Simple Ideas for Better Homes, Gardens & Outdoor Spaces
Brush a tomato or hibiscus branch and a small cloud of white specks lifts off the leaves, circles for a few seconds, and settles back down. That is usually how people first notice whiteflies. By then the insects have often been feeding for weeks. Adults are only about 1/16 inch (1.5 to 2 mm) long, … Read more
A lawn can look fine on a Monday and have bare, chewed-off patches by the weekend. That speed is the first clue. Drought damage and fungal disease usually creep across turf over weeks, but a caterpillar outbreak can strip a stretch of grass in days. Often the first thing anyone notices is birds. Starlings and … Read more
You pull back the shower curtain and a long-legged spider is sitting in the tub. A web stretches across the garage door that wasn’t there on Friday. Then a large, fast brown spider crosses the living room floor at nine at night, and it’s the third one this week. The cause is usually less alarming … Read more
Small black flies drift up from a pot when you water it. They land on the window, crawl across the saucer, and end up in your coffee. Most people respond by swatting the adults, and a week later there are just as many. The flies you can see are the smallest part of the problem. … Read more
A man who gardens seriously usually owns a shed full of tools already, and the ones he uses most are the ones he has put up with longest: pruners with a slack spring, a wheelbarrow wheel that wobbles, gloves that have been patched twice. That is the real difficulty with buying for him. A new … Read more
A gardener’s mother-of-the-year wish list usually has a catch: she already owns a trowel, three pairs of gloves, and a watering can she’s attached to. Buying her another generic “garden gift” is how you end up with a pair of pruners that sits in a drawer. The better approach is to think about what her … Read more
Most homemade bird feeders don’t fail because the birds ignore them. They fail because the seed gets wet, turns to mold, and either sickens the birds or sits untouched until it’s thrown out. A feeder with no drainage, a flat lid that collects rain, or a tray big enough to hold a puddle will cause … Read more
A patch of lawn turns straw-colored in late summer, but the sprinklers have been running and the neighboring grass is fine. Grab a handful of the dead turf and pull. If it lifts like a loose piece of carpet, with no roots holding it down, the problem is almost certainly underground. Pale, C-shaped grubs are … Read more
A brown, ragged patch appears in the lawn. The grass looks chewed or scalped rather than dried out. Birds keep landing there to peck at it, and watering doesn’t help. Many homeowners treat this as drought or fungus, and it can go on for weeks before anyone looks closely at the ground. When the cause … Read more
A patch of lawn turns yellow, then straw-brown, in the sunniest, hottest part of the yard, usually beside a driveway or sidewalk. The obvious diagnosis is drought, so you water. The patch keeps growing anyway. That is the classic chinch bug story, and the confusion is costly because chinch bug damage will not respond to … Read more