A few years ago, a gardening friend suggested I place a layer of compost in my flower beds before mulching with my usual shredded bark mulch. As my garden seemed happy and required less care that ...

While compost and mulch may seem interchangeable, they have distinctly different uses in sustainable landscaping. Photo courtesy San Diego County Water Authority Seventh in a series republished with ...

Let’s first start with soil. It's the loose stuff on the surface of the ground that covers over half of the earth’s land surface. It’s made up of minerals, organic matter, broken rock particles, many ...

Beautiful as they are, colorful autumn leaves can be a real clean up process. Instead of bagging them up or letting them blow away, you can turn them into a valuable resource for your garden. Leaf ...

A rose by any other name may still be a rose, but mulches need defining. There are 17 different materials considered on the University of California’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management website, and ...

Every gardener wants the best soil for their garden. How do you know if your soil is "good"? What do you add to make it good? When you go to a plant nursery or the gardening section of a big box store ...

A layer of wood mulch and compost at highway construction sites can reduce rain runoff and lessen erosion, according to research from the LSU AgCenter. A three-year study, funded by the state ...