News Lanterns DC Studios’ Lanterns Adds Rebel Ridge’s Aaron Pierre as John Stewart This is a most excellent team-up By Molly Templeton | Published on October 9, 2024 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix If you saw Jeremy Saulnier’s tense, excellent Rebel Ridge (pictured above), this bit of casting news will probably not surprise you: That movie’s star, Aaron Pierre, is your next Green Lantern. He will play John Stewart alongside the already-announced Kyle Chandler (playing Hal Jordan) in DC Studios’ Lanterns. Peter Safran, who runs DC Studios alongside James Gunn, has said that Lanterns “plays a really big role in leading into the main story we are telling across film and TV”—so Pierre may be quite busy in the coming years. This is not Pierre’s first foray into superhero territory, or even into DC Comics-land: He played Dev-Em in Syfy’s Krypton. More recently, he was in The Underground Railroad; starred opposite Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe; and played Malcolm X in the Hulu series Genius: MLK/X. He also provides the voice of Mufasa in the upcoming live-action The Lion King. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, “the role of Stewart carries much significance, as the fan-favorite comic book character was one of DC’s first Black superheroes.” According to Entertainment Weekly, the show—which Gunn has compared to True Detective—follows Stewart and Jordan as “They head to the American heartland to investigate a murder and find themselves in the midst of a dark, Earth-based mystery that has larger implications for the over-arching DCU plans that will stretch across movies and shows.” Lanterns has as showrunner Chris Mundy, whose presence may help them live up to the True Detective comparisons; Mundy was a producer and writer on True Detective: Night Country (and also Ozark). He will also be writing Lanterns alongside Damon Lindelof and DC Comics writer Tom King. Lanterns was ordered straight-to-series at HBO, and is expected to have an eight-episode first season. There’s no word yet on when we might expect to watch it.[end-mark] The post DC Studios’ <i>Lanterns</i> Adds <i>Rebel Ridge</i>’s Aaron Pierre as John Stewart appeared first on Reactor.

Books Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: September 2024 A truly excellent update based on Austen and Shakespeare, plus some great YA, space opera, and fantasy! By Jo Walton | Published on October 9, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share September was an excellent month, I was in Florence the whole time. The first few weeks were very packed with museum visits and dashing about, and since then I’ve been writing. So I only finished eight books this month, but they’re very interesting ones. The Letters of Queen Victoria Volume 3, 1854-1861 — Queen Victoria (1908) The thing that would surprise you about Queen Victoria’s letters is what a passionate person she was. She cared so much. She cared about some pretty peculiar things, such as keeping other monarchs on their thrones, but she also cared about her family, about being kept in the loop by politicians who tried to keep her out of it, about the Scottish Highlands, and about parliamentary procedure. This volume ends with the death of Albert, so this isn’t the late “not amused” Victoria. But she’s never going through the motions, she’s always deeply engaged in a way I wouldn’t have expected. I like reading letters; I like the sense you get of a real person who gets up in the morning and writes the letter and doesn’t know what’s happening next any more than we do in our own lives. I often find it makes me feel sympathetic to them as a person, and occasionally the opposite, seeing people in this close-up, day-by-day way sometimes makes me loathe them. With Queen Victoria it isn’t either of those things. I do like her more, but I don’t feel I really know her the way I often do after reading letters—and this is the third volume of her letters I’ve read. They’re edited, of course, and she is careful, of course, and almost always writing to subordinates and not equals. Very interesting. I hope there are more volumes. The Waiting Game — Elizabeth Cadell (1985) It’s amazing that this was a new book in 1985, it feels as if it’s from an earlier era, probably from Cadell’s own youth. This is a book about a quiet village with a few families, and then a stranger arrives, just as Jane Austen prescribed. The stranger and heroine is a girl called Gianna, which—look, it isn’t a French name, it just isn’t. But she’s French, and her father (except it turns out he isn’t) used to be engaged to the stepmother of the hero, and… this is a very silly book, redeemed only by being fun. There is a ridiculous and completely unnecessary plot in which two people turn out to be siblings and they never find out and it doesn’t matter. I feel this is too silly to recommend to anyone, and yet I read it all through and quietly enjoyed it. I mostly enjoyed the character of the stepmother who wants to live in an English village and do nothing. Fallen — Melissa Scott (2023) This is book two of Firstborn, Lastborn and I have not read volume one. However, I was told this stood alone, and so it does. This is a ton of fun, a big space opera universe, which underwent a collapse centuries ago when AI went rogue and broke the FTL system—similar in some ways to the backstory of Kate Elliott’s Alexander the Great in Space books. This begins almost like a C.J. Cherryh book, with a spaceship captain and her sidekick wondering how to get out of a planetary situation turned dangerous. A woman turns up from the captain’s past with a solution to the immediate problem but which, of course, entangles them in deeper and more dangerous issues. There are nanite “burdens” in everyone’s DNA, the AIs are lurking in the FTL dimension (and actively trying to escape from it) there are artifacts left by the ancestors which could be great or could lead to doom… Melissa Scott is always great at really solid worldbuilding and events that can feel like real history. Much Ado About Nada — Uzma Jalaluddin (2023) You’re going to find this hard to believe but this is a modern version of both Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Jane Austen’s Persuasion and it’s set in the Muslim community in Toronto, and it’s brilliant. There’s a huge problem with updating versions of classic stories and it’s that they don’t make sense in a modern context—I know I complained here about the sisters in Joanna Trollope’s Sense & Sensibility being entitled jerks because they expect to live on family money, unlike Austen’s girls, who cannot reasonably earn their own living. But because Jalaluddin’s characters live in a context (devout Canadian Muslims) where purity before marriage is as expected as it was in Shakespeare’s Italy or Austen’s England, and because she can write about a heroine who does have a degree and a job and is still living at home because it’s hard to break away from parental expectations, she can make the plots work. If you already know the plots, you will be wondering things like “How does she do Hero?” and “How does she do Louisa Musgrave?” and then you will read the book and be delighted. If you don’t have these questions in mind, it won’t feel like you’re missing anything, I think. You can just read a good story about people in an interesting community—which is either your own community in which you’ll be pleased to be represented, or if not you may well, like me, be interested to learn about it. I bought this book on strong recommendations from two friends, and then kept it sitting there unread for a while, and now I’m sorry I didn’t leap on it right away, because it really is excellent. Great characters, great situations, excellent use of source material, and just a terrific read. One warning, it’s very long, much longer than a normal romance, and while the cover makes it look as if it’s funny, and it is funny in spots, it isn’t a light book—it deals with a lot of serious issues. It deals with them very well, but it’s best to know starting out that this isn’t a light-hearted romp you can zip through. I kept thinking about it after I finished it and will definitely re-read it, which is only the case with the best romance novels for me. Rainbow Gold: Poems Old and New Selected for Boys and Girls — Sara Teasdale (1922) Free on Project Gutenberg. This is a poetry anthology, and actually it’s really good—I enjoyed reading it. It’s a really good selection of fun readable poetry from before 1922, and while originally aimed at children isn’t a bit childish. But then I guess I grew up on this kind of poetry, all English language, all metrical, lots of it narrative. My beloved Faber Book of Children’s Verse (school prize) does have some translations and some free verse, but it was from the Seventies. This is sufficiently older that it does not. But almost everything here is good, and well arranged, and a joy to read. Much of it was familiar, some was new to me. If you want a free anthology of fun poetry that reads aloud well, this is a good one to mix in with more modern and wide-ranging ones. Love and Death in Renaissance Italy — Thomas V. Cohen (2003) This was so good. Cohen takes a selection of court cases from sixteenth-century Rome and finds out as much as he can about the specific people and places and events, from the court documents, from physical locations, and from anything else he can find out about the participants. There’s a case where a wife and her lover were killed by the jealous husband, a case where a man was harassing a young girl who wanted to become a nun, a case of a girl insisting that a man who has promised to marry her go through with it—most of the cases are ordinary people, though the honour killing was a lord, and it’s absolutely fascinating having these glimpses of their everyday lives through their testimony and their actions. Cohen has arranged some of them in “acts” and made some of them dialogues, and in every way done as much explication as possible without obscuring the events. Mostly, the people speak for themselves, with explanation where necessary. I really love this form of writing microhistories, and I’d happily read much more of it. I don’t think it assumes much starting knowledge, I think it would be accessible to most people, and very interesting especially for writers. We Regret to Inform You — Ariel Kaplan (2018) YA novel about an overachieving teen who is inexplicably turned down by all her college choices. It’s well written and fast paced, and, as is common in good YA, what it’s really about it growing up and discovering who you are and what you want. The details and characters and point of view in this are terrific, and I raced through it. It’s an excellent example of how a low-stakes story can be gripping because the bad things can really happen. In a novel, to a certain extent the higher the stakes the less plausible it is that the bad thing will occur, and therefore, to the experienced reader, the less you actually care. Will the universe end? Will the protagonist die? Nope, not going to happen. Will the protagonist fail to get into even Paul Revere, her “safety” college? Will she have to tell her mom she didn’t get in anywhere? There’s real tension there. This book also has good stuff about money and class in America. I’ll definitely be reading more by Kaplan. Unquiet Land — Sharon Shinn (2016) Another in Shinn’s Elemental Blessings series. I love the worldbuilding. I love the blessings. I love the fact that each book features a protagonist from a different element—water, air, fire, and now earth. (The last one is bone and wood.) I love seeing the protagonists from the earlier books advanced in their lives and meddling in other people’s lives. I love the details of everyday life in a fantasy world—in this one the protagonist is setting up a shop while trying to make a connection with the daughter she abandoned years before. But I don’t like the action plots, which the books don’t really need and which also tend to be a little rushed, because I suspect that Shinn, like me, is more interested in the details. It’s interesting, though, that even though I do not like the action plots, and I know perfectly well that everyone is going to be OK just because it’s that kind of book, I still find myself unable to look away when characters appear to be in danger. It’s an odd sensation, not being able to look away, while knowing nothing bad will really happen and consequently feeling a little manipulated. Anyway, the things that are great about these remain great.[end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: September 2024 appeared first on Reactor.

The era of Me Too is dead and gone. The age of ignoring women who are politically inconvenient to the Left has come. Or maybe it never went away. That’s the obvious take from a series of new, disturbing stories about Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff. It’s already been confirmed that Emhoff acted like a cad when he cheated on his first wife and knocked up his daughter’s nanny in 2009. But now there are new allegations, first reported by the Daily Mail, that Emhoff publicly slapped his then-girlfriend during a 2012 trip to the Cannes Film Festival. The Daily Mail relied on the testimony of three anonymous witnesses who were described as friends of Emhoff’s girlfriend at the time, whom the newspaper also didn’t name.  An unnamed representative for Harris, who married Emhoff in 2014, told Semfor that “this report is untrue.” “Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false,” the representative said. The Daily Mail on Tuesday reported additional allegations against Emhoff, writing that he acted inappropriately toward women at the Los Angeles law firm he ran. Some of his former employees even called the second gentleman a “misogynist.” Uh-oh. The media's champion male role model Doug Emhoff was reportedly "inappropriate" and "misogynistic" at work according to a former colleague.Doug allegedly punished female coworkers who didn't flirt with him and held male-only cocktail hours.Misogynists for Harris! pic.twitter.com/Ej7VqpVDMS— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2024 While these allegations have piled up, the legacy media has shown a general lack of interest in these stories, even though Emhoff’s wife is the Democrats’ nominee for president. Gee, I wonder why? Doug Emhoff punched a woman in the face with 3 eye witness accounts and CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN ignored it. Not to mention dozens of accounts who made their following in this platform over #MeToo Because of an election,— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 8, 2024 Most of this reporting comes after the media eagerly concocted an image of Emhoff as the wonderful, loving, supportive husband who was redefining masculinity. In late September, former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki had a sit-down interview with Emhoff. There were no questions about the nanny. It was all softballs, not too unlike the interviews his wife has mostly struggled her way through. Psaki framed the interview by asking Emhoff about how he has “reshaped the perception of masculinity.” Psaki to Doug Emhoff: "You reshaped the perception of masculinity"PS: He impregnated his kid's nanny pic.twitter.com/quUI9x8BhS— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 29, 2024 This clearly isn’t just a line Psaki came up with in the moment. It’s a narrative Democrats and the media have consistently spun in the past few months: Emhoff as the affable, supportive husband willing to take a back seat to all his wife’s endeavors. Completely nonthreatening. Perfectly nice. These new accounts could cloud that image if they turn out to be true. And that’s why this story matters. We are seeing in real time how media narratives are spun, and how stories shift based on the priorities of the Democrat Party.  In 2018, the media was eager to dig up decades-old, hazy accounts from women who accused now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of rape despite extremely thin evidence. Left-wing journalists frothed about how “rapists have no place on the Supreme Court.” That was an actual headline. They demanded a national conversation about toxic masculinity. One would think these same commentators who were ready to convict Kavanaugh on such scant evidence would have some concern about an alleged domestic abuser in the White House. Nope. There’s no interest in this story at all. They just want it to go away. And that’s because it undermines the idea that Harris and Democrats are somehow on the side of women as opposed to those brute, neanderthal right-wingers. You see, the Democrat Party now relies disproportionately on single women for votes. The party has leaned into enshrining abortion as a top issue. And it clearly is pushing prominent male Democrats into the subordinate “bumbling TV dad” role. Hence the message about Emhoff’s redefined masculinity and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s relegation to being the comic- relief veep “knucklehead.” The Democrat Party even branded male Harris supporters as “dudes for Harris” rather than “men” for Harris to subtly message the nonthreatening nature of the men in the party. It’s interesting that what the Democrat Party touts as the new masculinity appears to just be manchild-ism. The message to men is that little will be expected of you. You’ll still have your petty amusements, your pornography, your unattached lifestyle where your actions have no consequences just as long as you don’t interfere with the ambitions of those strong, independent women. Just try not to be too embarrassing and it’s all good. But the allegations against Emhoff are clearly crossing into the crisis management phase. Instead of redefined masculinity, it looks more like Emhoff is a man who is out of control and can’t contain his vices or his temper. So now the party of “believe all women” just wants women to stay on message. The media, which became downright fanatical and often farcical during the era of Me Too, suddenly has lost all interest in uncovering an explosive story about a man who soon may become the “first dude.” So, was the Me Too movement really about protecting women? As my colleague Tyler O’Neil reported, various national domestic violence groups have said nothing about Emhoff and have even generally praised him.  What began with fanaticism morphed into cynicism, and ended up as nihilism. Don’t expect any digging or curiosity about the Emhoff allegations from the legacy media.  They’re too busy making sure we all know that the future is female. The post Media Neglect of Emhoff Allegations Signals the Cynical End of ‘Me Too’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the West, we are on vacation from history. That’s because we are living on the interest earned by our parents and grandparents. The European continent, until the war in Ukraine, had never experienced a more peaceful respite from history than since the end of the Cold War. America has enjoyed its own peace dividend, with spending ballooning to unprecedented levels and our wars fought in distant lands. When you are on vacation from history, you tend to engage in foolish fallacies. Fallacies like the idea that evil doesn’t exist; that negotiation solves all conflict, and that weakness brings with it peace instead of war; that apologizing for Western civilization is a corrective to past injustice, rather than an incentive for future violence. On Oct. 7, 2023, history returned with a vengeance. On that day, Hamas—an evil terrorist group—invaded Israel and engaged in a triumphant orgy of rape and slaughter, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed; 250 were dragged back into the hellhole of Gaza. Hamas proved that evil does exist. The terrorists and their civilian counterparts celebrated their evil. They livestreamed it. They cheered as the broken and mutilated bodies of the slain were paraded through Gaza. They handed out candies as teenage dancers were raped and shot at a music festival. Yes, evil exists. It turns out that human beings are not all seeking the same things—that we do not all have the same priorities or the same values. Hamas proved that conciliation with evil and weakness toward it bring about only suffering. Israel has surrendered territory to a variety of terrorist groups over the past few decades: areas of the West Bank—biblical Judea and Samaria—to the terrorist Palestinian Authority; the Gaza Strip to Hamas; southern Lebanon to Hezbollah. All have become terrorist havens. The only way to defeat evil is through credible threat of crushing force. The Western fallacy that negotiation is a strategy, rather than a tactic—that we can talk our enemies into peace—is indeed a lie. Victory brings about peace; strength brings about peace. And the year since Oct. 7 proved that the West has lost her way. We have lost our way. For a moment after Oct. 7, the West sympathized with the Israelis. And then the West decided to go back to sleep—to watch its children march with Hamas and Hezbollah flags alongside terrorism supporters imported from abroad. The West decided that Israel had committed a grave sin in defending herself, no matter how meticulous or necessary the operations. The West, still enjoying its vacation from history, decided it was easier to go back to sleep than to engage with reality. And yet history does not stop. History does not stop because there is, in fact, no end of history, no conciliation between all cultures. The promises of Isaiah that swords will be beaten into plowshares remain unfulfilled—and until the coming of a messiah, will continue to remain so. The United Nations’ statue depicting a gun with its barrel-end tied into a knot remains more a mockery than a tribute, given the U.N.’s own involvement in terrorism and killings across the globe—including on Oct. 7 and in southern Lebanon. History will continue, because human evil is quite real. The only hope for a truly peaceful world isn’t a somnambulant West, too busy apologizing for its own existence to defend itself; it’s a strong and virile West, willing to stand for itself and to defeat those who would challenge it. After Oct. 7, Israel learned that lesson. And Israelis paid the price. And so Israel will not go back to sleep. Hamas has been decimated; Hezbollah is being systematically destroyed; Iran lives in fear of Israeli retaliation. All of which is good. But the West must understand a simple truth: Just because Israel is located on the bleeding edge of history doesn’t mean that the vacation for the rest of the West can last. In fact, it’s already ending. And the more the West insists on turning over and hitting the snooze button, the worse history’s wake-up call will be. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post October 7: If You’re on Vacation From History, You Fail to Learn From It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Arizona State University (ASU) is a public school and therefore undisputed subject to the US Constitution’s free speech rules. Yet a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demonstrates that it was prominently involved in working with, and on behalf of the US government. To affect free speech. That would be a blatant example of what Congress is investigating and what the critics are calling Big Tech-(Big) Government collusion, given that the target of the “collaboration” the university was involved in was online “disinformation.” The thing to remember when talking about this collusion is that the current White House had enough wits about it to never make a “beeline” reaching the end result of censorship. From what is known from the congressional probe and the Twitter Files alone, this was always instead a meandering effort that included many seemingly intermediary and/or legitimate actors. According to James Rushmore for Racket News, in this case, ASU was the recipient of grants (and, in line with the overall “process” – the purpose of the one given in January 2024 and reported by the Washington Examiner is not clearly stated). The grant though did come from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). In and of itself, not ring many alarm bells – until the reason behind it, and the activities of GEC are taken into account. Those activities, in the case of ASU’s involvement, meant working with government agencies to flag what was decided to be disinformation, but also something referred to as “falsified media.” The obsession with “Russian disinformation” featured here as well, a hallmark of “arguments” of the political party that came to power in 2020 in the US. But also a hallmark that had been introduced into public discourse with the party’s defeat four years earlier. The claims have since, but it seems to no avail, been thoroughly debunked. ASU’s role was to contribute by developing “or refining” automated tools and techniques to pinpoint the specter of “fake news,” “disinformation,” and, “(foreign) propaganda.” The public university’s involvement didn’t stop there, since another project saw it become a US Department of Defense DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) subcontractor. “Falsified media” was once again supposed to be the target, with ASU teaming up with Kitware software company based in New York to give spies a system capable of detecting how media, branded as such, work, and what algorithms they use. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Arizona State University Caught in Free Speech Tug-of-War Over Gov-Funded “Disinformation” Battle appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Google continues to explore ways to block sideloaded apps under the premise that this is something needed to combat fraud and scams. A sideloaded app is an app installed on a device through means other than the device’s official app store, allowing users to bypass Big Tech control. A new testing ground is India, where the US tech juggernaut is launching a pilot – a part of the Google Play Protect, that it calls “enhanced fraud protection.” Google said it was “excited” to include India in this experiment, after Singapore, Thailand, and Brazil. Sideloaded apps are a major thorn in Google’s and Apple’s side since they provide users with a way to bypass official stores. This is a threat not only to the giants’ exorbitant revenues collected from these stores, but also to their ability to control, and if need be, censor, i.e., remove apps. Google is of course selling its desire to efficiently ax even the sideloaded ones as a positive development that is designed solely to protect users from fraud. But the truth is that once Google introduces this type of blocking, it could decide to block any type of app. The criteria the pilot now uses are specific permissions (RECEIVE_SMS, READ_SMS, BIND_Notifications, and Accessibility), and Google’s interpretations thereof. Google claims that “major fraud malware” exploiting the four permissions is almost exclusively (95 percent of cases) happening via sideloaded apps. It doesn’t, however, say that the presence of these permissions automatically means an app is malicious – because there is no way to prove that. Nevertheless – “after the pilot begins, when a user in India attempts to install an application from an internet-sideloading source and any of these four permissions are declared, Play Protect will automatically block the installation with an explanation to the user,” the company said. Knowing Google, the “explanation” will probably be along the lines of, “The app’s been blocked – good luck.” No word on whether a user is able to “appeal” the decision in order to still go ahead and install their app of choice, and it doesn’t seem so – Google is talking about automatic blocking, not warnings. Reports say that in Singapore, Google was able to use the pilot to block 900,000 installations. These were not actually proven to be fraudulent, but are treated as “high risk.” If the pilot becomes a feature on Android, it will be up to Google to decide what is a “high-risk” app, and expand or reduce the list of permissions it chooses to classify as “frequently abused by fraudsters.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Sideloading Under Fire: Google’s New Move to Block Apps Raises Eyebrows appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Want to grow plants like a pro? If you are, these 5 easy gardening tips will help you out. Growing plants require your love, patience, and care. An exciting adventure that anyone can venture to. Read on and discover the secret on how to become an expert in growing your plants. Grow Plants Like A Pro With 5 Simple Tips This post is courtesy of Garden Season and shared with permission. >I remember when I started to grow plants in pots just to decorate my home. There's just something about indoor plants which enliven the house when fancy decor are just dull and lifeless. Then, I progressed to growing herbs and to my delight, my kitchen has never been the same. A kitchen without some culinary herbs nearby is now a big no-no to me. If you want that in your household too, check these helpful gardening tips as you read through.   1. Start With Easy-To-Grow Plants | There are plants that require practically little attention. While you may want to get on with the plant world's big leagues, let's try the juniors first. If you want to grow your own food, go with herbs and you'll be wanting more after. For flowers, you can go with the perennial bulbs. As long as they're planted in a loose, sandy, and well-draining soil, they'll be good to go. In the temperate north, plant Crocuses and Snowdrops close to each other in a small plant bed for an all-season flower garden. You can grow Canna Lilies, Caladiums, and Gladioli in the warm south. If you want to grow an orchard, you'll find rooting an avocado seed from the fruit you bought from the grocery so easy you'll grow more. You'll also find starting lemon seeds from the those you squeezed out of a fruit easy to grow. Most vegetables are easy to grow. Just find out which vegetables are grown in the summer and which veggies prefer the cool fall and winter weather. It's also important to know your hardiness zone to know when to plant a variety of vegetable.   2. Pick A Sunny Location image via gardendsgn Although there are plants that prefer shady areas, warmth and sunlight should still be present. The sun is essential to plant growth, only the amount needed in different plants varies. Most vegetables will need the sunlight to grow but sunlight can be intense, most new plants will need protection. Most annual flowering plants love the sun so much their blooms are intensified with the sun. Weeds love the sun too. So while you are on the look out for your growing greenies, watch out for these pesky weeds. Get rid of them then and there before they outgrow your plants. Seed saving is a great activity you can do this winter season. Check out our tips and always be prepared! ???? https://t.co/GnCzeKcX4P — Homesteading (@HomesteadingUSA) December 26, 2016   3. The Essence Of A Rich Soil image via kentvb I'm sure you've heard about composting in the garden before. Gardeners make compost because of the importance of healthy soil to plants. A rich and healthy soil needs to have the right balance of nutrients and minerals to grow. Avoid using unnatural fertilizers, pest repellents, and weed killers. They will disrupt the natural process going on in the soil. If you ever have to deal with pests, weeds, and improving your soil, always do it the natural way. You'll find vegetables grown in healthy and organic soil are healthy and rich as well. When growing plants from seeds, it is best to start them in compost or rich soil to boost growth   4. Sow In Succession When growing vegetables as your own food, this is how green thumbs do it with success. Even experts know they cannot sow seeds and see them all into maturity. There's always a bad seed or a bad seed batch. Sowing batches of seeds in succession ensure planting success. If one batch gets affected with pests or diseases, you've always got more to go. Sudden change in weather can affect plants too, so it's really ideal to keep a stock on seedlings. This will also ensure a steady supply of fresh and organic vegetables all-season long.   5. Prune, Prune, Prune | One of the essential tasks to maintaining your garden and keeping your plants their best is by pruning. This is cutting through unsightly or dead leaves and branches without actually hurting the plant. In fact, this is ideal for plant growth. Besides, pruning also helps prevent the spread of plant diseases. By cutting affected parts off from the plant before they jump on to another. Vegetables like bell peppers and tomatoes will have more yields by pinching off some foliage. Flowers like roses and hydrangeas, on the other hand, will have more blooms with pruning. Wish to be growing your own food for some time now? Then check this video from Howcast and start growing veggies: It’s no use preaching how really great plants are. You are here since you know how important and effective they are for a beautiful home, a healthy body, and for a peaceful soul. It’s not hard to grow plants. The hardest part may be starting it. The reservation comes from maintaining them. But that’s where the beauty of gardening comes through — it's in seeing your plants through. With the help of gardeners and green thumbs who went through the same process as you, you can grow plants with these helpful tips, guide, and ideas.   There you have it, my fellow homesteaders! Beginner’s tips to grow plants on your own. Let me know if you have some more ideas. Share it and post in the comments section below. I hope this topic will be helpful as you start growing plants but if you specifically planned a vegetable garden, then check these tips and ideas for vegetable gardening beginners. Follow us on instagram, twitter, pinterest, and facebook!   Featured Image Via stcatharines

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