All Herbs

Can plants grow with heat lamps instead of sunlight? At first thought, why not? After all, heat lamps emit both light and heat, right? On second thought, plants need more than just heat and light from artificial lights. Plants can be grown under a heat lamp that is designed to: 1) emit full-color spectrum lights,…

Gardeners cultivate plants that repel rats, mice, and other rodents such as voles, gophers, squirrels, groundhogs, squirrels, and raccoons. Do you know the plants that repel rats, and those that attract them into your home or garden? Read on. The most common plants that have been scientifically proven to repel rats are: Amaryllis Bergamot Black…

The cute, quiet, and hardworking ladybug is a crop saver, a pop culture icon, and an instructional aid in classrooms around the world but some are destructive. You should be able to identify the ones that can destroy plants, bite you and stain your homes. Ladybugs have a 4-stage life cycle consisting of 1) egg…

Tasty soups are perfect bowls of comfort for rainy days, chilly afternoons, and winter evenings. They’re great fillers for large crowds and better than medications for coughs, runny noses, or fevers. Whether soup is clear, thick, cold, specialty, or cultural, 26 are the most common herbs used to provide cooling, woody, sweetish, bitter, sulfury, floral,…

The incorrect amount of sunlight or temperature can affect plants. For instance, full-sun plants need the right temperature as well as from 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight each day. There are three ways to correctly identify full-sun plants for your garden: 1) use heat-zone or plant hardiness maps, 2) know what’s growing there…

Most plants grown in gardens need from 6 to 8 hours of sunlight each day. However, if your garden faces north or doesn’t get enough sunlight, you might be worried if starting a garden either indoor or outdoor is a good idea.  The number of sunlight hours of a north-facing garden depends on 1) emisphere…

The stories you’ve heard and how people condition us to see worms as slimy, dirty animals crawling in the soil. However, if you see worms in your indoor or outdoor garden, don’t panic, don’t be disgusted – be informed. What looks like worms in the soil can be 1) wireworms, 2) pseudocentipedes, 3) centipedes, 4)…

Do plants get hungry? Yes. When they’re hungry, thirsty, or nutrition-starved, leaves wilt and droop, stems are short and weak, roots and tissues darken and die (necrosis). But then again, how do they eat exactly? Plants feed all the time, using light, air, and water to make their own food by absorbing nutrients in two…

What animal in your garden is not a worm, snail or insect, has a skirt, a foot, and 27,000 teeth? If you say it’s a slug, you’re absolutely right. A white garden slug is a land mollusk found in gardens and fields. It contributes to natural ecosystems but can be a pest when it destroys…

It’s a familiar story: we know organic and inorganic fertilizers but – talk about artificial, natural, synthetic, and chemical fertilizers and we’re a bit lost. Are they the same? No, not at all. The pros and cons of using organic vs inorganic fertilizer include (1) variable vs precise nutrition content, (2) immediate and short-term vs…

Wouldn’t it be great if you can just quickly choose the best liquid or granular fertilizer? Unfortunately, there are so many fertilizer types, elements, and factors to consider that choosing one can be rather, well… daunting. Liquid and granular fertilizers have different pros and cons to consider in terms of (1) your goals and limitations,…

We have all the technologies we need to make our homes cosy and warm during hard winter and cool during bursting summers. However, what about your indoor herbs? What about those herbs outside? Some herbs are very sensitive to temperature changes and small amounts of either heat or cold can kill them. Hence, what is…