What Do Plants Eat for Food?

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.

If you want to make your Orchids feel at home then use good Orchid compost and mimic natural conditions as best you can. There are many proprietary brands available but you could do a lot worse than talk to an expert at a local Orchid show.

Yes you can rest happily with this organic treatment for your Aphids. It is called ‘spiders’ and they can be found in every garden and often in your own home.

Hemerocallis better known as ‘Day Lilies’ have given a wonderful show this year!

Peacock

The Russia-Ukraine grain deal that has been critical to keeping global food prices stable and preventing famine is currently in tatters. On July 17, 2023, Russia said it was pulling out of the year-old deal, which allowed shipments of grains and other foodstuffs to travel past the Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea. And to make matters worse, over the next two days Russia bombed the Ukrainian grain port of Odesa, destroying over 60,000 tons of grain.

Perhaps as you’ve strolled through your garden lately, you’ve looked at a plant and thought, “What’s eating you?” It can be tricky to discern what is doing the munching when the muncher is nowhere to be found. Some telltale signs paired with a little knowledge can help you sleuth out the culprits.

Remember: I’m all about the 365-day garden, even here in Zone 5B in the Hudson Valley of New York State, where frost happens in May and again in October. By planting extra-early (and extra-late) showoffs, including shrubs that flower at one extreme end of the season or get fiery foliage or fruit at the other (or maybe have great bark or structure when “naked”), I stretch the season to fill the calendar with visual treats.The woody-plant bloom schedule begins here in late January to mid-February, weather depending (update: in 2014 it was late March instead!), and by late April look at what has already happened, or is currently under way or about to pop. Follow the green links to the full plant portraits f

In the Q&A that follows, Ellen’s answers contain green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss. A recap of earlier stories in our ongoing series is at the bottom of the page, along with information on how to get BirdNote daily–and if you want to give thanks to nonprofit BirdNote for all their wonderful avian “aha’s,” you can do so at this link.Q. I’ve read that flamingoes’ plumage may be more or less colorful depending on their diet, but is this true of other bird species, too?A. What on earth does the lowly house finch have in common with the elegant, long-legged flamingo? They are what they eat. In color, that is. The carotenoids in their diets affect what color they are.  Carotenoids are the same pigments that give oranges and carrots–and brine shrimp–their color

I’M WATERING THEN SHADING the garden beds where peas grew fat and sweet until early July, when their time was done.  The heat and calendar told them to stop, but I’m carrying on—making the now-empty spot hospitable for something else by cooling the soil a bit so something delicious for fall harvest will be happy to germinate, and get growing.

Ellen—part of the BirdNote public-radio show team and my collaborator on a series of bird-related stories—is the person I always tell about new birds or other avian happenings out my window, even though I’m in the Hudson Valley of New York and she’s in Seattle.“Is it starting out there?” I asked as March began, just in from a session of crawling around to cut back hellebore foliage, accompanied by mourning dove (above), chickadee and titmouse songs.“Yes,” was the quick answer, in an email with a photo of Ellen’s own tidied-up hellebores—all in full bloom, way a

About 18 years ago, I began opening my place to the national garden-visiting program of the Garden Conservancy called Open Days. Its director, Laura Palmer, was my latest radio guest—and we talked about where around the country you can visit hundreds of private gardens, and also how you can decide to share your garden, too.The reason I say I started learning as a result from strangers who visit: I notice someone across the yard looking at something, or using their camera, and I think: “What are they looking at? There’s nothing over in that spot!”No matter how I try to direct people, or tell them how to move through the place and what to look at, they just don’t see the garden the way I do–and as a result, I have a lot of “aha’s” fro