Share your unique perspective with our community by submitting photos of inviting gardens, nutritious foods, wild animals, and more to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Photo Group on Flickr (www.Flickr.com/Groups/MotherEarthNewsPhotos/Pool).We’ll feature our fa

Whether you need to cultivate, scalp, edge, dig, furrow, plant, or harvest, the Cobrahead Weeder & Cultivator can help you do it all! Made in the USA, this tool comes with a 1-year warranty and weighs less than a pound! BEST SELLER #6551 $29.95 Membe

Welcome to our series answering reader questions and concerns about how to cut the utility-company cord. Hoss Boyd is founder, president, and CEO of TeraVolt Energy and a recognized solar and energy-storage expert. Learn more about TeraVolt Energy at

“‘Agroforestry’ is a modern term for what tribes have been practicing for millennia,” says Stephanie Gutierrez, Ecotrust’s forest and community program director. “For many tribes, that’s traditional gathering and management practices, harvesting fung

Years ago, I read a description in a text, the name of which has long since been lost in my memory, of a cold smoker built into the hills of Appalachia. I’d never heard of such a thing. It had a small firebox in the ground that poured smoke into a ho

Every weekend at the farmers market, a few people approach me with hungry twinkles in their eyes and ask wistfully if it’s possible to grow morel mushrooms at home. It’s entirely possible, although many will tell you it’s a fool’s errand. It usually

Opting out of industrial agriculture and keeping your own chickens is an environmentally friendly choice already, so a lot of choices you make about your flock, such as which breeds to keep, are neutral from an environmental perspective. However, oth

Oshibana (押し花) is the Japanese art of using pressed flowers and other botanical materials, such as leaves and stems, to create a composition. Artists essentially “paint” a picture using pieces of nature. The petals and leaves are flattened using a va

If you’ve raised broiler chickens in mobile shelters on pasture, then you’re familiar with the view looking back along the path the chickens have traveled, where plants are flattened and covered in manure. Then, as you scan farther back, you’ll see t

Every fall, my husband plants 350 cloves of hardneck garlic, which means we harvest 350 heads of garlic the following summer. We prefer to grow cold-hardy hardneck cultivars instead of the softneck types typically found in grocery stores or growing i

Before I became a full-time “peasant,” I was an environmental educator, tasked with instilling nature stewardship in young minds. My boss gave me benchmarks for my nature hikes and stream surveys: “Educate students about river pollution,” “Inform stu

Soil consists of sand, silt, and clay, which come together with organic matter to form aggregates. Pores within and outside these aggregates hold water, air, organic matter, and minerals, and these pores help soil organisms and plant roots thrive. Ti

Herbal wisdom includes plenty of stories lauding the potential benefits of herbal weeds, and there’s also some clinical evidence that they work. Let’s look at five of my favorite beneficial weeds and see what science and tradition tell us about them.

Up to half of the average North American household’s food ends up getting tossed out, with most of this “waste” ending up in landfills, where it’s tucked into layers of garbage and gobbled up by methanogenic (methane producing) bacteria. Yet, by toss

I embarked on my agricultural journey by delving into indoor hydroponics. It all began with my homemade deep-water culture system housed in a Sterilite tote bin. To kick-start my indoor growing experience, I converted a closet into my first cultivati

Starting seeds at home enables gardeners to cultivate strong plants that are ready for the ground come springtime, while also bringing the joy of gardening indoors during the more dormant time of year. Luckily, you don’t need to spend much money on s

To get rid of fungus gnats, you’ll need to consider their life span, which includes eggs, four stages of larvae, pupa, and adult. Depending on the species, adults can lay up to 200 eggs. They lay eggs where fungus is growing, which usually correspond

Share your unique perspective with our community by submitting photos of inviting gardens, nutritious foods, wild animals, and more to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Photo Group on Flickr (www.Flickr.com/Groups/MotherEarthNewsPhotos/Pool). We’ll feature our f

Most people find that when they reveal the news of their soap-making endeavor, it sparks enthusiasm from friends, family, and would-be customers. People can’t wait to try your bars! You make piles of soap during your practice runs, tempting you to gi

The best gardening advice I can offer is to start out simple. Most of us would love to cut back on our grocery bill, and growing our own food certainly helps. When we’re plunking seedlings or seeds into our garden soil, it doesn’t look like all that

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