Learn to Grow an Organic Garden

Do you worry about the toxic chemicals in your vegetables but hate the high price and less than optimal quality of organic choices at your local market?

Years of exposure to chemicals can not only make you sick, they can cause long term health problems for your children. Chemicals build up in your system and can cause fatigue, mood changes and weight gain, at best!

Growing organically isn't hard but too often it can feel that way. Go to your local nursery or garden department and you will see aisles and aisles of chemicals guaranteed to feed, protect and produce an abundant food supply... but at what cost.

Fresh organic food tastes better, is healthier for you and your family and is better for our environment. Best of all you can get it right out of your own garden.

Jeff Serland is an organic gardening expert.  His book My Organic Garden will take you through the entire process of getting your organic garden producing the freshest, healthiest food you have ever eaten and you will never go back to chemical laden commercial vegetable.

• Learn how to prepare the soil.
• Learn the right fertilizers.
• Learn about weeds in your garden.
• Learn how to raise your plants from seeds the easy way.
• Learn everything it takes to go organic.

Stop searching book stores and the internet and stop trying to piecemeal all that information together.

If you want to get started on a new way to garden, get Jeff's book today. Gardening can be healthy, fun and stress free if you have the right instructions.

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Setup a Hydroponic Garden for Year Round Growing

What's a garden without dirt? Hydroponics! While a whole lot of effort is put into tending to the soil in our gardens, soil itself is only the nutrient reservoir and otherwise totally inessential to growing plants. Provide the food source in water and your plants will grow just as hardily without a drop of dirt.

Whether you live in a New York high-rise, the desert of Arizona or Minnesota in the winter, hydroponics make it possible to grow fresh vegetables and herbs all year around.

Hydroponic kits are available in all shapes, sizes and price ranges. Some are even pretty enough to put on a kitchen counter to make clipping herbs into salads or soups quick and easy.  For do-it-yourselfer,  with a few supplies you can construct a system in an afternoon.  Which ever way you go, the basics of a home hydroponic system is simple.

Containers

• For DYI, fish tanks make the perfect hydroponic reservoir because they are solid, meant to hold water and have equal top/bottom dimensions. Any container with similar qualities will work just as well.
• Whether purchased or made, your container needs to block light or you will soon have algae growing along with your plants.   If using a fish tank or other clear container, spray it with black paint or cover with black plastic or fabric.

Lights

• Essential if your hydroponics garden will be indoors.
• If you have a full scale greenhouse operation, use lights as needed.

Support

• Lacking soil something needs to hold the plants upright.
• You can use Styrofoam or Rockwool.
• If you opt for Styrofoam you will need to cut it about one-quarter inch smaller than your container as well as cutting a hole for the air pump hose and holes for your net pots. Your Styrofoam will float in the water so made sure it is able to rise and lower easily - thus the benefit of an even dimensioned container.

QTY 10 375 Mesh Net Pot Cup Hydroponics Aeroponic    US $8.48

• Rockwool is a growing medium that can be purchased in sheets or blocks/cubes. They must either come with center holes for placing your plant or you must cut your own. Rockwool isn't wool at all but is made from molten rock. It's used in hydroponics as well as for rooting cuttings.

Net pots

• These individual plant pots look like doll size clothes baskets.
• You will place plants in your net pot then into the Styrofoam or Rockwool and finally into the container.

Air pump

• Plants will not live by nutrients alone.
• Without air circulating oxygen to the bottom of the container and the roots, your plants will soon be taking their last breath.
• Air pumps come from mini to industrial sizes.
• Just make sure it runs quietly if you share living space with your hydroponics system.

Nutrient Solution

• If there is anywhere you can go more wrong in hydroponics,  it's with your fertilizer.
• Too little will product weak, spindly plants and too much will burn your plant to death.
• Chose hydroponics nutrient solution only as your plants need a full spectrum of nutrients, trace minerals and anti-microbial agents to kill off fungus.
• Follow directions carefully but also use your eyes, instincts and a meter to increase or decrease feeding.

pH and Nutrient Monitoring

• Yes, there is a meter for that.
• Monitoring the pH and nutrient levels in your hydroponic garden will help your plants grow healthier and produce abundantly and let you sleep better at night knowing you did it right.

Easy Grow Mushrooms for a Gourmet Bounty

To the average gardener, growing mushrooms can seem a little alien because they seem to fly in the face of all gardening logic.

Fungi are classified as a kingdom as opposed to the more earthly known plants and animals.   A mushroom garden can add a little gourmet to your harvest and you may just fall in love with growing this quirk of nature.

Good For You

Not only do they make a delicious addition to pizza and stir fry, mushroom are high in fiber, protein, B vitamins, selenium, potassium and phosphorus. You can easily grow most species of mushrooms including Shiitake, Reishi, Maitake, Oyster and the popular button.

Easy Grow How-To

Although you can grow your own spawn (fungi speak for seedlings) from spore (think seeds) and use mediums from mature to coffee grounds, the easiest way to produce a healthy, bountiful flush (harvest) is to purchase sterilized spawn and inoculate (fungi speak for plant) in a log.

• Just think of the last place you would grow anything. Mushroom need a dark, humid and cool environment so grow them in a garage, shed, basement, cellar or outbuilding. If your climate and yard allows (dark and dank), grow outdoors.

• Mushrooms are grown on hardwood. You will need a 3-4 foot log, cut 4-12 weeks prior to inoculating.

• Don't use a fresh cut log as it still has the tree's natural fungicide compounds and will kill your spawn. Likewise don't use an aged log as its nutrient and sugar content has depleted.

• Select oak, poplar, elm, maple or alder. Avoid cedar and pine as they are too aromatic.

• Purchase sterilized plug spawn.

• To inoculate your hardwood with the spawn, drill 2" deep holes at 4" intervals in your log.

• You should drill about 40 holes in a 3-4 foot log.

• Pound the spawn plugs into the holes with a hammer (one per hole).

• Seal the holes with a fine coat of melted paraffin wax to prevent insects from feasting on your spawn.

• Inoculate prior to the winter freeze as the spawn will need to go dormant in winter.

• Stand your log on end; just lean it up against something.

• Water every few weeks; never let the log dry out.

• Colonizing can take 9-12 months.

• Your logs have begun "fruiting" when you see dark mottling on the cut ends.

• You can force fruiting by submerging your log in cold water for 24 hours (or putting out in heavy rain) and then hitting it with a hammer or dropping it a rock (aliens!). This arouses the primal instinct of the fungi who apparently think the tree has fallen and it's time to produce.

• Once established and given the right growing conditions, your fungi will fruit in flushes for years.

• Harvest your mushroom with a sharp knife.

• Should you want a steady supply of mushrooms for the whole family, inoculate 1-2 dozen logs.

• By re-soaking with a 6-8 week resting period you can rotate through the logs and be totally flushed in mushrooms year round.

• Start a new crop every year or two.

An even easier way to grow your own mushrooms and make a fun project for the kids is to buy mushroom kits. There are kits for most gourmet mushrooms prepared just right for their specific species and ready to fruit in just weeks. Mushrooms make a great new hobby and a meal too!

How To Plant Bulbs for Spring Flowers

It's Fall. Do You Know Where Your Bulbs Are?

Bulbs are a gift from the gods of winter. Knowing how lonely you will be for the sight of a brightly colored flower, the winter soil incubates the sleeping bulb through the coldest days and just when you think you can't stand another winter chill, a yellow daffodil or purple crocus will lift your darkest spirits and ready you for spring.

But until the thrill of spring, you have some work to do. Bulbs are easy and hardy flowers to grow so your tasks are few but important.

• Plant or store...but keep your bulbs between 50 and 60 degrees. If you aren't planting right away store in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator or in the garage or cellar. Protect from the rodents who will gladly make a meal of your bulbs.

• Don't delay. Bulbs should be planted about 6 weeks before the ground freezes, which is great because you would be hard pressed to dig a hole much afterward.

• Pick a spot in your garden that gets good but indirect light. Cold loving bulbs will die of heat stroke in direct sun.

• As bulbs are prone to rot in soggy conditions, add a little sandy to the soil and give them some protection if you live in a rainy climate.

• How deep you plant depends on the type of bulb. Four to twelve inches is the general range so check the package rather than guess wrong.

• Whoever thought of the bulb auger was surely a genius. They make the perfect hole and hold the dirt patiently until you are ready to refill your hole. Get one with a long handle for the garden and one with a short handle for the window boxes.

• Again, depending on the type of bulb, make your blub holes one to six inches apart. Don't guess or you will be pulling out bulbs all spring.

• Now most bulbs have distinct top and bottom sides. However, in the case of tubers, its another story.  Should you be totally stumped by the top-bottom dilemma, just plant sideways. The bulb is forgetting and God only know how but it will find its way to the top of the soil by spring.

• Drop a couple of bulbs in each hole; they like friends to winter with.

• Fill the hole back up with the dirt your auger held neatly for you while you worked.

• Cover with mulch, bark and/or dry leaves to protect from winter conditions and to keep the soil moist. It's a good idea to really camouflage your bulbs if squirrels roam your garden. They are sure you have planted this tasty treat just for them and will dig them up should they find them.

• Water well and you're done except for an occasional check of the soil as you never want it to completely dry out.

• The debate rages on whether to add manure or other fertilizer to the hole before adding the bulbs. I personally feel the bulb don't appreciates a hardy meal before a long sleep anymore than I do.  However, for last year’s bulbs, it's a good idea to refeed the soil at this time.

• Keep checking the window, spring will come again. As soon as the first shoots appear and the ground unfreezes you can add a slow release bulb food and be oh so glad you planted your bulbs last fall.

How to Grow Hardy Mint

If you're new to gardening, give yourself a boost of self confidence by growing mint.  Indoors or out, mint is a hardy and prolific perennial and doesn't give up easily even on the brownest thumbed gardener.

In fact, mint may very well take over your entire garden.  If you don't tend to it, mint will spread like wild fire. If left to its own, mint will make a super ground cover so plant with that design in mind.

Mint can get overly friendly with other plants so you may want to restrict it with a container or hanging basket. Should you want to plant directly in the ground, you can control it by planting in bottomless containers or by digging out the full area you want it to roam and laying out a plastic liner about 18 inches deep.  Remember to poke some drain holes in the liner then fill with soil and show your mint you know how to establish boundaries.

Mint is one plant that doesn't start well from seeds so buy starter plants. Then plant as soon as you can first dig in the soil in early spring so that you can enjoy continuous harvests all summer long.  Despite their size, set the plants 12-18 inches apart or you'll be pruning all summer long.

Lucky for you, mint is not a sun worshiper so, where other plants fail, mint is going to make that partially shady spot in your garden look fabulous.  It's only upkeep besides pruning is to keep the soil nutrient-rich and moist but never soggy.

Growing mint in poor soil and full sun or all shade will keep its growth in check but that's just being cruel to this beautiful herb.

Don't hesitate to pinch off sprigs frequently. This will keep keep the plants bushy and reward you with one of the most tasty and versatile herbs.  Mint doesn't just make a great tea, it has healing benefits that have been relied upon for centuries.

Now fast forward two or three months after planting and you'll more mint than you can think how to use. Fear not; here are ten ways to enjoy your bounty.  There are hundreds of  more ways to use mint. When you find your favorite way, come back and share it.

A DIY Craft and Great Gift Idea Too!

Try this Do It Yourself project for an indoor herb garden or flower  sanctuary  to bring joy to your home or give as a gift.

This is a great project for the kids or grand kids with adult supervision.  The pride and responsibility of taking care of a living things will last them a lifetime.

This is also a great gift for a housebound loved ones that misses the garden.  And of course it is a beautiful addition to any home decor.

Here’s what you need:

• Pre-made wooden window box
• 2 plastic containers that fit comfortably in the window box
• Optional: wood water sealant for inside the wooden box
• Sandpaper
• Electric drill, bracket and screws for attaching to wall
• Acrylic paints: white and colors of your choice
• Stencils or an artist ability
• Gloss overcoat
• 2" paint brush and sponges for the stencils
• Potting pebbles
• Nursery quality soil
• Herbs and/or flowers

Method:

1. Smooth the outside window box with sandpaper use gain-directinon strokes until all rough edges are smooth
2. Optional: apply water sealant inside the wooden box per manufacturer's directions
3. Apply two coats of white base to the outside of the wooden box per manufacturer's directions
4. Decorate with colored paint using stencils of  hearts, leaves, lattice, animals etc.
5. Dry over night and apply two coats of gloss to the outside of the wooden box per manufacturer's directions
6. Attach bracket to the wall just under the window
7. Place 1 of the plastic container boxes in the wooden box
8. Remove the drain covers from the 2nd plastic container and place it in the 1 container
9. Line the 2nd container with a dense layer of pebbles end to end
10. Fill with soil mix, flowers and/or herbs
11. Water without over saturating
12. Fertilize often with a slow release variety
13. Check the 1 plastic container monthly or as needed for excess water disposal

Best Herbs for your Box Garden:

• Lavender
• Geranium
• Chives
• Mint Sage
• Oregano

Best Plants for your Box Garden

• African Daisy
• Begonia
• Ground Ivy
• Black-eyed Susan
• Marigold

How to Prevent Houseplant Pests

What's worse than pests on your plants? Pests in your home. Aphids, spider mites and mealybugs especially love houseplants and thrive indoors.

Once your plant is infested with the crawling creatures, it may not be worth saving. It can also subject its healthy indoor neighbors to the same buggy fate. So a vigilant eye and prompt attention to ridding your plants of pests is critical.

Keeping Pests Away

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Never was there a more appropriate saying than when it comes to the beloved houseplant.

Heed these tips and you'll be enjoying your plants instead of fighting their bugs:

• Never bring a less than perfect plant home. Don't think you can cure its woes. A sickly plant is probably already a goner. Give a potential purchase the once over before buying.

• Even if your newest green friend looks in top shape, keep it away from your other plants for a week or so.  Then give it another careful exam using a magnifying glass.

• Keep your plants healthy and they will be less likely to attract pests to begin with. You can learn more about the care and feeding of plants here.

• If you bring outdoor plants in, use the same precautions as a newly purchased plant. Outdoor plants are hardier and may have the pests without the symptoms.

• Inspect your plants once a month. Use the magnifying glass and check stems and the backs of leaves. Houseplant pests are tiny, don't always look like bugs and aren't always mobile so look both for pests and the signs of pest damage.

• If you find pests on any plant, isolate it from the other plants and place  in favorable conditions to give it a fighting chance.

Never use a feather duster to clean your plants. Not only will it transfer insects from one plant to the plant, it may very well contain the critters you are trying to prevent.

• Replace the potting soil, which is likely infested.  Thoroughly wash the plant's container; remember pests are almost invisible to the eye. Use only packaged soil for indoor plants, which has been sterilized.

• Pests thrive in certain conditions:  warm temperatures, excess moisture,  highly fertilized soils, low lighting. Keeping conditions ideal in your home will be a big ounce of prevention. Eliminate and cause you you will likely eliminate the pest.

Read all about common houseplant pests and how to get rid of them safely and naturally.