Search results matching tag 'gardening'

Seed Seperating for next Spring

charly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:19:31 GMT

I have a lot of Zinnia's that i have taken off the main stem and taken apart and I don't knoe the easiest way to get the seeds out of the pile because seems like there are seeds and then just a simple dried flower stem along beside them. I have been using tweezers but there has to be an easier way. I am seperating seeds for four familys. Does anyone out there have a simple way?

thank you,

Charly

Re: Is gardening worth it financially?

Penny — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:49:25 GMT

I'm not sure about the cost per hour in labour, but it's really not that expensive if you do it right. I follow the Square Foot Gardening method and started really small (about 40 sq ft). It probably cost around $50 for the wood and stain we purchased to build the raised beds and maybe another $50 for the soil mix (peat moss, composted manure) but we make our own compost to add to it. I do everything from seed, with very few exceptions. Although the initial outlay was steep, the beauty of Square Foot Gardening is that once the beds are built and planted it takes very little time to maintain. I spend less than 10 minutes a day watering and weeding and get a decent harvest. (And that's after doubling the size this year.) We have a fresh salad every day and that alone is better and cheaper than buying a premixed organic salad mix. I plant a little of everything- right now I have lettuce mix, peas, tomatoes, radishes, broccolli, brussel sprouts, pole and bush beans, peppers, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, asparagus, spinach, swiss chard, beets, strawberries as well as a few flowers (marigolds, sweet peas, and nasturtiums- and the nasturtiums are also edible). I don't expect to be able to can or preserve anything but we eat very well in the summer, even in our short growing season (I'm in southern Manitoba so our last frost date is the end of May!) And the pleasure I get from watching my garden grow is something I can't put a price on. I would never give up my garden- I'd sooner give up my car!

Re: Is gardening worth it financially?

mplsmom — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:07:46 GMT

It might now be a little more expensive at first, but as you continue to garden and develop expertise, it definitely is! I've been gardening for 20 years; the vegetables and herbs work out to be less expensive and more convenient than what I get in the store.

Each year I try to come up with ways to extend my garden, make it easier to maintain and lower the cost. This year we used our old kitty litter buckets to create a pot garden in addition to our vegetable patch. (Pot gardening might be more practical for you while your children are small.) I have peppers, herbs, a few flowers, cherry tomatoes and wild lambs quarters growing in those; I found and bought a weeder/cultivator that my aunt recommended, it has a triagular head instead of a squarish one like a hoe, and it takes practically no time to get the worst of the weeding and cultivating done in the vegetable patch; I started using environmentally safe dish soap and have been using as much grey water from the kitchen as possible to water my pot garden which reduces the cost of the water for the garden for just a little effort.

Almost 20 years ago I started composting. My neighbors started contributing to my compost a few years ago so I have 3 cubic yard piles going (need to work on them, soon). I never need fertilizer and I'm actually giving free dirt to the neighbors who contributed. I also get volunteer plants and can pick and choose which of those to plant back in the garden.

When my children were small, I would give them fresh produce right out of the garden. Lettuce, green beans and tomatoes taste so much better when they are fresh and no vitamin pill contains better nutrients. Need I say my children were always terrific vegetable eaters? They surprised my aunt when they dragged me to the salad bar instead of the dessert bar at a buffet style restaurant - they were 6 and 3 at the time. Now they are big enough to help, especially with mulching in the fall and preparing the garden in the spring. At this point I don't really get to preserve anything. The children are a teen and a preteen and the food disappears practically as fast as it comes in the door, but they still go out and grab some lettuce or lambs quarters leaves to snack on and are still getting the best nutrition nature can offer.

Next Year's Perennials

PamH — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:24:00 GMT

It's June; your annuals are coming along or in pots. Your perennials are growing fast. So why not just sit back and not worry about your flower beds until next spring?

There is a good reason not to do this. Now is the time to start perennials and biennials for next year. It is easy, personally rewarding, and it can save hundreds of dollars. Consider this, a small starter perennial will usually cost $2 and up to $10. If you want lots of those delphiniums and want them in specific colors, what can you do? Plant now for next year and arrange your colors and heights to please you. Don't depend on box stores or nurseries to have the selection you want.

Here's what I am doing right now. In the past two days, I have used 21 8-oz styrofoam cups, 21 fold down plastic sandwich bags, and a modest amount of good seed starting mix to literally start a few hundred perennials: 3 kinds of delphiniums, 5 kinds of hollyhocks, 2 kinds of echinacea, Canterbury Bells, 3 kinds of foxgloves, etc. Most of these seeds I bought from a very old seed company, Crosmanseed.com. Their seed prices range from fifty-nine cents to eighty-nine cents with a modest delivery charge. Very specific special varieties I will buy at stores or order on line at other seed companies.

Now, you are ready to plant your seeds for next year's plants.

Take a styrofoam cup and puncture a couple of holes at the bottom. A sharpened pencil or pen does fine.
Write on the cup the name of the plants and the date of sowing in the cup.
Fill the cup with slightly moist growing medium, leaving about a half inch from the top.
Carefully shake out a few seeds (you should have plenty left for later sowings if you need them,) and gently sprinkle them over the top surface. At this point you may press the seeds into the soil. Sometimes it is good to sprinkle a fine covering of sand or vermiculite over the seeds if 1/4th cover is suggested on the seed packet.
Loosely put the fold down sandwich bag over the cup, leaving it somewhat pulled up at the top. This does not need to fit tight. It allows some air to seep in.
Place the cups in a sunny window sill or even better under a flourescent light (I use a 48" shoplight).
Check with regularity for germination and growth. When the seedlings are big enough to handle, wet the medium thoroughly and gently pull the seedlings out with roots intact and place in a much larger container to grow on until they are large enough to put in the garden.
Protect from sun scald by gently laying a piece of fifty-nine cent coarse nylon netting over them. This gives enough shade to harden them off. After several days, you may remove the netting and the plants should be hardened off and ready for full sun. If the plants are shade plants, then skip this part and put them directly into the shade first thing.
These little plants will require careful watching so that they don't dry out. Monitor them well and next summer you will have all the blooming size perennials you could possibly want. Your only limitation is your imagination. Use garden books and local gardens for inspiration.

-- Gloria

Everyone is smart about something! That's why we have The Dollar Stretcher Guest Blog. If you have a story that could help save time or money, please send it by email to MyStory@stretcher.com.

Re: How Does Your Garden Grow? Summer 2009 Garden Club!

shrewgirl2020 — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:04:22 GMT

I am really late getting my garden started this year. Normally I try to plant around the first or second week of May, but this year we had a frost through the third week of May and it has rained and been too wet to till the ground until now.

So my husband and I tilled the ground Monday and Tuesday we planted the following:

Corn: Early Bantam, Bloody Butcher, Yellow Dent, Sunshine, and Big Daddy Yellow Dent

Beans: Half-Runner, Bush, Romano, Red Scarlet Runner

Peas: Freezonia, Alaska, Dwarf Edible Sweet

Potatoes: Irish Red, Kennbunk, Yukon Gold

Lettuce: Endive, Mesclun, Grand Rapids Leaf, Salad Bowl, Black Seeded Simpson

Radish, Spinach, Detroit Red Beets, Red, Yellow and White Onions, Danvers Long Carrots

Sumter, Muncher, Straight 8 Cucumbers, Stonehead Cabbage, Sugar Baby, Charleston Grey, Mountain Pride Watermelons, Cantelope

Waldham's Butternut, Yellow Straightneck, Yellow Crookneck, Acorn, and Coczeille Squash, Connecticut Field Pumpkins

Cayenne, Jalepeno, Hot Banana, Cowhand and Green"Cali Wonder" Bell Peppers

Hybrid Celebrity Tomatoes and then the following heirloom tomatoes: Roma, Mr. Stripey, Yellow Pear, Red Beefsteak, German Queen, Marglobe and Brandywine.

Mammoth Sunflowers and a lot of other flowers, Dill, Sweet Basil, Chives, Spearmint and Peppermint.

We bought the tomato and pepper plants, but everything else is seed.

My herbs from the last two years: Thyme, Sage, Lavender, Bee Balm and Oregano made it through another winter and are in full bloom now. My pear tree is covered in little pears, there must be over a thousand on it!

So, I got a late start, so the harvest will be late, but hopefully we will have a late frost, at the end of September or first of October and I will still get something out of my garden.

After all of the tilling and planting I am taking today "off" to rest: I got really sunburned despite using sumscreen and a hat and long sleeves, and I have blisters from the hoeing and raking despite wearing gloves, and then somehow I got into poison ivy also, so I have the ivy on top of the blisters on top of the sunburn...other than that, I really enjoyed getting to "play" in the dirt yesterday.

I know that my list might sound like a lot, but I live on a small lot in a small town in Southwestern Virginia. I have been carefully digging up my yard and expanding my garden each year with the hopes that one day I will not need my lawnmower. I think if I can grow a garden on my small spot, a lot of others could too. This would really help our environment and our economy if we all tried to grow a little more of our own food. I know that it has helped our own personal budget, and its good exercise as well. I am not a stay at home mom either, both my husband and I work full time jobs outside of the home, we have four teenagers who consume a lot of our time as well, but we have been gardening each year for several years now so I think if we can find the time to garden others could also. Every little bit that you can grow for yourself helps everyone!

The Tiller is having Personal Problems!

Karen K — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:21:08 GMT

Hubby has been working on the tiller for the last couple days. First it was a new inner tube for a tire. Then water in the gas line. New Spark Plugs. Now the carburator is kaput! Hubby is very, very mechanical and he can fix all these problems. But the question is when is enough, enough? May be time to buy a new tiller for next year.

Survival Gardening

Brandy — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:19:39 GMT

In my e-mail this term, survival garden, popped out at me this week. Well, indeed...what else one would be planting edibles for? But this term seems to be catching on as people turn to growing their own foods to make it through tough times or to lower rising food expenses.

I know many of us here have either been growing food for years or have taken a serious hand at it more recently. How about our readers? Let us know if you feel you have had to start a garden to survive the times.

What about those who are just thinking about how they could be more self-sufficient and save on foods by growing them, where does one start with this? I found an interesting article called Top Five Tips for Survival Gardening. Check it out then check back here as members share their ideas on how to get a survival garden started.

Re: Frugal Flower Bed

homesteaderbelle — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:32:10 GMT

Chop or dig up a small area in your yard, sow some seeds, and watch them grow!

Belle

Better to be five minutes early than one minute late - be prepared.

Millers Grain House — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:48:00 GMT

This saying is more than just a reminder of good manners for arriving to a destination on time; it is a moto of many a homesteader.

Did you know that in the Great Depression, one (1) out of three (3) families were in agriculture. That's 33%! Many people that we know in our area remember growing huge gardens as children and never going hungry, while most people in the cities were in soup lines. They worked hard, but found joy in it. The tables were always full of homegrown goodies with plenty to spare for the occassional 'drifting guest'.

Now, less than 3% of Americans have a home garden. This speaks volumes to me on the state of our union. Without getting political, how do we expect to provide for our children if we are not providing for ourselves and letting the stores, media or government do it for us?

Maybe we won't ever have to worry about a food shortage, but maybe our children will. Why not be prepared early so they won't be unprepared when it's too late? Seems to make good sense to me.

If you are thinking of planting a garden, buy heirloom seeds. They will produce seeds that grow with each crop (unlike GMO or hybrid seeds that are 'sterile' and produce for one season only. Seeds from those will not produce anything but foliage the next year).

Below is a link/picture to click and check out a very reasonably priced heirloom seed company.

Be prepared, or at least prepare our children. Better to be five minutes early than one minute late.

Re: What does "Going to seed" mean?

Karen K — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:00:17 GMT

I found this book with easy to understand instructions on saving and sowing seed and how to let plants "go to seed". It offers lots of info about what the seed should look like when it is ready to be collected, methods to plant, etc. I started saving seed with the easy plants like marigolds and other flowers and have had good success. For the first time last season I saved seed from vege plants. I'll let you all know how successful my endeavor was.

http://www.amazon.com/Seed-Sowing-Saving-Step-Step/dp/1580170013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240138406&sr=1-1