Inside Ideas, Tips & Guides

Terrariums are a fun and easy way to bring nature indoors. They’re like tiny indoor gardens that you can grow inside glass containers. Let’s explore the common Indoor Plant Varieties for Terrariums for a successful miniature garden.

As a child I tried with seeds to grow stones – daft kid or what? Now I do not see the fun in growing Lithopes, due to the early aversion thereapy, but each to their own.

Seed collecting can be addictive. You may quickly discover you are surrounded by drying stems and paper bags but all you need is enough seeds for your immediate needs.

Autumn may seem a strange time to start a gardening business but it is the time to focus on what you want to do. Get all your ducks (or seedlings) in a row and ensure you have the detail sorted and with that I include enough cash to see you through and chosen customer groups. How to Start Your Own Gardening Business An Insider Guide to Setting Yourself Up as a Professional Gardener is a useful tutorial if you want to set up a gardening business. I recommend you consider your aspirations and limitations carefully and either set up a ‘Life Style business’ or consider becoming a qualified, professional career gardener.

Crevice gardens are all the rage at the moment. The careful alignment of rocks can create some interesting locations for alpine and rockery plants. They are also very good for helping wild life to thrive. See pictures of the Alpine Garden society rock supplier.

How to Start Your Own Gardening Business An Insider Guide to Setting Yourself Up as a Professional Gardener is a useful tutorial if you want to set up a gardening business. I recommend you consider your aspirations and limitations carefully and either set up a ‘Life Style business’ or consider becoming a qualified, professional career gardener. Life Style Gardener

This week I revisited RHS Harlow Carr library for the first time in several years. I previously volunteered in the ‘old potting shed’  library before the new building was completed. Then I was part of the team that moved and reshelved all the books from one part of the garden to the ecofriendly new premises.

 Schefflera arboricola, known as the “dwarf umbrella tree,†has small green leaflets attached to stout petioles. Indoors it will have a mature height of 3 to 4 feet.

Here is a fun and creative way to brighten up your outdoor space for spring!

Don’t know about Burning Rosemary Benefits? Well, then, don’t miss a captivating read, especially if you’re growing this aromatic culinary herb in your garden.

If you had asked how I felt about geometry when I was a high school sophomore preparing for final exams, I would have had an immediate and firm answer: “No, thank you.” But as soon as that geometry had anything to do with food, I’d correct my answer to “Count me in for all the research!”

In times of this pandemic, it is imperative that you take good care of your health, especially the respiratory system. Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds (which are 10 times higher indoors than outdoors), Particulate Matter, Polluting Gases like Nitrogen Oxide andRadon, and Contaminants like Asbestos are commonly found inside homes.

Welcome, DIY Enthusiasts! If you're passionate about creating unique and sustainable projects for your outdoor space, I have an exciting endeavor for you: building your own DIY solar water fountain.

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Did you know that citrus fruits are one of the only fruits in season during the winter? Not too long ago, the joys of taste-testing some unique citrus fruits was limited to winter, but now we can enjoy many citrus fruits (and their many benefits) all year long. One delicious type of orange that you may not be familiar with is the cara cara orange. A relatively new kid on the block, the cara cara is not only beautiful, but it also has a flavor profile that might just make it your new favorite citrus.

Growing plants in the classroom can provide a wealth of benefits for students and educators. Indoor plants have been linked to improved concentration and memory as well as a reduction in stress. Research has also linked indoor plants with increased productivity and reduced mental fatigue, all of which can be beneficial in the classroom environment.

What do sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, miso, and yogurt have in common? They are all fermented foods. Fermenting has been around for thousands of years and is the method of preparation for a variety of popular foods worldwide. If fermenting is something that you want to try, sauerkraut is a great place to start.

The sweet potato is a starchy, sweet-tasting root vegetable. They have a thin, brown skin on the outside with colored flesh inside, typically orange in color, but other varieties are white, purple or yellow. You can eat sweet potatoes whole or peeled; the leaves of the plant are also edible. While called ‘potatoes’, sweet and white potatoes are not actually related. Botanically, the sweet potato belongs to the bindweed or morning glory family, whereas the white potato is part of the nightshade family.

References to pumpkins date back many centuries. Native Americans dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats. They also roasted long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and ate them. The origin of pumpkin pie occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices and honey. The pumpkin was then baked in hot ashes. University of Illinois Extension

January is a special month as it is the start of a new year filled with the hope of great things to come. After holiday decorations come down, with the lights, sparkles, and glitter of the holiday season put away for another year; it is the perfect time to add an orchid for their unique appeal and charm.

Garden Sprouts is a program I run at the South Carolina Botanical Garden that is designed for preschoolers and caregivers. This class takes place once a week for three months every spring and fall. The goal is to share age-appropriate nature-based activities with children, who are mostly three to five years old, but sometimes younger or older. Over time I have learned the caregivers also learn things they never knew, enjoy the activities immensely, and are able to connect more deeply to the natural world through this program. The structure of this hour-long program is three-fold, we begin inside with a book related to the theme of the day, a walk or outdoor activity, and finally a craft. In this blog, I would like to share some of the books, outdoor activities, and crafts we have done in this class.

As people are spending more time around their homes during the concerns of COVID-19, they may be more likely to notice small ants crawling in and around their houses. Now is the perfect time to do something about it.

In an earlier blog post, we discovered how easy it is to grow luffas. Making soap from luffas is a fun and easy craft project for all ages.

Far too many times, I see unused mini-greenhouses sitting in backyards and farms. These once-promising structures are now home to millions of red imported fire ants, rats, and even the occasional snake. They sit vacant for years until they are torn down and thrown away. The temperature inside mini-greenhouses is extremely difficult to regulate and oftentimes harms transplants. If you are trying to grow transplants, be it vegetables or flowers, then the perfect solution exists at your local hardware store.

Now is the time to tame those apple trees with some dormant pruning. Apple trees have already set buds for the upcoming growing season and are in need of a little haircut for optimum fruit set and health. When pruning an apple tree, your first job is to get a full tree view.

The past two years have been far from ordinary. We have all had to learn how to navigate a world with new safety standards and health precautions. From mask-wearing to social distancing and new restrictions on some of our favorite activities, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered our daily habits. Although we have managed to adjust to these “new normals” for some time now, we now have to navigate another holiday season during a global pandemic.

***North Carolina State University is doing research about eastern carpenter bee management on private property. You can help by providing feedback in their survey, which should take just 10 to 15 minutes to complete. This information will help them develop improved management options for the future. To participate in the survey, see Carpenter Bee Survey.

Nature is always intriguing, often beautiful, but occasionally it is rather creepy and somewhat gruesome.

Shearing hedges into cubes, globes, and squares is a form of architectural pruning that balances appearance with shrub health. This balancing act is most evident in the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden in Bishopville, SC. Mr. Fryar, and now his protegee, Mike Gibson, Topiary Artist in Residence, skillfully maintain whimsical, fanciful living works of art from ordinary junipers, pines, and cypresses.

While walking in the Jurassic Garden at the South Carolina Botanical Garden, I noticed the ends of many fern fronds clearly engineered to make globe-like structures. When I took a close-up of this globe, I noticed delicate strands of silk crisscrossing the surface and holding the fonds closed tightly. What could be inside?

As I mentioned in my previous blog about the French style of floral design, I was inspired to create my Southern style arrangement using flowers and foliage from my own South Carolina landscape. The only floral items I purchased were a bouquet of fall floral mums and a bag of dried, sustainably gathered Spanish moss.

I recently came across this caterpillar in the garden. The bright green body first attracted my attention, and then I saw the white additions to its body. This caterpillar is beautiful but doomed; it may even be dead.

You can create fresh or preserved moss balls to add interest to your floral arrangements. If using fresh moss or reindeer lichen, please don’t collect entire populations of them from a single area. Only gather small amounts from different places to allow the moss or lichen to regenerate. Commercial dried moss and Spanish moss that has been sustainably sourced can be purchased from your favorite craft store. The dried materials will last much longer than the freshly gathered ones.

We’ve set our clocks back an hour with the end of day-light-savings time. Thanksgiving is a recent memory, and the day length continues to shorten as the winter solstice (December 21st) approaches. Now that winter temperatures are setting in, activity in the landscape is slowing, to a minimal pace at times, for both gardeners and wildlife.

First off, Happy National Nutrition Month! Every year, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics hosts National Nutrition Month and offers education on nutrition and making better food choices. Each year has a theme, and since National Nutrition Month is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the theme is “Fuel for the Future.” Looking into the future, we want to eat with each phase of life in mind and incorporate ways to help protect the environment.

This is the cocoon of a parasitic wasp (Microplitis plutellae) that attacks and kills diamondback moth larvae. This wasp will lay an egg inside the caterpillar, where the wasp larva feeds before emerging from the mature caterpillar to spin its cocoon, killing the caterpillar in the process.