What Is Guar Gum

Pauciflora Snow Gum trees actually produce an abundance of attractive white flowers in the spring and early summer (October to January in their native Australia).The trees are evergreen and hardy down to USDA zone 7.

It has a gray bark, with corky ridges on its twigs. Aunt Bett made sure I knew about it though. In the Appalachians, people dipped the twigs in whiskey and nibbled them to clean their teeth.

Because the leaves are thin and oval-shaped, they allow enough sunlight to penetrate the canopy, which makes the tree appear to glow. Black gum is usually the first tree to provide autumn leaf color.

Children have chewed the resinous sap like chewing gum. While maples thrive in most U.S. states, up into Canada and as far north as Alaska, eastern and western varieties do not overlap.

It was a treatment for rheumatism, a diuretic, and as a general tonic just to help people feel better. Thank you, Equilibrium, for your great photography. I chewed on sourweed, sucked honeysuckle, tasted clover to see what the bees found so interesting,...

If not, what is it you don't like and what do you need to change? If you don't consider yourself a success, maybe it's time to start reexamining these three things: Do you like yourself?

Their enthusiasm is definitely contagious, and just being in the presence of these wonderful people inspires me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and keep chugging along, not to mention all the people they've inspired to do the same.

Native across much of eastern North America, the sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) produces hundreds of golf ball-sized seed pods or capsules annually. If littering a lawn, they become projectiles from a lawnmower chute and are not comfortable to encounter...

You can seed it immediately or transplant vegetable starts into the soil pockets within and around the bed. Huegelkultur is an excellent, natural recycling technique, allowing woody waste to be converted into valuable growing space.

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. Temperatures plummeted to nigh-unbearable levels across the U.S., thanks to the much-discussed polar vortex that moved through over a two-day span, shattering record-low temperatures nationwide and plummeting...

When it's diluted let's say 200 times, it's called 200c because C is the Roman numeral for 100. Lower potencies work as well as higher potencies, but they have to be administered more frequently.

Teach children never to eat fruit from the winterberries in your garden or your home.Whether snitching berries from the bush or off holiday decor, animals that ingest leaves or berries from the winterberry plant can suffer adverse effects from the alkaloids...

"Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” –Gloria Steinem I'll be the first to admit it: I'm definitely a dreamer. Something will spark one of these thoughts, and I'll wind up daydreaming about my three-armed life or my alternate British self...

New To You, But Not So New It turns out that ashitaba isn't all that “new” to America. Nutritional Powerhouse Traditionally, ashitaba leaf was used for longevity and rejuvenation in Japan.

While the leaf-footed bug family is composed of several closely related species, these insect pests all use their piercing sucking mouthparts to feed on our favorite foods, like tomatoes , a range of vegetables, nut crops, and several fruit species.

As the tree ages, limbs fall and make hollow sections that are important cavities for small animals, cavity-nesting birds, and bees. As a matter of fact, I seldom notice them. For years I have been working to make my landscape more hospitable to pollinators...

No matter how anxious you are to plant your garden, it's essential that you wait to dig until your soil is ready. Determining if soil is frozen can make all the difference.How do you know if the ground is frozen solid?

Also,thoroughly before reuse and discard contaminated soil.Now that you know the answers to what is damping off and what does damping off look like, you can successfully keep it from happening to your seedlings.

They do this in order to reduce the amount of organic materials that is going to landfills. More and more cities and townships are initiating municipal composting programs. Just make sure that the compost you apply to your gardens is safe.International...

That is because they are slower to develop, which gives them stronger bones and organs before developing muscle, just as our turkeys did 50+ years ago. 2007's turkeys were namedMy turkey this year is a Bourbon Red hen, my first heritage turkey since I...

Our kids were happy to have lots of chocolates and candies to eat, but we weren't as happy about the other leftover products, one of which the laurel dry leaves bags. Whithin a year, we decided it wasn't convenient to pursue the business, since we were...

This high-humidity houseplant can grow to heights of nearly five feet.Dracaena sanderiana is considered non-toxic to humans.The ASPCA's Poison Control Center lists lucky bamboo as a toxic substance to dogs and cats.Although Dracaena sanderiana is considered...

Conservationists agree that the more plant species in an ecosystem, the healthier and more robust it is, yet a stroll down any lane in suburban America offers yard after yard of similar plants set in straight rows.

This cycle was repeated indefinitely. Production won out over soil health. Crop rotations and fallow ground may be seasonal as opposed to annual. This process had the intended effect of replenishing the soil, but it left half the arable land unused and...

On the Janka scale, a standard measure of wood hardness, Okoume's rating is only 380. Within its native range, Okoume is considered widespread and relatively common. Fresh-cut Okoume heartwood darkens with age and exposure to light and air.

I asked two farmer friends to take him in, and both kindly declined. The trouble is, he's starting to get a bit aggressive, and we've discovered that roosters and preschoolers don't mix.

As this growing season winds down and we start preparing for cooler weather, consider the unbridled pleasure that novelty could bring to your farm or homestead: What can you add to your farming experience this winter or next year to spice things up?