Once you’ve grown your own seedlings, or bought them at the nursery and brought them home, what’s the best way to get them in the ground and growing well?
There are two main parts to this – the state of the transplant, and the state of the place you’re going to plant them into.
The ideal is [...]
I have my strawberries in the hoophouse this year (keeps the deer off them) and today we ate the first four ripe ones. Mmmmm yummy! And about a month earlier than they would be in the open garden.
Planting already-started plants (called transplants, starts, or seedlings, depending on where you are) is a great way to get a head-start on the season and is especially useful for plants which need a longer growing season than you have. If you have the space and expertise you can start them yourself, but you can also [...]
Direct seeding outside has many advantages for most kinds of vegetables, though it’s not the best solution for all of them. While planting transplants gives you a head start on the season for veggies that need heat, and can help you get the most out of succession planting, some types of vegetables hate being transplanted [...]
Snap peas are the kind with the thick, sweet, crunchy, juicy edible pods (not the thin edible pods – those are snow peas or sugar peas). There are a number of different varieties available, though many people call them by the name of the original commercial variety, Sugar Snap. Growing snap peas is easy, even [...]
As you choose what to plant in your vegetable garden, you’ll need to consider several things. The main factors to think about are:
What you like to eat (and how much of it, and when)
What grows well in your local climate
What will growi n your specific conditions
What’s most worthwhile to grow at home
What You Like to [...]
There are a number of different ways to make a new raised bed vegetable garden. Some work better on a larger scale, some depend on having soil present already, and some use more recycled materials.
Assuming you’ve already found a location with the needed sun and water access, the first question is, what’s already there?
In many [...]
How you prepare an existing bed for spring planting depends on what state it’s in. Lots of weeds? Compacted? Mulched last fall? Let’s go over the possibilities, but first – if your beds have irrigation fittings of any kind you may need to move them out of the way so they don’t get damaged by [...]
Home vegetable growing has been rather out of fashion for the last few decades. Landscaping, lawns, and flowers have been “in”: edible landscapes too, to some extent, with food plants incorporated into a decorative landscape.
But not full on, growing food in order to eat. Some people have continued to do it, of course, but to [...]
