Is your backyard tight on garden space and a bit too sunny? Try this incredibly clever and simply gorgeous solution: Build an arbor or trellis for your vine crops, and let them provide you with shade as they spread across the frame, producing flowers, grapes, cucumbers, melons, squash and gourds that hang overhead — to stunning effect.

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Enchanted Garden: Grow A Hanging Vegetable Arbor

As the Earth heats up, weather changes are starting to hit us where it hurts—our backyards. Extreme storms, heat waves, droughts and heavy rains are hitting gardens around the world, flattening some crops and making others flourish. What does climate change mean for your own yard, and how can you prepare and adjust to changing weather patterns? Too often, the answer is “we just don’t know yet.” Here’s what we do know, and some sources that can help you find out more.

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Gardening in Times of Global Climate Change

By now, you’re most likely almost done putting out seed starts. Everything looks luscious, green and healthy, so good job! Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably running low on a few items, such as tomato cages and plant pots. Before you head out to that big box garden store, take a gander at a few of the suggestions we’ve listed below. You may already have all you need to construct garden staples.

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Grown By You, Built By You: DIY Tomato Cages, Garden Tools, and More!

With Mother’s Day and Memorial Day happening this month, there is an abundance of gorgeous flowers at the local markets. I recently came across a stunning pink bouquet of pesticide-free roses and took them home to experiment with rose petal-infused honey, without having actually found a solid recipe for it anywhere on the interwebs. Then, as kismet would have it, I came across a splendid tutorial on The Herb Companion for making herb-infused honey by our very own Kirsten Hudson. Using her advice, I experimented with my own take at rose-infused honey, and the results were just lovely. Here’s how to make this incredible infusion that will make you feel like a garden princess.

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Homemade Fresh Rose Petal-Infused Honey

Does your blood boil when you see a sprinkler watering concrete? Do you become infuriated when you see a large, runoff puddle clearly formed from a hose that’s seeping water? Both previous scenarios drive me to madness! It’s not that I’m anti-watering, or against giving grass and flowers a sprinkle every so often. But I am definitely for preserving and protecting water, and using natural resources to give green things a spritz. One way to harness the glorious goodness of water is by harnessing rainwater.

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Refreshing Harvest: 8 Simple Steps to Catch Rainwater for Your Garden

Ah, the tomato. What a perfect specimen. Delicious, colorful, juicy and full of nutrients and antioxidants, tomatoes are the ideal crop for a home gardener. A single plant will bring you a bountiful harvest, and a few plants will give you enough fruit to make your own sauces and preserves. What’s more, tomatoes come in a wide range of colors, flavors, sizes and growing habits. So don’t just stick with the most popular varieties. Choose the tomato that suits your fancy, and treat it like the queen of your garden. It will more than repay you.

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Tender Tomatoes: How To Plan and Plant Your Perfect Crop

In 2009 alone, 37% of Americans considered themselves to be home gardeners, and that was before our current gardening revolution had really even begun. If you’re one of the millions of home or apartment dwellers taking it upon yourself to grow your own food, congratulations! You’ve probably already got your plot of land (or containers) mapped out, your fruits and vegetables selected, and your new compost bin empty and waiting to grow some organic fertilizer. But before you start throwing everything from the kitchen sink into your compost bin, be aware of the foods and household items you don’t want going in there.

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DON’T Chuck These 12 Items Onto Your Compost Pile

Heirloom grains (also referred to as heritage grains) offer us the same taste of history and culture as their fruit and vegetable counterparts, and they have a special place in baking. After all, the essential joy of baked goods is that they remind us of the past, fill us with comforting memories—Mom’s chocolate chip cookies during the holidays, or Grandma’s famed apple pie every summer, or even your sister’s experimental gluten-free vegan brownies from her wheat-free phase. Baking is, at its core, inherently tied with these memories of family, history and emotional warmth. To bake with heirloom grains is to imbue your breads with even more culture and preserved history. Her are five to try.

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Bake A Heritage Pie: 5 Heirloom Flours to Try

When growing herbs, veggies and flowers, we often take great care to place plants in prime sunbathing spots and make sure to water them near religiously. We tend to them, pull weeds and fret over any critters that may be lurking on our prized plants, but when it comes to the soil we place those basil seeds and tomato transplants in, dirt is dirt, right?

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5 Factors That Can Muck Up Your Garden Soil

Can you see your future in the flower petals? If you know how to read them, you can. It’s not as arcane an art as reading tea leaves, but keeping an eye on neighborhood blooms can help you determine the best planting dates for your vegetables. After all, flowers are influenced by soil and air temperatures, length of the day and other factors you aren’t quite as sensitive to. Stay alert to the seasons’ natural rhythyms, and your veggies will thank you with a healthy harvest.

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Fortune-Telling Flowers: Let Spring Blooms Tell You When to Plant Garden Crops