Recent Post

Squash Vine Borer: How to Spot It and Stop It Before It Kills Your Plants
Stop the squash vine borer before it lays eggs with a row cover until flowering, foil around the stems and twice-weekly stem checks, and save a hit plant by slitting and burying the stem.

Zucchini Flowers But No Fruit? Why It Happens and the 30-Second Fix
Zucchini flowers but no fruit usually means the flowers are male so far, or the female flowers were not pollinated. How to tell the flowers apart, why pollination fails, and how to hand pollinate.

Blossom End Rot: The Real Reason Tomatoes Rot on the Bottom
Blossom end rot is the black patch on the bottom of a tomato, and it usually comes from uneven watering, not a lack of calcium in the soil. The three fixes: steady water, mulch and compost.

Why Your Compost Stops Working in Fall (And How to Fix It)
A cold fall compost pile has one of four problems: size, nitrogen, water or air. How to tell which one with your hand, the fix for each, and what to do with finished compost before the ground freezes. The written version of my video.

What to Do With Fall Leaves: 7 Ways I Use Every One
Shred fall leaves with the mower, then use them as a 6 to 8 inch winter blanket on beds, a garlic cover, chicken run bedding, compost browns, spring mulch, and leaf mold. The written version of my video.

How Many Sweet Potato Plants per Square Foot?
One sweet potato slip per 4 square feet, a 2 x 2 foot block with plants 24 inches apart. Extension row spacing works out to one plant per 2 to 6 square feet, never one per square.
