Ellen Wells

1 week ago | gardeningknowhow.com | Ellen Wells

After the initial potting of your indoor and outdoor plants, keeping them alive becomes your most important – and potentially most stressful – task. Knowing when and how much water to give plants is often cited by gardeners as their number one concern. A self-watering plant pot goes a long way in alleviating that worry. These clever containers provide plants with ready access to additional water on an as-needed basis.

2 weeks ago | homesandgardens.com | Ellen Wells

When you purchase a home within a homeowners association (HOA), the authority over your landscape doesn’t rest solely with you. Oftentimes an HOA, an entity formed of a neighborhood such as a subdivision or planned community, sets and enforces rules affecting properties and residents. What you can and cannot place in your yards are often overseen by this organization. An HOA’s established regulations regarding properties often include specific landscaping standards.

3 weeks ago | homesandgardens.com | Ellen Wells

Your home may be your castle, but if it’s part of a homeowners association (HOA), consider your home’s front-facing landscape to be governed by someone other than you. An HOA is an organization within a residential community such as a subdivision or planned development, that creates and enforces rules for the properties and residents within its purview. When you buy a home within an HOA, you automatically become a member and are subject to these HOA guidelines.

3 weeks ago | gardeningknowhow.com | Ellen Wells

If you are looking for a reliable supply of leafy lettuce for quick salads, look no further than your countertop or sunny window. Growing hydroponic lettuce indoors is about the easiest thing you can do to ensure you have greens at the ready. All you have to do is provide some light and nutrients, and you’ll receive a year-round harvest and bowlfuls of salad. Hydroponics is a tried-and-tested way of growing plants in water without soil.

3 weeks ago | homesandgardens.com | Ellen Wells

You would be forgiven if you mistook the beautifully blue, star-shaped flowers and rough, hairy stems and leaves of Borago officinalis for a perennial garden stalwart. Borage is, however, a robust annual that vigorously self-sows. The full-sun Mediterranean native grows in USDA hardiness zones 2-11, making it a plant available to most any gardener. Borage’s cucumber-flavored flowers and leaves place it firmly in the kitchen garden. Pollinators have rights to borage for its nectar-rich flowers, too.