Carrot color is rich in nutrition. Orange is the most familiar carrot color, but there are many colorful carrots: yellow, red, purple, and white. All are healthy eating. All are easy additions to the home garden. The first domesticated carrots—cultivated in Afghanistan more than 1,100 years ago–were white. Breeding over the past 900 years has…
Gardening Tips
Seed Starting Supplies
It is easy to grow your own plants from seed. By starting your own seedlings you can choose from hundreds of varieties that are not available in garden centers. The cost of plants will be far less than those sold in nurseries. You can also have transplants ready to go into the garden at any…
Ready Your Garden for Spring
Spring is coming soon! Here are some early spring tips for your garden. Warm Your Garden Before Planting Pre-warm cold soil before sowing or transplanting warm-weather crops into the garden. Black or clear plastic sheeting is a simple and inexpensive way to warm the soil and get a jump on the growing season. Continue…
Vegetable Crops for Beginning Gardeners
Beginning vegetable gardeners can be easily intimidated by the scores and scores of vegetable seed varieties available from even the smallest seed retailer. In reality, there are hundreds of vegetable varieties available in garden centers and online each year. What to plant? Taste, quality, speed to harvest, total yield, ease of harvest, plant habit, disease,…
Vegetable Watering Tips
Water is essential to the optimum growth of vegetables; the water content of most vegetables is nearly 90 percent. Providing the right amount of moisture to the vegetable garden is as important as supplying the right amount of plant food. Here are basic vegetable garden watering tips: • Seeds. Water to the age of your…
Vegetables to Seed Start Indoors
Snow on the ground. Heavy winter rain in the garden. Last average frost date weeks away. No problem. You can start the spring vegetable garden indoors. If you know the average date of the last spring frost in your garden or region, you can make a schedule for starting vegetable crops indoors and get growing…
Planning Succession Crops
Succession planting will allow you to plant several times throughout the growing season for a continuous supply of fresh vegetables. To plan succession crops you must know two things: • The number of weeks of growing season in your garden. The length of the growing season is the number weeks between the last frost in…
Succession Planting
Succession planting means growing different crops in the same space one right after the other in the same season, or planting the same crop in different parts of the garden in succession at different times. For example: • A row of carrots is planted in early spring: after the carrots are harvested in early summer,…
Common Mulches for Vegetable Gardens
Here are commonly used organic and inorganic mulches for vegetable gardens (for the benefits of mulching see : Organic mulches: • Compost. Decomposed and partially decomposed organic materials. Compost is both a mulch and soil conditioner. A 2- to 3-inch layer of compost will control weeds though not prevent weed growth. Incorporate compost into the…
Mulch for Vegetable Gardens: The Benefits
Mulch is any material laid on the surface of the soil. It can be organic, such as compost, shredded leaves, or lawn clipping, or inorganic or synthetic, such as coarse sand, gravel, or plastic. During the growing season, mulch can slow evaporation, inhibit and control weeds, and regulate soil temperature. In winter, mulch can protect…