Now is the time to truly consider growing your own vegetables. But, what if you don't have a large plot to grow a garden? You can grow vegetables in an assortment of containers...buckets, recycled plant containers, old barrels, etc. One vegetable that is EASY to grow and delicious (once again, once you eat one of your own potatoes, you'll not want for the potatoes in the store!...TASTE is back!)is the potato. And, you can grow potatoes in a container...anything from a 1/2 barrel to a full 55 gallon barrel. Here are some tips to get you going:
Choose the size of container/s in which to grow your potatoes...it can be plastic, metal or wood.
Drill holes in the bottom of your container to allow for drainage. You may have to put a screen over the holes once they are drilled to prevent soil leakage, etc..depends on how big you drill the holes! The holes should be about 6 inches apart.
Set barrels on blocks, old pallets, or whatever, to ensure that there is good drainage. And make sure your barrels are in a spot that receives a good amount of sunshine.
Place some gravel in the bottom of the barrel...again, to help with drainage.
Put down at least six inches of clean soil, mixed with a good compost, sand and maybe some sawdust.
Now...plant your potatoes. To plant potatoes you must get "seed" potatoes from a garden supply store, nice neighbor (smile) or feed store...or online. Do not use the potatoes you buy from the store...they will not produce well even though the potatoes grow little "buds". Once you get your seed potatoes, cut the potato into halves or fourths, depending on the size of the potato. But, make sure you have at least 2 "eyes" in each piece of the potato. Allow your cut potatoes to rest for the night and let the cut edges dry a bit. Next morning, place the cut-side down in the dirt and the "eyes" looking up, and push the potato seed down so that the seed is just covered. Water gently. In a couple of days, your potatoes will start to sprout. Let your potatoes sprout about 2-4 inches...then cover the plant with more soil/compost/sand mixture and gently water. Continue this procedure until your barrel is full. Once you see your potatoes "blossom" you know you have succeeded. Then, let the plants die back. When you are ready to harvest, kick the barrel over, and gather your potatoes. Then, enjoy!
Showing posts with label gardening tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening tips. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Growing A Backyard Vegetable Garden: Ideas to "Mulch" Over
Want to have a fantastic backyard vegetable garden? I invite you to scroll down the page and click on my article written for Ezine Articles concerning this very subject. In the meantime, here are some ways and ideas of where you can obtain your mulch material.
* Ask farmers or ranchers for spoiled straw or manure. As ranchers are cleaning out their barns this time of year, you may be able to hit the jackpot!
* As neighbors begin to mow their lawns, ask them for their lawn clippings. In the fall, as neighbors if you can have their leaves and other lawn debris.
* Go to parks and do the same as above...you'll be surprised, and most likely THANKED for hauling away the debris!
* After the highway department has mowed the roadsides, rack up what you can...just keep a look out for cars!
* Go to lumber yards, cabinet shops, etc. and ask for wood chips and sawdust. You can also check out tree trimming companies for wood chips and leaves.
* In addition to the above ingredients, don't forget cornstalks, pine needles, shredded newspaper, and peat moss. All make an excellent ground cover.
So, now you have many options in which to obtain mulch...it's cheap and easy, but the value and benefits will produce great dividends!
* Ask farmers or ranchers for spoiled straw or manure. As ranchers are cleaning out their barns this time of year, you may be able to hit the jackpot!
* As neighbors begin to mow their lawns, ask them for their lawn clippings. In the fall, as neighbors if you can have their leaves and other lawn debris.
* Go to parks and do the same as above...you'll be surprised, and most likely THANKED for hauling away the debris!
* After the highway department has mowed the roadsides, rack up what you can...just keep a look out for cars!
* Go to lumber yards, cabinet shops, etc. and ask for wood chips and sawdust. You can also check out tree trimming companies for wood chips and leaves.
* In addition to the above ingredients, don't forget cornstalks, pine needles, shredded newspaper, and peat moss. All make an excellent ground cover.
So, now you have many options in which to obtain mulch...it's cheap and easy, but the value and benefits will produce great dividends!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Gold For Your Home Garden! Manure!
When it comes to growing a garden, your soil needs nutrients. However, if you have gone to the local nursery to purchase some of that precious fertilizer for your garden, you might be overwhelmed by the price of that fertilizer!!!! So what's a gardener to do? When I still lived in a city, I drove out to the suburbs of town and found many willing folks who would allow me to take home some of their "x-tra" stuff from their barn. WOW! Now, I have an excess of "stuff"...including a variety of "feces species". So, here are some things you can do....
Offer to clean a stall or two in someones barn for horse manure. Or even offer to clean out a chicken coop. If this is first year manure, you will have to "age" it...in other words, it will be too "hot" for your garden and will burn your plants. Another point, especially with horse manure, is to pile your manure in the sun, cover it with black plastic, and let it "cook"...it will kill most weeds in the horse manure. If you are fortunate to find sheep or goat manure, you can directly put the manure on to your garden.
At any rate, it is best to try and put manure on your garden in the fall and till it into the soil over the winter. However, it's still not too late to till manure into your garden soil.
This post was inspired by this article that appeared last week...take a gander:
Manure More Precious Than Gold
From Gene Logsdon
by Gene Logsdon
I half-jokingly suggested about a year ago that animal manure— used livestock, horse, and chicken bedding— was going to be the hottest commodity on the Chicago Board of Trade. There are indications now that such a seemingly absurd prediction might not be so absurd after all. Last year the prices of some farm fertilizers shot up to over a thousand dollars a ton. Ammonium polyphosphate is still nearly that high. Deposits of potash in Canada, a main source of our potassium fertilizers, are declining. Natural gas, from which commercial nitrogen fertilizer is manufactured, is rising in cost as other uses compete for it. Long term, there are reasons to believe that the era of abundant manufactured fertilizers is passing.
Today, the situation has changed dramatically. With no assurance that grain prices will be high enough to cover the high prices of manufactured fertilizers, farmers are waiting in line at the animal confinement operations, willing to fork over good hard cash to get the lower-priced manure. The laugh of the day now is that maybe manure will become more profitable than the food produced, that the operations will become, in fact and not in jest, money-making manure factories which just happen to produce meat, milk, and eggs as byproducts. This seems particularly possible since some of these factories change hands about as often as partners do in a square dance.
The possibility that all of agriculture might have to rely on animal and human waste to maintain the necessary fertility to keep the world from starving is not at all something new to civilization. Only in the last century or so has it been possible to lard enough chemical nitrogen on cropland to attain record breaking yields while burning most of the organic matter out of the soil. Before this modern “progress,” human society had no other choice than to consider manure— animal and human— to be more precious than gold. At least humans did so in countries that sustained an ample food supply for very long periods of time, as China and Japan did. We all need to read again Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H. King, published in 1911, about oriental agriculture at that time. Manure was treated like a precious gem because it was a precious gem. Every scrap of animal waste, human waste, and plant residue was scrupulously collected, composted, and reapplied to the land. So precious was manure that Chinese farmers stored it in burglar-proof containers.
As a result, the oriental farmer for thousands of years maintained an unbelievably productive agriculture. Their little farms produced at the very least five times the amount of food per acre that American farmers were getting in 1907 when King traveled through Japan and China. Those yields still far exceed those of American agriculture even today, except where intensive, raised bed gardening is practiced here. For all practical purposes, a large part of China in 1900 was one huge intensive, raised bed garden. Indeed, the oriental farmer had no choice, because population densities were much higher than anything the United States had or has yet experienced. They either produced huge crops or starved.
Cheap, plentiful manufactured fertilizers and a seeming infinity of farmland allowed the United States over the last two centuries to become the champion wastrel of agriculture (and everything else). One can only imagine the famine and chaos that would result if we continued that kind of extravagance for forty centuries, even if we could. As sources of cheaper chemical fertilizers decline, manure will either once more become the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or population levels will dramatically decline.
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land),
The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and All Flesh Is Grass: Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
Offer to clean a stall or two in someones barn for horse manure. Or even offer to clean out a chicken coop. If this is first year manure, you will have to "age" it...in other words, it will be too "hot" for your garden and will burn your plants. Another point, especially with horse manure, is to pile your manure in the sun, cover it with black plastic, and let it "cook"...it will kill most weeds in the horse manure. If you are fortunate to find sheep or goat manure, you can directly put the manure on to your garden.
At any rate, it is best to try and put manure on your garden in the fall and till it into the soil over the winter. However, it's still not too late to till manure into your garden soil.
This post was inspired by this article that appeared last week...take a gander:
Manure More Precious Than Gold
From Gene Logsdon
by Gene Logsdon
I half-jokingly suggested about a year ago that animal manure— used livestock, horse, and chicken bedding— was going to be the hottest commodity on the Chicago Board of Trade. There are indications now that such a seemingly absurd prediction might not be so absurd after all. Last year the prices of some farm fertilizers shot up to over a thousand dollars a ton. Ammonium polyphosphate is still nearly that high. Deposits of potash in Canada, a main source of our potassium fertilizers, are declining. Natural gas, from which commercial nitrogen fertilizer is manufactured, is rising in cost as other uses compete for it. Long term, there are reasons to believe that the era of abundant manufactured fertilizers is passing.
Today, the situation has changed dramatically. With no assurance that grain prices will be high enough to cover the high prices of manufactured fertilizers, farmers are waiting in line at the animal confinement operations, willing to fork over good hard cash to get the lower-priced manure. The laugh of the day now is that maybe manure will become more profitable than the food produced, that the operations will become, in fact and not in jest, money-making manure factories which just happen to produce meat, milk, and eggs as byproducts. This seems particularly possible since some of these factories change hands about as often as partners do in a square dance.
The possibility that all of agriculture might have to rely on animal and human waste to maintain the necessary fertility to keep the world from starving is not at all something new to civilization. Only in the last century or so has it been possible to lard enough chemical nitrogen on cropland to attain record breaking yields while burning most of the organic matter out of the soil. Before this modern “progress,” human society had no other choice than to consider manure— animal and human— to be more precious than gold. At least humans did so in countries that sustained an ample food supply for very long periods of time, as China and Japan did. We all need to read again Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H. King, published in 1911, about oriental agriculture at that time. Manure was treated like a precious gem because it was a precious gem. Every scrap of animal waste, human waste, and plant residue was scrupulously collected, composted, and reapplied to the land. So precious was manure that Chinese farmers stored it in burglar-proof containers.
As a result, the oriental farmer for thousands of years maintained an unbelievably productive agriculture. Their little farms produced at the very least five times the amount of food per acre that American farmers were getting in 1907 when King traveled through Japan and China. Those yields still far exceed those of American agriculture even today, except where intensive, raised bed gardening is practiced here. For all practical purposes, a large part of China in 1900 was one huge intensive, raised bed garden. Indeed, the oriental farmer had no choice, because population densities were much higher than anything the United States had or has yet experienced. They either produced huge crops or starved.
Cheap, plentiful manufactured fertilizers and a seeming infinity of farmland allowed the United States over the last two centuries to become the champion wastrel of agriculture (and everything else). One can only imagine the famine and chaos that would result if we continued that kind of extravagance for forty centuries, even if we could. As sources of cheaper chemical fertilizers decline, manure will either once more become the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or population levels will dramatically decline.
~~
Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land),
The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and All Flesh Is Grass: Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
Friday, March 27, 2009
Grow A Backyard Vegetable Garden
There are many reasons why you should grow your own VEGETABLE garden. I emphasize vegetable because in my "younger days" I had a running argument with my sister that I didn't grow any thing that I couldn't eat. She on the other hand, had a lovely lawn and a bunch of flowers. Of course, some flowers are edible...hmmm. Any way, the obvious reasons include healthy food, food (which is becoming a concern), great tasting food, etc. And with the economic woes and people staying home more often, having a garden is a positive diversion...it gives you something to do!
You really do not need a lot of space to get a garden going. If you have a five gallon bucket, you can grow something! It is much cheaper to grow your own plants from seeds. I have written an article on the pros/cons of using hybrid/non-hybrid seeds. You can find this article at http:www.goarticles.com/ and then plug in the keywords hybrid/non-hybrid seeds in the search box.
A quick gardening tip for today is: SAVE THOSE EGG SHELLS! Egg shells make great little "starter" containers for your seeds. When cracking your eggs, try to only knock off the top 1/3 of the shell (best when you really don't care if your egg breaks). Fill your egg shell with a good starting soil, plant seed, let grow. When you are ready to transplant, simply place the whole thing in the ground. I knock off the bottom so the roots can poke through the bottom of the shell. Not only do you not disturb the fragile roots, but the calcium in the egg shell will provide some extra nutrition for the plant.
In future posts I will address other gardening concerns, tips and strategies.
You really do not need a lot of space to get a garden going. If you have a five gallon bucket, you can grow something! It is much cheaper to grow your own plants from seeds. I have written an article on the pros/cons of using hybrid/non-hybrid seeds. You can find this article at http:www.goarticles.com/ and then plug in the keywords hybrid/non-hybrid seeds in the search box.
A quick gardening tip for today is: SAVE THOSE EGG SHELLS! Egg shells make great little "starter" containers for your seeds. When cracking your eggs, try to only knock off the top 1/3 of the shell (best when you really don't care if your egg breaks). Fill your egg shell with a good starting soil, plant seed, let grow. When you are ready to transplant, simply place the whole thing in the ground. I knock off the bottom so the roots can poke through the bottom of the shell. Not only do you not disturb the fragile roots, but the calcium in the egg shell will provide some extra nutrition for the plant.
In future posts I will address other gardening concerns, tips and strategies.
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