Category: Fruit Gardening
-
Post-Storm Garden Recovery: How to Revitalize Your Garden After Severe Weather
For gardeners, heavy summer storms highlight the importance of being prepared both beforehand and ready for quick and decisive post-storm garden recovery. This article offers guidance on assessing damage, immediate care, and long-term recovery. It emphasizes the importance of quick action, evaluating plant damage, removing debris, caring for broken stems, waterlogged soil, and considering fertilization…
-
Natural Ways to Keep Chipmunks and Squirrels Out of Your Garden
Chipmunks and squirrels can wreak havoc on your garden, but there are ways to deter them. These rodents dig holes in search of food or to bury their own stash. You can deter them by offering a distraction of their preferred foods or using decorative stones to cover soil. Companion planting with marigolds may not…
-
Pruning for Perfect Tomatoes
Tomatoes are easy to grow and pruning is essential for optimal plant health and fruit production. Pruning encourages fruit growth and prevents diseases by limiting leaf contact with the ground. Determinant (bush) tomatoes require minimal pruning, while indeterminant (vine) tomatoes benefit greatly from it. Prune when plants are about a foot tall. Be mindful of…
-
Walking on Eggshells: Calcium for Your Garden
When you grow plants, they absorb nutrients and transform them into vegetables, fruit, and flowers. Harvesting removes these nutrients, so fertilizing your garden is crucial for its growth. Eggshells are an excellent source of calcium, vital for fruiting plants. Besides preventing issues like Blossom End Rot, eggshells benefit earthworms and help alkaline-loving plants. Sterilizing and…
-
Make it a Block Party: Soil Blocking for Spring Success
Soil blocking originated in Holland as a method to start garden seeds indoors before spring frosts. Growing in popularity starting in the early 2000s, it involves planting seeds in compacted dirt blocks. This technique offers benefits such as increased air flow, prevents root binding, and eliminates issues of a late spring start. Downsides include the…
-
Seed Swap Events: Increase Your Home Seed Library & Expand Your Garden
National Seed Swap Day, typically celebrated on the last Saturday of January, provides gardeners with the opportunity to exchange seeds, cuttings, and plants. These events offer a chance to acquire a diverse range of seeds, including local varieties better suited to the area. Seed swaps also facilitate social interaction, learning opportunities, and the acquisition of…
-
Green Tomatoes With Envy
Green tomatoes isn’t necessarily a tomato problem you need to overcome. But as the growing season grows to a close, the question arises: what to do with all those green tomatoes?
-
Blossom End Rot, What It Is, How To Fix It
Nothing is more upsetting to a gardener than dutifully caring for your plants only to find issues once the plant has begun to set fruit. Blossom End Rot is one of many common problems gardeners will encounter. It often occurs on common beginner gardener plants like tomatoes. Just because they’re easy to grow, however, doesn’t…
-
Common Tomato Problems
Tomatoes are the most common plant for gardeners of all types and skillsets. It is an easy plant to grow and is extremely forgiving to most kinds of weather. Yet even as easy as tomatoes are to grow, they come with a whole host of problems. Fortunately, tomato problems are easy to diagnose. Today, I’m…
-
Fruits and Vegetables at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon was the home of the first President of the United States, George Washington. Located in Mount Vernon, VA in Northern Virginia, it has some of the most spectacular gardens designed by the founding fathers. I had the opportunity to tour the gardens and have visited there many times. In the latest post I…