» Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Vegetable Garden Planting For Maximum Efficiency

jag — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:40:44 +0000

When you’re planning a vegetable garden, there’s more to consider than just what plants grow in your area. In fact, that should be your secondary concern as you get ready for your vegetable garden planting.

There are four questions you need to ask yourself before you even begin planning a vegetable garden:

What do you and your family like to eat
How much of these things CAN you eat
How much space do you have for growing vegetables
What grows best in your area

Taking these factors into account before you even begin will prevent you from wasting the food you grow, making vegetable gardening just that much more pleasant. After all, the sight of rotting vegetables after you’ve done all that work to plant vegetable gardens is never pleasant.

Vegetable Garden Planting:

Depending on how much room you have, you might consider vegetable container gardening. In fact, if you already have a flower container garden that grows a little tall, you can plant some herbs in with the flowers and make a border out of lettuce.

Green onions, carrots and herbs all make excellent vegetable container gardening plants, and are actually nice green plants to look at.

Also, when planning a vegetable garden, plan for the timing of harvesting your crop. Just because you get a million seeds in a packet doesn’t mean you have to plant them all at once. If you plant everything at once, it will all become eatable at once. Plant a few seeds the first time, then maybe a week or two plant a few more depending on how long it takes them to grow.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas to start planning a vegetable garden, and also how to do your vegetable garden planting so you’ll be eating fresh garden greens all summer long – and beyond!

For more good advice, check out Bartholomews All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook: Taking the Harvest to the Table

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

Tags

Container Gardening, Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Herbs – Spice Up Your Food – And Your Health

jag — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:36:27 +0000

I’m sure you use herbs almost daily to spice up your food, but did you know that certain herbs can give you that extra kick you need to reduce stress, maintain optimal health and make your life just a little bit more exciting? Here’s just a few that I’ve read about: Ginger - Good in stir-fries, and fish and chicken marinades. Ginger is a renowned anti-inflammatory and circulation booster. It’s also soothing in both summer and winter.

Fennel – You can roast the bulb of fennel as well as use the herb for spice, and you can munch on the seeds also! Fennel is good for gas and indigestion, and is a strong antioxidant! It could also help prevent cancer.

Thyme – Grows like a weed in our garden, and it’s great in stews and soups. Not to mention the fact that it has a lot of immune-enhancing properties.

Garlic – My favorite, I put it on everything! Also known as the poor man’s penicillin, it could protect against gastrointestinal and colorectal cancer.

Cilantro – Great for salads, in salsa, or in fish and chicken marinades. Cilantro revitalizes the body and helps counter indigestion. There is also some research that suggests it could help remove toxic metals (such as mercury) from the body. AND, the seed of the cilantro plant is coriander, which also has health benefits.

Basil – Another of my favorites for chicken, pasta, pesto and sandwiches (try a Bacon, Avocado Basil sandwich someday – you’ll never have a regular BLT again!) Basil also has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties and contains a wealth of nutrients, including beta-carotene and magnesium. Amazing!

These are just a few of the spices that you can add to improve your health. Next time, instead of reaching for the salt and pepper, try a little cayenne pepper instead. According to David Heber, M.D., Chili peppers have been found to help people boost metabolism and lose weight. And a little bit goes a long way!

Here’s to your health!

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Spicy Reading:

“Stop Being poisoned By Over-the-Counter Drugs – And Slash Your Medicine
Expenses By $300 – $500 Every Year” Home Remedies For Better Health.- The Complete Health Guide To Self-Healing. Shows You How To Treat Any Disease, With Herbs.

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Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

Tags

Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Did you know that some herbs can make it through the winter?

jag — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:14:01 +0000

Yes, sage, thyme, oregano, parsley, spearmint, peppermint, and wornwood are perennial herbs and can all be winterized.

All you need to do is wait for the first frost. Then, after the frost, trim away any browned and dead stems and mulch lightly around, but not over the plants.

If you have snow, don’t worry, that’s a good thing! Snow acts as an insulator and protects plants from excessive cold, so keep the snow cover on the plant when you get it. In the spring, just remove any winter damage and carefully get rid of any debris that has blown in and become wedged in the plants.

Then just sit back and watch them grow again!

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Try Fried Green Tomatoes for those Leftovers

jag — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:18:35 +0000

As summer comes to an end, it’s sad to see all of those tomatoes on the plant that aren’t ripe yet, and whenever I pick them green, they don’t seem to ripen very well in the house.

So, I went looking and found this secret to getting them to ripen. Here’s what you do:

Pick the mature green tomatoes (those with a pinkish-yellow tinge on the blossom end) before it frosts.
Wash the skin with a 1% bleach solution, rinse with water and dry.
Place in a 60F to 70F room, not touching each other.

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And then again, you could always make Fried Green Tomatoes. Here’s one of the easier recipes I found:

30 min 20 min prep

4 medium tomatoes
1 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons bacon drippings
salt and pepper

1. Cut the tomatoes into thick slices and sprinkle with the salt and pepper.
2.   Roll the tomato slices in the corn meal until both sides are covered.
3.   Heat the bacon drippings in a frying pan and add the tomatoes.
4.   Fry slowly until golden brown.

This way, you can enjoy ALL of your tomatoes!

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

How to Freeze Basil – Or Other Herbs

jag — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:42:31 +0000

Hello,

The basil Jeff planted is going gangbusters! Each plant grew into a nice leafy basil provider and now we have basil coming out of our ears! I was wondering how to save some of it, and thanks to a tip I received in a newsletter, now I know. I’ll just freeze it!

All you need to do is chop up the leaves, pack them into an ice cube tray, and cover it with water. Then freeze. After they’re frozen, you can move them into a freezer bag.

Now I won’t have to spend money on those little packets of frozen herbs; I’ll have it right at my fingertips.

Be sure to get your Fall Bulbs now, you will want to plant them soon.

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Huge Tomato Plants – and Pepper Maintenance

jag — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:58:48 +0000

Our tomato plants are HUGE this year. They’re planted in containers, with the usual tomato fence around them and they’re doing great. Jeff waters with a little miracle grow about once a week, and he makes sure they get water every day. They will let you know when they’re dry by looking very wilty. Tomatoes need a lot of sun, so if you have them in containers, be sure to water them every day and yours could look like this too!

So far, we have eaten the red ones as soon as they appear, YUM! I Love homegrown tomatoes, they actually taste like tomatoes, not like water, like the store bought ones.

I’m not sure if tomatoes have the same problem as peppers, but I have heard some people complaining that their peppers rot before they get ripe. If this happens, you might want to get more sunlight to them. Peppers need a long, warm season to mature, so if you use a dark colored mulch to absorb the heat during the daytime you will be one step ahead. Peppers need about 8-10 hours of direct sunlight each day. I think tomatoes need the same, ours get sunlight in the morning, and then constantly until about 4:00 p.m. If you don’t have enough heat, try attaching some tinfoil to a board, and then nailing it to a stick (kind of like a sign). Put this by the plant, making the sun bounce off the tinfoil and onto the plant.

Water both tomatoes and peppers from below, being careful not to get too many leaves wet.

If you follow these simple steps, you should have a great harvest! If you’ve never had a great harvest, you might want to try Gardners Supply Tomato Success method. Just click on the picture below for more info.

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

Who Knew Cherry Seeds Could Kill?

jag — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 23:03:43 +0000

A lady in one of the forums I subscribe to was concerned because her daughter swallowed a cherry seed. One forum member posted this reply:

“LOL If I had a dime for every cherry pit I swallowed when I was a kid I could afford to landscape my lawn! If they don’t get stuck in the throat, they won’t do a bit of damage. “this, too, will pass”

As I laughed at this “passing” joke, I kept reading and saw this post from another member:

“Whole cherry pits aren’t a problem; they will pass thru the system. But the seed within contains cyanide. If you don’t break the pit you should be ok. Canned cherries could be a problem, between cooking, and breaking of the pit itself, exposing the seed. One seed hasn’t enough cyanide to do damage. But 1/4 cup or more can easily kill. Beware.”

Who knew cherry seeds could kill? I sure didn’t, until today!

Find Tons of interesting reading material at the Online Nature Mall.

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs

The Tomato Experience

jag — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:21:48 +0000

I have a question. How do you spell Tomato? I’ve been doing some research and I’ve found it spelled both ways (even within the same web-sites) – Tomato, and Tomatoe. I’m a little paranoid about getting it wrong, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it just doesn’t matter – and at this point, I don’t care anymore because this is the month to get those Tomatoes going and there is not enough time to debate!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a lot of problems throughout the years getting my tomatoes to flourish. Usually I get a few vegetables, but the problem I have is that no matter how much I water and feed, my plants always look a little droopy, and there’s definitely not enough vegetables for all the salads I eat throughout the summer!

That’s why I was glad when Gardeners Supply Co. came out with their Totally Terrific Tomatoe plan. They have everything you need for Tomatoe Success!

When you get to their site, don’t forget to check out their excellent articles. Including How to Choose Tomato Plants; the proper way to support them, and, of course, how to get prize-winning luscious tomatoes.

Check out Gardners Supply, I’m definitely going to get their Tomato Yield Booster this year because there is just nothing better than a home grown tomato (no matter how you spell it! I’ll even give you a coupon. Click on the link below and you will get 15% off any order of $50, just for being a reader of this blog. (Offer expires at the end of June, 2006).

Get our Free Gardening Book: “Your Guide to a Successful and Beautiful Garden” at http://www.squarefootgardeningtips.com

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Vegetables_Fruits_Herbs