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If you've ever tasted fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes or other home-grown vegetables, you'll likely never forget the flavor. Maybe you've thought about starting your own vegetable garden--in your back yard or as part of a community plot—but you worried you didn't know enough to make it worth your while. Well, it's not as hard as you think. With the information provided in the following primer, even if your thumb is some color other than green, you can soon be harvesting delicious, nutritious and safe food for your family, friends and yourself—and saving money in the process. Read on...

Making compost in your backyard is not time-consuming, unsanitary or difficult. It just takes a bit of education and preparation. Backyard composting not only improves your soil’s fertility and workability, it saves you money at the garden-supply store as you'll no longer need to buy fertilizers—artificial or otherwise. It also reduces the strain on your local landfill and helps to lessen the amount of chemicals being produced and added to the environment. Read on…

Your outdoor space, whether an urban balcony or a large-acreage tract, is a balanced ecosystem that at times can shift, resulting in an invasion of insect pests. As we have seen, natural planting practices can help reduce the likelihood of an infestation, and organic pesticide products can help control one. An even better option is to modulate your ecosystem to attract beneficial organisms that will kill and feed on insect pests for you. Read on…

No matter how well you apply planting practices that reduce pest invasion, some pests will likely still get through to your plants. Fortunately, other organisms have been battling the same culprits much longer than we have—and they’ve developed methods to control them that we can learn from. Organic pesticides utilize these naturally occurring compounds; thus, they are prime weapons in the arsenal of pest-control solutions. Read on…

As long as humans have lived in houses and cultivated plants, they have had to deal with a variety of insect and fungal pests. Synthetic pesticides are very effective at killing these invaders, but they also harm beneficial organisms and persist in the environment contaminating food crops and water sources. Instead of spraying toxic chemicals at the first sign of a problem, employ a natural, systematic approach to pest control using organic pesticides only as a last resort. The first step is to use proper planting practices and maintenance to reduce the numbers of invasive pests. Read on…