Category: Growing

11 More Tips for the Home Garden

1/13/2021

You guys were so enthusiastic about my quick list of gardening tips I posted last week. Thanks for that! And many of you asked for more quick bits of info to apply to your own growing spaces. So, without further ado, here’s a few more things to keep in mind for the growing season:

Learn companion plant combinations. They hugely benefit crop health and yield (I.e. plant tomatoes and carrots together, avoid garlic and broccoli together, etc.).
An upside-down tomato cage is a great cucumber trellis. It works for zucchini too!
Nasturtiums are pollinator attractors, delicious edible flowers for humans, and deter pests from the garden.
Allysum is a great pollinator attractant and companion crop. In addition you can mulch it right back into your soil after it dies for a nutrient boost.
Plant tender lettuces under your tomatoes. They appreciate the partial shade and contribute nutrients that the tomatoes love to the soil.
Spray your walkway weeds with 30% industrial strength vinegar. This is much stronger than traditional vinegar. Spray on during a sunny morning. By night, the weeds are dead. Get the vinegar on amazon!
A garden that is watered everyday is less hardy than a garden watered every other. The latter has a longer root system as it reaches for water.
Sprinkle cinnamon on seedling soil when they’re in trays when starting. This keeps mold and gnats away.
Volesscram is an all natural essential oil and blood 🤮 product that can be sprinkled on garden pathways to deter voles.
If you have a slug problem, use a shallow dinner plate and pour beer on it at dusk. By morning, the slugs should have been attracted to the beer and drown.
For pillbug infestations (and for slugs too), place a scrap piece of lumber in your affected garden bed at dusk. In the morning remove the board and all the accumulated slugs and pillbugs that are stuck to it out of the garden.

Happy growing!

12 Tips for the Home Garden

1/4/2021

I have been growing my own food in some form or another for almost 20 years. I started with containers on a patio then upsized my growing operation with each house I moved to. I don't know everything about gardening by any means, but I've experienced and learned a lot. So here's some tips I want to share with you as you start planning your next garden. I hope it helps!

Grow beans on your tallest trellis because they grow the fastest
Plant small squash and melons at the base of your sturdiest trellis because they weigh the most. Hammocks might be needed later on for the fruit.
Place a pea seed in your finished compost. If it sprouts, the compost is ready. If it doesn't, more time is needed.
Use row cover over your cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, romanesco and brussels sprout plants to prevent an infestation of cabbage worms.
Never, ever use hay as mulch in the garden; it's filled with seeds and will turn your garden into a field of grass in no time. Use straw instead.
Peas are the first crop to be planted in the garden. When the soil is no longer a frozen rock (aka "workable") and reaches roughly 45F, you can sow those seeds.
Never use bamboo poles for pea plants. They can't grip the poles and will sag.
Rotate crops always. If you're stumped on where to rotate plants to, follow the adage, "Beans, then roots. Greens, then fruit".
When you walk past your tomato plants in the summertime, give the blossoms a tap with your finger. It'll help distribute pollen and increase your crop yield.
Got aphids in the garden? Add ladybugs. They'll eat the aphids and leave when the aphids are gone.
Water motion sprinklers are the best deterrent for garden intruders. A deer or gopher will happily circumvent a fence if they can find a way. But they won't like a blast of water.
Plant radishes around cucumbers to prevent beetles.

There's so much more I could share but we'll call it good for now.

How to Know how much to grow

1/3/2021

When it comes to growing your own food, the most common question I receive is, “How much of each crop do I plant?” Every person or family eats differently and favors certain crops. And some folks (like myself) grow for fresh eating and preservation. So here’s my advice: make a grocery list. What do you buy? How much? How often? Grow that. For example:

My family eats garden fresh tomatoes raw a couple of times per week (excluding all the Sungolds that never leave the confines of the garden before I eat them). We eat tomato sauce twice per week in pastas and pizza so I need about 104 pints of canned sauce. Take a look at your favorite tomato variety... what is the yield like? Different plants produce different amounts. In short, I personally grow 30-35 tomato plants. This provides us with enough fresh and canned tomatoes for a year. Plus I have some left to donate to the food pantry.

Calculating how much food to grow takes time. But if you’re serious about self-sufficiency and security when it comes to produce, it’s well worth it. Take some time to analyze your consumption and cross reference that with what plant varieties you like to grow. Therein lies your answer.

11 More Tips for the Home Garden

12 Tips for the Home Garden

How to Know how much to grow

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