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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Compost is a great way to recycle kitchen and garden scraps. It takes organic waste and turns it into nutrient-rich humus that can be used by plants. Composting is a way of returning to the soil what ...