus Asian Lady Beetles – Frugal Gardening

7 Garden Inspection Tasks for Thriving Plants – Frugal Gardening

Soil is the heart of your garden. And if we want to keep our gardens healthy and producing plenty, it’s essential to care for the soil diligently. Here are some practical and cheap ways to improve garden soil.

Fertilizer

When people think of improving soil, they most often think of adding fertilizer. This is because plants pull nutrients out of the soil, so we must put them back. There are 2 ways to add fertilizer: organic matter and inorganic fertilizers.

Organic Matter

Adding organic matter means adding products from living things into your soil. Some common ways of doing this include adding compost, manure, blood/bone meal, or seaweed-based fertilizer.

Inorganic Fertilizers

You can also use inorganic products. You can buy these at any gardening store. And they come in all kinds of varieties, like succulent, for encouraging blooms, fruits, or houseplants.

Soil Amendments

Nutrients are just 1 facet of keeping soil healthy. Paying attention to several soil characteristics like pH and permeability/drainage is essential.

Soil pH

Soil pH is a measure of the soil’s acidity. For example, you need acid soil to grow blueberries, corn, cucumbers, and onions.

How to Lower Soil pH

The easiest way to lower soil pH is to add sulfur, which you can find at garden supply stores. How much sulfur you need is determined by how much you need to lower the pH, so it’s a good idea to start with a pH test. Then you work it evenly into the soil according to the package directions. Be sure to wear protective gear as indicated. Be sure to give a 1 month’s break between adding sulfur and planting. If you do not, you will burn the roots of your plants.

How to Raise Soil pH

Adding agricultural lime, or simply lime is the go-to way to raise soil pH. Lime is ground-up limestone. Like lowering the pH, you need to start with a soil test to add the proper amount of lime. Then work it into the soil until evenly distributed. Allow at least 2 months, ideally 3, between treatment and planting to ensure enough time for the lime to neutralize the acid.

Permeability

The rate at which water moves through the soil is an integral part of growing healthy gardens. If water moves too fast, it may not be absorbed by the plant and leech nutrients away.If it drains too slowly, it can cause root rot and encourage fungal growth.

Improving Permeability

There are several cheap ways of improving the permeability of your soil.

Sand

Sand is a cheap way to make soil drain. How much and how fine the sand needs to be depends on what your soil is composed of.

Manure

You can aged manure to increase your soil’s permeability.

Mulch

An excellent way to prevent water loss from the soil is to keep the soil mulched. It will also make the soil cooler and prevent weeds from growing.

Conclusion

Growing delicious food starts with caring for your soil. So what do you add to it?

Read More:

5+ Cheap Ways To Make Soil More Acidic

5 Things To Consider When Recycling Soil

Why You Should Test Your Soil

Most of the time, growing a kitchen garden is a somewhat predictable task.

Many people grow the same things year after year. And that’s great because it means they eat something they love that are nutritious and delicious.

But I encourage people to grow at least one new or challenging thing each year.

Growing an Adventure

You might be thinking, why should I mess with success?

Don’t. I am not encouraging you to change what you are doing completely. I want you to explore.

Explore what?

The whole of food. What we plant and eat is a tiny sampling of the food world.

Do you love turnips? Why not grow kohlrabi? Both come from Brassica species, wild mustards, but kohlrabi is an Asian variety instead of a European one.

Do you love potatoes? Did you know that South America’s Incas of the Andes Mountains domesticated potatoes and ate hundreds of varieties that came in tons of different colors like purple and blue?

The same goes for carrots. They come in tons of colors like red, yellow, and purple.

Why Grow New Things?

Besides being fun, there is a few reasons to grow new things.

The Challenge

Challenges make you grow. They teach you new skills and can help keep your body and brain healthy.

Growing new things will expose to you new diseases, pests, and gardening techniques. These may bring frustration, but that is necessary to learn.

Cool Things

Plant genetics are really cool.

You can cross a lot of fruit and vegetable hybrids to get new varieties. For example, plumerries are crosses between plums and cherries that taste like a big cherry.

And you can get things like fasciation, a genetic condition that causes elongated growth. It can make flowers that normally circles to become ovals. And it causes cacti to become ribbon like instead of cylindrical.

You will find the plant world is full of beautiful colors and heavenly smells, even when it comes to a kitchen garden.

New Tastes

You will also get to taste new things, learn new recipes, and master new cooking techniques.

You can choose to grow things from all over the world and experience food from different cultures.

You can also choose to seek out native edible plants that are disappearing from cultural use, like pokeweed.

Or you could grow new varieties of old favorites like yellow watermelons or lemon cucumbers.

Community Perks

There are couple of community perks to growing something unique.

First, I know a lot of gardeners who love to trade extra crops. And bringing something exotic or different is always fun.

Second, you can also use growing something adventurous as a way to learn about your community and it’s food traditions.

You can find other people interested in growing traditional foods by finding a local seed library. Seed libraries allow you to check out seeds, grow the plants, and return seeds at the best time. My local public library hosts one.

Conclusion

If you could grow anything, regardless of climate, what would you grow? I would love to grow a banana tree and a cocoa tree.

Read More:

Gardens Add Life and Equity to Your Home

Good Bugs for the Garden

4 Ways to Autumn-ify Your Garden on a Budget

The health benefits of gardening are not limited to supplying your food. Gardening is also a form of self-care. You can reap several tangible benefits from growing your food, including physical and mental changes.

Improves Mood

Exercise, eating more veggies, and sunlight are all linked to improved mood.

Exercise and eating more veggies keep your blood sugar steady, and you avoid the ups and downs of mood that are associated with unhealthy blood sugar levels.

Sunlight and engaging in natural spaces correlate with improved moods, although we do not know why exactly. Both have been shown to reduce depression symptoms and alleviate anxiety.

Improves Physical Health

Gardening involves carrying heavy things, bending and stretching, and walking. That’s a whole workout: stretching, weight training, and aerobics.

And since gardens need almost daily attention, you can get regular exercise which is a key to preserving your health.

Reduces Risk of Lifestyle Diseases

The increased veggie intake and exercise levels in gardeners are associated with lower risks of things like diabetes and heart disease.

These diseases are called lifestyle diseases because your lifestyle heavily influences them. For example, high sugar, low-nutrient diets, and little exercise can exacerbate these conditions, while increased veggie eating and exercise can relieve them.

Reduces Stress

Gardening has been shown to reduce cortisol levels. Cortisol is the hormone we use to measure stress levels. High cortisol levels are associated with elevated blood sugar levels and reduced immune system efficacy and can alter your mood.

So while you are out weeding and feeding your garden, you are giving your body the tools it needs to deal with stress on a chemical level.

Time for Yourself

Gardening gives you time to pursue your curiosities. You can try different gardening experiments like growing exciting or exotic things, trying out other gardening tonics, or using your creativity to decorate and create beautiful sitting spaces to enjoy your garden even when you aren’t working in it.

Self-Esteem

Gardening allows you to show yourself you can do amazing things. It is the perfect way to prove to yourself that you can solve complicated problems, set goals and achieve them, and be consistent enough to help another living thing thrive.

Accomplishing these things will raise your self-esteem and make you feel more capable and robust.

Conclusion: Health Benefits of Gardening

Gardening is a great way to improve the overall quality of your life while saving money and providing your food. For example, improved mood, nutrition, and exercise result in significant physical and mental health benefits.

Read More:

Why You Should Test Your Soil

5 Best Plants for a Privacy Wall

4 Smart Garden Devices That Save Time and Money

Looking to make extra money? Mixing up homemade fertilizer is a great side hustle for gardeners. 

What is fertilizer?

I want to discuss fertilizers. They are anything you add to the soil to make it a hospitable place for plants. They can be organic or non-organic. 

When looking at fertilizers, they seem to come in all different kinds. For example, there are fertilizers for growing big and flavorful fruits and veggies, encouraging root, foliage, or flower growth, and even ones formulated for specific plants like roses. 

Fertilizers usually have 3 numbers on the front that refer to the ratio of 3 elements they contain. These are called the NPK ratio. 

Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus(P), and Potassium (K) are essential for plant growth. Nitrogen is critical for producing amino acids, and the proteins plants use for structure. Phosphorus is vital in photosynthesis. Potassium is necessary to move water and nutrients through plants and create energy. 

What is a soil amendment?

Many people confuse fertilizer and soil amendments. They are both things you add to the soil to encourage plant growth. Amendments include changing the soil’s acidity, drainage, or water retention. 

Best Homemade Fertilizers to Sell

These easy recipes are great to mix up and sell. 

Homemade Fertilizer: Seaweed

Water plants, both salt, and freshwater varieties, are rich in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.

And there is a long history of people gathering water plants off the shores, steeping them in water, and then using that water to feed plants. 

You can create your seaweed fertilizer in 2 ways: 

Simple Seaweed Tonic

1. Collect weeds from the shore 
2. Lay weeds in a single layer and let dry. You can do this slowly in the sun or use your oven at a very low temperature (160-180℉) for a couple of hours until dry.
3. Steep in hot water until the water has tinted green. 
4. Let it cool, then water your plants with it.

Seaweed Powder

This one seems to be the preferred way of using seaweed. 

1. Dry seaweed like above 
2. Use a large grinder, food processor, or blender to pulverize the dry weeds. 
3. Add the powder directly to the soil in the garden. 

Kitchen Ingredient Fertilizer

This simple fertilizer can be mixed up from simple, everyday kitchen ingredients and provides nitrogen, magnesium, and sulfur, all crucial nutrients for general plant growth. Some of the elements also protect plants from fungal diseases. 

Follow this recipe to the letter, though. Adding too much of each ingredient can cause burns on your plants. 

Kitchen Ingredient Fertilizer Recipe

1. Gather a plastic gallon pitcher, Epsom salt (not table salt), baking powder, and ammonia. 
2. Add 1.5 tablespoons Epsom Salt, 1.5 teaspoons baking powder, and just under .5 teaspoons ammonia to the empty pitcher. 
3. Add water to the mixture to make 1 gallon.
4. Let sit for 15 minutes to make sure all solids are fully dissolved.
5. Apply to your plants 

Conclusion

Do you make your fertilizer? Let us know your recipe in the comments below.

Gardening wasn’t a hobby in my mother’s family. Instead, it was essential to their lives. In the 1950s and 60s in rural Arkansas, the garden was their only source of fruits and vegetables. And when they wanted something different, they bartered their oversupply with their neighbors.

As the decades passed, my grandmother’s life changed dramatically. In the 1990s, the rural farming community had a grocery store, but my grandmother used it sparingly. She loved buying things like snack cakes and out-of-season fruits, but her heart still lived in the growing and cooking of food she grew.

Gardens and Books

Before the internet, my grandmother was an adventurous gardener, so she had all kinds of magazines, pamphlets, and books around her home. And they called to my bibliophile soul, y’all.

I remember spending hours upon hours looking through the books with her. Sometimes, she would plan a garden, so we would make charts and draw out maps on graphing paper.

She taught me how to use the index and cross-reference between 2 sources to check facts.

Even more important than these skills, she taught me that garden work was not all weeding, feeding, and harvesting.

It is a place where we can provide for ourselves. Food, creativity, beauty, and community intersect in the garden, and she knew it.

Gardens and Legacies

My grandmother took a lot of pride in her garden.

When I was in high school, my grandmother grew a peach tree from the pit of a fruit she bought at the grocery store.

I remember seeing the seedling pop up, then she kept it in a pot and brought it inside that first winter. The day she planted it, she had never seemed so happy. And I remember seeing the first flower and tasting that first peach.

It was delicious, but it was so much more than that. It was the culmination of 4 years of meticulous care. Instead of keeping it to herself, she cut it up and served as many of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandkids as she could.

It wasn’t about the peach anyway. It was about sharing in the loving family she cared for just as meticulously as that peach tree she nurtured.

Conclusion

My grandmother has passed away, but the things she taught me while working in the garden, like patience, diligence, and compassion, live on. I am using my garden to teach these things to my children.

I still have some old gardening books that fed my passion for reading and growing things. So I get them out and look through them now and then. I will share pictures of them below.

Read More:

10 Best Gardening Podcasts Worth Listening To

5 Gardening Communities Where You Can Share Your Harvests

5 Affordable Indoor Plants That You Might Also Get for Free

Enjoy this list of the best gardening podcasts if you want something to listen to while you weed or do other chores. And if you want something to read, check out this list of the best gardening books. 

Let’s Argue About Plants

LAAB is a podcast focused on common gardening problems; sometimes, arguments happen. But these arguments, from the best minds in horticulture, give you both sides of the issue and a deeper understanding. Topics include herbs, weeds, pest control, seed saving, and winter gardening.

Epic Gardening Podcast

This podcast is known for being under 10 minutes and for answering questions sent in by listeners. It focuses on giving tips for growing fruits and veggies, saving seeds, and conserving soil.

Gardening with the RHS

The Royal Horticultural Society in the UK produces this podcast to inspire everyone to garden. Topics include money-saving tips, pest control, gardening contests and competitions, and specialty gardens like sensory gardens or nocturnal gardens. 

Cultivating Place

Ever wonder why humans started growing food or what the early days of agriculture looked like? This podcast is for you. In addition to those academic topics, Cultivating Place also explores what we can learn from our history intertwined with growing food with issues like the historical importance of tomatoes and seed saving as cultural communication.

All the Dirt

All the Dirt is Australia’s most popular gardening podcast and focuses on sustainability. The topics covered include planning garden plots, homesteading/self-sufficiency, and low, impact techniques for growing fruits, veggies, and herbs. 

Roots and All

This podcast goes a bit deeper into creating wonderful outdoor spaces and gardens in both the practical and artistic sense. In addition to growing food, they also talk about gardening for the senses, to benefit the wildlife around you, and using different gardening techniques.  

Gardenerd

Gardenerd is a wonderful podcast that focuses more on urban gardening and the creative use of garden spaces and general gardening topics like growing fruits and vegetables, raised beds, and community gardens.

The Veg Grower Podcast

This podcast follows one man in his trial-and-error efforts gardening in his backyard. Use his experience to learn about cold-weather/winter gardening, pest control, and growing veggies in containers. 

The Dirt by Grow Your Own Magazine

All about growing fruits and veg, The Dirt is an insightful program that will help you grow healthier and tastier food and help you use your space to its fullest potential. Topics include container growing, soil conservation, and fertilizing practices. 

Kitchen Garden by The Kitchen Garden

This British podcast focuses on practical advice for growing everything you need in your kitchen, like herbs, fruits, and veggies. In addition, the podcast covers pest control, tips for individual crops like lettuce or grapes, and gardening for mental health. 

Conclusion

Which of these gardening podcasts would you listen to? What topics would you like to see covered in a podcast?

Read More:

What to Plant in your Fall or Winter Garden

5 Gardening Communities Where You Can Share Your Harvests

5 Affordable Indoor Plants That You Might Also Get for Free

Supporting Farmers Who Treat Their Animals Well

If you care about animals, it’s important to support farmers who treat their animals well. This includes making your purchase decisions based on the welfare of the animals. Like Paul Shapiro, you can also act politically and fight efforts that benefit factory farms. You can also make an impact by traveling to countries that support farmers who treat their animals well. When you travel, avoid eating local cuisine that includes animal cruelty. For example, do not eat live fish or “bushmeat.” You can also sign up for action alerts.

Animal welfare has become increasingly important. Approximately 99% of animals raised in the U.S. are raised in factory farms, where workers are exposed to hazardous conditions and often have to sacrifice their health to make profits. As a result, the animal welfare issue is a growing concern among consumers, and consumers must take action to help farmers improve the lives of the animals.

Buying Plant-based Substitutes

Buying plant-based or fermented alternatives to meat can be a sustainable way to consume meat without slaughtering animals. These alternatives have a low environmental impact but may be more expensive. In addition, they may have a limited sensory appeal and are not as popular among consumers as animal-based alternatives. This may be due to a lack of consumer education, food neophobia, or perceived inferior quality. Nevertheless, the ability to substitute meat for meat-based alternatives depends on consumer recognition of the substitute. The substitute should be similar in shape and form to meat. It should also be prepared like the meat, which consumers are used to.

The production process of plant-based or fermented meat substitutes is highly varied, and a range of textures is available. Some have undesirable off-flavors, such as astringent or bitter flavor. However, these compounds may be removed via germination or heat treatment. In addition, they might contain traces of phytochemicals, which may have anticancer properties.

Buying Cultivated Meat

You can try cultivated meat if you are looking for sustainable meat without slaughtering animals. This product is produced by using immature cells. After maturing for two to eight weeks, the cells are harvested, processed, and packaged to make various products. Cultivated meat has some advantages over conventional animal agriculture. For one, it uses less land, emits fewer greenhouse gases, and reduces agricultural pollution and eutrophication. It is also free of antibiotics and other chemicals, which means less contamination and fewer foodborne illnesses. However, some people worry that cultivated meat will reduce competition in the world protein market. They fear that it will result in a greater concentration of power in the hands of a small group of firms.

Buying In Bulk

Buying bulk sustainable meat without slaughter is possible and can effectively minimize your grocery bill. However, the meat industry produces a lot of waste during the slaughtering process, including bones, tendons, skin, contents of the gastrointestinal tract, and blood. This waste varies depending on the animal species.

By Loans Canada

Are you looking to get a loan and you’re not sure which one? In this article we’ll look at the different types of loans available.

Car Loan

A car loan is a loan taken out to purchase a vehicle. It can be for a brand-new vehicle or one that’s second hand.

A car loan is different than a car lease. A car lease is like renting the vehicle. You’re just paying for the privilege to use it for the next several years. With a car loan, you actually own the vehicle. This means that you can resell it later on if you so choose.

There was a time when five-year car loans were standard. However, this day in age six- or seven-year car loans are the standard.

If you choose to take out a longer car loan, you have to be careful about not finding yourself in a situation of negative equity. This is when your car dies and you still have money owing on the loan. As such, you might choose to keep your loan short at five or six years if you can afford the slightly higher payments.

Student Loan

Whether you’re attending school for the first time or you’re going back to school, a student loan can help you pay for it.

Student debt is considered good debt in most cases. If you can reasonably expect to grow your income, that’s when a student loan can make sense.

Student loans tend to come with lower interest rates and grace periods. You can get student loans from the government, as well as individual banks.

Small Business Loan

They say that small business is the backbone of the Canadian economy. If you’re thinking of starting your own business, a small business loan could be the funds that you need to jump start your business.

Starting a business tends to come with a lot of risk. As such, you can be expected to pay higher interest rates with a small business loan. You can try to get a more competitive rate by backing up your business loan with a well written business plan.

Debt Consolidation Loan

Do you have high-interest debt you want to pay off? That’s when a debt consolidation loan can make sense.

With a debt consolidation loan, you use a single loan to pay off any higher interest loans you owe. The whole idea is to save money and simply the process of repaying any debts you have owing.

You save money when the debt consolidation loan has a lower interest rate than the debts you paid off. It also makes it easier to pay everything off because you only have one payment to worry about, instead of several.

Personal Loan

Then there’s a general purposes persona loan. The general-purpose personal loan can be used however you like. It could be used for home renovations, to start a business or go back to school.

This is the most flexible option, but tends to come up with higher interest rates, since the reason isn’t specific.

As the weather gets warmer, many of us start to dream of hosting outdoor parties in our gardens. Whether you’re planning a casual get-together with friends or a more formal gathering, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure your party is a success. Here are five things to consider as you plan to host a party in your garden.

1. The Size of Your Garden

When deciding whether or not to host a party in your garden, one of the first things you’ll need to consider is the size of your space. If you have a small garden, you may need to limit the number of guests you invite to avoid feeling cramped. On the other hand, if you have a large garden, you may be able to accommodate a bigger group. You can consider having your graduation party in your garden as you only need to rent some chairs, tables, and canopies for extra shade.

If you’re not sure how many people your garden can comfortably accommodate, err on the side of caution and invite fewer guests than you think you can fit. It’s always better to have too much space than too little.

2. The Layout of Your Garden

Another important factor to consider is the layout of your garden. Take a look at your space and decide where you want guests to congregate. You’ll need to make sure there’s enough room for people to move around comfortably and that there aren’t any obstacles in the way (e.g., large tree roots, stepping stones, etc.). If you have a patio or deck in your garden, this is usually the best spot to set up tables and chairs for your guests.

Another thing to remember is that you’ll need to create a path for guests to follow when they arrive. This can be as simple as putting out a few lawn chairs or setting up a rope light along the edge of your garden.

3. The Weather

Of course, the weather is one of the most important things to consider when planning an outdoor party. You’ll need to keep an eye on the forecast in the days leading up to your event and be prepared for any potential weather changes. If there’s a chance of rain, you may consider renting a tent or setting up a tarp to provide shelter for your guests.

For hot weather, be sure to have plenty of cold drinks on hand and consider setting up a fan or two to keep guests cool. You may also want to provide sunscreen and bug spray for guests to use as needed.

4. Deep Cleaning the Exterior of Your Home

If you’re going to be inviting people over, you’ll want to make sure your home is presentable. This means giving the exterior of your house a good cleaning. Wash any dirt and grime off of windows, doors, and siding. Power wash your deck or patio if necessary. While at it, do not forget to visually inspect your siding and foundation. It helps you catch problems such as cracks before they become bigger issues. If you find any issues be sure to have them fixed right away. Research shows you will pay around $4,640 to repair foundation issues.

You should also take a look at your landscaping and make sure everything is trimmed and looking neat. Mow your lawn, pull weeds, and trim any overgrown bushes or trees. If you have flower beds, be sure to rake up any dead leaves or debris.

Last but not least, clear any clutter from your porch or patio. This includes things like bikes, lawn chairs, and garden tools. You want your guests to have plenty of space to move around without tripping over anything.

5. Your Budget

The typical American has about $38,000 in debt, excluding mortgages. So, one of the first things you need to do when planning a party is to figure out how much money you can realistically spend. Make a list of all the potential expenses for your party and give each item a realistic price tag. This will help you stay on track as you start making decisions about food, drinks, decorations, etc.

These tips should help you plan the perfect party in your garden. Just remember to start planning early, so you have plenty of time to prepare everything. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself. After all, it’s your party.