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Thinking of a Kitchen Garden?

By On March 19, 2009 In Gardening With No Comments Permanent Link to Thinking of a Kitchen Garden?Permalink

Thinking of a kitchen garden

Gardener’s Supply’s Kitchen Garden Planner is a free tool on their retail website that allows you to plan your very own 3′ x 6′ raised garden. There are several pre-planned gardens to get your started or you can design your own if you are feeling adventurous.

Pre-planned choices include the All American, High Yield, Salsa and Tomato Sauce, and my favorite, the Plant It and Forget It. Once you select your plot, Gardener’s does all the work by listing the number of vegetables you’ll need, planting dates and a number of tools that will make your life easier (all of which can be found for sale on their website, of course).

Designing your own garden is easy as well. Simplly click and drag your desired choices into the grid and once again the Kitchen Garden Planner will offer hints on growing and harvesting.

The Kitchen Planner is a great place for beginners to learn about vegetable placement and also offers seasoned growers a few tips on raised bed gardening if they are looking to try something new.

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Source obtained from www.greendaily.com

DIY Seedling Pots

By On February 13, 2009 In Gardening With 1 Comment Permanent Link to DIY Seedling PotsPermalink

DIY Seeding Pots

Even if it is cold and wintery in many parts of the country, it is still time to start doing some planting for your spring and summer garden. Planting seeds now will give you a head start once it is time to put things int he ground and what better way to get started than to make your own seedling pots?

There are a few different options for making seedling pots. You can make little, mini newspaper pots for starting herbs and smaller plants. And if you don’t like that tutorial, this also tells you how to make smaller newspaper pots without using any tape.

You can also make seedling pots from the cardboard tubes from toilet paper and paper towels. Of course, you’ve all given up paper towels, but, I’ll bet you still have some toilet paper. This one takes a bit of advance planning though, as you need to have plenty of rolls ready to go already. You can double what you have by cutting the rolls in half as well. You might think about opening bottom flaps when you plant though so the roots have a better chance of pushing out into the garden.

You can also use those toilet paper tubes to grow carrots. This seems quite interesting to me because my carrots last year were too short due to our hard soil. This may end up being the use for my toilet paper tubes and I will use the drinking glass newspaper seedling pots for everything else. If you’d prefer square pots and don’t mind some folding, these origami newspaper pots are pretty cool, and would be good for larger plants.

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Source obtained from www.greendaily.com

Winter Gardening Tips

By On October 9, 2008 In Gardening With No Comments Permanent Link to Winter Gardening TipsPermalink

Winter gardening tips
As you pull in your harvest, you don’t necessarily have to bid your garden adieu for the winter. Of course, where you live may restrict your growing (not much grows in snow). For many of us, we can have fresh herbs and produce year round.

  • Some vegetables that grow well in fall and winter are spinach, beets, carrots, and even broccoli.
  • Familiarize yourself with your hardiness zone. This will help you determine just what to grow this fall and winter.
  • Planting in raised beds improves drainage and allows the soil to warm up more quickly.
  • If you use a lot of containers for your herbs, bring them inside and sit them them in a south facing window.
  • For areas with temperatures that hover around 35 to 40 degrees during the winter, you might want to take Sea’s advice and build a cold frame box. This glass lidded strucure creates a mini greenhouse for your garden.

Even if you can’t grow produce, there are plenty of other ways to prepare your garden for spring.

  • Continue to add to your compost pile and make sure to keep it aerated.
  • If you are able, plant some clover, rye or vetch in your garden to add some organic material to the soil.
  • Add corn gluten meal in mid-February to prevent weeds from sprouting.

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Source obtained from www.greendaily.com

4 Ways To Use A Cold Frame

By On September 29, 2008 In Gardening With No Comments Permanent Link to 4 Ways To Use A Cold FramePermalink

No matter what your climate, these plant shelters expand your gardening options

by Adrianna Vargo

4 ways to use a cold frame

A few years ago, while driving with my family through the countryside of Bulgaria, I noticed how strikingly similar the landscape was to that of central Virginia. I also noticed that nearly every home had a garden plot, a grape arbor, and a cold frame of some sort. It made me realize how ancient and universal the practice of using cold frames is.

A cold frame is a simple structure that utilizes solar energy and insulation to create a microclimate within your garden. For those of you who have harvested and eaten a salad of fresh greens in February or have flowers blooming well past frost, you know the attraction of using cold frames. You also know how easy they are to make and use. Although we have a greenhouse on our farm, space is always limited, so we rely heavily, especially in spring and fall, on our cold frames to overwinter plants, extend the growing season, start seeds, and harden off plants.

For whatever purpose you want to use a cold frame, you need to keep in mind a few basic factors. First, some plants fare better in cold frames than others, with low-growing, cool-season plants being the best suited. Second, the type of cold frame you use dictates how much protection you can offer your plants. In all cases, the main conditions you need to monitor and control are temperature, sunlight, moisture, and wind exposure.

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