How to Start Your Own Organic Garden By Dave Mathews

 

Organic vegetable gardening has been done for centuries before the introduction of pesticides. This type of gardening requires that no artificial means be used to kill pests. So what is a garden of this type, how to create one and what to plant are some questions that need to be answered? This type of a garden is done without pesticides. This type of a garden is also nourished organically from a compost heap that consists of table scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, ect. This not only enriches the soil, it also allows for healthier plants.

So how do you create an organic vegetable garden? It is simple really. For organic vegetable gardening, you will need the following. A sunny location with soil that is well drained is the first step. You also need to measure a length and size that will be convenient for your garden and these beds should be about 30 inches. You will need to either build a frame that is between 10-12 inches high or stake out the bed. Before planting, you will need to mix your compost at least three weeks in advance. This can be either plant material or manure.

The next step in your organic vegetable gardening is to choose the varieties of vegetables that will not only be resistant to pests and disease, they also need to be well adapted for the region in question. The next step in your gardening should be to plant usually when the soil thaws in spring or in the fall. Your first idea may be to start planting broccoli, spinach and peas first. Corn, squash, tomatoes and peppers can be planted when the soil is warmer and after the danger of frost has passed. This will get the garden started quite nicely.

Now there are several things that you can add to your gardening in order to help your organic vegetable gardening. The introduction of beneficial insects such as ladybugs will keep your garden free of pests and help keep the garden growing. Another thing to do is to rotate your crops and keep the garden well weeded so that disease and pests cannot get a foot hold in your garden. Remember to water and mulch as needed. You can also cover susceptible crops with lightweight fabric to discourage pests. When you are speaking about beneficial bugs, remember to plant the plants that nourish these bugs as well.

So this, in a nut shell is how you do a vegetable garden of this type. It isn't that hard to do and the fruits and vegetables will nourish your body without the fear of pesticides. This is a win-win situation for all involved and will lead to a much healthier lifestyle for you and your family. It may take time and effort, but you will be well rewarded for your hard work with healthy fruits and vegetables that will nourish your body and be good for you as well. So an organic garden of this type is well worth investing the time and money in.

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About Author:
If you are interested in knowing more on how to start your organic garden then do visit our site for more information . The author is an online marketing expert with LinksTonite, an Internet Marketing Firm helping firms get targeted traffic thru higher search engine rankings.

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An Exciting New Fruit - The Pineberry By Blane Tarr

 

The pineberry is not a new fruit, but it is new to the commercial markets. It has received a lot of buzz recently as it was snatched from shelves in the United Kingdom. Here is this novelty's story:

The story starts in the 1700s. At that time, strawberry plants were taken to France from both North America and South America. The North American strawberry, Fragaria virginiana and the South American strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis were cross-bred. The resultant cross became known as Fragaria x ananassa and became cultivated more widely. Through breeding and selection programs, the large-fruited Garden Strawberry eventually became grown and consumed widely. That stereotypical strawberry that we all know and love, however, wasn't bred and selected overnight. And, there were other genetic traits sacrificed in favor of others.

In 2003, a few Dutchmen stumbled across some strawberry plants in France that were still hanging on and took them back to the Netherlands. These strawberry plants produced small, white fruits with red seeds. This is almost an inverse strawberry when compared to a "normal" red strawberry. But, even more interesting than the appearance, is the taste of these strawberries. Instead of tasting like normal strawberries, their flavor profile is a fusion of pineapple and strawberry. Hence, the fruits received the moniker, "pineberry."

The plants taken from France were cared for and nourished and selectively grown to strengthen the plant line. After six years of careful plant selection, the once-feeble plants were strong enough to be cultivated commercially. And so they were. They are now offered by VitalBerry, a Dutch company, through Waitrose, a grocery store chain in the UK for a period of 5 weeks in the spring.

They are still a novelty item and have received mixed reviews. Some culinary "experts" have reported that the fruits are watery and merely a sales gimmick. Others genuinely rave about them.

Unfortunately, however, they are only sold commercially in the UK at present. This will likely change if demand increases and the small white fruits with red seeds rise in popularity.

Retail pineberry sales do face a significant hurdle before they can be produced on a large scale. The pineberry plants produce berries that are quite small when compared to the typical store-bought strawberry. Additionally, each pineberry plant produces significantly fewer berries. This means that the demand will have to increase exponentially in order to get commercial growers to grow them. With small yields and small strawberries, it is just not profitable for the big agricultural giants and strawberry farms to bring them to market.

So, at least for the present, pineberries will fill a niche market and will most likely stay within Europe. If varieties of pineberries are developed that retain their unique flavor while improving size and fruit production, they will likely become as ubiquitous as their red cousins are during the early summer months.

If you can't wait until that day (if it ever comes), you can always buy a few plants and begin to grow your own!

You can grow your own buy purchasing your own pineberry plants. Find out more details here: Pineberry

For other varieties, you can reference this directory: Strawberry Plants for Sale

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Tips For Growing Lettuce in the Garden By Dave Truman

 

There's nothing better than a salad made with fresh lettuce from the garden. Adding lettuce to your garden can be a welcome addition. Not only is healthy and tasty to eat but it needs very little space to grow. But there are some guidelines you should know before planting lettuce.

To grow lettuce or any other vegetable, you need to have good soil. For lettuce, keep the nitrogen level high by using 30-10-10 NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) fertilizer. This will provide the lettuce with the nutrition it needs to produce healthy leaves.

When planting lettuce seeds make sure they are planted 1/8-3/8 inch deep, separated by 6-12 inches (2-3.5 m) from the next plant. Romaine lettuce can be planted closer together but other crisp lettuce need more space. If you plant in rows, keep the rows separated by about 20 inches (6m).

The roots of lettuce do not grow very deep so it is important to weed often. Many other grasses and plants with deeper root growth can invade the lettuce.

Since lettuce lacks deep root growth it has to find moisture near the surface. Therefore it is important to keep the soil moist but not saturated. Try to keep the water off of the leaves and into the soil except for the occasional washing. Wet leaves especially during nighttime temperatures can lead to disease.

Like any other vegetable, lettuce plants have problems with diseases and pests. Many insects enjoy the lettuce leaves and the folds of the leaves also offer many places for fungi to grow.

Aphids, flea beetles, leafhoppers, slugs and cutworms are common insects that feast on lettuce. Washing the leaves with a high-pressure hose can temporally help get rid of the insects. Insecticide lightly applied to the lettuce will provide better long-term control.

One common fungal disease is anthracnose (Microdochium panattonianum). This fungus can stay alive in soil for many years. Bottom rot (Rhizoctonia solani) is another common fungus. This type of fungus usually occurs in soil that drains poorly. To combat these fungi, keep foliage dry and plant in good soil.

Another common problem with lettuce is bolting. Bolting is not a disease or pest but occurs when the plant goes to seed and the leaves stop growing. Bolting happens when the temperatures are consistently too high. To prevent this from happening, plant lettuce in shaded area or plant next to a shading crop such as corn.

Lettuce is a wonderful vegetable to have in your garden. With proper preparation and care, you can enjoy salads with fresh lettuce throughout the growing season.

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Looking for creative ideas for your vegetable garden layout? You can stop searching - visit the Vegetable Gardeners website at http://www.vegetablegardeners.com for lots of helpful tips and advice. Plus get your own copy of our free reports for growing better vegetables.

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Grow Carrots - Fly Free By Georgina Crawford

 

The first thing to do when growing carrots is to choose your carrot seed. It is probably best to visit a garden centre, or obtain a seed merchant's catalogue, as there are many, many varieties to choose from. You could have early maturing or late maturing carrots, ones that are OK to leave in the ground after frosts begin, orange ones, yellow ones, purple ones, round ones, thin ones and baby ones. The choice is yours, but having tried several of the unusual varieties I find that the plain old orange ones have the best flavour and vigour.

It's important to prepare the ground well. Carrots do not like manure, and if they are put into manured ground they will grow into tortuous shapes to try and avoid the muck, thus making them unusuable in the kitchen, (unless you are particularly fond of trying to peel carrots with twelve curled legs). I grow carrots on ground which was manured the previous season, so for example, I will manure the ground well one year and grow a bean crop on it. The beans will lock the nitrogen from the manure into the soil, and the following year I will grow carrots where the beans were. This type of crop rotation also helps prevent the build up of soil borne diseases.

Carrot flies, which create nasty brown channels in your carrots, cannot actually fly very far, they fling themselves around, hoping to land on your carrot crop, which they can smell, so one way of limiting their damage is to erect a physical barrier about two feet high all around the carrot bed. Another way to deter them is to mask the smell of the carrots.

I have had my best results with carrots when I grow them between rows of garlic. Garlic should be planted between October and Christmas Day, http://hubpages.com/hub/Save-Money-Grow-Garlic, and so is growing vigourously by the time carrot seeds are going in. The smell of the garlic really masks the smell of the carrots, and I rarely have any problems with root fly.

The dangerous time for attracting carrot root fly is when you harvest the carrots. Simply touching the leaves produces that wonderful fresh carrot smell, which signals a meal to both us and the carrot fly. I'm sure my fellow allotment holders think I'm mad, but when I harvest carrots, I burn a little citronella tea light in a jar, and rub a few garlic leaves for good measure (of course, I'm always careful to extinguish the tea light before I leave my plot).

Try out my little tips above, and enjoy fly free carrots with your supper!

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Georgina Crawford has published two children's books, articles for UK gardening magazines and the nursing press. She also writes online at http://hubpages.com/profile/Georgina_writes and has a blog. She is also a freelance copywriter.

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How to Grow Cucumbers By Hans Dekker

 

The versatile cucumber (cucumis sativus) is tasty pickled, in a salad, as a salad, in a sandwich, or just eaten raw. How to grow cucumbers depends largely in part on how you plan to eat them. Cucumbers come in over 120 varieties that range from small picklers to large slicers and from dark green to the yellow of the lemon cucumber. They come "burped" or burpless, seeded or without seeds.

Originating in India where they have been cultivated for over 3,000 years, the cucumber is a quick growing subtropical vine. In fact, many varieties of cucumber are ready to harvest after 50 days. However, some gardeners shy away from learning how to grow cucumbers because of their peculiar pollination habits. The traditional cucumber produces both a male (staminate) and a female (pistillate) blossom. Male blossoms appear first and soon drop from the vine without bearing fruit. However, the vines soon bloom again with both male and female flowers and continue blooming throughout the growing season. Cucumber vines bear fruit in abundance as long as you harvest them before they reach full maturity.

Relatives of squash, melons, and pumpkins, there are a variety of ways to learn how to grow cucumbers. Grow them in hills, in rows along a wire trellis, or train your cucumber vines to climb a wall or wooden trellis. In addition to growing directly in the garden, cucumbers make an attractive container plant. The cucumber is an appealing plant with lovely blossoms that permeate the air with the heady fragrance of -- what else? -- cucumbers!

When getting ready to learn how to grow cucumbers in your garden, it's best to prepare the soil about a month ahead of planting them. Cucumbers are not good at competing for space and nutrients. Remove weeds and spade in rich organic material. You'll have plenty of time to do this, since cucumbers are subtropical vines that prefer the sunny days and balmy nights of summertime. Seeds need about an 80F temperature to germinate, but then will do so in four to five days. Although seeds can be planted directly into the garden, cucumbers can also be started indoors for transplanting. If you use peat pots to start the seed, you can bury the whole pot in the garden lessening the risk that you'll damage the tender vines.

Once established, in addition to keeping the fruit cleaner, a layer of mulch in your cucumber patch minimizes weed growth and helps your soil retain moisture. Although cucumbers hate wet feet and won't grow in standing water, the more moisture they can absorb the juicier and sweeter they will be.

Harvest cucumbers at whatever size you like, as long as you don't wait for them to turn yellow (unless they are a yellow variety). Once they begin to turn yellow, they're past their prime. Flavor turns bitter and the fruit begins to dry out. Besides, frequently picking your cukes will promote more prolific blossoming resulting in larger harvests.

You are free to publish the above article in your ezine or website, provided credit in the form of an (HTML clickable) hyperlink is given to the author.

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Hans is an enthusiast gardener and one of the authors of the "How To" section of http://www.gardening-guides.com and http://www.patio-furniture-ideas.com

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Why Grow Upside Down Tomatoes? By Paul Dale

 

Who said you can't grow tomatoes upside down? When in fact, what many do not know is that tomato plants can possibly be grown the other way around. People also often think that growing not in the typical way would cause different results. True! But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are inferior to the typically grown. Amazingly is that it produces fruits that were never less in quality. Now isn't that something very interesting?

Growing tomatoes upside down can be both done indoors and outdoors. All you have to need is a sturdy container and you're then all set to your upside down homegrown tomatoes. And to top these, growing tomatoes upside down can be done anywhere. Either you have a large garden outside your home or just a little balcony, space was never an issue or a big problem. Now if you don't have a very big space or a garden wide enough to plant, you can always have the choice to make use of your patio or any space inside your home. It can even be aesthetically pleasing at the same time.

Tomatoes grown upside down actually grow better. With the tomatoes inside containers, the mobility gives your plant a much better view of their best friend Mr. Sun. It would be easier for you to move them to places wherein they have a good access of direct sunlight. Another advantage that one gains in growing upside down is that the tomatoes no longer need a support system. The stakes and cages are no longer essential. The absence of staking is all okay. Weeding is another unnecessary activity with upside down tomatoes. If you have a very busy schedule, you sure have very little worries concerning your tomato plant's parasitic companions.

With the plant much away from the ground, there is also little to worry on pest control and diseases. Let's admit it, the soil which is the storage house of your tomatoes nutrients is also the source of the very unwelcome pests and diseases. And so if your plants are much away from the soil, you'll surely expect tomatoes that are perfectly in shape. The tomato plant that is grown upside down also has better circulation compared to those that are not. The air can not only pass freely to your plants but a plus would be the distance in between your tomatoes. This will lead to a better pollination in your plant. They also mature earlier, ripening their fruit much ahead than usual making you have those tomatoes faster than expected.

With the stems of your plant flowing towards the ground, there is lesser stress in the branches since its weight is not in conflict to the flow of gravity. And finally pruning becomes a lesser burden since your plant is on an eye level. There's no need to bend down.

There has been a lot of alternatives made by tomato enthusiasts just to be able to plant tomatoes in whatever condition. You may plant it typically in the ground, in containers, or in water but I bet growing tomatoes upside down will be the best alternative. So start hanging those tomatoes.

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Paul Dale is the author of "Tomato Growing Secrets". For more great information to grow upside down tomatoes go to our website. The website contains valuable information on anything related to growing your own tomatoes.

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How to Grow Leeks By Richard Allen

 

Growing your own Leeks is easy - they grow well in a cool climate, requiring a long growth period of 120 to 170 days from sowing to harvest. They are often grown from seed indoors and then planted out when more mature. You should start them indoors and plant them in the garden in early spring 4 to 6 weeks before the last average frost when they are about 9cm tall. In milder temperatures you can transplant them into your outdoor plot in autumn or late winter.

They are a hardy biennial plant which is grown as an annual, having thick white stalks topped with green fanning leaves similar to oversized spring onions, but with a milder flavour.

Each plant will yield 12 to 15 leeks each.

Sow your plants in full sun, in rich well-drained soil. Prepare your planting bed a in advance by digging in aged manure. In preparation for sowing them prepare trenches 15cm deep and plant out your transplants at the bottom of each trench. As they grow fill the trenches in gradually around them.

Planting from seed outdoors - Sow the seeds 5mm deep, thinning out or transplanting them to 6 to 9 inches apart as they grow. Sow in rows 12 to 18 inches apart. When transplanting from indoors plant them into trenches 5 to 6 inches deep as described above. Watering will naturally collapse the soil around plants and fill in the trenches.

Keep the soil around leeks just moist not over watered, and water only when the surface becomes just dry. They can be interspersed with similar plant types such as carrots, celery, garlic, onions.

If you want to grow large, white, juicy plants, you will need to blanch the lower part of the stem by piling up soil around the stalks as they grow. Pile up soil around stalks to just below the leaves but no higher. If the temperature looks like giving frost then add straw above plants.

They are relatively easy to grow as they have no serious disease problems.

Harvesting them:
They require around 170 days from sowing and 80 days from transplanting to reach maturity when the stems will be around 1 to 2 inches in diameter and the leaves 6 to 8 inches tall. Then simply lift leeks as you need them but ensure they are all harvested before the first frost.

Storing and preserving them. Keep your leeks in the garden until you are ready to eat them as they will only keep in the refrigerator for around one week, or store them in a cold, damp place for 2 to 3 months.

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If you found this article of interest and would like to know more then visit the authors site on growing your own vegetables for more great tips and free advice on growing vegetables.

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Growing Hydroponic Lettuce By Jimbo Thomas

 

Out of all the hydroponic vegetables you could grow, hydroponic lettuce is probably the easiest of all.

Now, some people think that growing lettuce is boring, but I can tell you now it's not. There are at least 6 cultivar groups of lettuce within each group are many varieties. Here are the 6 lettuce groups; Iceberg, Butterhead, Chinese, Looseleaf, Batavian and Romaine. Further, according to the United Nations Department in Food and Agriculture there are 23 Million Tonnes of lettuce produced each year, 12 Million of which is in China and 5 Million Tonnes in the United States. I think it's fair to say, that lettuce is indeed far from boring!

To produce hydroponic lettuce you need to have a hydroponic closet of some sort indoors. You can either buy one or make it yourself. Planting and raising the lettuce hydroponically is easy, and in 4 weeks of planting you can be eating it. Hydroponic lettuce will produce a high yield, but this does depend on the space you have available.

Once planted the lettuce will need little attention, save some hydroponic fertilizer, a little Epsom salt and some calcium nitrate. Hydroponic lettuce [http://thehomebusinessventure.com/hydroponiccloset.html] is not a very demanding crop and as long as you don't over water it you should be fine. Ensure to the lettuce plants get the correct amount of light. In fact, it would bode well if you bought a cheap guide to hydroponics (I got just the thing for you on that!)

Stagger your planting too, for instance, if you plant every week, after the first 4 week period goes by you get a fresh crop of hydroponic lettuce each week.

Good Luck!

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And finally, if you want to dip your toes into hydroponics, I recommend you get this very excellent Guide To Hydroponics at http://thehomebusinessventure.com/hydroponiccloset.html. It contains all you need to know to get going with this awesome indoor gardening method.

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