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Posts tagged vegetable gardening
Planning Your Vegetable Gardens
Feb 13th
This is what the garden area looked like before we started any work.
This year I’m trying to be more organized about my planting. You see, there are certain vegetables that you don’t want to plant in the same place every year, because of soil born disease and pests. The most prominent of these are: tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers.
Last year I experienced early blight with my tomatoes. So, this year I want to be sure to plant them in a different location, so that if any of the blight bacteria lived in the soil over the winter I won’t have to More >
What Gardening Means To Me
Jan 23rd
What little girl could resist growing a Beauty Bush.
Today is my birthday. So, I thought I’d take time to write about what gardening means to me, why I’m such an avid gardener.
In all honesty I think I’m an avid gardener because my mother was, also. She loved to be outside planting things and started me off at a very early age. I remember helping plant pansies at around the age of five.
Not too long after that, maybe a year or two, I had my first garden. It was a flower garden and had all my favorites: pansies, marigolds, dahlias, snapdragons, More >
Long-term Planning For Gardens
Dec 19th
Shade patterns change throughout the year. Keep a log for successful planting.
Maybe you’ve got it on you resolution list to finally do something with the yard. You’ve got some ideas, but aren’t sure exactly which plants will work well for each garden.
The first thing you need to do is know the lay of your land. Which way is north, south, east, and west? How does the house line up with these directions? Where are large trees or shrubs located in relation to the directions? Are the trees/shrubs evergreen or deciduous?
Before you plant anything you need to know what the shade More >
Fall Cleanup
Nov 7th
Beautiful fall foliage needs to be cleaned up to protect your lawn.
The first frosts have hit all around the country, with some people even experiencing record snowfall. The trees are bare, the annuals dead, the perennials sleeping, and surprisingly enough the camellias still blooming.
Now’s the time to do some cleanup in your garden, to be ready for next years display. First and foremost, if you have a lot of leaves covering either your garden or your lawn, you need to deal with them. You need to rake the leaves off the lawn, as they could pack down and kill the More >
Planting Mistakes
Nov 3rd
Hot or not?
Even the best laid plans run amok sometimes and in several of my plantings this year I ran into some problems. You see, I planted all my peppers which included sweet, paprika, and hot, all in the same area. I thought that I’d have no problem identifying them because they would look different.
I was wrong. There are just two plants that look different from the others, but they look the same as each other. But they aren’t planted in the same area, so they aren’t the same variety!
Now I have a bowl of peppers drying on my table More >
Going On Vacation
Sep 13th
Well, I’m about to go on vacation, back home for a sisters reunion. Lucky for me my husband isn’t going, because then I would have to find someone to take care of the yard and houseplants.
After putting in a lot of work on your garden, it pays to find someone who will care for it properly while you're on vacation.
We’ve been gone twice for longer periods, with unfortunate dire results. The first time we were in India for three months for a yoga and meditation intensive. I put my trust in the next-door neighbor teens to water things. When I More >
Focus Plant: Pineapple Tomatillo, Ground Cherrie, etc.
Jul 25th
I was introduced to these little wonders as pineapple tomatillo, also known by quite a few other names one of which is ground cherries. Many people who enjoy Mexican food have had regular tomatillos, especially in salsas. However, the pineapple tomatillo is very different from the regular one. They both have the same husk and shiny round fruit inside, but after that they are quite different.
First off, the pineapple tomatillo is a little bit bigger than a pea. Second, it has a flavor reminiscent of pineapple when fully ripe. Third, it is ripe when it is yellow.
These little morsels are More >