Companion Plants

Quite often we can use garden plantings to lessen the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Below is a chart I copied from Tennessee Magizine about Companion plants. Some plants attract good insects and other enhance the flavor of their companions. still more add good elements to the soil. Also beware of plants that arre not happy planted together!

New Celery from Purchased Celery

I found this on Pinterest and rather than rewrite this whole post I'm going to send you to this terrific blog! It shows how to grow a whole new celery plant from a purchased celery! A good tip and a new blog to follow too. I'm going to do this one for sure.

http://chickensintheroad.com/farm-bell-recipes/re-growing-celery/

Tips for Growing Winter Veggies

Most of you know that I have no sunny spot to grow veggies period much less winter ones but I know lots of you do. I found this really good post today and wanted to share it with you. I think maybe my son Zack (he inherited the green thumb) and I may attempt a vegetable garden in my lower back yard next spring. In the mean time, please enjoy this post from DIY Natural
http://www.diynatural.com/winter-vegetables/?awt_l=5qXWw&awt_m=3kdFQ7zQMItFQkt

Bees and Butterflies...It's not what you think!

Butterfly Bush Bloom

Every year the butterflies get fewer and fewer even though I have tons of plants to attract them. My friend and garden buddy, Joni, sent me this very informative post about how to attract them to our yards, what plants they like and steps we can take to insure we will have our pollinators around for a long time. After all, our food chain depends on them. I can't imagine summer without a fresh tomato from my yard - tomatoes depend on pollinators like bees and butterflies to set fruit - squash, corn and many others too!

Read what Joni sent here: http://deliciousliving.com/health/how-save-bees-your-garden?cid=nl_360_daily 

Growing Your Own Garlic in Containers

I finally found Garlic cloves for planting and decided to turn some of my garden tubs into a garlic garden. I planted 36 Early Italian Garlic bulbs in two containers like the ones below. I found the bulbs from Burpee Seed site and I was real happy with my purchase. Good planting and harvesting instructions came with the cloves. The tubs in the photo were planted about 10 days ago and you can see how they have grown. I will let them grow until they turn brown just like onions do when they are ready to harvest. I'll braid the stems and hang in the pantry for winter use.

Cheap and Simple Seed Starter Cups

Most of my readers know how frugal- translate that cheap! Since I grow and transplant hundreds of tomatoes and other small plants, my container expense was climbing. I have small groups of folks over to my house every other week and we have snacks - I use the tall plastic cups to keep from washing dishes. They are just the right size to pot up my tomatoes for sale in! I used an ice pick to put holes in the bottom and a black permanent marker to write the variety on top!

Seed Potatoes in a Barrel!

I have very little sunny space for gardening in my yard. This year I am doing Straw Bale Gardening and I will post my experiment here soon. In addition, I am growing potatoes in half barrels. My son gave me a big white plastic barrel that had been around his work yard for years. It had not contained anything hazardous. Bill sawed it in half and drilled 1/2 inch drainage holes around the sides and in the bottom of the half that was the barrel bottom.

Here's what the bottom of that barrel looked like when Bill was finished drilling drain holes. I used a coffee filter to cover the big hole that was in the top.
Next I put about 4 inches of compost in the bottom of both barrel halves, laid my seed potatoes on top of the soil as in the picture at the top. I did red potatoes in one and Yukon Gold in the other half. Next I covered the seed potatoes with more compost until I could not see any of the potato seeds. picture below:

As the potatoes grow, I will keep covering the vines, leaving a few leaves to soak up sun, until the vines reach the top of the barrel. At that point I will let them spill over the sides till it's time to dump out my harvest! I'll post more as they grow.

Best Gardening Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me

Last week I promised to tell you the best gardening advice dad ever gave me. It's very simple but most of us have a very hard time with this one and it can make or break your garden. Without farther ado here it is in his own hand writing:

Trust me in Zone 6B this should be the Gardening Gospel! I have seen it snow 5 inches on May 5th!

Growing Carrots - Tips from Papa's Garden Journal

Papa grew the best carrots ever! We had them from summer till way after Christmas. Below are tips from his journal about how he did it.

Papa always planted Nantes Coreless seeds in the fall. Here's what he said in his journal about growing them: "8-2 Planted 1/2 pack (same as last year) where potatoes were - ground very fertile and loose due to pony poo and straw. 2 rows.
8-9 Carrots coming up, removed straw and mulch
9-27 Some as big (around) as pennies - very good stewed. Lots and lots. Too thick still
1-1 (following year) lots and lots: smaller than usual probably due to them being planted too thick but some very large, most OK. Still have one full row in ground. they are mulched.
1-29 dug 2 large plastic dishes full - the end of the crop.

Another year he wrote this: " Carrots- Nantes - 2 rows where potatoes were. Started eating some end of Sept. When we returned from trip 12/3 (he and mom always went to Gulf Shores for three months every fall) they were monsters! a bumper crop of long, large, smooth ones. I gave carrots to everybody and still had scads for us.
12-21 mulched remaining rows with straw due to cold
March 1 final digging - an aluminum dish pan full after eating them since September, giving them to all our friends. Much too many - cut back to one 40 foot row this year.

Dad always mulched the carrots with straw before the first hard frost. He always planted his carrots after he dug the potatoes and raked the bed smooth. One of his favorite sources for seeds was Henry Fields . I lived on the adjoining property to mom and dad and we raised ponies. That's where he got the pony poo. He would till in the year old manure every spring and his garden soil was very fertile and fluffy too.

I think I will plant carrots this fall in my deep tubs. I don't have a normal garden due to my nasty clay soil and huge, tall oak trees. I use raised beds and plastic containers. See my post about container gardening.

 Next week a mishmash of tips about lots of things from Pop's journal.

If you want to read more about Papa and his antics check out Papa's Journal.

Notes from Papa's Garden Journal - Growing Tomatoes

My dad grew the most awesome veggies. He kept a gardening journal and I inherited it when he died several years ago. I ran across the journal the other day and I had forgotten how many good tips were in there. In the next few weeks, I want to share some of them with you.  

This week we will talk about Tomatoes. Papa, as the grandchildren called him, tried all sorts of Tomatoes and here are some of his notes about his favorite varieties:

 

His all time favorite was Early Girl. Dad planted it every year and as it's name implies, he always got the first tomatoes on this plant. this was also the one he took suckers from for late fall crop.

 

Celebrity- Here's what he said about it, "set 6 plants next to Early Girl on 4-27. Both were from plants started from seed indoors on 3-10. Plenty of fruit on both varieties on 7-6. 7-18 giving away tomatoes to anyone who needs them!"

 

Parks Whopper: (I wonder if this one is still available) He planted it in 2000 and got "bunches" of tomatoes according to his journal.

One way he kept us in fresh tomatoes from early summer to late fall (sometimes as late as Christmas) was by rooting some of the sucker branches from the ones planted in the spring, planting them in the garden in mid-summer and these would produce fruit until frost. The tomatoes that still had green fruit on them when the first hard frost was predicted would be pulled up by the roots and the whole vine hung upside down in the barn. We would pick ripe tomatoes off them until Christmas!

Another way to save those green tomatoes is to wrap each one in newspaper, store them in a box in a dark closet and check them weekly for ripe ones. I’ve done this myself and had fresh tomatoes way into winter.

Next week I'll share his notes on growing carrots. We always had carrots way into January from the seeds he planted the pervious year.

 

 

Some of my Favorite Garden Web Links

I spend quite a few hours a week searching and reading about gardening and plants. I've run upon a bunch of really great sources of information and plants over the years. Below are a few of my favorites and a brief description of them

Let's start with plant information. By far the best plant search and information site I have found is  Missouri Botanical Garden  plant search. You can search by common name or Latin name. There are pictures, plant info and growing tips http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plantfinder/plantfindersearch.aspx

Dave's Garden is also a good place to search. You can subscribe for even more perks. Plants available for sale on this site too. http://davesgarden.com/

This link has good information on seed starting and other gardening tips on the sidebar http://www.prescottenews.com/index.php/features/columnists/ken-lain-watters-garden-center/item/22894-starting-seed-indoors

Fun tips and ideas here:  http://www.amateurgardening.com/category/how-to/

I've mentioned Mike McGroarty several times but his site remains one of the best sources of info out there;
http://mikesbackyardnursery.com/

University of Minnesota Extension has lots of features for gardeners too http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/

The best free forum on the web; http://www.gardenweb.com/  you can search by region, state, plant even birding etc.

This next one is a retail site that has great information about the plants they sell. I use it for growing info quite often Plant Delight Nursery http://www.plantdelights.com/#

Everything you ever want to know about perennials http://www.perennialplant.org/

FREE SEEDS HERE! http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/Free_Seeds.html
http://www.heirloomseedswap.com/ 

Not free but good source of seeds http://www.southernexposure.com/

Some of my favorite plant sources
Walter's Gardens        Mary's Greenhouse in Tennessee     Gorge Top Gardens

Petals from the Past     White Flower Farm  lets not forget Amazon and Ebay too.

Please share your favorite sites in my comments section

Seed Starting Video Tips

It's time to start your tomato and veggie seeds as well as summer flowers. Being a person who sees no point in replicating information or wasting energy (mine!). I want to point you to some really good videos on how to start seeds. These are from Burpee so remember that you can also buy some of the items they talk about from other vendors. Do an Amazon or Google search before you purchase anything. I reuse my little greenhouse boxes over every year. Here are pictures of the ones I just planted. No tomato sprouts yet but coral bells jumped up within a week.