Tops on the list for growing high quality vegetables is adding a good compost to your garden each year. This is not just top soil, this is broken down organic material that is just waiting to stimulate the soil, feed your plants and even protect them from disease and pests. Compost takes about a year [...]

In many of the people I talk to and classes I teach it is very clear that most of us are not clear what “organic” means as it relates to gardening and food production. I would like to venture some thoughts on the subject in hopes of letting people define it for themselves. Our wonderful [...]

Every year I have the same problem and every year it seems so do many others. You may have seen this, your cucumbers or your squash/zucchini plant is wilting so you water it, yet it doesn’t perk up and then it just dies. This is a tell tale sign of squash bugs. These bugs suck [...]

There is a wonderful free service that Utah State Extention provides for those growing anything in their yard. It is the Plant Pest Advisories. You can subscribe to these advisories so that you will receive an email every week to alert you what you should be looking for in terms of pests and how to [...]

In a prior post I discussed very basic pest and disease practices to control your unwanted plant killers. In order to be effective while being environmentally friendly, most states use an

There is something important that you should do for those plants that go dormant over the winter, particularly fruit trees, berries, roses etc. Every year, during the “pink stage” (right before the tree is about to open buds), you will want to dormant spray to eliminate numerous problems for the trees. By spraying during this time you [...]

Anyone who gardens is very aware of all that there is to learn on the subject of pest and disease management. Even those who study this subject for a living find this a lifetime pursuit. This can be very discouraging for the backyard vegetable gardener who wants to grow plants and doesn’t have the time [...]