Guide
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Must Have Planting Calendar for Vegetable Gardeners
Have you ever wondered when you needed to seed, sow or transplant your vegetable garden? Now you have the answer! Many veggie gardeners here in Central Texas find the fall season to be more productive than spring in our area, so check out the Veggie Planting Calendar to plan your fall veggie garden. The Texas AgriLife Extension Vegetable Garden Planting Guide will show you all the ideal times to plant in order to maximize your garden bounty! You can download a printable PDF of the calendar to post by your garden or bring with you to your favorite plant nursery.
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Supercharge your Garden with Texas Superstar Plants
The new Texas Superstar Guide to strong and stunning plants for Texans, created by Texas A&M AgriLife Research, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and the Texas Department of Agriculture, is available online. To be designated a Texas Superstar, a plant must be beautiful and perform well for consumers and growers throughout the state. Superstars must be easy to propagate, which should ensure the plants are not only widely available throughout Texas but also reasonably priced. The Texas Superstar program began as a regional program in the early 1980s and became a statewide effort in 1989. The name Texas Superstar was coined in 1997. The designation was applied to all the…
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What is Hugulkultur?
When you don’t have a giant property, it is important to strategize to get the most use of the garden you have, and that includes planting vegetables and herbs in raised beds and containers. I’ve been growing vegetables and herbs in two 4-by-8-foot raised beds built years ago, and every few years, I invest in copious amounts of compost and organic topsoil to refill them. Some friends garden in much larger beds and the cost to fill them would make your salad spin. But there is a better method: “Hugelkultur,” is said to have been used in Germany and eastern Europe for centuries as part of a more extensive permaculture…
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How to Build a Gardener’s Toolbox
Tips for finding quality tools that will last We may be a home gardener, not an arborist or full-time landscaper, but still want tools with the professional-quality performance that professionals demand. Like a chef impatient with a dull knife, we want them to cut cleanly into whatever medium we are working in, whether branch or soil. And we’d just as soon skip any implements with clunky grips or unnecessary weight. The tools that follow are the ones worth waiting for — and you may have to wait for some of them, if supply-chain snarls or shipping delays so conspire. But whether you’re shopping for gifts or your own personal use,…
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2021 Gift Guide for Plant Lovers
If you didn’t know a “Plant Person” before, chances are you do now. The coronavirus pandemic ushered in a botanical boom: A new crop of victory gardeners resulted in a run on seeds; sales of plant-based meat alternatives and other foods soared; as did sales of plants both legal and quasi legal. Eleven Madison Park, regarded as one of the world’s best restaurants, debuted an all-plant menu (that didn’t delight every diner) in June. And fashion houses from New York to Paris have made commitments to use more plant-based materials in their collections. The current craze began to take root even before the pandemic, though, with millennials, in part inspired…
