Mowing Height Matters

Remember the Dark Matter garden from RHS Chelsea 2015? When it was dismantled at the end of the show, it was put on a truck and taken to Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire. In this video you can watch it being rebuilt and replanted

An ethnobotany superhero by night, my mild-mannered daytime alter ego is a science writer for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), one of the UK’s research councils. It’s not often that those two worlds collide, although during the early summer the campus I work on is dotted with the blooms of hardy orchids.

When one man went to mow it was to mow a meadow. Do you want to let your lawn get into that state? If not here are some tips but probably not enough to get you a stately home lawn.

The physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil work together to make it a complex, dynamic, and living substance. The role of organic matter in soil health is vital. Soil organic matter facilitates the interactions between the soil properties.

By now, everyone involved with gardening or growing plants has heard the term “soil health” thrown around. What is soil health, and why is it important?

Don’t let its relatives mislead you. Garlic’s close cousin, the onion (Allium cepa), is more adaptable about its ideal moment to be lifted and cured. You can simply let the tops (leaves) die down right in place, delaying digging a bit to when it’s convenient. Or if you’re in a rush, move things along (assuming the bulbs are well-formed) by knocking over the foliage to urge the plants toward their finale.With garlic, though, waiting until all the leaves go brown will promote overripe bulbs whose cloves are starting to separate from one another, and the resulting un-tight heads won’t store as long. Each leaf that browns is one fewer potential wrapper to protect the bulb. (Counterpoint: Harvesting too soon can also diminish the bulbs’ shelf life in storage, and may limit the bulbs r

IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION: DO YOU LIKE TO MOW? Unless, of course, like me you have a love-hate thing going with mowing. I am always irritated that there’s mowing to be done.

I HAVE A LOVE-HATE THING GOING WITH MOWING: I always feel it’s a time-waster, but I am also always relieved there’s “mowing to be done” since that means legitimate escape from things like writing the book I have due. Mowing has immediate, tangible results; you cut grass blades, and they look cut. You try to write and, well, sometimes you don’t get any words. So tell me, do you li

But first, that key reminder: For best flavor and texture, harvest both zucchinis (Cucurbita pepo) and cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) before the skin gets hard and dull, when they still look like the beauties up top. Bitterness from an increase in the chemicals called cucurbitacins that these crops (and melons, pumpkins and gourds) contain may increase with overripeness, though it can also result from environmental stressors such as uneven soil moisture, low soil fertility, low soil pH, high heat or wide swings in temperatures. Once you’ve got such tender subjects in hand, head directly to the kitchen.IAM KNOWN FOR MY PICKLES, and more all the time thanks to search engines and other such decidedly non-culinary efforts. The second-most-popular post I’ve ever published (just an inch behind my slideshow of gorgeous vintage “green” WPA posters from 1936-43, like the one below): the easy refrigerat

YES, PLEASE; HAVE YOUR WAY WITH MY LAWN, TOO; I hear you, Andre. As much as I basically like to mow, I don’t like it as much as the grass apparently liked to grow this wet, cool year.

WHAT DO YOU SAY (AFTER ‘THANK YOU’) when someone sends you something thoughtful but, well, um, you’re just not an orange person? This latest doodle from Andre Jordan reminds me of all those holiday gifts I never wore but just couldn’t throw out, either.

THIS ISN’T JUST LOW-TECH, IT’S SLOW-TECH. Even with my old gas-powered push mower (emphasis on “push” on this hilly terrain) and the tractor for the outermost areas, I’m clocking a minimum of 45 minutes a day and not keeping up.