Tom Lanehart
Most raised bed gardens are planted by instinct. You buy seedlings in spring, find spots that seem about right, and push them into the soil. It works well enough — until the zucchini takes over, the tomatoes shade everything behind them, the lettuce bolts in the summer heat before you got to eat it, and … Read more
Depth is the one raised bed decision most gardeners make too quickly. You find a kit, pick a lumber width, or go with what looks right — and only after the bed is filled and planted do you discover that the carrots are forking, the tomatoes are struggling, or the soil dries out faster than … Read more
Best Soil for Raised Beds — The Mix That Determines Everything You can build a beautiful cedar bed, site it perfectly, water it faithfully — and still grow a disappointing garden. The variable that determines whether a raised bed thrives or struggles isn’t the lumber, the location, or even the seeds. It’s what you put … Read more
Most gardening questions come down to soil. But with raised beds, the questions start earlier — before you’ve planted a single seed, before you’ve mixed a single handful of soil. What should you build with? How deep does it need to be? What do you fill it with? And once it’s set up, how do … Read more
If you’ve spent any time shopping for electric pruning shears, you’ve probably run into the same wall I did: a flood of no-name brands on Amazon with suspiciously similar specs, mixed in with a few well-known tool names that cost twice as much. It’s hard to know what you actually need, and whether spending more … Read more
Most gardeners start with bypass pruners. They’re versatile, they make clean cuts on live growth, and they’re what you see everywhere. But the moment you hit your first serious patch of dead wood — old rose canes that snap, dry woody shrub stems, brittle winter-killed branches — a bypass pruner either struggles or forces you … Read more
Walk into any garden center with bypass pruning shears on your list and you’ll find options ranging from $10 to $80 — all promising clean cuts and long life. The price spread alone causes more confusion than it should, because a lot of what’s on those racks works perfectly well. The real question is what … Read more
Most gardeners don’t need to spend $70 on pruning shears. A well-designed tool at $15 to $30 will handle the majority of home garden work without complaint — and there are genuinely good options at that price that won’t fall apart after two seasons. The problem is that “budget pruning shears” covers a wide range: … Read more
The economics of professional pruning shears only make sense when you think about them correctly. The upfront cost looks high until you divide it by the number of years the tool will be in service — at which point a Felco 2, maintained correctly, costs less per year than most budget alternatives replaced annually. The … Read more
Rose pruning is unforgiving of wrong equipment. A dull blade on a rose cane doesn’t just make the cut harder — it crushes the cambium zone at the cut margin, slows callusing, and leaves the wound open to botrytis and other fungal pathogens for longer than a clean cut would. I learned this the hard … Read more