Archive for the ‘Garden Groom’ Category

There will come a time when a garden will no longer be as productive outside as it could be inside. When this time comes it is usually in the fall of the year, when the weather begins to get cooler. However the time to consider when it is time to move is before the weather changes, right now we have, a few more weeks to consider what to do with the remaining growing season.

One thing you can do is to start growing some smaller plants in small pots, even better is if you want to start raising hydroponic, vegetables, like leaf lettuce.

The time to start this is 6 weeks before you get ready to move your garden inside, this way you can have produce year round and that is very cool indeed.

Getting started with hydroponics is not an easy or cheap thing, however, you can do more with less if you read a few books and that is one way you can get into hydroponics, the other way is to spend money…

The first thing you want to do when thinking about starting your own indoor hydroponics farm is to choose your location well.

You want a naturally warm climate inside, where you can have room to work and keep your plants well maintained.

Recently there has been little rain and many that have planted gardens have seen their gardens begin to wither away to nothing or they start to notice the yellow leaf patterns on their plants.

This is a sign that there is not enough water in the garden root system.

So how hot does it get in your garden?

If you do not have enough water your garden will quickly wither away.

It may be hard for some to make time to water and I can understand why someone might abandon their gardens, however, it really only takes a little time to water a garden, and if you heap dirt up around the base of a plant the water your plants do get will last longer in the root system.

If it gets too hot then you risk loosing your plants.

However I have seen something that defies logic, dry dead gardens, this is something that is hard to understand because you see them out there working in the garden preparing the soil, doing the work, planting, and growing their gardens, and as long as it rains, everything is fine but if it starts to get dry they stop taking care of the garden, keeping that garden growing is in your best interest.

I am not sure where the idea came that your garden just grows itself and you dont have to do anything in order to reap the benefits of the garden, in other words the produce of the garden, is only reaped when you put in a little effort.

So get out there and water the garden, and you will be happy that you did.

Growing a garden takes work and effort, but the rewards are so much better than you might imagine, more so when the price of produce starts to go

up and up and up…

For every hour you put into a garden you can get pounds of produce, so far this year we have about 200 pounds of produce and counting…

We have prepared that and frozen or canned what we could not use right away, I can tell you that during the winter, it is going to be really nice to

have fresh tasting produce, to enjoy…

We keep a close eye on our tomatoes, because we use it to create some of the best food you can imagine, all kinds of tomato sauce, pizza sauce, chili, vegetable soup, and many other things that just need that extra zing you can only get with vine raised tomatoes.

However, this year and in some years in the past fungus has been a real problem, or blight can really reduce your yield per acre of tomatoes, using a fungicide is one way to help however it seems like this year it has really been tough.

We noticed that we had a good control of this issue until we saw a series of rainy days that seemed to spread the fungus very quickly in fact we nearly lost the entire crop to the fungus and this is not the only report of fungus problems, one possible but alarming prospect for this rapid spread is that pollution has become a much more serious problem than what we have in the past thought.

If this is in fact a problem with cloud and rain water pollution, then we will have to find a way to treat our tomatoes with a fungicide that is effective within hours of treatment as the current method and application is not working.

If you have seen this type of fungus and the level of damage it does let us know how you deal with fungus problems.

At some point there is really nothing you can do to save the crop, no amount of spraying will help, however you can save the plant or tree, which is equally important to a farmer.

Saving the tree means that you can try again next year, loosing your tree to the fungus rot means that you dont get another chance to raise another crop.

So, make sure that your trees have enough water and treat as prescribed by your fungicide label.

Remove mummies, (mummified fruit) so that it will reduce the amount of the spread of the disease.

Do not prune until the first frost, then inspect the entire tree and only prune those areas that are obviously effected.

Once you have pruned the tree, then it is time to tread for the fungus.

It is easier to kill the fungus once the sap has retreated to the root system.

Treat as prescribed during the dormant period, then treat again at the spring and again during the flowing period.

Then again, at first fruit and pollination.

This is the only way to ensure that your crop will survive the brown rot, until that time make sure you trees have plenty of water and treat as normal.

If you have squirrel populations that are in excess take care of them now because later it will be more difficult, yes they are cute, but they are not going to feed you.

garden plants garden soil

Should you use poles or cages to help with tomato vine growth, recently we had a rather large storm with

some very high winds which caused some damage to some of the vegetables we were growing in the garden.

we were using poles to tie up the plants but the growth was just so fast that many of the plants were just too large.

So it can be difficult to keep up with the very fast growth.

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Tomatoes are a hardy plant and even with the damage that was done to the vines it appears that much of the damage

will in fact survive, at first it looked bad for the tomatoes which was a real concern to us, since we are dependent on

making sure our garden produces enough tomatoes that we can enjoy the fruit as well as our family and friends.

How does a garden grow,

well there are several unique things that are needed, sunlight, heat, water, humidity, then photosynthesis can occur, that is the process where every living plant grows and brings fruit and or vegetables to your table to eat.

It is something that you need, however, how much of each one do you need to really get that growth and the level of growth, for instance, you can grow peppers and if you have too much water or your soil does not have the right amount of chemical makeup then those peppers will not be hot enough, now that might be a good thing if you dont like hot peppers but if you want to grow hot peppers because of the health benefits of the chemical makeup of eating hot peppers, and there are some studies that suggest that this is true, then you will not get what you want out of your plant.

This is the balance that you need to make sure that your garden grows the way you want it to grow.

So water, sunlight, garden soil, and care makes your garden grow.

One of the most important things you can do for your garden is to give it as much time as you can.

Sometimes that can be difficult but the more time you spend working in your garden the more you

will get from your garden, this includes a lot of things you might not at first guess.

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Cool, arent they?

blight can ruin your tomato crop and it is very important that when you spray the crop that you make sure you follow all the warnings on the label and make sure that you follow the safety instructions.

Also make sure that you mix the spray exactly as the label states, because a weaker spray will not help your problem.

Just as a strong spray may cause you problems as well.

follow proper pruning techniques to prune off the bad spots on your tomato plants.

It may seem like your going to loose your crop at first but if you keep up with following
the instructions the blight will go away on its own.

What does blight look like.

tomato

Even if your not into a survival garden, you can still take advantage of having a garden for many different reasons, the chief of which believe it or not is plain old oxygen, yes, you heard correctly, many people have a nice flower garden not only because they are beautiful but because they provide something in return for the love you give them.

oxygen…

The funny thing is that in the news today they had a funny story about how they are considering taxing the emissions of cows.

Now that is just too much to handle.

But just in case lets make sure that we all plant a flower so they dont have to worry about trying to tax cows.

Plant a flower today and save a cow.