Try these houseplant remedies when your plants start to wither and droop. Houseplant ailments fall into three main categories: Fungal, Viral, and Pests. Fungal Diseases: Fungal diseases are usually due to mold and mildew growth, and are easy to cure. Symptoms of fungal disease, more commonly referred to as “leaf spot” include leaf loss, stunted […]
Living
How To
How to Use a Digital Camera
Photography blogger Susan Cole Kelly shares her simple tips for using a digital camera. Our friends at Yankee have asked me to write a blog entry about how to use a digital camera. Initially, I was stumped — isn’t that like asking a chef to write a few words about how to use a stove? […]
You don’t believe anyone could get behind a beehive oven? Well, you have to realize that General Lafayette (you know, that French guy who helped us win the Revolution) was a skinny man. Most histories don’t tell us that. And, well, in all truth, the story that he hid from the British after the Battle […]
Living
Goodbye to Winter
The air is suddenly moist and soft, and the new smell of dirt is intoxicating. The color and quality of light is more urgent when I wake up, when I walk the block scouting for tips of green emerging from hay-colored lawns. It’s whiter and brighter, and it feels as though it’s here to stay. […]
Old wooden shoe forms make a charming, vintage-looking coatrack. 1. Browse your favorite antiques stores and flea markets for interesting old shoe forms. 2. Determine the wood-panel size you’ll need for the space you’ve got in mind. You might use an old wooden door, for instance, or a shutter, or even an old cutting board. […]
How To
How to Sugar on a Shoestring
Maple sugaring, as Burr Morse will tell you, doesn’t require fancy stainless-steel boilers and gravity-fed tubing–simple firepits and recycled milk jugs work just fine, too. Morse should know: His family claims sugaring roots stretching back nearly two centuries, and today Morse sugars from the same trees his granddad once tapped. Come March, his farm, with […]
Gardens
Planting Buddies for Your Crops
Companion planting is a time-honored, if not always scientifically proven, technique for combining certain plants with others to protect them from pests or to otherwise enhance their growth. Garden lore includes an almost endless supply of “recipes” for supposedly beneficial plant combinations, and research by scientists and gardeners indicates that many companion planting arrangements really […]
Gardens
Spring Blossoms | Photographs
Spring is coming, and you can celebrate this season by following the trail of blossoms in this slide show by photographer Matt Kalinowski. You can view more of Matt’s work at: www.mattkalinowski.com
Joe Lentini, a team leader with Mountain Rescue Service, shares advice on how to survive extreme winter weather.
Terrariums are a wonderful way to enjoy a miniature form of nature year-round. Here’s how to make a terrarium at home.
How do you stunt the growth of paperwhites to keep them from becoming too leggy? The boozy answer may surprise you.
Watering mistakes kill plants sooner than nearly any other factor, and letting plants sit in standing water is one of the common ones. J. P. Casey, author of Treatise on the Culture and Growth of Different Sorts of Flower Roots, and of Green House Plants Kept in Rooms (1821), notes: “All green house plants… must […]