dirt magazine

08/06/2025

Let's keep our grass fields grass!

An artificial turf field on a summer day is hotter than grass and asphalt. Here’s what to know about the debate over grass vs. turf.

05/20/2025

Dirtbag 2.0 just dropped. If you like dirt magazine and love your dad, or love Dirt and like your dad, we've got your Father's Day gift.

Looking for a Dad's day gift that's functional but out of the ordinary? How about showing your love for a grassroots, independent magazine written by real people and mailed to your house, carrying no sneaky spyware or hidden agenda? We are so grateful to our readers for keeping us going for 13 years...

05/01/2025

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, we wanted to re-share this powerful piece of writing by cox.

I was once diagnosed paranoid and/or paranoid schizophrenic. That was a year after I returned from Vietnam. “Progressive and incurable,” said the psychiatrist. ...

04/22/2025

Calling all backyard chicken keepers!
We're digging into the real numbers behind the pastoral allure. If you keep 50 or fewer chickens we'd love to hear about your experience.

Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

04/02/2025

Meghan's into it! Save the date: Dirt's Kitchen Garden Tour is Sunday, Aug. 3.

Cooking with the Duchess of Sussex as she navigates her rebrand from recovering royal to domestic goddess.

02/24/2025

An expensive reminder that farming is a skilled job and farmers are experts who can't be upgraded by AI as easily as, well, most of the rest of us.

His Sensei Ag company hasn’t succeeded in boosting output and nutrition in its greenhouses with AI, robotics and software.

02/14/2025

We know by now 'there is no away,' but it's still tempting to think of the recycling bin as a get-out-of-jail free card. This is a needed reminder that it's not -- it's just more garbage imperialism.

Speaking of which, here's a general announcement that we take gently used egg cartons for husband Joe's eggs 🥚 Most small-scale egg producers are happy to take them back. Feel free to drop them by the office at 20 West Ave., Chester NY 10918 if you're local :)

The world’s poorer nations have never stopped being receptacles for the West’s rubbish.

02/06/2025

You know eggs have gotten dear when this happens. Reminds me of the $24 million Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, remember that? I get it... this is the good stuff!

About $40,000 worth of eggs were taken from a trailer belonging to Pete and Gerry’s Organics, police said. U.S. wholesale egg prices are at a record high.

10/03/2024

Congratulations Patrick Moynihan of Vernon, NJ, repeat-winner of Most Hospitable Garden in Dirt's Kitchen Garden Tour. Last year, Patrick's giant pumpkin rotted in the garden. He just sent us a pic: this year, it made it to harvest!

10/02/2024

And here I am, totally unaware that my beloved and fun-to-say shagbark hickory is even related to the tennis-ball tree aka black walnut! One lifetime is not enough to learn the most basic facts of life.

Hickories and walnuts belong to the same family — the walnut family (Juglandaceae). Up until the early 1800s, American botanists considered hickories to be walnuts (genus Juglans), and no distinction was made between the two groups of trees. In the 1800s, hickories became recognized as being taxonomically distinct from walnuts and were given their own genus to reflect this distinction — the Carya genus.

An observable difference between hickories and walnuts involves the fruits. Hickories are dehiscent — the fruits completely or partially split open at maturity, and their husks are composed of sections or valves. With few exceptions, walnuts are typically indehiscent — the fruits do not split open at maturity.

Pictured here are 5 hickories and 2 walnuts that grow in eastern North America. Bark isn’t always the best feature to help distinguish between species, but it can be useful in some circumstances. For example, the bark of shagbark hickory is similar to the bark of shellbark hickory, but the bark of both trees is very different from the bark of bitternut hickory.

09/24/2024

40 days! And the AT has a new speed record.

Ultrarunner Tara “Candy Mama” Dower shaved 13 hours off Karel Sabbe’s previous record for hiking the iconic route