Soil, Watering, and Fertilizing: Answers to Common Questions
Practical answers to the questions gardeners ask most about buying and improving soil, watering wisely, choosing mulch, and making sense of fertilizer.
Clear, staff-reviewed answers to common gardening questions.
Practical answers to the questions gardeners ask most about buying and improving soil, watering wisely, choosing mulch, and making sense of fertilizer.
How to match plants to your site, from shade and problem soils to containers, screens, and bulbs, and how to plant them for success.
Avocado trees can be rewarding, but the same symptom may have several causes. Use the plant's roots, soil, weather, light, and growth pattern together rather than relying on a fixed watering rule or a single diagnosis.
A practical guide to light shaping, renovation, flowering schedules, houseplants, perennials, vines, and when a tree problem belongs to an arborist.
Match the method to the plant, keep new starts clean and evenly moist, and take extra care with toxic plants, sharp tools, and anything near natural water.
Diagnose, repair, renovate, and safely maintain lawn turf and ornamental grasses, from mushrooms and bare spots to mowing, winter survival, and chemical injury.
Practical answers to the questions gardeners ask most about young and established trees, from how much water a new planting really needs to growing conifers in pots, feeding evergreens, and dealing with problem spots, seed litter, and trunk damage.
Slugs, aphids, scale, earwigs, grubs, and root maggots turn up in every garden. Here is how to work out which pest you actually have, which non-chemical controls are worth your time, and where the limits of pesticide use lie.
Discolored foliage is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Where the damage sits on the plant, what shape it takes, and what changed just before it appeared will usually narrow the cause to watering, light, salts, or something that needs identifying before you treat it.
Almost anything will grow in a container if you get the growing medium, the pot size, and the watering right. Here is what goes in the pot, how big it needs to be, and how a range of plants from soybeans to snake plants behave once they are in one.
Maples raise the same handful of questions year after year, from surface roots and pipes to scorched leaves, disappointing fall color, and whether a Japanese maple can be kept small. Here are the answers, with the specifics that make them usable.
There is no cup count that answers "how much water does this plant need," but there are numbers worth knowing: how deep the water should reach, how to check that it got there, how to taper watering as a new plant establishes, and when fertilizer is beside the point.
Impatiens care depends on the species or cultivar, the weather, and the growing conditions. Use the symptoms and situation below as a starting point, while treating disease identifications as provisional.
Choose plants for your climate, soil, mature size, and the people and wildlife sharing your garden.
Resistant plant lists are worth reading and worth doubting, repellents wear off with the first rain, and a barrier is the only thing that reliably holds. Here is how to fence, trap, and deter the animals eating your garden, and what to leave alone.
Practical, diagnosis-first guidance for common garden problems, from starting plants to managing difficult sites safely.
Most germination failures come down to a handful of fixable things: seed that was never viable, seed buried too deep, soil too cold, or a hard coat that needed softening first. Here are the specifics, including timings, temperatures, and depths.
Timing, hole size, root balls, whether to cut the top back, and what to do about the wilting, reddening, and yellowing that follow a move, with specifics for trees, shrubs, perennials, brambles, bulbs, and vines.
How to move an old rubber plant into a bigger pot, cut back a leggy dracaena, braid a ficus, read bleached or browning leaves, deal with weeds and cats in your pots, and build a working carnivorous plant bog in a ten gallon tank.
Start by identifying the plant and the turf you want to keep. Correct watering, drainage, mowing, hand removal, edging, and dense turf usually provide the safest first steps. Chemical treatment, preemergent, and fertilizer decisions depend on the exact weed, turf, site, season, and current product label.
Understand missing, delayed, or disappointing flowers and spring growth, from late leaf-out and seasonal rest to light, water, pruning, support, and cautious nutrition.
Chrysanthemums can grow in window boxes and other containers, but returning after winter depends on the cultivar, climate, container conditions, and protection.
Identify the plant and its growth habit before acting, start with removal and site correction, and use any chemical only when the current label and local rules specifically allow that exact site and target.
Learn how to establish redbuds, protect them from browsing, investigate leaf problems, move seedlings safely, and judge whether container growing fits the tree.
Identify the animal and the damage before treating, then favor exclusion and other low risk measures around food crops and use any pesticide only as its current label directs.
How far tree roots actually travel, what is safe near sprinkler lines and septic fields, which shrubs will grow under pines, what to buy for shade in a desert or a small Pennsylvania yard, and whether container, balled, or bare root stock establishes fastest.
What to add and how deep to dig it, the real difference between peat moss and peat humus, how to break up unscreened clay topsoil, what to do where there are only a few inches of soil over rock, and why bleach and leftover herbicide need care.
Named cultivars with their sizes for the hard situations, how far from the wall to plant, which formal hedge is safe around a toddler, what actually grows in wet clay or under trees, and the invasive and toxicity checks to run before you buy.
Find the graft, prune after bloom, weight the upright shoots so they learn to hang, take four to five inch cuttings in early summer, and work out whether a sulking new tree is short of sun, short of roots, or sitting in water.
Albizia julibrissin leafs out weeks after everything else, resents being dug because its roots are deep and brittle, comes readily from the seed in those brown pods, and is invasive across much of the country, which is worth knowing before you plant another one.
Which hollies need a pollinator and which set fruit alone, how to sex a plant from its flowers, why berries are still green in October, and what to do about rabbits, scale, winter burn, and a shrub that will not grow.
Male and female flowers on melons and pumpkins, the four to six hour window when a squash blossom can be pollinated, why gooseberries drop plump and brown, the size to pick a crookneck, and the right way to dry sunflower heads and statice.
Some of the plants that look like they are dying are simply doing what they do in July, and the rest usually come down to roots sitting wet, so start with a pinch test and a finger in the soil before you reach for a treatment.
Most identification problems come down to a handful of concrete differences in size, leaf, and flower, so here are the ones that separate the pairs people ask about most, along with what monocot means, what ponics means, and why a store pineapple had seeds in it.
Most herb problems come down to light, drainage, and cutting them often enough, so here are the specifics for the herbs people ask about most, including how long cilantro really lasts, why indoor seedlings go spindly, and what to do about the tiny white things in the soil.
Where the discoloring starts, which leaves it hits first, and whether the plant is still growing tell you most of what you need, so check the soil properly, rule out normal shedding, and resist the urge to feed anything that looks sick.
Most cactus trouble traces back to water, either too much of it in winter or the wrong kind of watering in summer, so start by learning to read the plant itself, then handle pups, pests, weeds, and cold hardiness with the specifics below.
Healthy soil is the foundation of successful gardening. Here we address the most common questions about soil structure, amendment, testing, water management, and specialized uses from vegetable gardens to containers.
Identify the plant first, then match its light, winter care, roots, and support to the site. Check local climate guidance, utility locations, invasive plant rules, and property requirements before planting.
Almost every pruning question comes down to three things, which are when the plant sets its flower buds, whether it can regrow from old wood, and how much you take at one time, so work out those three and the timing answers itself.
Nearly every stubborn weed on this page stores energy underground, so the methods that work are the ones that either starve those reserves or carry a treatment down into them, and the timing and technique matter more than the product.
A collection of practical answers to real gardening questions, from plant identification and zone hardiness to diagnosis of leaf problems, pest management, and growing specific vegetables and specialty plants.
Almost every winter question has a number attached to it, so this page gives the actual thresholds for bringing plants in, storing them cool, insulating containers, and putting them back out again.
Cane pruning by type, planting depth and site selection, water and mulch amounts, common diseases and pests by name, and fertilizer ratios that support fruiting rather than leaf growth.
Mandevilla and Dipladenia can respond quickly to cold, low light, watering swings, and root disturbance. Use the plant's actual conditions and symptom pattern to guide care, rather than relying on a single temperature, calendar date, or assumed diagnosis.
What junipers need to thrive, from watering depth and fertilizer timing to pruning technique and salt tolerance, plus what to do when browning or yellowing shows up.
How to prepare beds, add amendments and mulch, water efficiently, fertilize correctly, and adapt to alkaline or salty soils.
Build a healthier lawn by diagnosing the site first, choosing amendments and products for the actual need, and adjusting care to turf, weather, and local rules.
Use the plant's history, growing conditions, and close inspection to distinguish normal bloom aging from stress, pests, or disease.
How to recognize Verticillium wilt, powdery mildew, root fungi, and slime molds in the garden, what causes them, which plants resist them, and how to move forward with treatment.
