Ideas, Info, Tools & Technology to Create Your Dream Garden
Posts tagged vegetable gardening
My Favorite Time Of Spring
May 8th
First hydrangea blossoms opening right now.
Perfect WeatherThis last week has been fantastic. The weather is warm enough to work outside and the humidity is still low. The gardens are bursting into bloom. I have snapdragons, carnations, dianthus, pansies, and petunias already in bloom. The hydrangeas first blossoms opened yesterday. My lilies have buds all over them.
Cornucopia In The MakingThe trees have leafed out. The berry bushes are making berries. The grapes have buds on them. Best of all one of the peach trees we planted two years ago is covered in little peaches. We even have on plum on one More >
Keeping Up With “Frankenseeds”
Mar 29th
On several occasions I’ve talked about GMO or GE crops. Monsanto and Seminis are the two main companies developing these seeds. While developing their “frankenseeds” they’re also keeping their foot in the legitimate seed door. I recently found a listing of many of the varieties that Monsanto and Seminis sell.
What does this mean for the home grower or the conscientious gardener? Anyone who’s concerned about the effects of Monsanto’s work can vote with their pocketbook, by staying away from seeds that are offered by either Monsanto or Seminis.
Safe seeds will ensure the planets food supply.
The best way to do this More >
Glorious Oriental Seeds
Mar 27th
One thing that the US has is a poverty of varieties of vegetables. When you enter a supermarket you find just one kind of broccoli, one variety of carrot, one maybe two varieties of cucumber (eating and a pickling). What most Americans don’t know is that there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of varieties of almost every vegetable on the planet.
I recently found a great site for buying typical oriental vegetable seeds. Unfortunately I found the site after I had ordered all my seeds for this year, but I wanted to share this resource with you, so that you can More >
2012 Premiere
Mar 15th
First spinach seedlings of 2012 emerge.
Ta-da! The 2012 garden show has begun. The very first spring seeds have sprouted. Planted on 3/2/12 the very first spinach seeds have broken ground. I was waiting with bated breath, as it seemed like forever for the first seeds to emerge.
I planted both spinach and sugar snap peas that day. So far just a few spinach seedlings are showing.
We’re having a very hot spring already and I’m concerned that the rest of the spring seeds, which I plan to get in the ground in the next few days, will sprout and immediately bolt. In More >
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 >