 Friday, July 23, 2010 by Barbara Pleasant (3 comments)
It was late January when I started my onions from seed, and last week we tenderly carried the main crop from garden to deck. Oh, happy day! A few shallots aren't quite ready, but having a fine assortment of onions curing in warm shade will make any gardener's day. But let's back up a bit to consider the fine points of how to harvest onions and prepare them for storage, because how you handle your mature onion bulbs will greatly affect how long they will keep. Some onions store better than others, but all will keep better if they are attentively harvested and cured... Read more...
Categories: storing onions |
 Friday, July 16, 2010 by Jeremy Dore (5 comments)
I have always been more of a practical gardener than an idealist. Although it is nice to have an array of pretty bedding flowers I am not inclined to invest the time or space for such luxuries: for me each plant has to earn its place in the garden and be productive in some way. This doesn’t mean that my vegetable plot is devoid of flowers however. Flowers play an important role in any organic garden but the criteria for selecting them are different to ornamental gardens – it’s not the size or colour of the flowers that count but their attractiveness to the right kind of insects... Read more...
Categories: flowers beneficial insects |
Friday, July 09, 2010 by Barbara Pleasant (12 comments)
Turning cucumbers into pickles is one of my favorite food preservation projects, mostly because I love pickles. Each year I grow about six plants of a pickling variety and half as many hybrid slicers, which produce enough to make a year’s supply of pickles. You can pickle any type of cucumber, but small ones work best. Using a trellis of some type makes my cucumbers more productive and easier to pick. Growing cucumbers up instead of out also keeps the fruits amazingly straight, so the fruits easier to clean and slice... Read more...
Categories: Preserve cucumber pickle |
Friday, July 02, 2010 by Jeremy Dore (4 comments)
When summer temperatures start to soar many people reach for the hosepipe and sprinkler to keep their lawn and garden looking good. It is convenient to have endless water ‘on tap’ but it is also very ecologically expensive – clean drinking water takes energy to produce and a sprinkler can use 1000 litres (200 gallons) an hour. That’s the same amount of water that a whole family uses in two days. Multiply that by millions of homes and it soon becomes apparent why this can be bad news for the regional water supply, often resulting in a hosepipe ban to conserve water. So what alternative exist for keeping your fruit and vegetables well watered? Read more...
Categories: gardening watering |
Friday, June 25, 2010 by Barbara Pleasant (11 comments)
The most beloved herb of summer, basil is the only culinary herb that smells as good as it tastes. For basil lovers, fresh is the only version that will do, because no preservation method adequately captures basil’s seductive flavor and aroma. Dried basil is usually a taste disaster, but several other methods give better results... Read more...
Categories: preserve basil |
Friday, June 18, 2010 by Jeremy Dore (14 comments)
If I had to pick a fruit that benefits from home-growing more than any other it would be strawberries. The taste of fresh strawberries heralds the arrival of summer for many people but modern methods of mass-cultivation often leave shop-bought varieties tasting bland or mushy. Contrast this with the soft fragrant strawberries picked from your own garden and the supermarket offerings seem very poor in comparison. For the best tasting perfectly ripe strawberries there is only one option: grow them yourself. Read more...
Categories: gardening organic strawberry |
Friday, June 11, 2010 by Barbara Pleasant (1 comments)
Perhaps a few people get lucky on their first try, but most gardeners spend several seasons learning how to grow broccoli. This is because garden broccoli has more precise cultural requirements compared to other vegetables. On every level – timing, soil fertility, spacing, and pest management – broccoli’s rather exact needs must be met. But once you figure out broccoli’s secret formula for success, you can look forward to bountiful yields of this popular and nutritious vegetable. Read more...
Categories: gardening broccoli |
Friday, June 04, 2010 by Jeremy Dore (8 comments)
Most gardeners have experienced the disappointment of carefully raising a vegetable crop only to have it damaged or destroyed by an invasion of pests such as slugs, aphids or other bugs. The traditional advice in such situations is to heavily spray crops with pesticides but many of us prefer to use nature's own organic controls for the food we are going to eat. Trap cropping is one of those valuable organic techniques and is regularly used by organic farmers yet few gardeners are aware of the benefits it offers... Read more...
Categories: organic gardening pests |
Friday, May 28, 2010 by Barbara Pleasant (6 comments)
Whether you call it coriander or cilantro, Coriandrum sativum is a controversial plant. If you were to line up six people and ask their opinion, four would praise the sprightly flavor of cilantro leaves, and two would make awful faces and come up with a descriptive phrase like this one, posted in response to a recent story in the New York Times: "mildewed canvas deck chair combined with the flavor of old window screen." Read more...
Categories: growing herbs coriander cilantro |
Friday, May 21, 2010 by Jeremy Dore (3 comments)
Earlier this week one of the large DIY Chain stores sent me their catalogue with 'Grow Your Own' proclaimed prominently on the front cover. Intrigued by what a store that sells bathroom suites could offer me for growing vegetables I took a look before relegating it to the recycling pile. I was amazed by how much they consider necessary equipment for vegetable gardening and how expensive it would be to purchase when most gardeners know there are cheaper and more effective ways to do things... Read more...
Categories: vegetable gardening economy |