By Sonya Welter

“Feed and the pests will come,” seems to be every gardener’s motto.

We may never see a pest but as soon as we plant the first tomato or pepper the swarms seem to appear.

But a unique concept of feeding and nurturing nature’s insect task force will bring even the novice gardener relief.

The concept is simple provide shelter, water, and food for beneficial insects and let nature take its course. So try a beneficial insect border around your garden and see how nature works without chemicals. Who knows you may decide to do a whole beneficial insect garden to reward nature’s insect task force.

SWEET ALYSSUM (Lobularia maritima)

This annual is low growing and produces white flowers that can form a border in a flowerbed or can act as a fast-growing ground cover that vegetables can be planted into. Many studies have shown that sweet alyssum is highly appealing to aphid eating hover flies.

CUP PLANT (Silbium perfoliatum)

This perennial grows Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

I love reading about rare, unusual, and tropical plants.

It is fascinating to discover ones that most people have never heard of.

Naturally, I want to grow them myself.

However, since they aren’t as common, it follows that it is harder to buy them.

Mother Earth News has put together a great new tool for those looking for seeds and plants, both common and unusual. Simply visit their Seed and Plant Finder to “quickly search the online catalogs of more than 500 mail order seed companies” using their search box. They suggest putting any variety names with two or more words in quotation marks.

In the past, a friend and I have enjoyed growing dwarf papyrus in buckets. We have been wanting to try the giant species, but only found seeds. Since giant papyrus is more difficult to grow from seed, I thought this would be a good opportunity to see if there was a place that offered giant papyrus plants.

With this tool, I was able to Read the rest of this entry »