Gardening can be a delightful experience, but when heatwaves strike, it can become quite challenging to continue gardening in extreme heat. I find myself less motivated to go out and water plants or check for pests when the heat & humidity become unbearable for more than a few minutes at a time. But high temperatures […]
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Searching for Self-Watering Container Inserts I hate hot & humid weather. More specifically, I hate having to carry water around the yard to water plant containers when it’s 100F outside with a heat index of 110F. I’ve tried just waiting until the evening around sunset, but the humidity can still be unbearable. My clothes get
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Planning a fall vegetable garden project for 2023 is more challenging than usual. This is the first year I’ve had the raised beds for the summer vegetable garden. Since some of the summer plants (like tomatoes) may extend into the fall season, I need to plan the fall garden carefully. In other words, I need
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I’ve been looking for the brightest and best solar path lights for several years. I’ve installed low-voltage landscape lights before, but they require an electrical outlet nearby. I didn’t want to install additional electrical outlets for low voltage landscape lights, so I wanted to stick with solar lights for now. Lowe’s Home Improvement, Home Depot,
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Many people love hanging baskets — they often pop-up in garden centers around late April and early May and make great gifts for Mother’s Day. However, a hanging basket project can be a maintenance hassle. Whether you choose a large hanging basket of Boston or Kimberly Queen ferns or a basket filled with colorful annuals,
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Garden Maintenance Overview The maintenance phase of any garden project is, perhaps, the most challenging. In software engineering, developers support the software and client by fixing any errors in the software. Similarly, with garden maintenance, our goal is to keep your plants alive, keep your landscape features in working order, and fix any issues that
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Software testing goals include: Given a set of inputs into the software, testing requires checking what is output by the software for those inputs. With software testing, we ask, “Do the actual results match the expected results”? If the answer is ‘no’, then there are issues that need to be addressed. If the answer is
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The implementation phase is where the plans start becoming reality! This phase is also the most physically demanding, unless you’re supervising others or hiring others to do the work. During the implementation phase, software engineers often use an integrated development environment (IDE) to facilitate writing code and developing software. This development environment includes a centralized
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Once you have documented a core set of requirements, you must start designing your garden. This could be the most time-consuming part of the project. If you have a solid design, then the later phases of the garden project lifecycle should be quite simple. My favorite part of the design phase is researching different plant
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The Importance of Specifying Requirements Before beginning any gardening project, you must have an idea of the final product or you might wander aimlessly with no direction, no vision, and no structure (though I do admit: there is a certain amount of joy and excitement involved in wandering aimlessly through a garden center). Having a
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