Author Archives: Patty Craft

How to Make Fairy Gardens

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fairy gardens

Fairy gardens are fun, small-scale ways to introduce gardening to little ones—or they can be a way to add a bit of whimsy to your own life. Here’s how to attract a sprite or two to your garden.

Grow Your Own Celery & Avoid Pesticides from Store-Bought

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celery

Celery can be attacked by parsleyworms, carrot rust flies and nematodes, but these pests are more often found in huge commercial plantings than in home gardens. This is why commercial celery, or store-bought, is one of the most pesticide-laden crops in the produce aisle. Grow your own for worry-free, healthier celery with these tips. 

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Do You Know Who Invented the Wheelbarrow & When?

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wheelbarrow

As you use your wheelbarrow to haul dirt, mulch, debris to the burn pile, or what seems like miles of hose to connect to the spigot, you probably haven’t thought about the tool’s history. But there’s a rich history to this vital gardening tool that spans continents and millennia.

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Save the Bees! Best Plantings for Honeybees

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If you’ve been gardening for a minute, you’ll know that the plight of the bees is always a lively topic. In her new book, Planting for Honeybees: The Growers Guide to Creating a Buzz, author Sarah Wyndham Lewis jokes, “They say if you have four beekeepers in the room, you’ll have six opinions on any given topic! I’ve never found this truer than in researching this book.”

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Garden Design: Tips for Raised Beds

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raised beds

The most recent National Gardening Survey says, “More and more consumers are choosing not to dig holes in their leisure times. If they have the finances, they are investing in raised beds.” A raised bed is gardening soil, raised above the normal soil level, and contained by durable materials such as wood timbers, bricks or metal edging.

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How to Get Mad Blooms from Your Hydrangeas

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hydrangeas

The key to mad blooms from your hydrangeas: prune them while they’re young. With all types of hydrangeas, it pays dividends to build a strong bushy plant, even before you worry about flowers. The first few years after planting are the most important for pruning hydrangeas because you’ll be building the foundation for years to come.

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Healing Gardens: The Power of Plants

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power of plants

The Healing Power of Plants A wise old gardening friend used to tell me that there’s hardly any problem a walk through the garden won’t make more manageable. She inherently knew the healing power of plants because she’d spent decades …

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Why We Need to Keep Growing More Gardeners

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keep growing

In today’s digital age, it is more common to find children playing video games and texting friends rather than planting seeds, cultivating young plants, and enjoying the fruits of their labor. Many children no longer know where their food comes from, and they rarely consume enough fresh fruits and vegetables as part of their daily diets. That’s why we need to keep growing more gardeners. 

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