Tips for a Healthy Vegetable Garden

The healthiest and best way to save money in today economy is to plant a garden for you and your family.

Organic Gardens

With all of the talk these days about the chemicals being used on our produce it’s no wonder more and more people are leaning towards Organic Gardens.

Organic gardening starts with the soil, it takes approximately 7 years to be able to deem produce organic. This means that no pesticides or chemicals were used either on the plants or in the soil for that length of time, this in turn makes the soil and anything grown in it “clean” and therefore can be deemed Organic.

Japanese Garden

Very different from western or American sty gardens, japanese gardening is a cultural form of gardening that is meant to produce a scene that mimics nature as much as possible by using trees, shrubs, rocks, sand, artificial hills, ponds, and flowing water as art-forms.

Flower Gardening

Flower gardens are becoming more popular every year.

Planet Enemies – Keeping them at bay

There are two basic ways to keep your plants enemies at bay:

Mechanical protection for the plants.

Applying insecticides and fungicides.

The first and most useful is the covered frame, such as a greenhouse. It consists usually of a wooden box, some eighteen inches to two feet square and about eight high, covered with glass, protecting cloth, mosquito netting or mosquito wire. The first two coverings have, of course, the additional advantage of retaining heat and protecting from cold, making it possible by their use to plant earlier than is otherwise safe. They are used extensively in getting an extra early and safe start with cucumbers, melons and the other vine vegetables.

For protecting newly-set plants, such as tomatoes or cabbage, from the cut-worm, there are stiff, tin, cardboard or tar paper collars, which are made several inches high and large enough to be put around the stem and penetrate an inch or so into the soil.

When applying poison powders, the home gardener should supply himself with a powder gun. If you are restricted to a single implement, however, it would be best to get one of the hand-powered, compressed-air sprayers. These are used for applying wet sprays, and should be supplied with one of the several forms of mist-making

Which Plants are Best for Your Garden?

Before buying plants carefully examine your garden to see how much sun and shade it gets, whether the soil is well drained or water logged and whether your land is sheltered or windswept. Once you have done this you’ll be better able to find the best plants for your situation; shade-loving plants for the sheltered areas, sun-lovers for the warm spots, drought-resistant plants for the parched areas which may be either sunny or shaded, and swamp plants for the poorly-drained parts.

Test your soil first, to determine the pH level of your soil and what kind of nutrients you need to add, if any. Is the soil acid or alkaline? Most plants prefer soil that is slightly acidic, but there are some that must have alkaline soil to grow.

Your Fall Garden

There are gardeners who don’t even consider fall gardening because of the winter frosts that might make an early appearance.

How to care for your house plants

There are just a few simply steps to ensure a healthy houseplant.

1.

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Tips for Container Gardeners

June 16, 2010 by admin  
Filed under Garden Care, Gardening Information

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Container gardens are wonderful for city dwellers who don’t have the land to garden. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening allows you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another.

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Safe Pest Control Tips

June 16, 2010 by admin  
Filed under Featured, Gardening Information

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Pest control while an important step in any healthy garden must be done with utmost consideration to safety; safety in terms of the plants, animals and humans. This holds especially true for those with vegetable and organic gardens. The main purpose of growing vegetables organically will be defeated if they become tainted with pest control chemicals.

Here are some long-term tips to make pest control less damaging and more environmentally friendly.

1. Get Physical

This is the hands on approach to pest control, picking grubs off by hand, creating barriers and traps and plugging holes. Snails can be found hiding in damp places under rocks and towrds the base of those plants with straplike foliage.

2. Add more bugs!

Encourage predatory insects such as green lacewings and dragonflies to feed on aphids and other pests that attack your plants. You can do this by placing a shallow bowl of water in the garden. Dragonflies especially will hover around water. Bacterial insecticides such as B. thuringiensis could also be used against caterpillars.

3. As a last resort you can turn to chemical pest control.

Organic pest control methods can be successful and the ingredients for many of the recipes can be found in the kitchen cupboards. If chemical sprays are really necessary, try and find the least-toxic. These include insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils, dehydrating dusts, etc.

4. Try Home Remedies

Recipes for alternative pest control include the following:

Against Green Aphids and Mites – Mix 1 tablespoon of liquid soap and a cup of vegetable oil. Dilute a teaspoon of this solution in a cup of water and spray on aphids and mites.

Against Cockroaches – Dusts of boric acid can be applied to cracks or entry points of these insects. Bay leaves on pantry shelves could also help in warding off these critters.

Make sure that the chemicals you use are made specifically for the insects you are targeting.

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