Tag: Home & Gardening

Study of 70 Household Spices Found Lead in Every Sample

An Australian study of 12 different brands of popular dried herbs and spices stocked on supermarket shelves revealed that all samples had traces of heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, antimony, cadmium, and mercury. A 2021 U.S. consumer data advocate’s analysis of 126 herbs and spices discovered that roughly one-third of the tested products had significant…


How to Attract Pollinators to Your Garden

Don’t be so quick to shoo that bee away. Virtually all seeds need to be pollinated; happily, there are insects and wildlife ready to help. The USDA reports that there are more than 3,500 species of bees alone increasing crop yields, and it estimates that one out of every three bites of food we eat exists…


Saving Your Own Seeds

My corn is a thousand years old. So are the heirloom beans I use for red beans and rice, the Friday school lunch staple I grew up with. I have garlic that’s 30 years old, winter squash that’s 20, a lima bean that produces perennial plants, and a lovely, ancient lavender purple bean from the…


Biden Announces US Will Send M1 Abrams Tanks to Ukraine

The United States will send M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine as Kyiv’s conflict with Russia nears its one-year anniversary, President Joe Biden confirmed on Jan. 25. The president said during a White House announcement that the United States will send 31 tanks to Ukraine, adding that the “U.S. and Europe are fully united.” He…


The Struggle Isn’t Over for Dutch Farmers

During the summer of 2022, protests erupted in the Netherlands over the government’s plan to curtail nitrogen emissions from the country’s farms—in some cases, by up to 95 percent. At the time, authorities acknowledged that their proposal would necessitate slashing livestock numbers across the country, especially near areas protected as part of the European Union’s…


Soil in Danger: How Fixing Agricultural Soil Could Help the World

Agricultural soil is an important resource for communities all over the world, not only because it provides humans with the majority of their food but because it also plays a major role in balancing the environment. Soil researchers have said investing in soil could help the world tap into an untold resource against environmental challenges…


Couple Buy 109-Year-Old Mansion, Transform It Into $900,000 Home for Their Son

The day Trey and Abby Brothers brought their first-born baby home was extra-special. Their son has started life in a rambling 109-year-old mansion – but his parents aren’t super rich; they’re just smart. Trey, 33, works in information technology, and Abby, 31, is a registered nurse. They purchased the 6,000-square-foot, six-bedroom mansion in Aberdeen, North…


How to Grow 4,400 Pounds of Food a Year in the Backyard

A vegan family of four, without any gardening experience, can grow all of their own food for a year using 1/20th of an acre. That’s 4,400 pounds of food per year, grown in six garden beds using the “predictable” and formulaic Mittleider gardening system, said Lucinda Bailey, co-founder of seed bank company Texas Ready. “I’ve…


What’s the Difference Between Annual and Perennial Plants?

When you’re beginning gardening, there are so many new terms to learn. One of the most important is the difference between annual and perennial plants. Put simply, annual or perennial is a classification of how long your plant’s lifecycle is: 1 year for annuals, 3 or more years for perennials. Yet, some plants are grown as…


Self-Destructive Disney Finds a New (More Permanent) Way to Terrify Children

Commentary Remember the Evil Queen in Disney’s animated classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937)? “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” and all that. She was pretty scary. But not nearly as scary as what Disney is doing today. It’s hard to conceive how twisted and immoral Disney Studios—where I once worked on two feature…