Plant Gardens 101

Back when I was just a young kid, around the age of 5 or 6, I remember being out in the back yard with my dad as he turned over the soil, buried his food waste (which I later learned was a great way to add nutrients to the soil), and got the ground ready for the upcoming gardening season. It was a ritual that compares to professional athletes training for an upcoming season. My dad took it that seriously.

Little did I know then that the lessons he would teach about gardening would stay with me to this day. In fact I have adopted the same getting ready ritual that he had. My dad has since stopped his gardening practice for health related reasons, but I feel that I carry on that tradition that he learned from his father (my grandfather).

By watching my dad, listening to what he had to say, I learned a variety of things about gardening, that you just won’t learn in a high school classroom (at least in NJ anyway). (more…)

In the early spring, the cooler months, that is when I get my spinach, radishes and lettuce in the ground. Within a month or so I have fresh vegetables ready to be harvested. The only problem is once I pick those vegetables it leaves me empty space.
Succession cropping is the process by which you plant something new, typically a warmer weather plant, into the area vacated by a cooler weather plant like those mentioned above.

When you properly plan out in advance your succession cropping you can easily three crops from the same area. For example, in the spring you plant your lettuce, then the weather warms up, spinach is done so you replace it with squash or tomatoes. As the hot summer months come to a close and it gets cooler again, you can put the spinach back in and get some more. (more…)

There will come a time when you do everything right for your vegetable garden, family, pets, kids and so on, to make sure you are going as “organic” as possible, only to have something out of your control happen. I lead with this because it happened to me just yesterday.

I have a good amount of grass to grow as do all my neighbors. I took the time to change my mower blade to a mulching blade so I would not have to bag the clippings and can actually have them serve a purpose and that is to provide nutrients to the lawn as they decay as well as provide food for the ecosystem in the soil. It is a win-win situation for everybody or should I say everybody and everything.

So I am sitting at my kitchen table yesterday afternoon, I like out the window and notice that the lawn service for my neighbor shows up. I just figured they were there to cut, edge, trim and all of that good stuff, but instead they rolled out a huge hose and started spraying some kind chemical all over their lawn. When I questioned them about it, they said it was to keep mosquitoes and other insects at “bay”. (more…)

When I started vegetable gardening I was a mere seven years old. I would go out and help my dad turn the soil over, plants some seeds, even bury the food waste in the backyard. Of course back then burying food waste was an oddity in society, whereas today it is not only accepted but encouraged. I will get to more on that in a moment.

From the moment I was a young child up until today I learned quickly that there are certain tools I just could not live without to help with the tasks of cultivating my home vegetable garden. These tools make it easier to aerate the soil, mix in compost and other materials, and break up the bigger chunks of dirt.

Let me start with my trusty shovel or spade. My shovel is as basic as it gets. It is a simple shovel with a wooden handle and the spade is made of forged steel. You can buy one similar at any home or garden center, although they probably are made with fiberglass handles today. My shovel allows me to dig deep holes to bury my food waste. I will dig a hole about eighteen inches, dump the food waste in and cover the hole with the dirt. I build up great nutrients in my soil this way and my shovel allows me to get to that depth fairly easily. Why this depth? Because that is where the worms live! (more…)

Vermicompost is the end result of organic matter being consumed by earth worms. Also commonly known as worm castings, vermicompost adds much needed nutrients to the soil that have been depleted with continuous growing seasons.

Every variety of worm creates worm castings; obviously. However the most common worm to be used in this process throughout the United States and Europe is called the red wiggler earth worm, the Eisenia foetida. It has been found that these worms produce the best vermicompost as compared to other worms and are the species of worm that should be used.

There are two great ways to create vermicompost and add it to your soil. One way takes a little more effort than another, but both can be implemented with great success. (more…)

Back when I first started home vegetable gardening, what seems like many many moons ago, I never even heard of intercropping. In fact the first time I even heard the word I thought someone had made it up. So I did some research on the matter and found out that yes it is a real world and intercropping has tremendous benefits for your garden.

Traditional home vegetable gardeners just like to plant what they like to eat, in rows that make sense to them, harvest the fruit that they expect, and perform the work (i.e. weeding, watering etc.) they need to do to get their plants to grow.
Not many, at least the ones that I have talked to, partake in the activity of intercropping. Intercropping gives you the ability to utilize unused space and do so for more than just more fruit but for a purpose.

Intercropping is when you grow multiple varieties of vegetation within the same row or area. What this does, is allow you to use the space that would otherwise be left unoccupied or eventually occupied by weeds if you haven’t taken proper measures with a weed barrier. (more…)

What does it mean to concentrate? By definition it means to focus in on something and ignore the surroundings. In home vegetable gardening the definition is fairly similar, except we do not ignore anything.

Think for a moment the last time you packed for that long vacation to the Caribbean to lay out on the sunny beaches to work on that tan. With all the travel restrictions these days, waiting in long lines at the airport, extra fees for that large red hard suitcase that you have, you make the most of every inch of space in your luggage so you can get through the airport “experience” rather quickly and without extra cost.

You stuff the sandals in pockets in your piece of luggage that you never knew existed, and then of course your favorite blue flowered Hawaiian shirt gets rolled up and stuffed into the sandals. In other words you make use of every inch space that you have.

Getting back to home vegetable gardening, concentration gardening is similar to packing that suitcase and that is to utilize every inch of space that you have available. Lets’ face it. For most of us that grow home vegetable gardens we do not have the land of Farmer Bob, although some people I know have the blue jean overalls and yellow straw hat, but we’ll save that for another conversation. (more…)

How do you determine which vegetables you grow in your home garden? I was recently watching a television program about gardening and the host was interviewing a home owner and the vegetable garden they had planted. The host was asking what the homeowner had planted and like clockwork the homeowner pointed out that in row 1 they had this vegetable and in row 2 they had another and so on, and that got me thinking about vegetables that we as home gardeners rarely plant.

When I plant my vegetables I, probably like most, plant vegetables that I enjoy eating the most, and completely overlook those vegetables that I eat but not probably as often as the most popular like tomatoes and peppers.

I have recently designated one row in my home vegetable garden to those vegetable plants that I eat, although not a lot of, to help reduce the costs I would normally incur on my shopping bill. Celery falls into that category. I do not eat a lot of it, and one single plant gives me plenty for an entire season. (more…)

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It is Monday morning and it is raining cats and dogs. You think to yourself that the buckets of water that are falling out of the sky are a good thing. Good because your vegetable garden really does need a good watering. So you grab your hot cup of coffee, stair out the window and watch as much needed rain falls onto your plants that you are hoping will produce a lot of vegetables.

Later that week, Thursday rolls around faster than a cherry red Corvette on a straight away leading you to wonder where did the go? You check you calendar and have marked on there that it is time to water the vegetable garden.

Instead, you choose not to because, after all, on Monday the rain was tremendous. This scenario is the trap that we as gardeners can fall into if we are not careful, and that is not watering the plants enough. Many studies have shown that vegetable plants, especially those still in their infancy, need plenty of water. (more…)

If you love to plant a vegetable garden every year like me then you know the amount of work that can go into it. With all of that hard work there are some things you can do to lesson the “pain” of gardening and make it more enjoyable which is what it is supposed to be. Here are some tips and advice that you can start following today.

Timing is Everything If timed perfectly you can take your growing plants from the indoors to the outdoors without much worry. Timed poorly and move them too soon and all of that growth and hard work will be wiped out in a matter of minutes. So what causes this? Bugs? Your Neighbor? No! One of the worse enemies of a gardener, frost! Frost occurs when temperatures go low enough to where overnight dew freezes. This condition will kill your new plants. To avoid this look up frost maps online at the United States Department of Agriculture to find when the first and last frosts occur in your area and then calculate your timing. (more…)

Frost is the condition that occurs when temperatures reach a low enough level to turn moisture into ice. Usually you will hear the term frost more so when the overnight dew that gets formed on your front lawn or on your car freezes.

If you do not live in an area affected by temperatures that drop near or below thirty-two degrees then you probably never experienced frost conditions. For those of us that live in areas where you can get frost then you know every well how aggravating it can be sometimes.

You get up early in the morning, go out to your car, put the key into the ignition, turn the car on and you are ready to leave, except the fact that the dew froze overnight and now you have frost on your windows. You can’t see out of them therefore you get out the trusty old ice scraper and start chiseling away at the stuff so you can get on your way. (more…)

One of the best natural solutions to make your plants healthier is through the use of compos tea. Compost tea is the process by which you use compost to brew a liquid solution that you will then “feed” to your plants. Compost tea can be applied to vegetables, trees, bushes, flowers, or in short anything that you grow that you want to get healthier.

The first step is to get compost. You can buy compost from a local nursery or garden center but the better option is to make your own. You make compost from organic material. In other words grass, leaves twigs, and food waste to name a few.

You then take the compost and mix it with water. After about an hour of soaking you can use the compost enriched water on your plants and you will get excellent benefits, but if you really want to get the most out of your compost tea, you have to brew it.
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