Back when I was a professional gardener, I had clients who insisted on having me lay down landscape fabric then putting bark on top of it to discourage weeds. I hated this practice and tried to talk ...

Some mulches are better at blocking weeds, some are more attractive, and some contain organic matter that breaks down to ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...