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Home Garden Tips

Gardening is a fun hobby, but it can be hard to get started. Home Garden Joy strives to make it easy and fun to begin your new garden. This section is devoted to many how-to tips: watering, soil, seed starting, composting, USDA hardiness zones, and all the things I've learned as I grew up with experienced gardeners by my side.  You'll find tips and tricks, and plenty of practice advice, too.

 

bee on sunflower

Plants Are Smart – They May Influence Their Own Pollination

The Only Garden Design Tip You’ll Ever Need!

Why Do Spring Flowering Trees Bloom in the Fall?

Fall Garden Update and Dealing with Drought

Fast Growing Shade Trees: An Interview with Davey Tree Experts

Save Water in Your Home

Keeping Birds Out of the Garden

Five Reasons Gardeners Should Get a Tetanus Shot

a close up of a cucumber leaf with anthracnose

Outwitting the Insects

Trench Composting

Gardening for Health: Can Doctors Prescribe Gardening?

Summer Gardening Tasks

The New Composting System Is Done!

Are You Stuck in a Gardening Rut?

My First Water Garden

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A sugar maple tree cover in autumn leaves

How to Compost Fall Leaves: Turn Autumn Leaves Into Garden Gold

Every October, the big sugar maple near our garden shed drops its leaves in what feels like a single weekend. One day the yard is green, and the next I’m scrunching through ankle-deep gold and wondering where I left the rake. I used to see that pile as a chore. Now I see it as…

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Pumpkins in the pumpkin patch

October Gardening: Tasks and Tips

October is the time of year for pumpkins, squash, scrunching through piles of fall leaves, and enjoying the last of the lovely weather before winter sets in. Here in Virginia, October can go either way — sometimes it stays warm, and sometimes the first frosts move in and finish off the summer vegetables. At this…

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A head of bok choy growing in my garden.

How to Grow Bok Choy

I learned how to grow bok choy through trial and error. Last fall, I noticed some beautiful heads of Chinese cabbage (napa cabbage) at our local farmer’s market. When I asked the proprietor where it was grown, I found it was grown not five miles from my house! Well, that means I could grow all…

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A bench with a zinc pail filled with apples. On the bench, squash, apples, and gardening tools

September Gardening: Tasks & Tips

Fall is the time for mums, for pumpkins, and another round of pansies — for soft golden twilights and leaves crunching underfoot. September is the last month here in zones 6 and 7 when the garden is still lush and full. We’re harvesting the last of the tomatoes here at Seven Oaks, my farm near…

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