Plant Gardens 101

We all are looking for ways to get garden crops sooner, or get more of them. One way to get an early jump is to use a cold frame to start your seedlings.

The gardening season can’t start early enough for most of us. For those in the northern states the gardening season seems like it may never start, and it’s just too short for some long season warm weather vegetables like okra or some melons. For those in the south, it would seem that the growing season is long enough, but with the very hot summer months some crops just either won’t survive the heat and dry weather, or even if they do survive they won’t produce much when temperatures get above 80 or 85 degrees. This includes some of the old standby favorites like tomatoes or even bell peppers.

While many vegetables can be started indoors, one problem with doing that is that they get acclimated to either greenhouse or indoor conditions, and can be ill suited to set out early in the season when the night time temperature swings can be at their most extreme, and these tender seedlings can be easily damaged by temperatures close to freezing. One way to help them acclimate is to “harden them off” which is basically a methodology of slowly introducing them to the harsh outdoor environment. (more…)

If you’re itching to get your green thumb on, but want to do more than grow flowers, you should consider your own vegetable and fruit gardens. You may be thinking your backyard doesn’t have good enough soil to grow great vegetables and fruits. That may be true, but you still don’t have to give up. Instead, create a better yard, through garden planters.

You don’t want to pay a fortune to add layers of right topsoil to your whole yard when you really only need the richer soil in the specific places where the plants are going to be growing. You may not have done the research before, but it could be hundreds to thousands of dollars to have a complete layer of topsoil placed on your yard. So, why not just create smaller rich planting venues with garden planters?

Instead of trying to prepare a whole yard, you can decide where you want your garden to grow and put garden planters in the right formation. Then fill them with potting soil or topsoil that the plants will thrive in, and plant away. (more…)

Raised bed gardening will provide you with the unique opportunity to have a garden that will be the envy of the neighborhood. You will produce more, have higher quality vegetables and spend less time maintaining them. All of the work is done the first time your raised beds are created and you will enjoy the fruits of your labor for years to come.

1. Reasons for Raised Beds – Creating a raised bed gardening system is a fantastic way to control the soil you use, control weeds and produce the most garden vegetables and flowers in the smallest space possible. Raised bed gardening allows you to easily control the environment in which your garden plants grow – temperature and moisture. Raised bed gardens allow you to start your garden sooner and extend the growing season by green housing the raised bed. Raised bed gardening additionally makes it very easy to fertilize and control any types of garden pests that might otherwise damage your garden plants.

2. Materials for Raised Bed Gardening

A limited number of materials are required to create a raised bed for gardening – To build one 4′x8′ Raised Bed: (more…)

Once you have gotten everything together that you will need to create and maintain your organic vegetable garden you need something to plant in it. For many choosing what vegetables to grow is the fun part of organic vegetable gardening since you get to imagine what sort of vegetables you will see shooting up from your new garden. There are many organic vegetable seeds available for sale from retailers both online and offline. In fact, there are so many seeds to choose from that some people find themselves completely overwhelmed by their options.

If you are someone that has never grown vegetables before then it is important that you stick to vegetables that are easy to grow. Even though they might be vegetables that you have not usually eaten before or never thought about growing you might be surprised by the results. A good organic gardening book is helpful. Many organic gardeners have found that vegetables they usually hated when purchased canned or frozen, taste delicious when harvested from their own backyard. The following are a few vegetables that are easy to go organically and often a delicious treat. (more…)

Many years ago I bought a house in Wisconsin with a huge backyard. Large areas were devoted to fruit trees, vegetables, flowers and my special favorites like strawberries and raspberries. Growing raspberries has now become a must for any garden of mine. They taste great fresh or in desserts and are relatively easy to grow. My first experience really sold me. Got lucky I guess and after a few years had to invite friends over to pick them, just to keep up. Fresh raspberries in the grocery stores today cost an arm and a leg; so why not give them a try.

Raspberries are a type of bramble, like blackberries and are also known as “Cane berries” Raspberries are different from blackberries in that the fruit has a hollow core that remains on the plant when you pick the raspberry. The most common way of growing raspberries is in rows spaced 6 to 12 feet apart. Raspberries are wonderful for jam, to eat fresh, or to use in a variety of desserts. Raspberries are a very healthy food; they are high in Vitamin C and naturally have no fat, cholesterol or sodium. (more…)

Growing your own vegetables from seed is very easy. It is great fun to watch the tiny seedlings emerge from the soil mix and of course is a great deal cheaper than buying ready grown plants. It is not as quick though. The reason why it is cheaper is that you are doing all the work yourself.

So what do you grow them in? Well it all depends on what type of plant you are growing. Before we discuss what type of container you need, you also need to think about what type of soil mix you are going to grow them in.

My father used to just take some garden soil, put it in an old dirty plant pot and grow his seeds. It used to work but it was only his experience which allowed him to be able to identify which was the seedling he was after and which was a weed seedling. Why, well the soil he used was full of weed seeds. He also did not clean his pots which is never a good thing. (more…)

Metropolitan areas offer many things to their inhabitants. Jobs are plentiful, eateries and watering holes are in high abundance, and arts and nightlife scenes are often very appealing. Those looking to move from more rural areas to perhaps an apartment or condominium in the city might feel they will be forced to sacrifice many of the attributes the country provides. Space is at a premium in the city. Suburbia and rural living offer more of it, and many people living in more spacious areas enjoy growing their own vegetables and tending personal gardens in their spare time. The fact is that vegetables are able to grow and thrive in smaller areas, and just because your space is limited, it doesn’t mean you and your vegetable garden need to be.

As a result of new research and development involving genetic modifications of standard vegetables and fruits we have all come to expect in a backyard garden, many seed companies offer seeds and starts of miniature or dwarf versions more suited for growing in limited space. Just imagine, growing tomatoes in a bucket on your tiny condominium deck could be so rewarding and the perfect addition to a summer salad. You can grow strawberries in small containers in your bedroom windowsill, strawberry shortcake, anyone? Growing your vegetables in containers has its advantages over a conventional garden because you can move your plantings inside if cooler weather should threaten and give your growing vegetables artificial indoor light in the interim. (more…)

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To grow your organic vegetable backyard is not an obstinate thing and in truth many people who have farming are now spinning to organic farming methods. This doesn’t mean that you neediness to grow only organic herbs and vegetables in your patch. Organic farming can cover all aspects of gardening, plus a flower backyard or an ornamental plot as well.

Just because you want to have an organic vegetable patch that doesn’t mean that you only want to spear with the organic vegetable backyard. You can develop to enter such gear as herbs as well if you like, not remark zenith plants and others.

The one thing that you do want to look out for when you’re mounting your organic vegetable plot alongside your flower patch, is that your flower patch is also mature organically. After all, it kind of defeats the intention of rising an organic vegetable backyard if right next to it you use all sorts of compound pesticides and fertilizers in your flower bed. (more…)

What is the best way of getting your children interested in growing vegetables?

Well in my view you need to give them their own space. Tell them this plot is yours. It doesn’t have to be large, about 2 feet square for younger children or you could even get them started by growing crops or herbs in pots. Older children may prefer something larger. I know that a small high density bed that is only 2 foot by 2 foot doesn’t sound very big, but it will be to a young child. A larger bed may just seem too big to do anything with to them, so start them small. If you have more than one child, give them their own high density bed each or just make a larger bed and divide this up into a section for each child and then divide this into mini plots for each crop. For very young children I would not make the bed more than 2 feet wide as they can reach the middle of this from each side.

What I would do is start them off with their own high density gardening raised bed built from timber that is at least 6 inches deep. This will give a soil depth which is deep enough for most easy to grow crops. You need to fill this with a soil mix and I would recommend buying this in the form of bagged peat or coir, bagged well rotted manure and maybe a bag of sterilized topsoil as well. As you have some manure in there you need to instill in your children good hygiene with hand washing after gardening and before eating. Mix your soil ingredients together and then fill the high density garden bed. If you are using 6 inch timber you will only need 2 cubic foot of soil mix. Once you have done this I would divide the bed into 4 mini plots using a brightly colored plastic string. I have gone for plastic as it does not rot and is safer for little hands than wire. Simply staple this to the timber. To increase interest, get your child involved in building the high density garden bed and even a trip to buy the soil mix and the seeds. (more…)

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Many people are into vegetable gardening nowadays, and they are even getting their supply of vegetables from their gardens. Of course, this makes the vegetables much cheaper, and in addition the vegetables taste much better too. Actually, vegetable gardening is quite similar to gardening for shrubs and herbs. With just a little care, these plants can produce excellent vegetables for consumption.

The size of the garden needs to be decided beforehand. Select a place where the drainage is good, there is good supply of air and healthy soil. Sunlight is most important. One more thing to do is to fence your garden, because there will be several animals trying to get a bite or more at your vegetables. For mice, moles and other rodents, you will need to use a trap somewhere in the garden. (more…)

Peppers are a warm weather vegetable that can be finicky at times and difficult to grow, particularly in mild climates. Peppers require a lengthy growing season and warm temperatures within a specific range to thrive fully. There are two types of peppers: sweet and hot. Sweet peppers are bell-shaped and come in a variety of colors ranging from green and red to purple and even white. Hot peppers are smaller and thinner and come in shades of green, yellow, and red. While homegrown peppers can be difficult at times, they are not an impossible plant for the home gardener to grow. In this article, we’ll provide some tips that will help you grow your best peppers ever.

Peppers can either be purchased as young plants from a nursery or grown indoors from seed. Either method is perfectly acceptable; it is simply a matter of how much time and effort you want to put into your plants. There are several benefits to growing the plants from seed. For starters, a packet contains enough seeds for an enormous garden of pepper plants and can usually be purchased for less than $2.00. Young pepper plants purchased from a nursery, on the other hand, will cost you about that same amount, per plant. So depending on how many plants you want, growing from seed can save quite a bit of money. Second, if you want to try some unusual varieties of peppers, you will most likely have to order seeds and grow them yourself. Nurseries will almost always have sweet bell, jalapeno, and banana peppers as young plants, but rarely will they have more obscure varieties such as Hungarian Yellow Wax, Anaheim, and Serrano peppers. (more…)

Before you create a hummingbird habitat in your backyard, there are several important things you must know, and do, to attract these beautiful creatures and to protect them. The selection of a good hummingbird feeder, placement of the feeder, maintenance of the hummingbird feeder and choice of food can be critical, both to your enjoyment of the hummingbirds and to their survival. I will cover each of these points, but first, allow me to give you a little information about the hummingbirds themselves.

How many types of hummingbirds are there? There are more than 10,000 species of birds in the world. About 925 of those species have been counted in the U. S. and Canada. Of all the birds living in our part of the world, few are as interesting, as fascinating, or as beautiful as the hummingbird. There are 16 species of hummingbirds breeding regularly in the United States and another half dozen Mexican or Caribbean species that have been reported here. (more…)

As a rule, we choose to grow bush beans rather than pole beans. I cannot make up my mind whether or not this is from sheer laziness. In a city backyard the tall varieties might perhaps be a problem since it would be difficult to get poles. But these running beans can be trained along old fences and with little urging will run up the stalks of the tallest sunflowers. So that settles the pole question. There is an ornamental side to the bean question. Suppose you plant these tall beans at the extreme rear end of each vegetable row. Make arches with supple tree limbs, binding them over to form the arch. Train the beans over these. When one stands facing the garden, what a beautiful terminus these bean arches make.

Beans like rich, warm, sandy soil. In order to assist the soil be sure to dig deeply, and work it over thoroughly for bean culture. It never does to plant beans before the world has warmed up from its spring chills. There is another advantage in early digging of soil. It brings to the surface eggs and larvae of insects. The birds eager for food will even follow the plough to pick from the soil these choice morsels. A little lime worked in with the soil is helpful in the cultivation of beans. (more…)

Growing chillies is fantastic fun but results often depend on the climate where you live. However, there are things you can do to grow excellent quality and quantities of chillies in most climates.

I live in an area where chillies do not grow very well outdoors so I grow them in a greenhouse but what I am going to talk about here can be used when growing outdoors.

The first thing to think about is seed. You can walk into a supermarket, buy a chilli and use the seeds from the chilli you cook with. Not after you have cooked them though. It is better to buy from a specialist seed company though as these seeds will be from chillies which have been specially grown for their seeds. You can buy these from supermarkets, DIY stores or major seed supply companies. However, I like to buy my chilli seeds from specialist chilli growers. They are easy enough to find now that the internet has been developed but my Grandfather never had the internet yet he found a specialist company many years ago before chillies became a popular food in the UK.

So how do you grow them. Well you could just throw a few seeds in a pot and hope for the best but by taking some careful steps you can maximise your success. (more…)

Deep inside we all love Sunflowers, they are so amazing and so full of life, that having sunflowers in your garden, it is a bleesing.

Sunflowers are usually planted in early May, similar to corn, and usually bloom in late July.

They require approximately 100-120 days to mature. Sunflowers originated in theAmericas in 1000B.C., where for centuries they were cultivated as a valuable food source. The use of sunflower images as religious symbols has also been documented in some native societies. Sunflowers also produce latex and are the subject of experiments to improve their suitability as an alternative crop for producing hypoallergenic rubber .

Sunflowers have a low to medium tolerance of saline conditions, and therefore soils with high levels of salinity should be avoided. Sunflowers are sensitive to herbicide residues such as Lontrel and Pursuit. Sunflowers represent light instead of darkness, transparency instead of secrecy, security instead of threat, and joy instead of fear. (more…)

Imagine eating luscious red strawberries fresh from your garden still warm from the sun. What a treat and that treat can be yours. Here are easy tips for growing strawberries.

Strawberries need at least six hours of sun a day to flower and set fruit. Keep that in mind when selecting a site for your berries. Strawberry pots, those big pots with little holes in the sides are not ideal for strawberries because they dry out too fast.

Strawberries prefer rich soil. Dig down about six inches with a sturdy shovel and turn the dirt over. Remove rocks and twigs and sprinkle in a slow release fertilizer per package directions. Add a bag of compost or well rotted manure for every 8 square feet of your strawberry patch. For example if your patch is 12 feet by 12 feet you would need 4 bags. Spread the compost evenly and then turn over the soil again to mix the fertilizer and compost into the soil. (more…)

Planter boxes give you the benefit of raising organic vegetables right outside your door or window. Rising costs of produce have caused some budget-conscious people to reconsider the money they spend on fresh fruits and vegetables. But at what cost to their health? And the price of organic produce is even higher. You can grow your own vegetables, even without much space. Roots, leafy vegetables, and fleshy vegetables can all grow well in planter boxes, if you choose the right varieties and provide the attention they need.

Root vegetables are edible roots of plants. Vegetables which fall in this category include carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, radishes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Root vegetables can work well in planter boxes, as long as the planters are deep enough. Try carrots and radishes. (more…)

Interested in growing organic? For many, it’s the only way to grow.

When starting an organic vegetable garden you must start from the ground up. Compost is the key to a lush, bountiful organic garden. If you don’t already have your own compost, check with your local municipality. Most give away leaf compost for free. Some even deliver by the truckload to your home!

Leaf compost is very rich in organic matter; however, it still needs a few amendments. Lime added to your compost will balance the Ph and Gypsum added (about 5lbs. per 100 sq. ft.) will keep the soil nice and loose, it also adds trace minerals such as calcium which is great for the soil. Adding these will also help plants intake the nutrients they need to thrive. Work this into the top 4”-6” of soil.

Another important key to growing organic veggies is sunlight. Take some time to watch the sun as it moves across your property throughout the day. Start your garden where it will get the maximum amount of sun and plant your rows from NE to SW. It is also important to water your garden in the early morning between the hours of 6 and 10 am. The will allow for good water absorption and any water left on the leaves will evaporate before the heat of mid-day. Watering in the middle of the day is not recommended because the water will evaporate before it has a chance to really soak in (or you will have to water longer to get the same effect). The leaves of the plants may also burn as the water on the leaves heats up. Never, ever water your garden in the evening unless you want a tough battle with the evil fungus! Let me explain. When you water in the evening it is cooler and dark. The ground will absorb the water well, however, the round will only suck up so much, and then the garden is left with water on the leaves and puddles (even small ones) around the stems. There is no sun to gently evaporate the excess. Water and air can carry fungus spores naturally. The water laying on the leaves and around the stems acts as a fertilizer to the evil fungus and it grows literally overnight. Before you know it you have black spots on your tomato and pepper plant and curling leaves on your cucumbers! (more…)