Aside from pumpkins, there’s no more popular fall décor than potted hardy chrysanthemums. Their gorgeous colors shout autumn is here with every jewel- or fire-colored bloom. And with retailers ...

When I had a much smaller garden, I could only fit a couple of small shrubs along a fence. Lilac was not one of them. And yet, I still knew when the lilacs were in bloom because their unmistakable ...

There’s nothing worse than putting in the time and effort to get your Christmas cactus to bloom only to find all of its tiny buds on the floor one day. For a plant that’s relatively easy to take care ...

Both the garden and I get a second wind in September. After the mellowness of summer months, and leisurely August pastimes, my mind craves a refocus and regroup. It’s not quite the back-to-school ...

Whether you’ve been at this whole gardening thing for a while or you’re just getting started, you probably know that starting your own seeds is a game changer. But doing so means giving up a chunk of ...

I don’t know about you, but I love the look of greens tucked around my home for the holidays. Nothing says Christmas more than pine boughs and sprigs of holly. Not to mention, it’s pretty hard to beat ...

Once in your lifetime, you should find the time to build a beautiful cob oven in your backyard. If you can’t find time, then you’ll have to “make time”, because you simply cannot live a full life ...

Tomato gardeners, I’d like to paint an all-too-familiar scene for you. You’re out in the garden, happily picking ripe tomatoes from your plants, when you notice a twiggy, leafless branch. You recoil ...

The climes, they are a-changin’. Depending on where you live, winters might be trending milder or chillier. Frost dates, once fairly accurate, are shifting. The arrival of fool’s spring wakes up our ...

If there’s one thing my Rural Sprout colleagues and I have in common, in addition to our obsession with composting everything that dares move, is our hatred of waste. I know hate is a strong word, but ...

LECA are expanded clay pebbles that resemble cocoa puffs. If you’ve ever seen houseplants planted in LECA and you thought to yourself “why would anyone use cocoa puffs to pot their plants in?”, let me ...

Your home life is more wasteful than you realize. The average American household consumes more than 900-kilowatt hours every month. Assuming you’re powering your home with coal or petroleum, this puts ...