Building a Strong Shed Foundation With Aggregates

Building a Strong Shed Foundation With Aggregates When you’re building a shed or tackling a major landscape project, the foundation makes all the difference. After a decade of working the land at 40 Day Living Urban Farm, we’ve learned that stability, drainage and cost-efficiency start from the ground up. So when it was time to […]

Tradescantia Inch Plant – Why We Don’t Use the Old Name

At 40 Day Living, we believe plant names should celebrate beauty, which is why we call Tradescantia Inch Plant. You may know Tradescantia zebrina by a name historically used in the nursery trade: “Wandering Jew.” We want to be clear: we have never used that name and will never use it. Here’s why we say […]

Morning Nourishment for Me and the Garden

Some mornings, when I’ve got the time and the energy, I blend up something special; not just for me, but for my garden too. A quick smoothie packed with healing ingredients to nourish my body… and then I take the scraps, blend them again and pour that goodness right back into the soil. It’s not […]

Harvesting Lavender Seeds: A Quiet Task That Grounds Me

The lavender in my garden was done blooming and had dried out completely, which meant one thing, it was time to collect seeds. This isn’t something I do every week, but when the timing is right and the stems are good and dry, I grab my scissors, a clean, dry plastic bowl from the kitchen […]

Garden Basics 101: Get to Know Your Garden

Creating and maintaining a beautiful garden with healthy, thriving plants requires imagination and lots of careful planning. Whether you’re moving to a new house and thinking about gardening for the first time, or just want a little more knowledge and organization in the garden you’ve already started, you should thoroughly evaluate its landscape on a […]

Inexpensive Way to Start New Plants

Do you throw away your plastic containers after using them? Well after reading this post, you’re going to think twice before you throw out another one! Here I have four muffin containers that I’ve been saving from Costco. A couple holes poked here and there, and they’d make perfect little greenhouses…Let’s do it! First, I […]

Planting Sweet Potatoes in Raised Beds

Growing in raised beds can be helpful if you’re trying to keep your harvests from critters and foragers (aka invaders) that roam through your garden when you’re not around. This morning I spent some time drilling holes in the bottom of two plastic whiskey barrels and two galvanized metal bins to get them ready for […]

Cooperative Extension Office Locator

Most people aren’t aware that there are trained faculty and staff that offer problem-solving horticultural assistance, free of charge, in or near most of the nation’s approximately 3,000 counties. When I first became interested in sustainable gardening, I took to the internet and dived into as many gardening how-to videos and articles as I could find. Eager and excited to try out the techniques I learned, I cleared an area of my back yard and set out to start growing.

How to Propagate Spider Plants

I was so happy when I got a chance to take home a Spider Plant pup from one of these larger Spider Plants that you see here on the right. I’m not the best at indoor gardening, but I’ve been taking a stab at it over the past couple years and it’s starting to “grow” […]

How I Rescued Two Baby Hostas

It was quite a score to bring home a batch of decorative hostas to add to my gardens. I had to do the work and dig them up, with help from my Hubby of course, but I didn’t mind because I love transplanting flowers. Transplanting is one of the easiest ways to add floral variety […]