Veggie Garden Info

Repelling Raccoons - 3 ways to keep raccoons out of your corn!

Original post from Garden Desk

We have many raccoons that frequent our yard and garden. They eat the leftover cat food on the back deck just waiting until that magical night when the sweet corn is ready!

Then they party until every last kernel is gone!

So what can I do to repel those rascally raccoons? There are three ways for me and you to rid raccoons from our gardens:

Read the rest of this post HERE.

 

 

Planting Out in the Heirloom Garden

Original post from Bifurcated Carrots

This is a cross posting, also available at La Vida Locavore.  For my regular readers, please bear with the somewhat introductory nature.  Those of you who do regularly read this blog may want to check out some of the other posts on La Vida Locavore.

For me heirloom gardening is all about getting away from the mentality of growing things from a purchased packet of seeds. If you do grow plants from purchased seeds, you are always better off saving your own seeds if possible because with every generation they adapt to your garden, a process you can help along by being a little choosy with the plants you save seeds from.

Even better than starting with purchased seeds are those you can’t buy, and can only get for free or perhaps a small payment to cover shipping and handling costs. These might be plants growing wild somewhere, where someone has gone out and collected some seeds for you. Perhaps these are varieties someone has created in their own garden with amateur plant breeding techniques. You might spend the time to make contacts at academic institutions or seed banks, and find things in these collections or perhaps know someone who has already done this and can get some saved seeds from them. Even easier than saving seeds every year is to establish perennial plants in your garden, those that come back providing tasty things to eat each year.

Keep reading to see pictures and descriptions of a few of the plants I’m growing this year.

Read the rest of this post HERE.

 

   Organic Gardening From Park Seed

 

Don’t Let Your Seeds Grow up to be Hybrids

Original post from Veggie Gardening Tips

Just in case the previous article describing some of the vegetable varieties I’m growing this season didn’t inspire you to investigate a  few heirloom seed choices, today I’ll share some of the reasons that hybrid vegetable seeds aren’t high up on my shopping list.

First I’ll admit to planting a hybrid variety or two in my garden, but there have to be pretty compelling reasons and an exceptional plant involved to cause me to go against my better judgment like that. And while open pollinated plants aren’t perfect, I prefer to grow them for a number of very good reasons:

Top Ten Reasons for Planting Heirlooms in the Veggie Garden

1. Never met a GMO that I liked – GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms and that really doesn’t sound like something I want showing up on the dinner table. I simply don’t trust GMO’s or the motives behind them, and I’m curious to see the arguments that will be used to try and convince us that GMO’s are better for us.

2. Too thrifty to pay for seeds every year –

Read the rest of this post HERE.

Self seeding sea of greens

Original post from The Veggie Patch Re-Imagined

So I was worried that even though I had been seeing orach seedlings for weeks, my mustard hadn't germinated yet.


Mix of orachs from green to purple to variations in between.

Like I needed to worry. Yesterday, I notice a sea of tiny purple and green heart shaped brassica seed leaves where the osaka purple mustard was last year. I think it's safe to say that they have reseeded themselves.

The sweet cicely seed head I tossed down also has dutifully reproduced.

Read the rest of this post HERE.

The Upside-Down Tomato Project

Original post from Down on the Allotment

I've seen this experiment tried a couple of times, I'm not sure if the results were too good, but I thought I'd try making an upside-down tomato plant this year. Take a large plastic bottle and a small tomato plant. Cut a hole in the top side of the bottle so that you can fill it with compost and make holes in the top to hang it. Wash all the soil off the roots carefully.

Read the rest of this post HERE.

3rd Annual Ladybug release

Original post from The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

In case you missed the first and second annual lady bug release, you can follow those posts.  We have never had a serious aphid or spider mite problem and I like to feel our annual release of lady bugs is the reason why.  Either way, great entertainment for the girls for a couple hours for a $6.00 bag of lady bugs.

Lady bugs sometimes naturally choose to wander from the location where you release them and may just take residence in your neighbors yard, so I have thought about releasing them in my neighbors yard so they will end up in mine.  Fortunately there are a few tricks to help entice your lady bugs from leaving your garden:

Read the rest of this post HERE.

The potato problem

Original post from Dreams and Bones

I over ordered potatoes this year. Somehow I FORGOT that I had ordered from FEDCO ... 2 pounds of Yellow Finns. Then one Sunday morning I found potatogarden.com and as if in a trance I ordered pounds more of Bison, German Butter Ball, Adora and more Yellow Finns. And I don't even really LIKE potatoes. I mean they are fun to to harvest, but it is after all a white carb.

So I decided I would relegate the majority of the potatoes to what is becoming the darkest bed in my garden AND I would resurrect the "potato bin."

Read the rest of this post HERE.

Takenoko

Original post from Adekun’s Japan Blog

Takenoko (bamboo shoot)

Not usually found growing in the garden, bamboo shoots are harvested around this season. We were lucky to be given a sack this weekend. The preparation takes some time. Once the outer layers have been removed the shoots are boiled in nuka (rice bran) for about an hour.

Read the rest of this post HERE.