Category Archives: Plant Care

General Gardening Wisdom, Plant Care

Handy Tips to Increase Your Harvest

 

Simple steps will produce a higher yield with succession planting

Gardening is often considered to be a pretty straightforward process, where a gardener sows the seeds and then they grow into nice juicy fruits and vegetables.

While some beginner gardeners know that this is hardly the case, weathered gardeners know a lot depends on the gardener.
What and how much is produced is directly related to the experience level of the gardener.

The following tips will help you unlock your garden’s full potential resulting in your plants to produce a lot more.
You will learn how to use the wisdom of nature and the soil itself, at the hand of an experienced gardener.

And finally, you will learn how to take full advantage of the last warm days this year.

Click ‘NEXT’ below to read all about the tips on the next page.

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General Gardening Wisdom, Organic Gardening, Plant Care

Why You Should Have Your Own Seed Bank

 

More sustainability and less dependence of the Big Agriculture Means We Can Look Better After Ourselves

Farmers and gardeners each year purchase seeds from big companies and corporations so they can plant some fruits and vegetables in their gardens or farms. This doesn’t have to be the case, though.

For centuries, our ancestors collected their own crop seeds and reused them the next year, or stored them (sometimes for several years).

In the following article you will learn why it’s highly advisable to keep your own seeds and reuse them for the next year. You will learn how to do that and how to best store them.

And finally and most importantly, you’ll also learn how to pick the best of your seeds and in doing so, increase the overall quality of your crop.

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Insects & Pests, Organic Gardening, Plant Care

Want Healthy Peppers – What To Look Out For

 

These pests and diseases will often damage your peppers, learn how to fight them

Like most vegetables and fruits, your peppers are not immune against the “attention” from a wide range of insects and pests.

Don’t despair though. Find out which are the most common pests and diseases are and how to eradicate them before it is to late.

With most pests and insects, speedy action can help save your crop.  This requires you to be vigilant and to keep a close watch on your growing plants.

Identify any potential issues quickly and take action before it spreads.

Since your organic garden isn’t treated with pesticides and insecticides, you should be expecting all these little inhabitants among your plants. There are very easy and simple (and perfectly organic) methods of removing them. Just read on.

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General Gardening Wisdom, Organic Gardening, Plant Care

Sweet Potato: Here is How to Grow and Harvest It

 

These root plants can grow in virtually any conditions – from rich to poor soil

If you have never thought of growing sweet potatoes, now is the perfect time.

In the following article you will learn which the perfect conditions are and how to harvest your sweet potatoes. You will learn how to better care for them and what practices to avoid if you want them to grow healthy.

You will learn how to plant them and which problems you may encounter, and of course, how to handle them well. You will also learn how to store them after the harvest, so they can remain fresh for months.

Let us know if you grow your own sweet potatoes and what you found, that work for you.

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General Gardening Wisdom, Plant Care, Tomatoes

7 Mistakes To Avoid When Growing Tomatoes

 

Find out how to avoid these common mistakes and grow great tomatoes

Many gardeners had experienced those moments when they pick a tomato only to see the cat-face at the bottom. Or they pick the tomato and the bottom got rotten is rotten.   Why does this happen, what am I doing wrong?

Unfortunately, most of these are the result of bad gardening and care. Some people call them these the 7 deadly sins of tomato growing.

In this article you’ll read what the causes and solutions are. You’ll also get a bonus tip. Part of being a gardener means you will always learn something new about your garden.  Find out how you too can grow awesome tomatoes …

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General Gardening Wisdom, Organic Gardening, Plant Care

Expert Gardeners Share 7 Tips For Greater Yields

 

Expert gardeners share these 7 secrets for better produce and much higher yields throughout the season.

It is no secret that one of the fasted ways of learning, is to learn form an expert.  Read what these experts are saying.

You may think that once you place those seeds in the ground, they will just sprout and give you what fruits they can. This is a common but very basic mistake most first time gardeners make. A better approach or more correct way of thinking is that you still need to take special care for your plants, and they will reward you with even more and better produce.

You can improve the yield capacity of your garden soil by following these 7 great tips, shared by experienced gardeners. Your garden plants will thank you with an awesome crop!

Remember to share this with those closest to you.

Imagine harvesting nearly half a ton of tasty, beautiful, organically grown vegetables from a 15-by-20-foot plot, 100 pounds of tomatoes from just 100 square feet (a 4-by-25-foot bed), or 20 pounds of carrots from just 24 square feet. Yields like these are easier to achieve than you may think. The secret to superproductive gardening is taking the time now to plan strategies that will work for your garden. Here are seven high-yield strategies gleaned from gardeners who have learned to make the most of their garden space.

1. Build Up Your Soil

Expert gardeners agree that building up the soil is the single most important factor in pumping up yields. A deep, organically rich soil encourages the growth of healthy, extensive roots that are able to reach more nutrients and water. ……..

The fastest way to get that deep layer of fertile soil is to make raised beds. Raised beds yield up to four times more than the same amount of space planted in rows. ………..

2. Round Out Your Beds

………A rounded bed that is 5 feet wide across its base, for instance, will give you a 6-foot-wide arc above it—creating a planting surface that’s a foot wider than that of a flat bed. That foot might not seem like much, but multiply it by the length of your bed and you’ll see that it can make a big difference in total planting area……….

3. Space Smartly

……….Avoid planting in square patterns or rows. Instead, stagger the plants by planting in triangles. By doing so, you can fit 10 to 14 percent more plants in each bed.

Just be careful not to space your plants too tightly…………

4. Grow Up

No matter how small your garden, you can grow more by going vertical. ………..

Growing vegetables vertically also saves time. Harvest and maintenance go faster because you can see exactly where the fruits are. And upward-bound plants are less likely to be hit by fungal diseases thanks to the improved air circulation around the foliage…………

5. Mix It Up

Interplanting compatible crops saves space, too. Consider the classic Native American combination, the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. Sturdy cornstalks support the pole beans, while squash grows freely on the ground below, shading out competing weeds. This combination works because the crops are compatible……….

6. Succeed With Successions

Succession planting allows you to grow more than one crop in a given space over the course of a growing season. That way, many gardeners are able to harvest three or even four crops from a single area…………..

7. Stretch Your Season

Adding a few weeks to each end of the growing season can buy you enough time to grow yet another succession crop—say a planting of leaf lettuce, kale, or turnips—or to harvest more end-of-the-season tomatoes.

To get those extra weeks of production, you need to keep the air around your plants warm, even when the weather is cold, by using mulches, cloches, row covers, or coldframes……….

Article Source:  Read the full article in Rodales organic Life
Image Source: Harvest To Table

General Gardening Wisdom, Plant Care

GMO Cross-Contamination – Cross it Out of The Equation

 

Here is the powerful secret of avoiding cross-pollination and still yielding organic corn crops no matter how close you are to GMO crops

For many organic farmers it is unfortunate to be in the vicinity of GM crops. The risk of the organic crops to be cross-contaminated with the GM crops is very high, and seemingly almost unavoidable. But don’t despair. There’s a solution to this problem. It is actually very simple and easy, and requires almost nothing special from you.

As you read the following article you will learn how to outsmart the GM corn crops, the pollination itself and take full control of how your corn crops will grow. It does sound like magic, but the solution is amazingly simple and even intuitive. Read the article and thank us later.

Remember to spread the word by sharing …

Enjoying your organic corn harvest about now? Corn is usually a July or August crop. At House in the Woods Farm, we plant our corn early. We harvested our corn in late June and were offering it to CSA customers for Independence Day weekend.

We grow our own organic corn because we want organic corn. I wouldn’t want all my efforts at organic corn tainted by a genetically modified variety. It’s an issue for those of us surrounded by GMO feed corn crops in particular. Cross-pollination with feed corn will take the sweet right out of your sweet corn.

We are beating the likelihood of GMO cross-pollination by being the early corn. It is a simple solution to a complicated problem. Be the early corn! …………

………..We start the seedlings in trays about the second week of April and plant them out in early May. Our seedlings have a jump start ahead of weeds since they are transplanted a few inches tall. ………….

We love the hybrid variety we tested this year! It is called Luscious. For organic production, we need protection from the worms that can sneak into corn. Luscious features a closed husk that keeps bugs out. I wonder if our early season was too early for the worm too. Luscious is particularly cold tolerant, which is ideal for early planting soil conditions. ………….

Read the full article in Mother Earth News.

Source: Mother Earth news

Image Source: www.motherjones.com

General Gardening Wisdom, Insects & Pests, Plant Care

8 Tips To Fighting Insects and Other Garden’s Invaders

Slugs, ants, ear-worms, mildew and fungus – these are all a frustration to the organic gardener. Learn how to win the battle, organically

Organic gardens tend to attract all sorts of creatures and plant life, but not all of them are beneficial like bees. You as a gardener have probably spent countless hours devising ways of removing these pests and insects from your garden. And to stay on the sustainable side, you don’t want to use any chemicals. 

You will be happy to learn that you don’t need chemicals to finally solve some of the long-lasting battles with ants, slugs and snails, white flies and even fungus and mildew. You will learn 8 easy and quick methods for taking control of your garden once and for all.  

Remember to share with your organic gardening friends.

Ever since gardeners went organic in their vegetable gardens, natural remedies for common garden pests have shot off the roof. Many store depots that concentrates on gardening products went overtime in developing environment friendly, inexpensive, and readily available ingredients that can be made to combat these common and destructive garden problems. In fact, gardeners also went on to experiment on what is the best solution for their own garden problems until they perfected their own formulas on how to  stop and control the different problems that have risen in their area. Today, there are so many ways on how to deal with common garden problems organically. Here are some of them.

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Aphids, spider mites, and white flies are all allergic to liquid soap………… Spray the soap spray solution to the leaves of the plants in your garden. Make sure that both sides of the plants leaves are sprayed with your soap spray solution.

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Great in treating mildew and other plant fungus, milk spray is very easy to do. In a container, add an equal part of milk and water. Mix properly and spray it to the infected plants in your garden. ………..

Believe it or not, snails and slugs are drawn to beer. In a small container, pour in some beer until it is full. Place the container with beer near your garden plants and when the slugs and snails climb into the container to take a sip, then they can no longer climb back up and in turn the slugs and snails will drown in the container.

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In a bowl, mix sugar and borax. If borax in unavailable, you can also use corn mill.  After mixing, sprinkle the ants’ route with the solution. The ants will gather the sugar-borax mixture and bring it back to their nest. Since borax and corn mill are deadly to ants, when the ants consume the mixture, it will kill them.

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Read the full article and all 8 tips in Fresh Organic Gardening

 

Source: Fresh Organic Gardening

Image Source:  www.trendtenreviews.com 

General Gardening Wisdom, Plant Care

What Einstein Said About Bees

 

Learn how to attract bee colonies and improve your garden (and nature’s) ecosystem

We all know that the bee colonies are collapsing on a large scale world-wide. If we don’t act soon and take action, one day we may live without bees. And since bees help plants pollinate and grow fruit, we may suffer the result that the ecosystem will collapse as well.  If Einstein thought it was important to make reference to a world without bees, we better take note and act upon it now.

Every person should take responsibility and see what part they can play.

In the following article you will learn five methods of improving your garden to be bee-friendly and welcoming.  If Einstein thought it was important to make reference to a world without bees, we better take note and act upon it now.

The genius Albert Einstein once said “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”. If this fact is true, then we should all be panicking right now. There are 4,000 species of bees around the world. And all these bees are in danger. According to statistics that was taken in the past six years, a total of 10 million beehives have collapsed in North America alone. Scientists are now calling this phenomenon as the Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD.  The use of chemical pesticides and insecticides are just some of the reasons of the said beehive collapse…………

So, how can we help in increasing the population of our pollinators? We can do this by attracting them and letting them forage and set up their colonies in our garden………..

Fruit bearing trees in your garden makes for perfect nesting sites for bees. Dead trees and logs can also be used. If you have no trees in your garden, then the post of your fences can be a good substitute………

Pesticides will drive away your pollinator insects instead of attracting them. So, if you want your plants to be visited by bees, then stop using pesticides of any kind unless it is really needed. ………..

Plant your bee friendly plants in an area where there is a good access to sunlight. Bees prefer a sunny spot compared to a shaded area in the garden…………

For more information and for a complete list of plants you may consider for your garden, read the full article in Fresh Organic Gardening

Article Source:Fresh Organic Gardening

Source image: Click Here

General Gardening Wisdom, Plant Care

Learn A “Shady” Trick To Increase Garden Yields

A Gardener Reveals His Solution to Optimizing Unused Margins

Have you ever wondered what to do with those shady areas in your garden? If you have crops there, you know from experience, that the yield is lower than on the sunny patches.

You will be happy to learn that there is a way to put those shady margins to good use. You can easily transform your garden in such a way so that no area remains unused. If you’re curious how to do that, read the article and learn all the solutions and good practices. You will even learn how to rearrange your garden so you contribute to the eco-system.

Making your home garden productive is an in-depth and gradual process.    ……..

Assessing where the best sun is and where different microclimates lie can begin to help define use areas.  As each exposure and conditions create a different microclimate, you may have three to four distinct areas at your home, each with their own strengths and setbacks — even in a small urban lot. Best to work with the forces of nature to create plant groupings that reflect the microclimate of each area.

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As for a commercial example, if you were to try to grow two acres of carrots on a parcel of land, but only 3/4 of that land is in full sun, you may have trouble with carrot yields in the shadier area.  Would it not make more sense to work with the lay-of-the-land and plant something more shade-loving in that shadier area?

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As for the rest of the property, work with marginal or shady areas by assessing plants that don’t mind the shade. Many greens and culinary herbs originate in meadows and forest under-stories where the light is dappled. Because they do not have the pressure to produce fruiting bodies, greens are able to stay healthy in less than full sun.

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One simple addition that I love is to plant hearty annuals in the basins at the base of each fruit tree. Particularly when using drip irrigation, there is already a water source at each fruit tree. In this way, the secondary understory crop is acting as a green mulch for the fruit tree, reducing weeds as well as slowing evapotranspiration.

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My solution for these marginal margins is to plant native plants and drought-tolerant Mediterranean species………

As for the natives, they can provide insectary zones adjacent to your crops, which will ensure that your food crops get regularly pollinated. Think of these native flower zones as apartment complexes for beneficial insects. It is my great joy to return to a garden I have designed and see resident bee populations able to stay in the vicinity due to year-round pollen on-site.

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Source: Read the full article in Mother Earth News
Image Source: From an article in Money Crashers