Make your own fertilizer, it's all natural and inexpensive

Saturday, April 20, 2013

If you want to make your own fertilizer, here is an easy, cheap recipe.

For one cup of fertilizer:

1/3 cup of green sand (potash and minerals)

1/3 cup of rock phosphate or bone meal (phosphorous and minerals)

1/3 cup of alfalfa or soybean meal (nitrogen)

1 Tbl Azomite (70 minerals and trace elements)

This is good for 40 quarts of potting soil.  Just mix it in with compost to rejuvenate your old potting soil for this season.  You can add up to 50% of compost to the potting soil.  Compost brings not only nitrogen, but also microbes that boost the plants ability to take up nutrients from the soil.  If you do not want to completely remove the soil to mix in compost, remove at least the top few inches and mix in compost.

Is also great for the garden as well.  It is best to either fertilize and then immediately apply mulch at a rate of 5 pounds per 100 square feet.  Or you can scratch in 2 tablespoons around the roots of each plant if not applying a mulch to keep the fertilizer in place.

Another great thing about natural fertilizers is that you can't burn up a plant with too much like chemical fertilizers.  For fruit bearers, like tomatoes, if you use too much, you will get a jolly green giant plant and no tomatoes because nitrogen stimulates leaf growth.  More is not necessarily better.

Vegetables you can grow in pots

Sunday, April 14, 2013

If you only have pots for your veggies, you can grow almost anything you can in the ground.  There has been a renaissance in growing your own vegetables in small spaces so development of compact, dwarf and patio varieties have proliferated.

Any varieties listed for a smaller pot will be happy in a larger pot, too.  There are many more varieties out there than listed below.  Just look at the seed packet for terms like patio, compact, or dwarf.

For containers 8” wide by 6-8” deep:

Carrots-Thumbelina, Parmex, Tonda di Parigi 

Greens-arugula, corn salad, cress, small pac choi like Tatsoi, purslane

Lettuce or Kale-any type that you are going to continually harvest and not grow into full heads.

For containers 10” wide by 10” deep or larger, these will grow well:

Carrots-Atlas, Little Finger, Adelaide, Short n Sweet

Eggplant with small fruits-Bambino, Casper, Fairytale, Neon, Patio Mohican, Slim Jim, White Egg

Greens-French sorrel, salad burnet, spinach

Herbs-any.  Mediterranean herbs love having dry feet.

Lettuce-Little Gem, Tennis Ball, Tom Thumb if growing to full heads

Peppers, compact types-Blushing Beauty, Chili Pepper Krakatoa F1, Habanero, Hungarian Yellow Wax, Sweet Pepper Ingrid, Prairie Fire, Red Delicious, Sweet Pickle, Zavory

Radishes-Amethyst, Cherry Bell, Pink Slipper, Poloneza, Red Head, Rudi

For containers 14-16” wide and 10” deep or larger:

Beans-compact bush types , Runner Beans

Beets

Broccoli raab

Celery

Chard

Cucumber, compact bush types-Lemon, Little Leaf, Suyo, Salad Bush, Fanfare, Sweet Success. 

All types of eggplant

Horseradish

Kale

Okra-Little Lucy

Onions-Apache, Pompeii or the perennial Egyptian Onion

Peas-dwarf bush types

All types of peppers (sweet peppers tend to be more productive in the ground)

Tomatoes, compact types-BushSteak, Celebrity, Daybreak, Johnny’s 361, Legend, Patio Princess, Sweet Baby Girl, Sweet n Neat F1

Turnips

Summer squash, compact bush types-Gold Rush, Midnight F1, Venus F1, Patio Star

Containers 20” wide by 16” deep:

Beans-any bush type, more compact pole types (look for the ones have vines 6’ or less or you can pinch off the longer types)

Broccoli

Lettuce-all varieties

Peanuts

Peas-all bush types and more compact pole types (look for ones that vine 6’ or less)

Potatoes

Pumpkins-miniature

Shallots

Sweet potatoes

Winter squash, compact bush types-Butterbush Butternut

For really large containers on the scale of a half whiskey or wine barrel:

Beans-all pole beans

Carrots-all varieties

Cucumbers-bush and vining types

Summer squash-Bush Baby, Space Miser, Egg Ball, Papaya Pear

Tomatoes

Watermelons

Winter squash-Honey Bear, Carnival, Discus Bush Buttercup

When growing veggies in containers, they will require more watering and more liquid fertilizer than if they were in the ground.  In the summer, you may have to water some water lovers every day.

To reduce watering, purchase or make pots that have a water reservoir in the bottom.  A couple on the market today are “Earthbox” and “Grow Box”.  With these type of pots, you can water weekly.  They are easy to make out of 5 gallon buckets or other plastic containers.

Extending or starting the garden earlier

Cloche to protect tender plant

Saturday, April 13, 2013

It is spring, but you are dreaming of summer veggies.  What to do?  Try these season stretchers!

The first thing you can do to extend the season is to start your seeds indoors or purchase plants from your neighborhood nursery or big box store.  Basil, tomatoes, and rosemary are already at my neighborhood stores.

To get your plants a safe early start, you can buy cloches, Wall of Water, a green house, or use a fabric covering to put your plants in or under.  If you are using a cloche or green house, be careful to vent anytime the sun is shining or you will fry your plants.

Be careful if using a greenhouse or cloche.  When the sun is out, it gets hot inside the plastic fast!  Be sure to open the greenhouse or cloche so you don't fry your plant.

Another trick is to lay clear plastic over your garden bed two weeks before you are planning on planting.  Make sure the soil is watered well first.  Clear plastic will raise the soil temperature by 8-14 degrees F.  This gives your plants a head start when they are placed in the pre-warmed soil.

You can either remove the plastic, plant, and then cover with mulch or leave the plastic in place and cut slits into the plastic and plant through the slits.  I personally don’t like to leave the plastic in place and use mulch.

Some would think that black plastic would give an even bigger temp boost, but it does not.  Temps will raise by 3-5 degrees F.

What we planted this week end

Monday, April 8, 2013

It finally felt like spring!  It actually got into the 70’s on Sunday.  It is forecasted to rain many days this week.  Perfect spring growing conditions!

This week end, we planted Windsor fava beans, Ozark Beauty strawberry plants, Red Sails lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Packman broccoli, 45 Day Golden Cross cabbage, Space Hybrid spinach.

The bulbs have really taken off.  The daffodils, hyacinths, and crocus are all blooming right now.  The forsythias are in bud and should be blooming this week.

Even if you only have a patio, you can grow potatoes

Drawing of a potato grow bag

Saturday, March 23, 2013

If you love potatoes, try growing some of the exotic varieties that are out there, like fingerling or blue potatoes.  You can find all kinds of great varieties in todays seed catalogs.  Along with the surprising number of different kinds of seed potatoes available, there are also many different ways to grow them without actually planting in the garden!

The potato is a native of South America and can be found in the wild from North America to Chile.  There is an amazing variety of potatoes grown in South America, many color and sizes.  It originated from an area in southern Peru/northwest Bolivia.  It was cultivated 7000-10000 years ago.  It took until the 1700’s for the potato to arrive in the colonies by the way of Irish immigrants.

Tubers are good source of fiber, B vitamins (B6, thiamin, niacin, pantothenic acid, folates), vitamin C, and minerals iron, manganese, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, and copper.  Potato nutritional info  Most of the nutrition is in the skin.  If you want even more nutrition, try some of the wonderful colors available today.  Nutrition info for blue and yellow potatoes 

Potato plants produce tubers along the stem so the more you can build up soil around the stem, the more potatoes you will harvest.  Since most of the action of potatoes occur underground, a light, well drained soil will give the highest yield of potatoes.  Adding sand and compost can be very beneficial.   

If gardening in a small space, there are lots of options of potato growing bags on the market now.  It follows the same concept as trenching or mounding in a garden bed.  They also do well in repurposed whisky barrels.  A pot 30”deep and 20” across is best.  Fill a third with potting soil, then add soil as the vine grows.

To give your potatoes plenty of loose, rich soil in a garden bed, dig a trench down about a foot, mix in compost, put mixed soil and compost 4" in bottom of trench and place eyes up in the trench.   Plant seed potatoes 3” deep and 10-12” apart.   When the potatoes have leaves showing, add another 3-4" of soil.  Continue to add as potatoes grow until trench is filled.  If planting in hard soil, you can mound the earth, mulch or straw around the plant as it grows.

Seed potatoes should be planted 2-3 weeks before the last frost (when the early daffodils bloom).  You can plant successively to extend the harvest until the dogwoods bloom.  You can continue to plant until May, but may only get fingerling size potatoes before the vines die back in the summer.

Early potatoes can be harvested when the first flowers appear.  Dig the potatoes when the foliage has died back in the summer.  Do not allow the baby potatoes to be exposed to sunlight.  If your potatoes turn green, do not eat them as they are poisonous.

You can grow potatoes from the “eyes” of store bought potatoes.  The risk is putting any disease they may have into your soil.  Many recommend to always buy sterile seed potatoes.  To be safe, I am sticking with sterile seed potatoes for garden beds.  If you are growing in a pot or potato growing bag, you could try using store bought eyes.  Let your potatoes age and when they start sprouting, they are ready to cut and plant.  Be sure to cut out a sprout, or "eye", to plant.  A plant will emerge from each sprouted eye.

I have a perennial blue potato, Ecos, that has survived 3 winters now.  I also planted blue seed potatoes this spring.  The first leaves have emerged.  I'll continue to mound mulch around them through the season to maximize the harvest.

Time to add compost and fertilizer to your beds

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Mid-March is the time to get your beds ready for spring!  

Ideally, you would test your soil to determine what nutrients your bed needs.  If you take your soil samples to your local county Co-op Extension office, you can get your soil tested for free in many counties.  You can also buy a do it yourself kit at the big box stores or your local nursery.

This spring, we put down an organic fertilizer Re-Vita Pro 5-4-4.  Then, we added a layer of mushroom compost.  We will top with mulch soon.  

The local CSA gardener told me a couple of years ago that it is important to not let your fertilizer just lay on top of the ground as many of the nutrients will be lost.

We are ready to start planting!

How to grow cucumbers-in pots or in the garden

Sunday, August 14,  2016

Cucumbers are a tropical plant and love heat.  They should be started indoors 4 weeks prior to the last frost (mid March in our Zone 6) and transplanted outside after all danger of frost has passed.  You can plant into July and have fruits from August to frost.

Cucumbers have been around for thousands of years and originally from India.  The cucumber arrived in Europe at least 2000 years ago.  The Romans loved them.  Christopher Columbus brought the cucumber with him to Haiti in the 1400‘s and was likely aboard the first ships in Virginia in the 1600’s.

Cucumbers are a good source of potassium, antioxidants like beta carotene, lutein, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K.  It also has a diuretic properties.  Cucumber nutritional info  Cucumbers have a sweet, refreshing taste.

Cucumbers should be planted in full sun, rich soil, and consistent moisture.  Cucumbers can be grown in pots, on the ground or on a trellis.  If growing in soil, plant 4 seeds in hills 3-4‘ apart and thin to the strongest two.  

Harvest before the fruits turn yellow.  Early fruits have less seeds.  Frequent harvesting also encourages the vine to grow more fruits.

If growing in pots, look for patio, dwarf, bush, or compact in the description.  Some small varieties include Lemon, Suyo, Salad Bush, Fanfare, Sweet Success.  One vine was all we needed to have enough cucumbers to make pickles for the year for my husband and for salads for me.  I also love adding cukes to my smoothies.  
Grow your own smoothie and juice garden
Decorative container gardening for edibles
Make your own pickles without a store bought seasoning mix

This year my first seedlings planted in May didn't make it.  I think there was just too much rain and not enough sun.  I replanted in July three varieties.   I planted seeds for a yellow that can weigh up to 5 pounds (Jaune Dickfleishige), a red (Hmong Red), and 2 white cucumbers (massive producer Dragon's White Egg and Miniature White that is a good container variety) directly into the garden on a trellis.  The whites are both small fruits.  It will be nice to have smaller ones so I can pick one for a single salad or smoothie.   I got my first cucumber this week from the July planting.

Fertilize weekly and keep evenly moist.  Do not let soil completely dry out.  This will result in bitter or hollow fruits.  Each plant produces both male and female flowers.  The first flowers will likely be males.  Don’t be surprised or worried when the first flowers fall off without fruiting.  When the female flowers appear, you will get baby fruits.
Summer garden tips

Don't forget to save seeds from your best producer for next year's garden!
Seed saving-fun, easy and a cost saver