Beginner-friendly gardening guides from Laura Bennett — a backyard gardener in Asheville, North Carolina (USDA Zone 7a) who’s been growing food and cut flowers for nine years. Her 14-raised-bed garden, cut-flower patch, and dahlia collection are where every guide starts. You’ll find seasonal planting calendars for Zones 5–9, step-by-step guides for raised beds and container gardens, dahlia and hydrangea care, companion planting, no-dig methods, pest control without chemicals, and the mistakes Laura made so you don’t have to. If a technique survives a North Carolina summer and a wet spring in her own beds, it makes it onto HomeGlowHacks. Browse the latest gardening articles below.
The strawberries you buy at the grocery store were picked before they were ripe, shipped for days, and taste like water compared to a strawberry you grew yourself. A single pot of strawberries on a sunny patio or balcony can produce handfuls of berries every week from late spring through fall — berries so sweet … Read more
For thousands of years, people grew their own medicine. Every farmstead had a patch of chamomile for sleep, peppermint for digestion, lavender for headaches, and echinacea for immune support. Modern medicine replaced much of this, but there is a growing movement to reconnect with these plants — not as a replacement for medical care, but … Read more
My first strawberry tower was a disaster. I had stacked five terracotta pots on a tiny apartment balcony, convinced I was about to become one of those people who posts dreamy harvest baskets on Instagram. Six weeks in, the top tier was bone dry, the bottom tier was drowning, and half the plants were yellow … Read more
Fresh blueberries picked from your own garden are in a completely different league from store-bought. They are sweeter, more flavorful, and you can eat them warm from the bush, which is honestly one of the greatest simple pleasures in life. And the best part? Blueberry bushes are beautiful — they have delicate white spring flowers, … Read more
Every dahlia grower in zones 3 through 7 faces the same fall dilemma: dig up the tubers and figure out how to keep them alive until spring, or gamble and hope they survive in the ground. After losing an entire collection my first year because I stored them in a too-warm basement, I have tested … Read more
I used to spend forty minutes every evening hand-watering my raised beds with a hose, trying to remember which bed I had already soaked and which one I had skipped. On vacation weeks I would come home to wilted tomatoes and crispy lettuce. The day I installed drip irrigation was the day gardening stopped feeling … Read more
The first year I grew tomatoes, they were covered in aphids and the basil next to them was thriving. A master gardener at the farmers market told me to move the basil closer — literally touching the tomato stems. The aphids disappeared within two weeks. That was my introduction to companion planting, and it changed … Read more
Grow bags have completely changed the potato-growing game. No digging, no hilling, no back-breaking harvest. When the potatoes are ready, you just tip the bag over and pick them up. It is genuinely that simple — and grow bag potatoes produce just as well as in-ground potatoes while taking up a fraction of the space. … Read more
Rosemary is one of the most useful herbs in any kitchen — it adds incredible flavor to roasted meats, potatoes, bread, and Mediterranean dishes. And the best part is that you can grow unlimited rosemary plants for free by taking cuttings from an existing plant. Propagating rosemary from cuttings is surprisingly easy and has a … Read more
Starting a garden from nothing is one of the most intimidating things in the world until you actually do it and realize it is one of the simplest. You do not need gardening experience, expensive tools, or acres of land. You need a patch of sun, some soil, a few plants, and the willingness to … Read more
