Organic Gardening

Honeybee Love: Keeping Honeybees Safe While Using Pesticides

May 16, 2010
Thumbnail image for Honeybee Love: Keeping Honeybees Safe While Using Pesticides

We’ve all heard about the plight of the honeybees by now – pesticides, hive infections, and other causes are combining to make it a very hard time to be a honeybee. If you’re thinking to yourself that it’s not the worst thing in the world to have one less type of stinging insect around – [...]

Click here to continue reading →

Vinegar Weed Control that Actually Works

March 4, 2010
Thumbnail image for Vinegar Weed Control that Actually Works

When I was in horticulture school, the old-skool dudes teaching pest control were all about the chemicals – they just didn’t believe organics could be as effective as the lethal stuff. Yet every so often, a hint of doubt would creep into their voices about safety. I’d hear, “well, this one’s actually pretty bad” or  [...]

Click here to continue reading →

How to Kill Dandelions in Lawn Organically

February 11, 2010
Thumbnail image for How to Kill Dandelions in Lawn Organically

I just got a nifty tip on how to kill dandelions organically when they are growing in your lawn or in the center of another plant: injection with vinegar-based organic weed killer. You may have found that if you spray non-selective herbicide, organic or otherwise, on your dandelion that you end up with a dead [...]

Click here to continue reading →

Organic Gardening 101: Learning to Love What You’ve Got (How to Stop Spraying and Start Seeing Beauty Everywhere)

July 25, 2009
Thumbnail image for Organic Gardening 101: Learning to Love What You’ve Got (How to Stop Spraying and Start Seeing Beauty Everywhere)

We’ve been talking about how to prevent pests on roses and flowers, and how to treat them organically if you do end up with problems. Today I want to talk about one of the biggest things that keeps us from gardening organically – our expectations and attachments to a specific kind of garden or plant. [...]

Click here to continue reading →

How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Organic Control of Black Spot/ Powdery Mildew, Aphids, and Caterpillars

July 14, 2009
Thumbnail image for How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Organic Control of Black Spot/ Powdery Mildew, Aphids, and Caterpillars

If you’ve tried to prevent rose problems with the tips in this article, but still ended up with some pests (it happens!), here are the methods I recommend to get rid of pests on roses the organic way. (Obviously, before spraying anything, read the instructions on the bottle and be sure to suit up appropriately [...]

Click here to continue reading →

How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Prevention

July 12, 2009
Thumbnail image for How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Prevention

The introduction to this series is here. Preventing pests with good gardening habits is the first step towards having healthy roses and flowers. Healthy plants are a lot less likely to get diseases, while sickly plants become overrun by problems very quickly. Not only that, attending to the basics of a healthy garden will get [...]

Click here to continue reading →

How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Intro

July 12, 2009
Thumbnail image for How to Treat Rose and Flower Pests Naturally: Intro

Roses can be tough to grow organically, because they’ve been so over-bred for their honking big flowers that often, breeders paid little attention to disease-resistance. So you end up with these great frankenflowers that look fantastic – until midsummer when the black spot, caterpillars, and aphids move in. But – I admit it – I [...]

Click here to continue reading →

How to Kill Thrips Organically on Rhododendrons and Other Plants

June 27, 2009
Thumbnail image for How to Kill Thrips Organically on Rhododendrons and Other Plants

Thrips are a tiny sucking insect that pester Rhododendrons (particularly many older varieties) and Azaleas, some evergreen Viburnums, Photinia, and occasionally other plants in the coastal Pacific Northwest. You can tell you have them because your ordinarily green leaves will develop a silvery sheen on them, while the undersides of the leaves will get little [...]

Click here to continue reading →

Soil, Water, and Mulch: The Three Key Steps to a Healthy Organic Garden

June 14, 2009
Thumbnail image for Soil, Water, and Mulch: The Three Key Steps to a Healthy Organic Garden

As a professional landscaper, I get to see and diagnose a lot of garden issues. I find many people at wits’ end, spraying for pest problems and dealing with unhappy plants. Most of the time, the pest problem or grumpy plant shouldn’t be looked at as the problem itself – more accurately, they are symptoms [...]

Click here to continue reading →

Organic Snail and Slug Control: How to Kill Snails and Slugs Naturally

June 5, 2009
Thumbnail image for Organic Snail and Slug Control: How to Kill Snails and Slugs Naturally

Snails and slugs are one of the most common pests in the garden, and the traditional pesticide treatment for them is particularly nasty. If you are transitioning to an organic garden, treating snails and slugs differently is an easy (and still highly effective) change that will have a great impact on your family’s health and [...]

Click here to continue reading →

← Previous Entries