7 Fall Tasks to Prepare for Spring Garden

Don’t wait for spring to start preparing for your garden. There are a few things you can do now – in the fall – to reduce the amount of work and make your spring garden even more successful than ever!

Homegrown Pico de Gallo Recipe

You have tons of homegrown ripe tomatoes right about now and can’t eat them fast enough, right?  Well how about a fresh, healthy pico de gallo recipe right from my kitchen?  Pico de Gallo is such a versatile item and doesn’t only require corn tortillas to go with them. It can be spooned over chicken or fish, part of an omelet, or in a fresh burrito! You can make more than you immediately need and freeze in small portions for use later. What’s really cool about this recipe is that most of the ingredients can be grown right in your backyard, patio or balcony garden!

This is my recipe and although I’m a bit biased, I have to say it’s wonderful!

Winter Vegetable Gardening Outdoors

Summer is almost over, tomatoes are ripe, peppers and cukes are coming to an end. However, the end of summer doesn’t have to mean the end of your vegetable garden. There are many edibles that can be grown for harvest in the fall, winter or even over-wintered for harvest in spring.

Why Should I Grow Potatoes At Home?

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Since the big wave of low carb diets in recent years, potatoes have been somewhat blacklisted from the list of healthy foods. Although potatoes are high in starchy carbohydrates, they are very healthy and beneficial to our diets if prepared in healthful ways and in moderation. Potatoes are low-fat and full of essential vitamins, minerals and fiber – especially the skins. They have more potassium than bananas and contain a good amount of vitamin C and B6. They offer support for healthy blood pressure and clotting, digestive, immune and nervous systems. They also help to balance blood pressure and support muscle contraction and cell growth. However, if you fry potatoes or add other less than healthy foods as toppings on a baked potato, then yes they aren’t as healthy.

When it comes to a backyard garden, potatoes generally aren’t a vegetable that most people think about growing. However, there are several reasons to consider adding potatoes to your collection of home-grown veggies.

8 Reasons for Vertical Gardening

MonkeyPots Vertical Patio Garden

Vertical gardening is one of my favorite gardening subjects. I think it’s because growing vertically  offers solutions to such a wide array of gardening challenges. More people are implementing vertical gardening for a number of reasons. You might have heard about the rooftop gardens a growing number of restaurants are implementing. Or maybe you’ve even seen one of the wall gardens that are showing up in metro areas all over the world. 

 

Mad Cow Disease From Bone Meal in Your Vegetable Garden?

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Last week, I wrote a post on Organic Vegetable Garden Soil Preparation which discusses the elements and properties of healthy garden soil and how to amend it to get it that way, if otherwise. I received an awesome comment/question that I felt deserved to be a post all on its own.

A fellow garden blogger, Bill Brikiatis from Suburban Hobby Farmer, asked,

“I’ve heard from other bloggers that bone meal can be dangerous due to the potential for mad cow disease. Do you think there’s any truth to this?”

So the answer is….. (drum roll)…..

Organic Vegetable Garden Soil Preparation

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Soil quality is one of the most important factors in achieving high harvest yields, but is often the most overlooked for the beginner gardener. When I first took up gardening again as an adult I thought you worked the ground, planted your seeds, weeded and watered and presto! –  everything else took care of itself.  At least that’s how simple it was to grow my little garden when I was a kid. At that age, I wasn’t really concerned with the quality or measure of the bounty. As long as I got to eat a handful of sweet strawberries or chomp on a few carrots, it was all good. 

Definition of Days To Maturity – Planting Seeds or Transplants

Let’s talk about Days To Maturity in the context of gardening, which is the number of days until harvest.  This is one of the most important factors to understand and keep track of for small space gardeners and is especially true for gardeners in the northern states with shorter growing seasons or gardeners practicing succession planting. 

Vegetable Garden Planning – Intensive Gardening Series Finale

I’ve been spending so much time planning our own garden this year, especially with all the seeds we’re starting indoors this year, that this post is a few days later than promised. Sorry about that. Trying to squeeze everything in our small yard does take some time and effort, but well worth it at harvest time and each year gets easier once you get the hang of it.

If you have followed along throughout the Intensive Gardening Series, you already know what types of things to consider when planning your garden. It may seem daunting, but hang in there – we’ll take it step by step.  I’ll go through the main areas of consideration and I’ll also introduce a tool to help in your planning as well. No matter how much you want to just get out and start growing stuff, you will create a greater yield by taking the time to plan your garden layout first.

Companion Planting – An Intensive Gardening Method

Companion Planting is another Intensive Gardening Method used by the small space gardener to add to their array of tools in obtaining the best possible yield. By planting varieties that share properties that protect and nourish each other, you can plant a variety of vegetables tightly in a small space.

The following article will discuss how companion plants can attract beneficial insects and repel harmful ones, supply extra nutrients, be used as trap cropping, cover crops, and inter-planting which creates a diverse habitat that thrives.

Vertical Gardening – An Intensive Gardening Method

Last week we explored the Intensive Gardening Technique of using Raised Garden Beds. This week we bring forth the third installment of the Intensive Gardening Series of which discusses growing vegetables vertically.

One can use Succession Planting by growing cool and warm weather vegetables to extend the gardening season, however garden space cannot simply be added at will to a small city or suburban yard or patio garden. This is where growing vertically comes into the picture and can be one of the most important techniques for the small space gardener.

Raised Garden Bed Liners – To Use or Not to Use

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In response to a recent post on the advantages of raised garden beds, a reader posed an interesting question about using liners in raised beds that many folks might wonder about.

Advantages of Raised Garden Beds – An Intensive Gardening Method

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Last week we explored the Intensive Gardening Technique of Succession Planting. This week we discuss some of the benefits of using Raised Garden Beds.

Succession Planting Your Vegetable Garden – An Intensive Gardening Method

As mentioned last week, Succession Planting allows you to plant multiple crops in the same space during the year.  Most gardeners with limited garden space could benefit from using this Intensive Gardening Method.

Succession gardening could be implemented by 1) growing varying climate vegetables, by 2) growing early, then late maturing vegetable varieties and by 3) successively sowing vegetables for continuous harvests.

Should I Be Growing Vegetables from Seed

One question that I get a lot at this time of the year is “should I be growing vegetables from seed?”. There are many benefits of growing your vegetable garden from seeds versus purchasing transplants.

Probably the most prominant advantage to starting your garden from seed is the fact that the varieties of seeds available to the consumer is enormous whereas most local garden centers carry only a handful of vegetable varieties. Imagine growing a diverse array of flavorful, vibrantly colored tomatoes that you may have never even laid eyes on before. Most folks don’t even know that so many varieties of fruits and vegetables even exist and it’s quite an adventure to discover them. Here’s a pic of just some of the tomato varieties I personally grew last season – most of them heirlooms.