FIRES - Garden Guide
What Does It Take To Design And Build Your Own Fire Pit?
There are many alternatives to creating a fire pit other than buying a firepit model that is ready-made and requires some simple assembly. If you are a do-it-yourselfer looking to design and build your own fire pit you don't...
Texas Drought Well Documented in the Past
We all know about the recent wildfires in the plains of Texas, which burned millions of acres and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why. There have been severe droughts, which dried much of the land. Drought...
Transform Your Garden With A Wooden Playhouse
To make a ideal play place, start with a generic square playhouse (plans are easy to find online) or a pre-fabricated shed, available from most home improvement stores. Customize it with some paint, a few fancy features and a...
Why You Should Have A Home Vegetable Garden
There are more reasons today than ever before why the owner of a small place should have his, or her, own vegetable garden. The days of home weaving, home cheese-making and home meat-packing, are gone. With a thousand and one...
A Stone Fire Pit - Give Your Backyard Some Class Today
Fire pits are becoming more popular, and with good reason. They can be used to cook your family or guests a meal, keep you all warm on a chilly night, or just for the joy of watching flickering flames. But what about when...
Mosquitoes and Watergardens
Everyones favorite thing about summer is the mosquitos that are lurking behind every corner to bite you. Its so much fun to scratch for hours at those lovely little bites. The world would be ideal if that were actually...
Another Kind of Energy or ComPost-Modernism
PERMACULTURE HAS ITS GENESIS in the visionary work of J. Russell Smith, J. Sholto Douglas, Robert Hart, and others less well known, who, two generations ago and more, realized the urgency of transforming the basis of...
Fire Pits - How To Choose The Right One For You
When you mention fire pits to someone, it's amazing how frequently they have a very specific idea about what a fire pit actually is. And yet the reality is that there's a huge range of fire pits available, which can make...
What Do Rats Eat?
Rats consume a wide variety of food. They have voracious appetites and will consume almost anything. They are true omnivorous scavengers, but mostly prefer grain, livestock feed, and meat. Rats have also been known to consume...
Enriching the Land and Enriching Our Lives
In our previous article we talked about how important it is to keep our topsoil enriched, so that it has the vitality to maintain itself. We mentioned that erosion the manmade variety, not the natural type has become one...
Pest Control - Mice
Winter is here, which for some people means; they'll soon have mice. It's the time of the year when mice migrate indoors to find warmth, shelter and food. This can present a real problem because once they establish themselves...
Cycad Ferox - Encephalartos Ferox
DescriptionE. ferox is not usually regarded as having much of an exposed trunk, although it is certainly possible to find specimens in the wild with stems of up to 2m above ground level. Branching of the trunk is uncommon and...
Picking and Maintaining The Perfect Shrubs For Your Garden
The woody plants, smaller in size than trees, with low branches close to ground level, have traditionally been known as shrubs. They usually have more than one stem and these stems together are called canes, frequently touching...
Sensory Garden - Engaging All of the Senses in Your Garden Design
Engaging the Senses"We each have our own, unique ideas about how our garden should look and feel - the common element is a clear identity. A garden with a clear sense of place might thus be a tranquil, simple space w