-Jenn Hawthorne- When you think of fall gardening, you think of changing seasons, cooler temperatures, rain, and even snow on occasion. If you are considering a fall garden, maybe you have thought about where you might want to put it. One option for at least some of your fall planting could be growing vegetables in Smart Pots. I, personally, believe that Smart Pots are the best thing that has happened to the container garden industry since the trowel!!! Smart Pots invented the first … [Read more...] about Smarten Up Your Fall Garden
Organic gardening
A Guide to Simple Composting
-Gabrial House- Compost is one of the most nourishing and critical elements to a good organic garden. Compost not only feeds the plant in the garden it also feeds all of the wonderful creatures and bacteria that make living soil so vital and rich. Compost aids in aeration, water retention, as well as keeping the soil’s PH at a level the plants most prefer. Lots of good compost can even keep your plants disease- and pest-free! Let’s take a look at what it takes to make good compost from … [Read more...] about A Guide to Simple Composting
Fermented Hot Sauce
-Luis Guerra- Looking to add another ferment to your recipe book? Here is a good project to try with all those tasty peppers once the crops start coming in. As much as I love peppers on everything, sometimes there are just too many in my garden to eat before they go bad. Fermenting some of them for use in hot sauce is a great way to preserve the harvest. I really enjoy making fermented hot sauces, exploring how versatile the flavors of peppers can be. First, start with the peppers of … [Read more...] about Fermented Hot Sauce
Dealing with Pests in the Garden
-Chris Amaya- It’s mid year and the garden is blooming, the sun is ablaze, and the pests are rampant. I get several questions every week in the shop about infestations and what to do about them. The term “pest” can range anywhere from your neighborhood deer to tiny little specs in the dirt that are too small for the naked eye to see. For many people, the damage has taken a huge toll already that can set back the due date for fruits and vegetables. In this blog I specifically want to cover … [Read more...] about Dealing with Pests in the Garden
Fruit-Lover’s Paradise
-Pam Scott- “It’s the Berries!” A phrase hailing back to the 1920’s, expressed by my little grandmother, when something was “super good.” Berries are super good. There is nothing better than standing in the garden on a warm spring morning and eating the first strawberries off the plant. Having planted as many small fruits as I can fit into my small city garden, I have been enjoying a bounteous harvest of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and grapes for quite a few years. When … [Read more...] about Fruit-Lover’s Paradise
A Guide to Healthy, Organically-Grown Tomatoes
-Pam Scott- I love tomatoes! Canning them, freezing them, drying them, pickling them, roasting them and saucing them is my idea of fun. Tomatoes, basil and mozzarella define the taste of summer for me. Growing up in cool, dry, New England, I spent most every August canning tomatoes with my mother. You can imagine my despair when moving to the hot, humid,fungal jungle we call the South East. I found growing bountiful crops of tomatoes to be next to impossible.This went on for quite a … [Read more...] about A Guide to Healthy, Organically-Grown Tomatoes
To Organic, or Not to Organic, That is the Question
-Chris Amaya- As a home gardener, you have a lot to consider when choosing the right resources to fuel your hobby – everything from location, to fertilizers, to pest control, and even seeds. For years commercial farmers have used a variety of heavy salts to grow cash crops such as tobacco, corn, and soybeans to keep up with increasingly high demand. Unfortunately for the environment, these salts can build up over time and runoff into the water tables causing irreversible collateral … [Read more...] about To Organic, or Not to Organic, That is the Question
It’s time to improve your soil’s health
Fall is a great time to think about improving your soil’s health. We have all kinds of great resources at our finger tips this time of the year including leaf mulch, moisture, aged compost (hopefully you’ve been working on this), and cover crops. This is the time of year when your trees and perennial shrubs put their energy into their root systems. They have just spent the last growing season using up many of the nutrients in the soil they are growing in. In the natural world, say an … [Read more...] about It’s time to improve your soil’s health
It’s Garlic Time Again
It’s that time of the year when we garlic lovers need to be thinking about starting our next garlic crop. For those of us in the upper Southeast part of the country, the best planting time will be in November. Why November? Because for the cloves to develop nicely, they need a temperature between 32 degrees and 50 degrees fahrenheit. November tends to offer those kind of temperatures here in the southeast, but you can stretch this timing in either direction a bit. Later is better than earlier if … [Read more...] about It’s Garlic Time Again
How weeds can help you understand your garden
As cultivators, we are constantly competing with mother nature for growing space. If a space in your yard is left bare, you can be certain that some type of weed is going to move in, if the conditions are in its favor. Weeds, just like cultivated plants, thrive in conditions that are favorable for them to be successful. By observing the most prevalent types of weeds growing in one area, we can get an idea of the soil’s pH, nutrition content, moisture, compaction and can even help identify the … [Read more...] about How weeds can help you understand your garden
