Tricia takes the mystery out of mulching; we filmed our mulching video in her raised bed vegetable garden.

Everyone tells you to mulch your vegetable garden—but exactly how should you choose a mulch?

In our new video, Tricia shows you the basics of mulching.

What’s the difference between compost and mulch?

That was a trick question. You can use compost as a mulch all by itself. But you shouldn’t.

Finished compost or “humus” is a cornerstone of organic gardening. In the photo above you can see Tricia spreading it in a raised bed. Compost is decomposed organic matter full of microorganisms that will populate the soil and expand the soil food web in your garden. The compost will also improve your soil quality and structure—in clay soil it increases drainage, and in sandy soil it helps retain water. Want more information about how to create your own compost? We have university-research-based videos and articles on compost for you.

Compost feeds your soil and mulch protects your soil.

You can use compost alone as a mulch, but it will sink into the soil pretty rapidly.

What we think of as a “best practice” is to spread a 1” layer of compost and then cover it with a 2” layer of natural mulch like straw (NOT hay that has seeds), paper, bark, wood chips, dry grass clippings—or with a layer of plastic mulch.

Some gardeners worry that those layers of compost and natural mulch will keep water from reaching the roots of their plants. Not true. Even with our preferred drip irrigation, the water will trickle in and, importantly, will evaporate much more slowly because of the mulch layer.

When to use plastic mulch

Be sure to put the plastic mulch on top of the irrigation (or it would block water flow to the soil).

Plastic mulch is—plastic—and therefore an effective weed barrier. That’s a good thing in the vegetable garden. From the strawberry plants that are hard to weed between, to the big vegetable leaves that conceal weeds, you can see how it would be handy.

Plus, certain plants like certain colors of plastic mulch. Really.

How to choose from the rainbow of colors in plastic mulch

Who’s rockin’ the red plastic mulch?

The strawberries and the tomatoes, that’s who. Eggplants too. Tomatoes and eggplants do 12% better with red mulch. If you don’t want to go the whole red plastic film route with your tomatoes you can take a shortcut with a red plastic Tomato Crater for each plant.

Silver mulch film reflects well on certain vegetables

Aphids don’t like silver mulch film. Which means the rest of us do like it.

Use silver mulch film with your peppers and, according to Pennsylvania State University Extension, you can expect a 20% increase in size and yield.

Black plastic mulch to heat things up

Potatoes respond to all mulch colors, but they produce at their highest quality with black plastic mulch.

Are you growing onions? They’re broad-minded and respond to all of these colored plastic mulches.

Two big no-nos in mulching

1.  For our first item on the DON’T list, let’s step outside the vegetable garden and get a vivid example of “volcano” mulching around a tree.

See that mound of mulch? Not unlike a volcano? It’s a bad idea, and for some reason has become popular around the U.S. One of the worst of the many bad consequences of volcano mulching is excess moisture around the tree trunk, which can lead to fungal canker diseases.

Friends don’t let friends volcano mulch a tree. Keep mulch at least 6” away from the tree trunk, and don’t pile it up deeper than 2”.

2.  Now we’re back in the strawberry bed and it’s easy to remember, in this smaller venue, not to volcano mulch the strawberries or vegetables either. Keep all mulch 1”-2” away from the stems of vegetables and soft fruits.

Those are your pointers on mulching. Now get out there and mulch! You’ll save yourself no end of weeding and watering.

Here's how your summer cover crop could look at the end of the season -- some has been cut down to give fall kale a happy home.

Most cover crops are planted in late summer, but there are some cover crop seed mixes that can go in the ground in the springtime and give you benefits by the end of the summer.

Cover cropping is a cheap and effective way to fertilize your garden, hold topsoil in place, and retain moisture during the summer heat.

Planting a cover crop on a fallow garden bed or farm field is a classic organic gardening technique. It also seems rather mysterious to those new to organic gardening. But it’s simple as can be.

The principle of cover cropping is to grow plants that will nourish the soil. If you cut down cover crops that have high nitrogen levels, and turn them into the soil (where they will break down) the cover cropping is called “green manure”. In our new video about green manure Tricia shows you how to till in, turn in, or compost a cover crop. You’ll be adding more organic matter, which will improve soil structure over time, when you till in these green crops.

We have the largest selection of cover crops, at the best prices, on the West Coast.

Planting in the spring for a summer cover crop

For a fast, warm-season cover crop that shades out weeds, buckwheat (shown above) would be a good choice. It germinates when the soil is 45-105F.

An all-around summer/warm weather cover crop is our Summer Soil Builder Mix.  It needs a Cowpea Inoculant. There’s an easy-to-follow demo on how to mix the cover crop seed and the inoculant in this video.

We have a complete list of summer cover crops. Go to our Cover Crop page and click on “Grows in summer” in the Solution Finder list in the left sidebar.

Choosing a cover crop for any season

Most home gardeners want to replenish nitrogen in the soil, since vegetables use lots of nitrogen when they grow and fruit.  Have you heard of “nitrogen fixing”? That means the new nitrogen produced by the cover crops stays in the soil. You can see the nitrogen-fixing nodes on the roots in this photo.

Legumes are good for adding nitrogen to soil, so many cover crop seed mixes are high in legumes. Legumes fix more nitrogen if you treat them with an inoculant before you plant them. The inoculant contains the naturally occurring soil rhyzobacteria that is essential to nodule creation and the transfer of nitrogen back into the soil.

Choose a cover crop that will grow well in your climate and the upcoming season. It’s easy to find that information on our Cover Crop page. Look at the left sidebar and you will see our Cover Crop Solution Finder, which sorts the seed mixes by when to plant them and what they do.

Cover crops are not just for fixing nitrogen—for instance, they can be effective clod-busters (watch a video clip to see what Bay Area organic farmer Fred Hempel of Baia Nicchia Farm says about that). Think about what soil problems you would want to solve and then check our Cover Crop Solution Chart to find out which which seeds will do the trick for you.

How to plant a cover crop

Here’s what you do:

1)  Harvest your vegetables and pull out the plants and other debris.

2)  Calculate the square footage of the area you want to plant with cover crop.

3)  Buy enough seed for the area (our Summer Soil Builder Mix is shown above).

4)  Inoculate the seeds if necessary, and plant them.

5)  Water regularly if you chose a crop that needs summer irrigation.

Whether you plant in spring or late summer, the rule of thumb is to cut or turn in your crops when half of a cover crop stalk is in bloom.

Get your Advanced Organic Gardener merit badge when you plant a cover crop—whether you plant in spring or late summer.

Tricia shakes her new honey bees into the beehive.

Are you a beekeeping beginner? Follow our timeline and tips to keep the colony in your new beehive happy, safe, and productive.

The first 10 days with your new honey bees are crucial for the colony’s success. In our latest video, Tricia shows you how to welcome the honey bees to their hive and she checks on the beehive after 8 days, to evaluate.

Don’t have your beehive in place yet? We’ve got a video that shows you how to set one up.

Here’s a refresher article about the three kinds of honey bees you’ll be working with.

DAY 1

A typical shipment of honey bees for one hive is a three pound package of bees with one Queen.

When you’re introducing a relatively small colony into a new hive, the bees will need to put all their resources into drawing out new honey comb so the Queen bee can lay eggs and produce more Worker bees. The comb is also used for storing pollen and honey.

To help the bees draw this comb as quickly as possible, provide them with sugar syrup so that they do not have to forage for food during this critical time.

Sugar Syrup Recipe

1 part organic cane sugar
1 part hot water

Mix in a jar with a solid lid, shake to dissolve, and let it cool before giving it to the bees.

Before you install the jar on the hive, swap the solid jar lid for one with many perforations.

While they’re establishing the new hive the bees will drink a quart of syrup a day.

One way to subdue bees is to puff some cool smoke into their hive. The smoke disorients them. Each time you head out to check on your hive, light up a smoker. Fill it with fuel, light a match, close the lid, and use the bellows to encourage burning. This cotton fuel makes nice, cool smoke.

Always keep your hive tool (for gently prying frames out of the hive) and bee brush (for gently sweeping bees off of things) with you.

Set up your hive stand, solid bottom board, feeder, and first brood box, then add your own sugar syrup.

Remove the three innermost frames to create a space to pour in the new bees.

Using a clean bottle of water, mist the bees lightly to prepare them for being transferred into their hive. The mist weighs them down and makes them easier to move.

Packaged bees typically come with a can of syrup that the bees have been eating in transit. Gently lift the can out of the box and set it aside.

Reach into your bee shipping box and pull out your Queen cage.

Brush off any bees that are on the cage so you can see the Queen. Verify that she is alive and set her aside.

Now you’re going to pour your bees into the hive. You may need to give the box a hearty shake to get the bees to fall into the hive.

There will be some bees left in the box. Set it down on the ground facing the hive entrance. The remaining bees should find their way into the hive. After a few minutes the bees should be on the foundation and out of the bottom of the hive. Once this is the case, gently place each frame back into the hive.

Remove the tack on the end of the Queen cage, slide a finger over the end - don’t let the Queen escape! - and insert the Queen candy halfway in to the hole. Bend this piece of metal to hook it over the top of a frame.

TIP: It is essential that the Queen cage stay attached to the frame. If the cage falls the colony will likely reject and kill the Queen. We suggest using a flat thumbtack on the frame to ensure the cage is securely attached. The screen of the queen cage should face down into the hive. The bees will eat away at the sugar candy for 2-3 days to release the queen, at which point the colony should accept the queen as their own.

Place the inner cover on your hive, then the outer cover—and leave the bees alone for 8 days.

DAY 2 to 3

The Queen candy should be gone by now and the Queen should be out in the hive. But don’t look! The worst beginner mistake is to open the hive too often and too early. This can slow down the bees’ progress and, worse, accidentally roll or kill your Queen. The Queen and the other bees spend these days acclimating to their new surroundings.

DAY 5 to 7

The Queen should be laying eggs that look like tiny bits of white rice. If you later find that your Queen has not laid eggs, contact your bee supplier for a new Queen.

DAY 8

On Day 8 you can take the covers off the hive, gently lift the outermost frame out of the hive, and slide the center frame towards the edge. This will allow you to lift out the center frames without crushing any bees, especially your Queen.

When you hold a central frame up to the sun, you should see eggs. They’re little white dots, a smidge smaller than a grain of rice. When you see these, you know your Queen is
laying and you’re off to a good start! If you don’t see any eggs, replace the frames and wait for two days.

Gently set the central frames back inside the hive, slide the frames inward, and place the 8th empty frame back in on the edge.

DAY 10

After 3 days eggs turn into grubs (larvae). If you did not see any eggs (they are easy to miss) you can check now to see if any that escaped your notice have made the transition to the grub stage (where they look like small shrimp).

Eventually their cells will be sealed with wax caps and they will do one more metamorphosis and become pupae. The Queen will be laying in one area, surrounded by dark cells filled with pollen. Some distance away will be cells filled with sugar syrup—later on the Worker bees will fill other cells with honey.

Future Timeline

Once the bees have filled up most of the frame in the first brood box, add the second one. After both brood chambers are nearly full of comb, you’ll be ready for your Queen excluder and honey supers, one by one.

Beekeeping Supplies & Information

We have all you need in our new Beekeeping Supplies section, from beehives with copper roofs to those white beekeeper suits for adults and kids (you’ll never have to dream up a Halloween costume again)—everything but the honey bees themselves.

We have a Beekeeping Tool Kit with the essentials. And when you’re ready to harvest, grab a Honey Filtering & Bottling Kit.

Wondering about keeping your own bees? Just plain curious about all things apian? You can’t do better than The Beekeeper’s Bible. This handsome, hardback tome is part history book, part handbook, and part cookbook (with over 100 honeyed recipes)—page through it for fun facts, or to help you get your backyard buzzing. Check out all our excellent bee books and see which you like best.

For buzzwords, try the Honey Bee Glossary (generated at the research facility on Bee Biology Road—10 out of 10 points to UC Davis for a great street name).

Now that you’ve got the buzz, go flying off to be a successful beekeeping beginner!

What's the buzz on the inhabitants of a honey bee hive?

Just who is in a beehive?

Three kinds of bees live in a hive:

One female Queen bee

Many female Worker bees

A few male Drones

God Save the Queen bee

The term “Queen bee” is widely used to describe powerful women. Good pick, since the insect Queen bee is one impressive female. Her pheromone signals regulate the hive. In addition, as you can see in the photo above, she is much bigger than the Worker bees.

The Queen is the life of the hive. Not in a “life of the party” way, but as the giver of life. The Queen is the largest bee and lays all the eggs that maintain the hive population. To keep her strength up the Worker bees (other females) prepare her a special diet of royal jelly.

What do the male Drones do? Well, you can guess. They fly around outside the hive, waiting to mate with the Queen. Then they die off.

In a healthy hive this routine fluctuates with the seasons and goes on for years. 

An aging Queen may leave the hive with a few Worker bees and fly off to start a new hive. If she is ailing or no longer producing viable bees, the colony may sting her to death.

A replacement Queen can be added by a beekeeper, or, if there are viable eggs, the colony can feed royal jelly to an egg and create a new Queen. If there are several pupae being nurtured as possible Queens, the first new Queen bee to hatch will kill all the other Queen bee pupae. Yikes. Then she reigns supreme and the life of the hive goes on.

Does that make you appreciate the honey you’re spooning onto your cereal?

You think you work hard, try being a Worker bee

Where did that expression “busy as a bee” come from? The ceaseless toil of the female Worker bees, shown in the honeycomb. Workers are responsible for everything besides reproduction (and if a Worker has a job as a Nurse bee she is in on nurturing the larvae of the hive).

Workers cycle through a range of specialized jobs. Young Workers stay in the hive and focus on domestic tasks for the first few weeks. They may be attending the Queen, cleaning the hive (which includes hauling out dead bees), and also removing debris, dust, and pollen from other bees. Once the wax glands are functioning the Workers can build honeycombs, and use wax to cap the cells holding pupae. They help store food by packing empty cells with pollen for later use, and fanning (increasing evaporation) to preserve honey in cells.

Older Workers are out and about, gathering nectar, water, and pollen for the hive. Did you ever feel threatened when you got too close to a hive? Good. That meant the Workers acting as guards were doing their jobs. If you were seen as a real danger they would also have produced an alarm pheromone to warn the hive of your presence.

Drones—the lounge lizards of the apian world

If you want to visualize the life of male Drone bees, imagine them lined up on bar stools, sipping royal jelly (created for them by a Worker bee). After a few days of this they change their diet to honey, and fly out of the hive together on patrol flights, looking for Queens with whom to procreate.

They’re big guys with big eyes but no sting.

Yes, that hive is crowded

Let’s talk numbers. How many bees are there in a hive?

A lot of bees—from 10,000 to 50,000 honey bees in a hive. You can see that the Queen keeps busy laying eggs.

The life span of a bee is short. That bar-stool lifestyle of the Drones? Only lasts a few months at the most. They appear in late spring and by fall they are often forced from the hive to go starve in the outside world.

The Workers spend only a few weeks or months on their specialized tasks. A summer-born Worker bee will typically live only six weeks, while others have the chance to work at a less frantic pace and live for six months.

Beekeeping Supplies & Information

We have all you need in our new Beekeeping Supplies section, from beehives with copper roofs to those white beekeeper suits for adults and kids (you’ll never have to dream up a Halloween costume again)—everything but the honey bees themselves.

We show you how to get going with beekeeping in two new videos. In the first, Beekeeping for Beginners—Hive Set Up, Tricia chooses the right site, preps her hive, and gets it ready for the arrival of the honey bees. In the second video Tricia places bees in the new hive and feeds them while they settle in.

We have a Beekeeping Tool Kit with the essentials. And when you’re ready to harvest, grab a Honey Filtering & Bottling Kit.

Wondering about keeping your own bees? Just plain curious about all things apian? You can’t do better than The Beekeeper’s Bible. This handsome, hardback tome is part history book, part handbook, and part cookbook (with over 100 honeyed recipes)—page through it for fun facts, or to help you get your backyard buzzing. Check out all our excellent bee books and see which you like best.

For buzzwords, try the Honey Bee Glossary (generated at the research facility on Bee Biology Road—10 out of 10 points to UC Davis for a great street name).

Honey bees have a fascinating social structure—and will add fruitfulness to your garden.

A rose is a rose is an edible -- if you grow it organically.

Do you grow roses? DId you ever think about growing them organically?

That way you not only keep synthetic pesticides out of your garden and groundwater, but you can EAT and DRINK your roses too.

In our new video, Tricia shows you how to grow roses organically and she gives basic guidelines on rose care and pruning.

Now, let’s eat those organic roses. Pick up your pruners and follow us into the rose garden.

Strong fragrance means strong rose flavor

Our friend Teresa O’Connor is an edible flower specialist at Seasonal Wisdom. She votes for the fragrances and flavors of old roses like Rosa rugosa and Rosa gallica. We have a short video with Teresa’s tips on other edible flowers.

For California native plant lovers, consider the Rosa californica.

Feel free to follow your nose to your favorite rose.

How to gather your rosebuds

In the cool of the morning, snip off those buds and blooms, rinse them indoors, and then remove the bitter, white base of each petal.

Pat the petals dry and use them in the following recipe ideas.

Eat and drink organic roses from morning to night

*  Start your morning with a Vitamin C rich cup of rose hip tea (easy to find these on rugosas).

*  Make some rose petal jam for your breakfast toast.

*  In a hurry? Blast up some rose honey in your food processor.

*  Simplest of all? Add one part rose petals and two parts sugar for rose sugar. Prettiest in our small Weck jars.

*  You can use rose water in any number of recipes, like salad dressings and Manhattans. Here’s how to prep your very own organic rose water.

*  Feeling sentimental? FIx an entire tea party, for Mother’s Day or another occasion, with rose petal everything.

*  Still wondering about that Manhattan recipe? It’s a Rosehattan, pleasant to sip while wandering in your garden at dusk. 

Don’t forget to make tea for the roses, too

Alfalfa tea is all the rage with rosarians around the U.S., and many blue ribbon winners swear by it. Try our alfalfa tea ready to steep in “tea bags”. We have alfalfa tea bags from Haven Natural Brew Alfalfa Tea.

These make unusual gifts on their own or in our rosy gift baskets, for your rose-obsessed neighbors and friends.

Just goes to show—deer are not the only mammals that like to eat roses. Grow your roses organically and savor the floral flavors.