Fish and chips on Mars: our research shows how colonists could produce their own food

A cayenne pepper plant is a productive, easy-to-grow hot pepper perfect for anyone that wants medium-hot fruits. Grow them in garden beds or pots and expect each plant to yield dozens of slender glossy peppers. The 4 to 6 inch long fruits are typically green maturing to red and can be eaten fresh, dried, or used for hot sauce. In this article you’ll learn all about how to plant, grow, and harvest cayenne peppers from your garden. Cayenne pepper plant facts Cayenne pepper plants (Capsicum annuum) are incredibly popular in home gardens thanks to their

If you've already encountered a few or a group of spotted lanternflies in your yard, you may need to take extra steps to protect your yard since this invasive pest can damage the ecosystem around them.

Edimentals is a new term for growing flowers and vegetables together. Gardens today are often too small to have a separate ‘veg patch.’

For the first time in decades I heard a cuckoo just the other day, its pealing “Wuck-Koo” ringing out so loudly nearby that I felt a quick, sharp jolt of joy at being so closely in its presence. Once a common sound, the distinctive call of this fleeting seasonal migrant from tropical Africa is traditionally believed to signal the arrival of spring. But as is true of so many other once-common species of birds, its numbers, which are down by an estimated 27 per cent since the early 1970s, have been in slow but steady decline for decades.

Image: Hampton Court Flower Festival. Credit: RHS

How to Grow and Care for Nodding Onions (Lady’s Leek) Allium cernuum

We’ve all been there: The first summer heat wave comes to town and your air conditioner stops cooling, leaving you stranded in the heat. Air conditioners work hard year after year, but they do require a little upkeep and maintenance to run their best. If your air conditioner’s not cooling properly, there are a number of potential reasons. Some are simple, while others may require a service call from a certified HVAC technician. Here, we’ve outlined 7 potential reasons for your conditioner not cooling—and how to remedy them.

New Zealand Flax, or Phormium, is a handsome long-lived evergreen shrub that forms bold clumps of elongated sword-shaped leaves. The attractive, often colourful foliage looks good all-year round, and makes the perfect foil for other plants in borders, raised beds, gravel gardens and pots. Leaf colour is extremely varied and includes olive-green, purple, yellow, cream, red and apricot variegations, in wide or fine stripes.

Claire Hoppe

This year Chelsea Flower Show was full of interesting trees and shrubs with lots of dreamy woodland-edge planting in dappled light underneath leafy canopies. Native trees such as hawthorns, hazels and silver birch were the favoured choices in many of the show gardens, with a mixture of native and non-native ornamental plants selected for resilience and sustainability. In Ula Maria’s Forest Bathing Garden, white foxgloves, cow parsley and other umbellifers like Baltic parsley (Cenolophium denudatum) and valerian (Valeriana officinalis) were mixed with the simple shade-loving grass Melica altissima ‘Alba’ while Tom Stuart-Smith showcased intricate tapestries of interesting foliage in different shapes and textures. In other gardens, orange was a popular colour in many shades, from deep rusty orange irises to pale orange geums, especially in Ann Marie-Powell’s exuberant Octavia Hill Garden. As always, the Grand Pavilion is the ideal place to discover new and interesting plants showcased by some of the country’s leading nurseries.

Heads up: It’s probably time to revisit your junk drawer. Not to grab your go-to tube of lip balm or a piece of gum, but to finally organize it. 

When it comes to creating a modern homestead, you probably don’t automatically think of a park-like setting filled with color and texture that you’d like to hide out in for hours.