Hot Gardening Posts

News: Teeny Tiny Winter Terrariums

Design Sponge has posted some very pretty, tiny terrariums and air plants to brighten up these cold winter months. Buy them through Etsy seller Tortoise Loves Donkey or make your own. Scroll down for Design Sponge's terrarium how-to.

How To: Plant garlic in your vegetable garden

Garlic is great for spicing up your meals (and keeping vampires away!) and fall is a great time to grow it. In this video tutorial, you'll learn how to grow garlic in your garden. Get some garlic bulbs from a seed catalog, nursery or organic grower, and you'll soon have a garlic crop to be proud of.

How To: Grow vegetables late in the season

Come the fall, your garden is probably going to be looking pretty spare. But it doesn't have to be that way. There are vegetables that will thrive in the fall. In this Growing Wisdom gardening tutorial, you'll learn how to grow vegetables in the cooler months.

How To: Weed in hard-to-reach spots

One of the most challenging, arduous parts of gardening is weeding vegetables that are close to the ground. Cabbage, for instance, leafs out near the earth and can be fiendishly tricky to weed. In this Growing Wisdom gardening tutorial, you'll learn about some of the tools that can help you weed those hard-to-reach spots without breaking your back in the process.

How To: Aerate your soil using a broadfork

Aerating your soil is an essential part of gardening, but it can be long and back-breaking work. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, Dave Epstein will teach you how to use a broadfork to aerate your soil. Using a broadfork, you can aerate the soil without damaging the soil's ecology.

How To: Plant seeds using a pinpoint seeder

It can be a real challenge to plant your seeds in evenly-spaced lines. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, Dave Epstein will show you how to use a four-row pinpoint seeder to plenty your seeds. Using devices like this, planting seeds in even lines will be a whole lot easier.

How To: Use a three-bin composting system

Every day, the average American throws away about four pounds of trash. But a lot of your daily trash could actually be very useful in the garden, as composting. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, Dave Epstein shows you how to use a three-bin composting system.

How To: Make a leaf fence

Autumn leaves may be beautiful, but they can also be incredibly annoying as they pile up around your garden. But there are things you can do with autumn leaves, like mulching them, composting them and turning them into a living fence. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, Dave Epstein walks you through how to make a leaf fence.

How To: Extract seeds from tomatoes

If you've grown tomatoes from seed, perhaps you've wondered how the seed company extracts those seeds. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, Dave Epstein walks you through a process known as sluicing. Using sluicing, you can extract vegetable seeds yourself.

How To: Choose a shade tree

When you head to your neighborhood gardening center to find a shade tree for your garden, the variety of choices can be pretty overwhelming. There are so many kinds of trees, and each of those trees has its own varieties. In this clip, Dave Epstein from Growing Wisdom will help find the best shade tree for you.

How To: Use soil block makers to start seeds

A soil block maker is a cool device for starting your seeds. All you do is fill a container with soil and use the block maker like a cookie cutter. Then you'll have little blocks of soil to plant your seeds in, and you can easily transfer the block to your garden. Now stand back and watch your plants grow!

How To: Use vinca (or periwinkle) flowers in your garden

The vinca, or periwinkle, is a hearty flower that adds a lot to any garden. It comes in a variety of colors, and grows in the sun as well as the shade. But they're so hearty that you have to watch them, or they'll start springing up where they're not supposed to. In this video, Dave Epstein from Growing Wisdom walks you through using periwinkles in your garden.

How To: Make hoops for your low garden tunnel

With low garden tunnels you can protect your plants from frost and insects, and you can overwinter your crops. In this episode of Growing Wisdom, host Dave Epstein will look at how to build a garden low tunnel. He'll focus on using the Quick Hoops Bender for the project.

How To: Amend clay soil

Clay soil doesn't have the porousness to allow plants to grow well in it. Watch this video to learn about soil amendments, which will make the clay soil you have be more hospitable to plant life. By adding nutrients and supplements, you can have a healthy, thriving garden even with clay soil. A happy, healthy garden can be available to anyone if they're willing to put in the effort and care.

News: Garden-in-a-Jar

Terrariums. With fall quickly turning into winter, now's your chance to capture some of that remaining greenery as your very own garden-in-a-jar. I was lucky enough to catch Paula Hayes' terrarium show at Marianne Boesky Gallery in NYC this past summer. Her work is beautiful, not to mention inspiring:

How To: Prune tomatoes for stronger plants

Pruning tomatoes, though not required, will create stronger vines, which produce larger, fuller tomatoes during the growing season. Trim back a tomato plant in the winter with instructions from a sustainable gardener in this free video on gardening. No need to go crazy, even trimming the plant down by a third will give you a bigger, better tomato. Follow along with the tips in this gardening video and learn how to prune a tomato plant.

How To: Prune tomato plants to increase production

One way to increase production in tomato plants is pruning. Pruning your tomato plants will decrease the amount of energy needed for leaf production and increase the amount of energy that goes into your tomato, which provides a a larger and better tasting tomato. Trimming off branches that are not used and are not in direct sunlight achieves more efficiency by directing sugars into the fruit and not into the other branches. Watch this time lapse how-to video, follow along with the tips, and s...

How To: Prune plants

Learn how to cut back plants in your garden effectively to encourage new growth and remove dead and diseased branches. Follow this Howcast guide to learn how to prune plants.

How To: Choose plant fertilizer

To grow beautiful flowers and plants in an outdoor garden, you need to feed your soil the right plant food – a fertilizer that will help your plants thrive. Watch this video to learn how to choose plant fertilizer.

How To: Care for cannas

Learn how to care for canna plants with Carol Klein's comprehensive video guide covering planting, overwintering, and dealing with viruses such as canna yellow mottle, and bean yellow mosaic.