One of my garden goals for 2017 is to switch over to drip irrigation for my vegetable garden raised beds. Last year, I used a tripod sprinkler, which wasted a lot of water and left me with some disease problems. I’ve been pretty intimidated at the thought of drip tubes. You basically buy all the parts to make a custom… Read more »
I’m in the process of finishing up my first summer of vegetable gardening and I’m looking back on quite a few successes. I started in April with seeds and I grew and harvested tomatoes, peppers and zucchini in July through September. I stopped an outbreak of blossom end rot. Other things I tried were pure learning experiences. I didn’t get… Read more »
Growing vegetables from seed seems like a really easy process. Step one: Buy seeds. Step two: Plant them. Step three: Eat vegetables. But watching my seeds progress/not progress to mature plants this summer and now getting ready for a fall vegetable garden has got me twisted up in knots. When I bought a bundle of vegetable seeds this spring, I… Read more »
The movement to bring pollinators back to the garden is big. I’ve heard about it mainly through the concern over colony collapse disorder and the disappearance of bees from some parts of the United States. I think people generally support this movement. No one likes to hear about species in trouble, but do we really understand what pollinator decline means to us?… Read more »
You know things are going well in someone’s garden when they sit down for a coffee break there. I think of these gardeners looking in on their tomato and zucchini plants early in the morning, before the sun and heat make coffee unappetizing. They’re relaxing and reflecting on what it takes to put together a successful garden. And sitting back… Read more »
Whenever I think about growing tomatoes, I can’t help but remember that scene from Steel Magnolias. Ouiser tells the ladies at Truvy’s beauty parlor that she grows them only because that’s what old Southern ladies are supposed to do. She doesn’t even like them, but seems to be able to grow them with no problem. So what have I been… Read more »
I snipped some branches off my basil plant to get the whole thing branching and bushier, so I plucked these basil leaves and left them in water for later use. It’s been a few days and I’m ready to use them, so today I looked to make sure they weren’t doing anything funny in the water. Yep, they were. Nature finds a… Read more »
…and the takeaways I’ve gleaned from the internet. Can you eat pickling cucumbers? Yes. Conventional vs. organic fertilizer. I’m still confused. What is the difference? How do I know if my potatoes are ready to harvest? When flowers and stems are starting to die back. But I got this answer on Twitter from Longfield Gardens. Thank you again. Hip Hops… Read more »
There’s one method for gardening success that is completely counterintuitive to me: cut to promote growth. In many cases, if you make a cut in a plant’s branch, you promote more growth or flowering in that spot. This applies to a lot of succulents, trees and, as it turns out, vegetables. Here’s some advice I found on peppers: “Removing all flower buds… Read more »
With any gardening project, I always seem to reach a point where I’m not sure if things are going the way they should be. It’s that moment when things have been moving along, growing, and then things start to look a little off. I wonder if I need to be doing something differently to continue successfully. Our raised vegetable garden… Read more »