Plant Gardens 101

I think of lettuce as one of those “staple” vegetables. In other words it can be used in a variety of recipes, from salads, to sandwiches.

Because lettuce thrives in cooler temperatures, it is best to grow it in early spring or fall.

Here are some steps you can take to improve the conditions where your lettuce will grow to optimize and increase your harvest.

As stated earlier lettuce is a cooler temperature vegetable. The seeds will germinate best when the temperature of the soil is between 40 to 60 degrees F (4 to 16 C). Once the seeds have germinated they thrive best when the soil temperature is 55 to 65 F (13 to 18 C). (more…)

Earworms are also referred sometimes as the fruit worm. They look like caterpillars and can grow over an inch in length. Their color range can be green, brown, yellow or tan and have black or brown stripes on their sides. They lay their eggs in the spring then continue to eat the silk of corn before it gets to the actual ear. However, this pesky insect does not just limit itself to corn. It also goes after beans, peas, peppers, potatoes, squash and tomatoes.
Spray the affected plants with Btn which is bacillus thuringiensis in the spring just before the eggs begin to hatch. Bacillus thuringiensis is a soil dwelling bacterium that is commonly used as a natural pesticide. It occurs naturally in caterpillars as well as moths, butterflies and on the surface of dark plants.

Create an environment in your garden to allow beneficial insects to enter. Such insects include lacewings and trichogramma wasps. A lacewing is a winged insect in the order Neuroptera and a trichogramma wasp is a common wasp insect used to control pests. (more…)

Most home vegetable gardeners have seen somewhere or heard from someone the importance of the N, P, K levels in your soil. These letters represent specific elements and stand for Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K). If you look on any bag of fertilizer available at your local home or garden center you will see these letters and usually a ratio values right on the bag, bucket or box.

Although, N, P, and K, are considered the big three, they are only a few compared to the many elements and nutrients your plants need in order to grow or thrive. Just like you need all of your vitamins and minerals from A through zinc, a plant requires many nutrients as well.

One specific nutrient it needs, just like humans, is calcium. Calcium in plants is required for proper cell division during plant formation and growth. If your soil lacks calcium the leaves of your plants will look yellow or pale and blossom end rot will occur more frequently. Other signs of calcium deficiency include bad root formation, browning of plants and small vegetable and fruit formations. (more…)

The pH level is a scale that displays how acidic or alkaline something is. A pH level less than 7 means, whatever it is you are testing is dominantly acidic and a level over 7 means it is more alkaline. If you get a reading of 7 that means it is neutral which is normally water.

Simply just getting the pH reading is not enough. Once you have that reading you need to know how to make adjustments in your soil for optimum growth of the vegetables that you are planting.

Here is how you can raise and lower your soil’s pH level in your home vegetable garden.

Before you can do anything to your soil you have to know what the pH level is. The best way to obtain this reading is with a pH soil testing kit from your local home or garden center. They are as inexpensive as five bucks or as complicated and expensive as a hundred dollars. The choice of which one you get is up to you. (more…)

Kohlrabi is cousin to cabbage and broccoli. The best time to grow this great tasting vegetable is in the cooler months in the autumn following plants that can only grow when the temperatures are hot. Here is how you can successfully grow kohlrabi in your home vegetable garden.

It is not recommended that you sow your kohlrabi seeds indoors due to the fact they germinate better in cooler temperatures that are more than likely readily available outdoors during the autumn months. Therefore sow your seeds in your garden no deeper than 1/2″ and space them out at least eight inches.

For an optimal growing environment make sure you test the pH level of your soil. Kohlrabi likes the soil to be neutral or as close to neutral as you can get. 6.0 - 7.0 would be ideal. (more…)

Long before you put a seed in the ground you may have already been set up for a less than bountiful harvest, or even worse no harvest at all. That is because the condition of your soil determines whether or not your vegetable plant will grow and produce.

There are ways to test your soil and of course the means to fix your soil if it need be. Let’s first talk about how you can test your soil.

There four methods you can use. The first is getting your local municipality or state EPA to test your soil conditions. You simply call them up, ask for a soil test kit, follow their instructions and for a fee they will analyze the soil you send them. Some may even send you recommendations on what steps you need to take in order to fix any problems that you may have. These test, depending on where you are in the country can be pricey and you can wait quite awhile as commercial farmers take precedence over the home vegetable gardener. (more…)

Like many home vegetable gardeners, when I was younger I concentrated on the simple basics of having a home vegetable garden. The information I am about to share with you was never even a thought in my mind, but as I have come to learn, knowing it, has made me a better gardener and my harvest more productive.

You can keep your home vegetable garden at the current level of where it is now of planting some seeds, adding water, maybe a little fertilizer and waiting for the vegetables to come up, or you can follow the advice below and produce even more.

Sowing This term refers to the depth at which you plant a seed. It varies by plant variety and seed size. A typical rule of thumb is the smaller the seed to more shallow it has to be planted. The reason being is each seed as built into it the ability to push through the topsoil. Larger seeds can push through from deeper depths whereas smaller seeds need to be closer to the top. (more…)

It is something that I talk about in great abundance and that is vermicompost. Vermicompost is the end result of varieties of earth worms breaking down organic material. Their castings are what is called vermicompost.

Extensive studies have shown that adding vermicompost to your soil (more on that in a moment) helps improve it’s physical structure, enriches the soil with micro-organisms, increased of microbial activity by more than 20 times than other forms of compost, and improves your soil’s water holding capacity which leads to savings on water since you do not have to do it as often.

When vermicompost has been mixed in with soil, studies have shown that germination is a bit faster, plant growth is stronger and crops yield more. The root structures of plants are shown to be stronger than plants not grown in a vermicompost mix and the growth of roots are more defined. (more…)

White flies are tiny, about the size of the tip of a pin, and a lone fly by themselves is hardly reason to panic, but thousands could be very destructive to your garden.

They more readily attack cucumbers, potatoes and tomatoes, and can literally wipe out your crop if not handled properly.

They usually gather on the underside of leaves of the plants and extract the sap from the plant, which could invariably kill the plant.

Here is how you can get rid of white flies from your vegetable garden.

The first step and most natural repellent and control for white flies is to attract their natural predators. As with most creatures in the insect world, white flies too, have natural predators. They include lacewings, ladybugs and praying mantids to name a few. Attract a few of these and they will definitely help you out. (more…)

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Although this salad green is not well known, it is very tasty and grows well in cooler climates, making it a perfect addition to your fall, early spring or even a winter garden.

It is also referred to as miner’s lettuce. The name comes from the 1849 gold rush of California where claytonia was used as fresh salad greens.

Here is how you can add claytonia, this tasty salad green, to your home vegetable garden.

Like most other vegetables claytonia prefers a neutral soil pH. Test your soil and adjust accordingly to a pH level of 6.5 to 7.0. You can pick a pH soil testing kit at any home or garden center for a few bucks.

Claytonia likes a cool environment. The seeds are best when planted in soil where the temperature is fifty to fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, although can with stand up to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, which makes claytonia the perfect fall, winter and early spring vegetable for the backyard. (more…)

By default gardeners are green, green thumbed that is. They take necessary steps to cultivate their land, regardless of the size, and do the things to make their gardens a success. But did you know you can also do some other things that not only will add to your green thumb but make you go green and be more environmentally friendly? Here are some things as a gardener you can start implementing today for a cleaner environment.

Recycle Water
Well you are not really recycling water but what you are doing to trapping rain water to be used at a later date so you do not pull more water from the municipal supply. You do this by using a rain barrel, which is just really a fancy word for a container that catches rain water from your down spouts. Just use a garbage can, rubber maid container or something similar and instead of your rain down spouts just going to the ground, redirect them into your containers. When they get full, use the water in your garden. (more…)

Vermicompost, also known as worm castings, is the end result of worms feeding off of organic material such as food waste. Vermicompost has shown in studies that it contains much needed water soluble nutrients your vegetables, fruits and flowers crave.

You can either make your own vermicompost by adding worms and food scraps to a ventilated container or buy vermicompost commercially. Either way is fine and if just adding nutrients to your soil is not enough proof to use vermicompost than read these three other ways to justify its purpose. (more…)

Gardening doesn’t simply have to be just your flower bed or vegetables growing in your yard anymore. Now it can be a full fledged vacation. Here are some destinations that you can travel to if you want to get away and still enjoy your love for gardening.

The Butchart Gardens Nestled on 55 acres on Vancouver Island, it ranks as one of the world’s greatest garden spectacles. Started in 1904 by Jennie Butchart, she began sculpting the landscape to meet a Victorian style. The Butchart Gardens boasts 26 greenhouses, and a variety of flowers that bloom throughout the year. You can go on self guided and group tours as well as eco-friendly boat tours. They boast a gift shop where you can buy seeds of the flowers they grow as well as a knowledgeable staff to help you in your own gardening ventures. If you love gardens, this is a great one to see.

National Gardens in Washington, DC Beyond the many historical and governmental attractions of the nation’s capitol sits the newest addition to the botanical gardens which opened in October of 2006. The National Gardens has four gardens, which consist of a seven bed regional garden, a first ladies garden, a formal rose garden and a butterfly garden. The gardens have a great backdrop of the US Capitol and best of all there is no cost to go in to see them. (more…)

Years ago my dad taught me the benefits of composting food waste. It had nothing to do with any type of “green” movement or being environmentally friendly, no, it had everything to do with reintroducing nutrients back into the soil.

Here is what he taught me then and it still holds true today. By burying your food waste and kitchen scraps (no steak bones though), you are providing a quality food source for the creatures that live in your soil. From micro organisms and those creatures that the human eye can not see, up to worms, which of course we do see.    (more…)