 Friday, July 31, 2009 by Barbara Pleasant (7 comments)
Yes, ratoons is spelled correctly, and my garden is full of them. By midsummer most of my lettuces are ratoons, as are all of the cabbage and broccoli. What is a ratoon? Derived from the Spanish word retoño (to resprout), ratoons are second crops that grow from the stumps or stubble of the first. This makes ratoon cropping different from a cut-and-come-again growth cycle, in which harvested leaves or stems are quickly replaced by new ones (chard and basil are prime examples). Ratoon crops regrow from the lowest part of the stem, or stump. Sugar cane and rice often produce sizeable ratoon harvests, as do some vegetables... Read more...
Categories: vegetable gardening |
 Friday, July 24, 2009 by Jeremy Dore (1 comments)
There’s no doubt that gardening is a great family activity. As well as exercise, fresh air and fun there is the prospect of encouraging healthy eating by growing your own fresh produce. Whether it be lending a hand on the vegetable plot or helping grandparents with the digging there are plenty of opportunities for growing together. So I thought I would round up some of the best ideas I have come across recently for encouraging adults and children to garden together... Read more...
Categories: gardening children family |
Friday, July 17, 2009 by Barbara Pleasant (20 comments)
As gardeners watch their tomato plants load up with green fruits, the question of whether or not to thin them can keep you up at night. To make things worse, thinning methods that work in one climate can prove disastrous in another – so much so that debates between American and European gardeners on the subject have led to nasty conflicts. In order to set the record straight – and help you grow your best crop of tomatoes – here’s a global report on thinning trusses of tomato fruits... Read more...
Categories: gardening tomato pruning |
Friday, July 10, 2009 by Jeremy Dore (3 comments)
Growing your own food is the best way to ensure that you know exactly what went into producing it. However, most gardeners are unable to be completely self-sufficient in food and have to also rely on fruit and vegetables grown commercially. It is this which makes the question of pesticide residues so important – what exactly is on the fruit and vegetables we buy? Should we only buy higher priced organic produce or is it OK to compromise? The best way to answer this is to look at the extent of the pesticide problem... Read more...
Categories: pesticide, fruit, vegetables |
Friday, July 03, 2009 by Barbara Pleasant (9 comments)
Many companion planting charts are based upon work in the 1930s that sought to relate to plants on an energy level and were constructed using dubious scientific methods. Does this mean that companion planting is worthless? Not at all! Few gardeners go a season without noticing some new benefit to companion planting in their gardens, and this is certainly true at my house. But instead of trying to capture ethereal energies that might be wafting about between plants, I use a common-sense approach to companion planting. Here are several companion planting tactics too logical to ignore... Read more...
Categories: gardening companion planting |
Friday, June 26, 2009 by Jeremy Dore (11 comments)
What would you most like to ban from your garden? That was the question we posed in our recent GrowVeg.com poll and the results show a fascinating mix of pests and troubles that afflict gardeners. There were all the usual suspects such as slugs, cats and deer but also many unusual answers ranging from ‘rollie pollies’ to ‘stink bugs’. So what can be done about the huge range of troublesome pests? Read more...
Categories: gardening pests slugs deer cats rabbits birds |
Friday, June 19, 2009 by Barbara Pleasant (7 comments)
Most gardeners in warm summer areas grow peppers (Capsicum annuum), which come in an endless array of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. All peppers originated in Mexico, and they retain enough of their tropical ancestry to make them a bit challenging to grow in home gardens. Ideal growing temperatures for peppers range between 68°F (20°C) at night and 86°F (30°C) during the day. Cooler temperatures slow the plants’ growth, while very hot temperatures often cause the blossoms to fall off rather than setting fruit. What’s a pepper-loving gardener to do? To get more peppers over a longer season, try these three tried-and-true strategies.
Read more...
Categories: gardening peppers pollination |
Friday, June 12, 2009 by Jeremy Dore (7 comments)
It is around this time of year that pests seem to appear from nowhere in the garden. Of all the insects that suddenly spring up, aphids are the ones that always take me by surprise – within a matter of days plants can be covered with one of the various varieties of them: whitefly, greenfly, blackfly, mealy aphids and root aphids. So just how serious is it when your garden comes under attack and what can be done to counter such an invasion? Read more...
Categories: organic gardening pests |
Friday, June 05, 2009 by Barbara Pleasant (9 comments)
In an intriguing comment to my blog on the world's best tomatoes, Linda from Northern California asked about “dry farmed” tomatoes, which are grown with little or no supplemental water. Linda says the dry farmed tomatoes grown by a neighbor have a remarkably intense, delicious flavor, and I’m not surprised. A little drought stress deepens the flavors of ripening tomatoes, melons, and several other garden crops. In fact, one of the reason commercially-grown specimens often taste flabby is because they are pumped up with water. Enter dryland gardening, in which every drop of water is regarded as precious... Read more...
Categories: gardening dryland water |
Friday, May 29, 2009 by Jeremy Dore (9 comments)
When it comes to feeding plants, nothing beats organic compost. Good compost contains the ideal range of nutrients which are released slowly into the ground as plants need them. Often, however, there is a valid reason to supplement plants with a fertiliser, such as when growing in less than ideal soil, or in pots and containers where the potting soil can gradually lose its nutrients. When choosing how to supplement plants the environmentally conscious gardener faces a dilemma: many commercially produced fertilizers are either chemical based or highly processed and shipped in difficult-to-recycle plastic bottles. But there is one brilliant alternative that you can grow yourself - comfrey... Read more...
Categories: gardening organic comfrey |