At summers end, the frost comes and with it are taken the leaves and stems. They lay wilted and done. Now without their fullness creating covers and shade you will find what lies beneath and for me, I find gourds. Now easy to pick, easy to see, I step about the wilting stems and gather a basket of gourds that…
Gardening Series
Tomatoes
When gardeners start the garden year, they have expectations of what they will grow and what the vegetables will look like when they harvest them. If you haven’t gardened before, the thing to know is that the plants, like us, have life spans. Meaning, they have a baby stage, a mid stage, a full grown stage and then start passing…
Gardening Series # 10, Planting Seeds
Planting seeds, well, they have specific challenges to them, primarily it’s a visual issue. More specifically, if you don’t mark where you planted them, you don’t know where they are. At least I don’t. Seedlings are like mini trees. You plunk them into the ground and there they stand hollering “Here I am! Don’t hit me with the scuffle hoe!”…
Gardening Series #9 Footpaths in the Garden
I don’t make raised beds. Although a very popular method of gardening and one I keep promising to try, instead I find that I stick to what I know, to what I was taught. I have the garden rototilled into fluffy smoothness and then I create foot paths in the garden by walking in the newly turned soil. I purposely…
Gardening Series #8 Hardening Off
OK, so your seedlings have had a lovely Princess-like start to life. They have grown quietly and nicely on a wonderfully warm mat under a steady supply of grow lights, where there is no wind, no bugs, and no plants bigger then they are. As they grow, they need to head to the garden. So far, their world has not…
Gardening Series #7 Growth Rates of Seedlings
When I started growing my own vegetable plants, I was told that they grow at different rates. I learned that that is an understatement. Let me tell you what I learned about the growth rates of seedlings. Different grow rates means that seedlings may germinate in hours or it may take a whole month just to germinate, that much of a…
Gardening Series # 6 Care of Growing Seedlings
Your seedlings will have been growing under the lights and you will have been watering them each day, maintaining an even amount of moisture. But once your seedlings look like this, they need bigger containers. They need to spread out and develop their root systems. Because different plants develop at different rates, seedlings will be ready at different times.…