A safe and completely organic way to keep ants from crawling around on your cabinets is to wipe down the surface with a mixture of vinegar and water. As far as your nose is concerned, the tart scent will quickly fade, but to ant it will remain strong, and they’ll stay away.

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If you water longer and less often than normal, you’ll encourage your plants to develop deeper root systems than they might otherwise. This will help them become more drought-tolerant, just in case you have to deal with water restrictions later.

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If you have a soggy yard, you can grow carnivorous plants — particularly if you’d like to try an unusual way of controlling the local insect population. Cobra lilies, sundews, pitcher plants, and flytraps all do very well in wet, nitrogen-poor soils, and can be fascinating to watch. Since they thrive on warmth and humidity, they’re easiest to grow outside in the southern U.S. (where most are native), though they can be grown in a conservatory or greenhouse anywhere.

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The NY Times has published a great article about gardening coaches, for people who want some help to bring their garden up to a new level, but who don’t want to simply write a check and hand it over to a landscaper or a landscape architect.

Their target audience — do-it-yourselfers in search of enlightenment — occupies a middle ground between the people who simply sit back and watch, while others do the planting and mulching, and amateur plant killers whose gardening strategy can best be summed up as trowel and error.

The article also includes an interesting theory about why people turn to gardening coaches.

According to Sara Begg, the executive editor of Horticulture magazine, the emergence of coaches may have something to do with an increased interest in gardening as a hobby among the 30-something crowd — and an utter lack of grounding in it: “While I learned gardening from my mother and grandmother, I don’t know these days if most people have that training passed down.

I think the concept is great. There’s nothing more satisfying than doing something yourself, and now there’s finally someone who can direct you and tell what to do. It’s overwhelming to look at all those landscaping and gardening books and try to figure out what you want to do without guidance from someone who knows your area and climate.

There’s such a wide range of how much effort people put into their yards and gardens, and this is really a cool twist.

I am pretty sure that I am the only person on my entire block who mows his own lawn, except for one other guy (who uses an electric mower, woo hoo!). So it’s all lawn crews, except for me with my Scotts Classic reel mower, and him with his Black & Decker electric.

Maybe we need more lawn and garden coaches in Dallas.

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In these days of hotter summers and shrinking water supplies, it makes sense to save water when you can. Try watering in the morning or evening, when evaporation will be less of a factor, and use mulch and compost to help your soil retain water. You can also install a rainwater barrel to collect water for gardening purposes.

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The local ABC station in Dallas, WFAA, did a great story on manual push reel mowers, and they talk about Clean Air Gardening.

Check out the video online.

If you’re thinking about a reel mower, don’t miss our comprehensive Reel Mower Buyer’s Guide.

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If you want to keep your yard bright green throughout the winter without resorting to chemicals, plant annual rye grass. It will grow steadily all winter and then die out as it becomes warmer, letting your normal grass take over.

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Organically grown houseplants are great for combating the factors that make indoor air 2-5 times more polluted than most outdoor air. Not only do they reward us with breathable oxygen, they also filter out existing pollutants. Just be sure to avoid over-watering, and don’t use chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Here’s a guide to some of the healthiest houseplants.

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This spring my family and I started to test out the Australia Tumbleweed Worm Compost Bin. This is my first adventure with worm composting, and it’s pretty exciting. It combines the eco-friendly activity of composting with the fun of taking care of pets. Ok, so they’re small, wiggly, slimy pets, but living creatures with personalities nonetheless.

If you’ve ever had an ant farm or perhaps sea monkeys, that’s the kind of experience it’s similar to. However, the worms are actually doing some very cool things. Namely, turning kitchen scraps into fertilizer for use in your yard, garden and with your houseplants.

I’m actually working on an entire website devoted to the art of worm composting, so you can refer to that for more details in the near future.

Basically, this is a review of the worm-composting unit itself.

The Australia Worm Farm is a two-piece vermicomposting unit. Other than snapping the lid on the bin, there’s nothing to assemble. The bin also comes with a short but well-written instruction manual and trouble-shooting guide. The top part of the bin is where you keep the worms, the bottom part is where the liquid drains down from the composting process. This liquid is the fertilizer you can use in your garden.

We used the red wiggler worms available from Clean Air Gardening to start the bin off. They arrived quickly and in good shape from the worm farm, which is located in California.

This bin is small, so if you’re serious about worm farming, you may want to get a larger bin. However, it’s a perfect size for a family of 3-4. We’re a family of 3 and it’s ideal for us.

From reading about worm composting, I’ve learned that a worm bin may not be the ideal composter if you want to compost citrus peels, onions, fruits, and other kinds of organic waste that may affect the worms or attract fruit flies and other pests. We compost fruit in our bin and it did attract fruit flies when we had it indoors. However, you can still compost lots and lots of stuff, so you’re still able to recycle the majority of your kitchen waste. Now that the bin is outdoors, it’s not really a big deal.

However, you should think about a regular compost bin in addition to a worm composter so you can compost everything, which is the route we’re taking. You can’t really compost leaves or grass clippings in a worm composter. Although if you want to build a massive one, go for it!

The bin is generally sturdy and seems to be holding up to elements at our house. We’ve had it just about three months, most of the time outdoors.

It has plenty of air holes and a drain spout. It’s a drain without a way to open or close it, so the liquid will freely flow as you compost. The drain spout seems like a great idea as I’ve talked to people who’ve had their worms drown from their worm bin filling up. We did have the spout clog but it’s easy to clean. Our bin so far doesn’t produce enough liquid to worry about the bottom filling up, so that’s not really an issue, but I appreciate that it’s built into the design. We keep a small cup at the bottom to catch any liquid.

This bin is also very lightweight so you can move it around indoors or to other places in your yard if you decide to relocate your worms during the year.

I have to admit that I started the bin rather in a hurry, tucked it away in a closet, and let it sit. The conditions were not the ideal, so we had some worms die off.

Fortunately, with a little adjusting, the worms are coming back. We also got some red wigglers from a friend to get the population back up.

I know you’re all wondering about the smell. Well, our worm bin actually did smell a little wormy when we first started it indoors. It was barely noticeable to me, and my wife seemed to find an issue with it more than I did. However, I think the odor had more to do with the fact that the conditions in the bin were not ideal. From reading the troubleshooting guide, I found out that we probably had the bin too wet and too much food in there initially.

Now that we have the bin outside and things are warmer, the bin is doing great.

All in all this is good worm bin, especially for people with limited space and who have a small family. The instructions are brief but very useful, and the trouble shooting guide will help solved basic problems.

I think worm composting in general is a little more challenging that we at first thought, but with a little reading up on the web, you can solve most issues quickly and easily.

The design of this bin is nice and compact, and it makes worm composting very easy.

Stay tuned for our complete worm composting guide which should be up on the web soon.

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Do you have boggy soil in your yard or garden? Don’t spend thousands draining it; get with the flow and plant some bald cypress trees (scientifically known as Taxodium). They grow very fast, thrive on wet environments (though they can handle dryer soils just fine) and will suck up and transpire hundreds of gallons of water per day.

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