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Companion planting has a history as old as agriculture itself. The early Chinese used the mosquito fern as a companion for rice crops. The Native Americans used the system called The Three Sisters, which utilized Corn, Beans, and Squash together. It has been used to assist plants in their nutrient uptake, pest control, and pollination. It is commonly used in the Square Foot Gardening and Organic Gardening methods. It can also be utilized in Raised Bed Gardening and Container Gardening techniques |
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Frequent Inspection. Catch them early. One “colonizer” can produce up to 80 offspring in as little as a week and is capable of doing so several times. Slowly walk through your garden several times a week paying close attention to the underside of leaves. Also check for aphids on newly purchased plants and transplants. Don’t over fertilize. Aphids prefer the new growth that is found in abundance in overly fertilized plants. Use only slow release fertilizers. It is also a good idea to grow plants |
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Raised beds can add a whole new exciting dimension to your gardening experience. Raised beds are especially useful for gardeners with limited space in their yards. Even if you have virtually no space to grow plants, you can consider setting up a small raised bed on your patio or porch to grow a collection of tasty herbs and veggies or perhaps a variety of beautiful ornamental plants. Raised beds built at an appropriate level can also help reduce the aches and pains produced by kneeling or bend |
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What is Square Foot Gardening? Square foot gardening is a clever approach to growing food. It's easy to do, easy to manage, very adaptible, and it produces high yields of top-quality food. One square foot garden unit measuring 16 sq ft (1.5 sq metres) holds an average of 130 plants and produces enough vegetables for one person. A family of four can have fresh greens in abundance throughout the growing season and beyond from only 64 sq ft of growing space (6 sq metres). The idea behind square |
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Video: Making Bent Wood Trellis == Whenever I'm designing elements for my garden, I always keep in mind, that the more natural they are the better they seem to fit in and that's exactly what I did when I created this rustic trellis. But others have taken this idea a step further. Jim Long, author of the book Making Bentwood Arbors and Trellises, explains how to create these artistic garden ornaments. Jim Long, Author: I find that lots of people can't identify wood so, my rule of th |
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In this video, you will see how to improve your digital images using a program like Photoshop. This video covers, levels, hue/saturation, cropping, sizing, layers, saveing a file, naming a file and more. |
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Beans & legumes have nodules on their rootlets that will pump nitrogen from the environment into your soil -- making a more nitrogen-rich soil. Would be great to plant these either near heavy nitrogen feeders like: tomatos, corn & cruciferous vegetables. Or to rotate your crops and plant beans where the heavy nitrogen feeding veggies were planted the year before. |
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I just planted my Beet's seeds a few weeks ago and they are doing great! Beet is very easy to grow. Sow seeds during the spring season two weeks before the last frost. The ideal temperature for growing beets is 60° to 65°F. In cool-summer areas sow seeds every three weeks for continual harvest. In warm-summer areas sow in spring and again in fall so that roots mature during cool periods. Thin beet seeding to 4 inches apart once true leaves form, save the thinnings for salads. Make |
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Some plants needs an extra support to grow tall. Peas and Beans are an example of these kind of plants. Trellis structures can be as simple as a wooden stakes or as intricate as interwoven lattice. Plants are trained on a trellis to conserve space, increase light penetration into the plant, display the plants and fruits in an interesting way, improve air circulation, reduce desease, and ease harvesting. Set a stake at the same time that the plant goes into the ground and loosely tether the plant |
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My friend took the time to put some seeds together, however they did not sprout at all. She has heard that other people on her area were able to sow the seeds without using artificial lights. So with that in mind she thought it would be okay to put them outside, even though they have not sprouted yet, just for the fact that was getting warm outside and it is right around the beginning of May. There was also some rain for a few days, but they were inside this small "green house" |
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If you want to catch snails, create a bunch of make-shift "Chinese Tables", or very low table tops. You can make these out of old boards, placed on top of rocks or bricks. There should be about 3-6 inches of clearance under the table. They love to hang off the bottoms of these things, they accumulate there, as if it were a snail trap. Video: Picking off the snails from the snail trap. |
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Snails are mature when a lip forms at the opening of their shell. Before they mature, their shells are more easily broken, making them undesirable. For H. aspersa, commercial weight is 8 grams or larger. The nutrient composition of raw snails (per 100 grams of edible portion), according to information from the nutrient databank of France, is: * Energy: 80.5 kcal (337 kJ) * Water: 79 g * Protein: 16 g * Available carbohydrates: 2 g * Fiber: 0 g * Fat: 1 |
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Helix aspersa, the common western garden snail, is a close relative of the commercial French food snail, Helix pomatia. The practice of rearing snails for food is known as heliciculture. --- To Eat the Garden Snail: --- Catch a bunch of snails, without damaging them, and put them into an aquarium. To catch snails, wait until it rains, or put some plywood or other sturdy board near an area where you have seen snails. Make sure the underside of the boa |
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There are Stingless nettles. Under a meter tall, the smaller they are, the more nutritious. Chewing the leaf is the remedy for a sting. == From http://www.thebestofrawfood.com . Sergei reveals the ancient secrets of stinging nettles, where and how to pick them and how to eat them. Filmed during Sergei and Valya Boutenko's visit Amsterdam, The Netherlands in September 2008. More information on wild edible greens on Sergei's website: http://www.harmonyhikes.com/ |
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This is great to know when you go camping. -- Notes: Put your chicken and fixings in a pot inside the solar oven. Seal the over so that no pressure or air can escape. Hard to over-cook. Cooks very moist. Reflectors need to be adjusted every hour or so. You can also use a windshield screen reflector with and an oven or turkey bag. It can also be used to sterilize water. -- 230 degrees after 1 hour 2.5 hour partly cloudy - just under 300 deg |
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Learn from Green Deane how to identify and prepare Rumex (Sorrel) a spring time green and wild food around the world. eattheweeds.com . . Leaves look like a little sword Leaves turn pink when they start to die. Leaves are very smooth, but wrinkled. Pink and Red seeds Buckwheat family . . |
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Learn from Green Deane about Amaranth, a long-cultivated but also wild food, vegetable and grain. . . Vegetable Amaranth 1-2 feet high Grain Amaranth - much taller Leaves dark on top, silvery on bottom. Leaves alternate up the stem. Cousin to spinache. High in protein and minerals Can be used to make beer. . . |
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Garden Time - Don't Kill your Weeds, Eat Them Why apply chemicals to remove your weeds, when you can harvest them to eat! We wander through a backyard to assemble a salad with a plant expert --- • Eastern Blue violet - Viola sororia Mild Green, eat the young leaves. • Miner's Lettuce - Claytonia perfoliata Young leaves Northwest only. Delicious. • Wild Mustard - Brassica rapa Pungent green. Best tasting of all the mustards. Flowers. • S |
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The best way that I've found to keep track of your seedlings and starts is to draw a planting diagram. This way even if some dog, cat, snot-nose or other large gardening pest knocks down your labels and signs, you will know which is which. It's good to take pictures of your seedlings when they first pop up, to make note of what their non-cotelydon leaves look like. |
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A couple of Tips and Tricks to get the most out of your flower pictures. • Most digital cameras today have a flower icon somewhere. This flower button is made just for you! When you want to take pictures of a flower click this button, it will make your flowers look better every time. The flower function turns your lens into a bit of a micro-zoom lens, which will sharpen up-close objects. • Take the picture with the sun behind you, not in front of you. You want to capture the LIGHT |
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If you have seeds from past years and want to plant them it is totally fine, seeds should last for a long time. However there is still a risk of seeds not germinatings sometimes, due to the age of the seed. A good thing to do before planting old seeds is to test them first. You can do that by placing seeds on a wet paper towel folded in half in a sealed bag. First fold paper towel in half, then spray it with water, place seeds on paper towel and fold it again, forming a square. Spray more water |
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If your putting new grass sods yourself you might want to plan ahead and consider following some steps: 1. Kill all existing lawn/weed using Roundup to neutralize the soil 2. Use yard roller to smooth-out the soil 3. Use rotor tiller and till the ground 4. Water the ground to loosen up the soil 5. Install new sods with seams criss crossing 6. Use yard roller to even out the new sods 7. Water them thoroughly After round-up have had a few days to work (mainly s |
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You can also use leaves to make a nutritious "tea" for your plants. Simply wrap a small pile of leaves in burlap and immerse in a garbage can or large bucket of water. Leave for three days, then remove the "tea bag" and dump contents into the compost. Scoop out the enriched water with a smaller bucket and use to water your plants and shrubs. |
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If you have too many leaves to incorporate into the compost bin, you can simply compost the pile of leaves by itself. Locate the pile where drainage is adequate; a shaded area will help keep The leaf pile should be at least 4' in diameter and 3' in height. Include a layer of dirt between each foot of leaves. The pile should be damp enough that when a sample taken from the interior is squeezed by hand, a few drops of moisture will appear. The pile should not be packed too tightly. |
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The biggest chore with composting is turning the pile from time to time. However, with 'no-turn composting', your compost can be aerated without turning. The secret is to thoroughly mix in enough coarse material, like straw, when building the pile. The compost will develop as fast as if it were turned regularly, and studies show that the nitrogen level may be even higher than turned compost. With 'no-turn' composting, add new materials to the top of the pile, and harvest fresh compo |
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Start you compost pile on bare earth. This allows worms and other beneficial organisms to aerate the compost and be transported to your garden beds. Lay twigs or straw first, a few inches deep. This aids drainage and helps aerate the pile. Add compost materials in layers, alternating moist and dry. Moist ingredients are food scraps, tea bags, seaweed, etc. Dry materials are straw, leaves and wood ashes. If you have wood ashes, sprinkle in thin layers, or they will clump together a |
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For creating the perfect garden, the first thing you need to keep in mind is what type of garden you will have. There are many different choices and often it can be hard to pick just one, but hopefully you can narrow it down. But by narrowing it down, you’ll make the gardening experience easier on yourself and the plants. If all your plants are similar, then it shouldn’t be very hard to care for them all. Below are some of the main garden ideas for you to pick from. If you’re just looking fo |
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The most important organic vegetable gardening techniques begin with the soil. You should regularly add organic matter to your soil, using locally available resources wherever possible. The best thing to do is to add home made compost. Everyone has access to the raw ingredients of organic matter, because your lawn, garden, and kitchen produce them everyday. Decaying plant wastes, like grass clippings, fall leaves, and vegetable scraps from your kitchen, are the building blocks of compost. Adding |
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