Information Central — Vegetable Gardening Questions Answered

Eagle Fest Saturday

Rains County, the next county over from my home in Hunt County, proclaims itself the Eagle Capital of Texas. Bald Eagles winter on Lake Tawakoni. The last weekend in January, there is an Eagle Fest with boat rides to see the eagles, see other birds of prey, and a small festival. Despite the current rainy weather, it is supposed to be a beautiful weekend. Come out Saturday and see the eagles. Admission is only $2.00 for the Eagle Fest. Boat rides are $25. Last Chance Forever and Blackland Prairie Raptor Center will have birds of prey that are undergoing rehabilitation or are too injured to be released in the wild but are able to act as ambassadors for their species. At 10:00, Dr. James Conrad will speak on the ecology of the Bald Eagle. This looks like a fun event to attend for a family looking for some inexpensive educational fun.

Growing Radishes in Hunt County, Texas

It is almost time to plant your radishes for the spring garden. They are one of the first things that are ready to harvest in the spring. Plant groups of them one week apart so you do not get more radishes at one time then you can eat.

For detailed instructions on how to plant radishes, see Growing Radishes. Here is a snapshot of the information you need to choose what cultivar to plant.

when to plant: February 5 to April 15th, September 1 to November 1
depth of planting: 1/2 inch
spacing of plants inside row: 1 inch
spacing of rows: 1 foot
time to harvest: 20-30 days
fertilizing: one cup of 10-20-10 per 10 feet of row at planting

cultivars for Hunt County:

Cultivar	Days to Harvest
Champion	20
Cherriette	24
Cherry Belle	22
White Icicle	30

Gardenbookfrontcoverthumbnail Growing Radishes in Hunt County, Texas

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Time to Plant Spring Onions

It is time to plant spring onions in North Central Texas. Onions are one of the things that grow really well in our black gumbo soil and they are easy to plant. Almost every feed store, home improvement store, and garden supply has bundles of sprigs ready to go in the ground. Pick ones that are not too dry and have some green on them. Wilted or dried out springs won’t live long. [click to continue…]

Plant Survival Tactics in Drought

Everywhere in North America is still undergoing a historic drought. Plants are dropping like flies from heat, stress, and lack of water. Texas is estimated to have lost ten percent of its’ trees from the drought, and other states are just as hard hit. Most of us will be planting new trees, shrubs, and flowers to replace those lost this last year. [click to continue…]

Using a Community Garden

Want to garden but don’t have any space? Try community gardening, a growing phenomenon in the United States. This guest post by Ewan Michaels discusses what you can expect and what is expected of you. He lives in Great Britain, where community gardens are a regular feature in most towns.

Using a Community Garden or Allotment

Community gardens or allotments are an excellent solution to those who lack garden space or would rather use their gardens for reasons other than growing food. Allotments are normally around 250 square meters but they can vary in size depending on the provider. If one is too large, you may be able to share with a friend but you should consult your provider. Allotments are normally offered to people on a renewable 12-month lease, where you can choose to grow whatever you like.

There are various benefits of renting a plot of land in a community garden. Firstly, in effect you are able to have an extension to your home; a rented garden away from home where you are able to relax, decorate it with your own outdoor water features and grow vegetables, fruit or flowers. This is perfect for those who don’t have much space at home but still wish to get involved in growing their own produce. In some places, you may be allowed to keep small animals such as rabbits or hens but you should speak to your provider first.

Another advantage is that you will be surrounded by fellow gardeners who you can regularly ask for tips and advice. You will find that they will be more than happy to share their knowledge whilst showing you their produce in their allotment. Some will have a wealth of information and could help to make your plot of land more successful.

Having an allotment gives you somewhere to escape to, your own piece of land to get away from everything, so you can do some gardening. You can also choose to decorate it as you like using ornaments or even solar powered water features. Gardening is a great form of exercise that leaves you with a final product in the form of fresh food or beautiful flowers.

It is also reasonable to expect certain things to be provided for you including security measures to prevent possible vandalism or trespassing. There should also be a water supply provided, as this is vital for anyone looking to grow plants and flowers, and main paths in between plots should be well maintained for easy access. In addition, some sites may provide meeting places, toilets or sheds but this will vary from site to site and should not be expected at every site.

With an allotment, you should remember that you are renting the land and therefore have certain responsibilities. These include keeping minor paths and your plot relatively neat and tidy, and maintaining the level of cultivation. In addition, you should respect fellow gardeners around you. When taking children or pets, you should ensure that they do not disturb others or cause any damage to other plots.

If you want to get involved in gardening but don’t really have the space, you should look into local allotments or community gardens that might be available in your local area. They act as a great solution to your gardening needs whilst immersing yourself within your local community. Growing your own vegetables and fruit can be incredibly satisfying, so work hard and enjoy the fruit of your labour!

Thank you, Ewan, for this helpful information on using a community garden.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Pruning Trees Especially Important This Year

With the extensive drought we are having, pruning your trees is going to be especially important this year. The Forest Service estimates we have lost ten percent of our trees in Texas. Many more trees have had die-backs and extensive damage. Removing the dead trees and pruning the living trees should be a priority for the health of the trees and your safety. No one wants a tree to fall through their roof!

Pruning needs to accomplish three things: remove dead, diseased, and damaged limbs, open up the canopy to air and light to prevent disease, and improve the appearance of the tree. Sometimes limbs must be removed for safety reasons, as well, such as when a limb threatens a structure or pedestrian walk way.

Generally the first cuts are too remove the three ds: dead, damaged, and diseased limbs. These should be cut back to the first joint of living, healthy, tissue. Be aware that cutting large limbs is dangerous and should only be done by a professional. The only thing worse than having a limb drop off and fall through you roof is cutting one off and having it do so.

This year, the bulk of the pruning you do will be of these limbs. In places such as Austin where there were severe watering restirctions, even the native trees died back or died entirely. Young trees were especially vulnerable as they did not have extensive root systems in place to reach what little water their was. This has lead to a need for a lot of tree removal in Round Rock, TX, and surrounding communities that are growing rapidly and have lots of new trees planted.

Often, by the time all the dead and diseased limbs are removed, no further pruning is necessary. However, if the canopy is still crowded, prune all branches pointing down and encourage those growing up. Pick two or three main branches and remove competitors. You want a shapely tree with space inside for air to flow. Otherwise, you run the risk of fungal and bacterial diseases hitting your weakened trees and killing them.

Finally, if there are limbs that just look bad, or destroy the symmetry of the tree, remove them. By the time you have finished pruning, the tree should be pleasing to look at, have all dead and damaged branches removed, and have air flow and light into the canopy. Proper pruning can really help our trees survive this drought. Don’t neglect your trees this winter.

Growing Corn in Hunt County, Texas

Growing corn is a bit more difficult than most people think. For one thing, it needs to be grown in blocks, not rows. Corn is pollinated by the wind, and a block of short rows will do that more efficiently than a long row of corn. Because of wind pollination, different types of corn can cross pollinate from as far away as 1/2 mile. To further complicate matters, there are two kinds of corn: sweet corn and flint corn. Sweet corn is what you eat off the cob, while flint corn is ground into corn meal, popped for popcorn, or fed to livestock. Make sure you get the right type for your garden or you could have an unpleasant surprise. Here is what you need to know to plant corn. You can find more information in my article on growing sweet corn, as well.

when to plant: March 20 to May 1, August 1 to August 15
depth of planting: 1 inch
spacing of plants inside row: 3-4 inches
spacing of rows: 2.5 to 3 feet
time to harvest: 65 to 100 days
fertilizing: For every 100 square feet, work in 2-3 pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer. Mix it with the top 3-4 inches of soil.

cultivars for Hunt County:

Cultivar	Days to Harvest
Indian Corn
Indian	100
Rainbow	110
Popcorn
Japanese Hullless	83
Robust White	100
Robust Yellow	100
Strawberry	110
Sugar Enhanced
Argent	80
Bodacious	75
Golden Queen	92
Seneca Arrowhead	65
Senceca Dancer	90
Spring Snow	65
Suppersweet Corn
Frontier	90
Honey n Pearl	78
Miral	70
Normal Sugary Corn
Early Sunglow	63
Merit	75
Silver Queen	91
Sweet G-90	90

Gardenbookfrontcoverthumbnail Growing Corn in Hunt County, Texas

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Time for Soil Tests

Do yourself and your plants a favor before you plant your garden this spring and do a soil test. Soil tests are simple. You gather some soil from your garden and send it to the soil lab in a special bag you obtain from your Extension agent. Two to four weeks later, you get a sheet of paper with the results.
The basic soil test tells you your soil pH, the amount of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium, and some of the most important micro-nutrients in your soil. In addition, if you tell the lab what you intend to grow in that spot, you will receive fertilizer recommendations.
Many people in Hunt County are surprised to learn that while they need to add nitrogen to the soil, they do not need to add phosphorus or potassium. Our black gumbo soil contains abundant phosphorus and potassium. In fact, adding more can actually cause your plants to get sick and die.
A soil test tells you exactly what is in your soil and what you need to add to get a good crop. It saves you money by allowing you to target your fertilizer applications to the soil conditions. You will save far more than the $10 or $20 fee for the test. Get one today.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Growing Collard Greens in Hunt County, Texas

Many Southerners eat collard greens on New Year’s Day for luck and to draw money toward them in the new year. Who doesn’t want good luck and riches? Here is how to grow your own collard greens, a Southern delicacy.

For detailed instructions on how to plant collard greens, see Collard Greens: A Southern Delicacy. Here is a snapshot of the information you need to choose what cultivar to plant.

when to plant: February 10 to March 10, August 1 to September 1
depth of planting: 1/2 to 3/4 inch deep
spacing of plants inside row: carpet row and trim leaves, or plant 12-18 inches apart for larger leaves
spacing of rows: 12-18 inches
time to harvest: 68-85 days
fertilizing: 8 pints 10-10-10 per row before harvest, one pint of nitrogen at 4 weeks and 7 weeks per row

cultivars for Hunt County:

Blue Max 68

Georgia Southern 75

Vates 75

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Getting Your Garden Ready For Spring

Even though it is officially winter, the weather in North Central Texas is supposed to be fantastic this week. Since onion planting is about two weeks away, now is a good time to get your garden ready for spring. While those of you further north are not quite ready for this yet, the steps are the same so you can follow along, then put them into action when the time comes.

First, if you have not cleared away any dead plants from the fall, get them out and on the compost heap. You want to start with new plants except for the things that overwinter, such as garlic, strawberries, and asparagus. If it is dead, get rid of it!

Second, you want to till under any compost and cover crops so they can be enriching your soil. Ideally, you would till the soil to a depth of six inches. This loosens the soil so root crops can grow well and distribtes the compost well throughout the soil. When the summer heat and the dry weather comes, this compost will help retain moisture in the soil as well as keep it from compacting into concrete. If you have not spread compost over your garden, you want to add three inches now and till it in good.

Lay out your rows and plow them. Make sure there are no big clods and that the area is free of grass and weeds. You cannot put per-emergents down in the garden because they would keep your vegetable seeds from growing, so you have to be vigilant and keep the weeds from taking advantage of your nice, fertile garden area. Pull weeds rather than chopping them to ensure they do not grow back.

At this point, you have strawberries, garlic, and asparagus still covered with straw against the winter chill. The rest of the garden is tilled and plowed in anticipation of planting. Let the soil rest for a couple of weeks now. The middle of January is the best time to plant onions in this area, and spring gardens go in the first part of February. All you will have to do then is make a small furrow on the top of each row to plant in and you will be ready to grow your garden.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Make the Most of Winter for A Sustainable Garden

Make the Most of Winter for a Sustainable Garden

It’s a topic of debate amongst gardeners; some adore winter as it means they can have a well-earned rest after the rush of summer sprouting and the fall harvest; however others miss the daily trek into the garden, and count down the days until spring.

However whether it’s loved or hated, winter produces so much for a sustainable garden that even the green fingered who are enjoying time off will enjoy.

Leaf Mulch

An unseasonably mild winter means that leaves are STILL falling from the trees, no sooner is the yard swept than another fall of leaves cover the ground. This is the ideal time to stack up the leaf mulch compost making sure the bin is full to the top and ready to rot as the warm weather returns.

Water

With storms and rain, and wet windy days, water barrels are filling fast. With adequate storage enough water can be gathered to make sure there’s enough in the spring.

To keep it fresh it is a good idea to half empty a full water barrel and then leave it outside for the natural rain to fill it up. There really is no better way to water plants.

Logs

Although for some of us so far the snow has been avoided, winds and hurricanes are in the news everyday causing havoc as they sweep their way across the country blowing over cars and buses alike. There has never been a more crucial time to trim trees, and precarious branches. Twigs can be dried out in a barn and used for kindling, whereas logs can be stacked, either to make natural wildlife homes, or to insert mushroom plugs when the time is right. Mushrooms grow well on damp logs with shade, adding extra fungi to the home crops.

Drying logs out and stacking neatly in a wood store will make sure that a wood burning stove or open fire keeps alight as the chills from the early spring gardening are melted away.

Seeds

It’s amazing this winter as some annuals that have been left out in the cold are still flowering despite the New Year beckoning. As normally gardeners would collect seeds in the fall, now is the time for those that had not completely dried out. Bird of paradise seeds and bedding plants seeds will ensure some good activity as May arrives. Whereas herb seeds will ensure the border of the veggie patch is as luscious as it’s always been without costing a cent.

This was a guest post from Martina Mercer on behalf of Lavenderworld.co.uk. Lavenderworld provide a range of products for the garden including herb plants and perennials.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Texas Trees Devastated in Drought

Texas trees have been devastated during the drought this year. The Forest Service estimates as many as five hundred million trees have died during the drought. That is close to ten percent of the trees in Texas. [click to continue…]

Last Minute Gardening Gifts

Wondering what to get that gardener on your gift list? Here are some last minute suggestions:

1)My book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up, is now only $0.99 in ebook form. It should be the first thing on your list for your gardening friends. Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

2)Give the gift of biodiversity and give your friend a membership to the Seed Saver’s Exchange. This excellent seed bank grows and preserves heirloom seeds for the next generation. At only $40, members save 10% on catalog prices, have access to varieties not sold elsewhere, and know they are helping preserve pure seed for future generations.

3)Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has made planting heirloom seed vegetable gardens easy. They have buckets filled with varieties of heirloom seeds for small, medium, and large gardens all ready packed. All you have to do is order a North bucket or a South bucket to get the varieties best suited for your vegetable garden. These seeds are open pollinated and packed to last so make a good emergency seed store in case of disaster, too.

Any of these gifts will be sure to please your gardening friends. Of course, I hope you chose to give the gift of my book, but I am slightly biased there. Good luck and good holidays.

Friday Fun at Texas Discovery Gardens

The Texas Discovery Gardens is celebrating its’ 70th anniversary this year. As part of that anniversary, they are running a special on membership and putting on several special programs. Reliant Energy is matching membership funds so that for a short time, membership is half off. Join as an individual for $15 instead of $30 until May or when the matching funds are exhausted.

On December 17th, they are holding a natural ornaments workshop. Dress for a walk and tour the gardens to see how to make ornaments from natural objects you can grow. This workshop, from 11- noon, is included with the normal admission to the gardens. Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $4 for children.

If ornaments are not your cup of tea, you can download a sneak peak at the 2012 calendar. They will be having plenty of workshops on butterflies, plant propagation, and other gardening next year. Join in the fun with a discounted membership today.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Growing Heirloom Vegetables in Small Plots

There are some special considerations when growing heirloom vegetables for food and seed in small plots. If you intend to save your seeds from at least some of your vegetables, you will need to do some things to make sure you get pure seed. Vegetables of the same species, such as tomatoes, will cross pollinate each other if grown too close together. The distance varies from a few yards for some vegetables to over 1/2 mile for corn. [click to continue…]

Growing Cauliflower in Hunt County, Texas

Cauliflower is a member of the cole family of crops. It grows best in the fall garden as it gets too hot and bolts many times in the spring. Remember when rotating your crops not to plant it where other cole crops such as broccoli, cabbage, or brussel sprouts have been planted in the last two years.

For detailed instructions on how to plant cauliflower, see growing cauliflower. Here is a snapshot of the information you need to choose what cultivar to plant.

when to plant: transplants February 15 to March 1, August 25 to September 15, seeds August 1 to August 15
depth of planting: 1/2 to 3/4 inch for seed
spacing of plants inside row: 2-3 inches apart
spacing of rows: 3-6 inches apart
time to harvest: 60-80 days
fertilizing: side dress with 10-10-10 fertilizer at a rate of a pound per 10 ft of row when planting. Side dress with 1 tablespoon per 10 ft of row every three weeks until harvest.

cultivars for Hunt County:

Snow Crown 60 days to harvest

Stardust 83 days to harvest

Hummingbird myths

Most gardeners like hummingbirds. These pretty, colorful birds sip nectar from long beaks with even longer tongues. Watching a tiny bird hover while drinking his fill is amazing. Hummingbirds are territorial and fight to protect feeders, nesting areas, and mates.

When I started being interested in hummingbirds, many things were recommended that are now discredited. I thought I would discuss three today.

IMG009 2 300x200 Hummingbird myths

Ruby Throated Hummingbird at feeder

First, hummingbirds won’t come to a feeder unless the sugar solution is red. Because many of the flowers hummingbirds liked to feed at are red, the assumption was made that if it wasn’t red, they wouldn’t come. This turned out to be not only false, but harmful. Hummingbirds come to a solution of one part regular sugar to four parts water. The red dye has, in some studies, been implicated in cancer in the little birds. Since they feed just fine without it, why risk it?

Second, if you leave a feeder out all year you will not prevent the bird from migrating when it needs to. This too, is a myth. Birds migrate according to day length, temperature, the magnetic field, and who knows what else. The migrating birds will appreciate the food and leave when it is time for them to do so.

Third, hummingbirds are not vegetarians. They eat little bugs found near the nectar in the plant while they are sipping nectar. The protein is necessary for the hummingbirds to reproduce, build fat reserves to migrate, and keep their high metabolisim in working order. Planting things like red trumpets or butterfly bushes will allow the hummingbird to keep their diet balanced between nectar and bugs.

The bottom line on attracting and feeding hummingbirds is to grow plants they drink nectar from and can eat insects on, use pure sugar and water solution, and keep the feeder clean. Doing these things will attract hummingbirds when they are in your area.

Time to sow cover crops

If you are in the South, winter has arrived. If you are in the North, it has been there a while. The last of the garden is gone and your field is bare. Sowing a cover crop of clover or other legume will help keep that soil in place and add nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil.

Legumes such as clover or soy beans have little nodules on their roots. These are filled with bacteria that pull nitrogen from the air and make it available to the plant. The cool part is that they gather more nitrogen than the plants can use, so they leave some behind for your vegetables. In addition, you can turn over the crop into your soil when it is time to plant your veggies, and it will act as green manure and help fertilize them that way.

The only caution with cover crops is to not plant something that will grow like crazy and cause you problems next season. Be sure it only likes cool weather and will die off in the heat. Vetch is notorious for taking over the world, for example.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Rain Finally

I do not know if the drought has broken, but it has rained about three inches at my house this weekend. Instead of the usual drought to flood, it has come down in slow, soaking rain that the land can absorb. We are still desperately dry, so water conservation must continue, but at least the plants and animals get a break from the dryness of the drought.

Make sure you factor in the rain when water your plants. This week, if you got an inch rain or more, don’t water at all. If you got less than an inch, just water enough to make up that amount. Too much water is not only wasteful, it hurts your plants. Plants need oxygen in their roots as well as water, so don’t drown them.

Enjoy the rain, if you get any. I never thought the sound of rain on a roof would be as wonderful as it is after a long drought. I can’t imagine the horror of going years without that sound, as some did in past droughts.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Tuning Your Garden Tools

Winter is a good time to tune your gardening tools. It is cold and wet and hard to do much outside, so cleaning and sharpening your tools is a good use of your time. Tools need two kinds of maintenance, in general. Edged tools need sharpening. All tools need a good cleaning and a wash in a bleach bath. [click to continue…]

Growing “Pumpkin Chunkin” Pumpkins

Regular readers of this blog probably suspect I am a nerd. After I admit to watching the 2011 Pumpkin Chunkin® contest, you will be sure that I am a nerd. One thing that disappointed me was that these were more metal cranes than catapults. The other thing I noticed is that most of the pumpkins were not the normal, orange pumpkins with pronounced ribs. Most teams shoot cold white spheres that look like big white balls instead of any pumpkin I have seen. [click to continue…]

Almost Home by Caroline Clemmons

What happens when you move to the big city from a small town, then go back? Link Dixon finds it is Almost Home in the book by Caroline Clemmons. Here is the book trailer:

Since my Mom writes as Caroline Clemmons, I suggest you try check it out for yourself. It is only $0.99 at Amazon.com.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Thanksgiving as a Harvest Festival

In the United Sates of America, today is set aside as a day of thanksgiving. From our legends about why this is so, you can see that Thanksgiving is a harvest festival under a different name. We celebrate the thanksgiving of the first European colonists we acknowledge when they harvested their crops and finally had something to eat.

Harvest festivals are common in agrarian societies all over the world. While winter has always been hard, the time just before harvest is hard too. Most of the stores are gone, game is wary, and things are lean. The harvest, while hard work, means survival for another year. Conversely, if the harvest fails, starvation looms.

This year, with droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, and fires, the harvest is less than usual. Expect to pay more for both meat and vegetables for two or three years to come because of the weather. Ranchers have sold off herds of beef cattle because the hay crop failed and they cannot feed them. That means that beef is was cheaper this summer, when cattle flooded the market, but is already becoming more expensive. Since many of those cattle were breeding cattle, this rise in price will continue for the two to three years it takes to rebuild herds, assuming we get some rain.

Wheat, corn, and other crops either didn’t make or made poorly, as well. Again, the drought that spread over most of the United States and Canada is to blame. Prices will continue to rise until the spring crops make, if we get rain.

What can you do to ensure your own personal harvest? Grow a small (or large, if you are ambitious) garden. Most places will allow potted plants, so you can grow one even if you live in an apartment. If you have the water to irrigate the garden, you can have as much food as you need. Potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, parsnips, and radishes give you starch for energy. Beans and legumes such as peas give you protein. Onions, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and similar vegetables give you all the vitamins and nutrients you need. Add a chicken coop for eggs and meat, or rabbits, and you can manage without buying more than flour, oil, baking powder, baking soda, and a few spices.

I am thankful to live in the country where I can raise my food. I am thankful that I am able to help others do the same. I have been blessed with a family and good friends who love me. I wish you a happy holiday season and many blessings.

For more help gardening, buy my book, Preparing A Vegetable Garden From The Ground Up
Available in print or ebook from Amazon.com or other retailers, this book walks you from choosing the site of your garden all the way through what to do after the harvest. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend today!

Growing Grapes in Hunt County, Texas

Grapes have become a popular plant to grow in our area. With two wineries in Greenville, Landon Winery and the Blue Armadillo Winery, it is natural to assume grapes grow well here. Most areas in Hunt County are vulnerable to Pierce’s Disease, however, so while grapes may do okay for a couple of years, they then die off. [click to continue…]

Feed Someone You Love: Teach Them To Garden

Remember the saying, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime?” Gardening is like that . You can teach someone to garden, to grow their own vegetables, and they will have food security. Even if they do not live anywhere that has any place to plant, pots and a little ingenuity will make it work. [click to continue…]

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Photos and Text Copyrighted 2010-2012 by Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D. All rights reserved. For permission and licensing information, see contact page.
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