Sunday, December 19

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Knowing vegetables that grow in shade doubles your gardening space.

Many people do not consider putting a vegetable garden in the shade but there are plants that grow well in the depths of winter and require only 4-5 hours per day of light. It is those same plants that grow well in the unlighted greenhouse mid-winter that can tolerate a shady spot during the heat of summer.


EarthBox RB-EB-TRC-PBB Garden Kit, Terra Cotta

There are a variety of vegetable plants that cannot only survive in the shade but actually produce better with only 4-5 hours of daily light.


Jiffy 5042 Windowsill Greenhouse 24-Plant Starter Kit With J7
Brassicas are a great warm and cold weather choice that will nutritionally benefit the household long term: Bokchoy, pak choy, the wide varieties of kale, swiss chard, cauliflower and brussell sprouts: Steam and eat or freeze. Brassicas have a unique character due to the many nutrients they offer to the dinner plate. Kale has protein as well as a boat-load of calcium and vitamin A. A cup of day will keep the doctor and Father-time away. Its a great anti-aging plant for the daily diet. Steam it with a bit of brown sugar, real butter and pepper. Create the brown sugar and butter sauce first and then pour over the kale to offset the bitterness. This is especially helpful for children and adults who can't palate the sometimes bitter taste. Just a small bit of this sauce changes the taste so don't over do it.


Indoor Mexican Salsa Garden Starter Kit- Seeds: Beefsteak Tomato, Tomatillo, Cayenne Long Red, Anaheim Chile, Jalapeno, Serrano, White Sweet Spanish Onions, Cilantro & More
A quick note on sugar substitute grown in the garden. Buttercup (not Butternut) squash makes a terrific thickener substitute for soups, stews, and gravies as well as a prime sugar substitute for tomato sauces and other sweet sauces. The main root base must be grown in the sun while the tendrils that travel east towards the sun, can tolerate partial shade. Plant on the east side of the garden so they have room to roam further east and develop the many fruits along the vine.


AeroGarden 970155-0500 Deluxe Trellis System
Root vegetables are another pleasant tasting solution: radish, carrots, beets and the plethora of beet greens during warm weather, turnips and greens, parsnips (let them freeze hard for sweetness) and a variety of potatoes interplanted with horseradish which protects the potatoes and other root vegetables from pests.


Claber 8583 Koala Indoor Faucet to Garden Hose ConnectorThe Beginner's Guide to Urban Gardening: A Simple, Practical Guide to Creating Your Own Bountiful Indoor Garden
Beans have very few varieties that can tolerate shade but fava bean is one that can tolerate dappled or partial shade. As with most beans they are nitrogen replacements for the soil when tilled into the soil at the end of the season. As with any vegetable grown in the shade, the leaves and pods may be bigger when grown in the shade but the beans may be fewer. The advantage of shade is the number of pods produced in shade number far more than what are produced in sun. Since this bean can tolerate shade and cold weather, when the leaves fall from the trees that are producing shade, the bean will still produce and fill those pods with beans as the colder weather sets into the garden.


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If you want instant gratification, trellis some peas of all kinds: steam and eat or freeze for winter stir frys. You can also eat the tendrils from the tops of the plants: steamed and seasoned with an olive oil and lime sauce with cinnamon and a touch of clove or horseradish.

Gardman Rainbow Garden R687 4-Tier Mini GreenhouseAeroGarden 0003-00Z Salad Greens Seed Kit

Other instant gratification plants are lettuce, spinach and radish. There are colorful varieties that bring nutrition to the table in a cheerful way. The Spinach Fiorana variety is a terrific choice for containers that can grow outside during reasonable temperatures and then be brought inside and put under a 4 hour per day light for fresh eating in winter. Malabar spinach is a vining spinach that can be started in containers, top-harvested before frost and brought inside for the winter as well. Spinach takes very little light (like lettuce 4 hours per day) to grow well.

Green Arbor 8938 Organic Herb Windowsill Garden KitAll About Vegetable Gardening

Let us not forget celery, calendula and cress. All are able to withstand partial shade in your vegetable garden and can be used not only as interplantings with sun loving vegetables but can be put aside into the partial shade area of your gardens. These vegetables can also tolerate a bit of cold weather. Use your celery in soups and stews; cress in sandwiches, and calendula in salads or softening cremes for those gardening-hands of yours.



Salad Bowl Red Lettuce Seeds - Lactuca Sativa - 0.5 Grams - Approx 600 Gardening Seeds - Vegetable Garden SeedCimmaron Lettuce Heirloom Seeds - Lactuca Sativa - 0.5 Grams - Approx 475 Gardening Seeds - Vegetable Garden Seed
Keep in mind that most of these vegetables need to have sun when first breaking through the soil as seedlings, but after they get their third leaf they are ready for the partial shade area of your landscape or gardens.


Miniature Indoor Herb Garden with Clover, Cress, Lettuce & Mustard
Financial advice? What your family eats now is what you should plant in the garden. A small spaced garden is not where you should experiment with new foods. Taste them from the grocers first and then determine the space you need to provide for them in your garden. If no one likes them, then save the space for what everyone likes to make sure your vegetable garden is providing what is popular and necessary for your household. In this way your vegetable garden will provide financial benefit to the household as well.
 

Friday, December 17

Late season vegetable garden starts with planning for cold weather.

Early Wonder Beet - 400 Seeds - BONUS PACK!Here in the Pioneer Valley, the gardening season is over but there are places in the country where gardeners are in the mid-season of gardening and this aritcle is for those who are starting their gardens late in the season.

If you are starting a late season vegetable garden, plan ahead for the impending cold weather.
Blue Scotch Curled Kale - 100 Seeds - BONUS PACK!
Brassicas are a great warm and cold weather choice that will nutritionally benefit your household long term: Bokchoy, pakchoy, the wide varieties of kale, swiss chard, and brussel sprouts: Steam and eat or freeze. Brassicas have a unique character in that they have a wide variety of nutrients to offer the dinner plate. Kale even has protein as well as a whole load of calcium and vitamin A. Eat a cup a day to keep the doctor and father time away. Its a great anti-aging plant to add to the diet. Steam it with a bit of brown sugar, real butter and pepper. Create the butter and brn.sugar sauce first and then pour over the kale to offset the bitterness. This is especially helpful for children and adults who can’t palate the bitter taste. Just a small bit of this sauce changes the taste so don’t over do it. In our household we use buttercup (not butternut) squash instead of brown sugar to sweeten everything. If you have enough time to grow it, do it. It is a great sugar replacement in soups, stews, tomato sauces, and a terrific additive to sauces as well.
Kale Italian Lacinato Nero Toscana Certified Organic Heirloom Seeds 75 Seeds
Root vegetables are another pleasant tasting solution: beets and the plethora of fresh beet greens during warm weather, turnips and turnip greens, and a variety of potatoes interplanted with horseradish which protects the potatoes from bugs.
Prepara Oil Mister
If you want instant gratification, trellis some peas of all kinds: steam and eat or freeze for winter stir-frys. You can also eat the tendrils from the tops of the plants: steamed and seasoned with an olive oil and lime sauce with cinnamon and a touch of clove or horseradish. Another instant gratification plant is lettuce. There are a variety of lettuces that bring nutrition to the table in many colors.
Fiorana Spinach - 500 Seeds - Great for Containers!Fiorana is great for containers
Spinach is another alternative and you can bring the vining malabar spinach inside for the winter if you plant it in a large pot originally: Harvest the long vine before bringing in and then grow under a light in a naturally lit room. Malabar spinach is difficult to find in plant form so seeds may be what you will be forced to plant. Don’t stress, plant regular bloomsdale spinach as well for a quick dinner salad and plant some in your inside garden as well. Spinach takes very little light (like lettuce 4 hrs. per day)to grow well.
Big Ideas for Small Gardens: Featuring Dave Egbert's Garden Notebook
I do hope that some of these suggestions help you in planning your vegetable garden. Keep in mind, that what you and your family eats now is what you should plant in the garden. A small spaced vegetable garden is not where you should experiment with new foods. Try them from the grocers first and then determine the space you will need to provide for them in your garden. If no one likes them, then save the space for what everyone likes to make sure that your vegetable garden is providing what is popular and necessary for your household.

Fall Foliage and Lake, the Berkshires, MA Photographic Poster Print by Kindra Clineff, 18x24 The bottle of Mount Tom mirrored in the pond of Eathampton.

Blessings from the snow covered Pioneer_Valley in the lower Berkshires of Western Masschusetts

Wednesday, December 15

Finding the right Christmas tree

Charlie Brown's Tree with Blanket - MulticolorTrying to find the perfect christmas tree with the right smell, the right shape and the right size is like trying to find the perfect woman. She has to be willing to ride in the trunk....and you can get rid of her after the holidays...and get a new one every year....and your mother who never truly approves is terrific about this short term relationship.
Pre-Lit Pull-Up Christmas Tree, Clear
Christmas trees are bit different than women though. The trees gather at temporary local joints for three weeks each year and you can just-go-there, pick-up your favorite and bring it home. You only have to feed it water, it trys-on only one skirt for christmas festivities, it has beautiful and shiny balls, and you don't worry about the dangle of the garland, its supposed be that way. You can plug it in at your will and even unplugged it will sit around looking beautiful. It doesn't take much to turn it on, you don't want it bare, its easy to slim down. and there is always a special place for it in your living room. You actually want to show it to your family, friends, neighbors and you might even have a party in its honor. You put the same arrangements on it everytime and even so, whenever you ring its bell, an angel gets it wings. It doesn't pretend or tolerate your idea of Christmas, it truly like trains. It dies slowly and the best part? It doesn't talk back and there are fifty more waiting outside your door.Kurt S. Adler 4-Foot Sterling Silver Shaggy Christmas Tree

Monday, December 13

Hot to start an organic garden

How to start an organic garden
Organic gardens vs. standard gardens is the difference in what chemicals you put on the garden in order to prevent bugs or disease or maintain an already healthy garden environment. According to the U.S. government, an organic garden is a garden in which chemicals are avoided and only used as a last resort to control unwanted pests and diseases.

If you are in a hurry, who isn't(?), then find a supplier who carries organic compost and loam and sand. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that chemicals are not in the compost, loam, or sand. When purchasing items for your garden, the term organic simply means there were no chemicals used in creating the loam, sand or compost. It does not mean that there were no chemicals at the site where the distributor retrieved the sand etc.

Without knowing where you live...urban, suburb or exurb, I have to assume you have space to build a garden. If you don't, then try a conatiner that can hold three bags of soil medium. Buy one bag each of compost, loam and sand. If you do have an outdoor site to start a garden, also include a wheelbarrow full of soil from your planned garden site.

I find raised beds the easiest to begin and maintain. The amount of soil mediums listed above is enough to fill a 4 X 4 raised bed area. Other amendments to the soil will be determined by what you are platning in your garden.

Use green sand and bone meal in the area that you are planting tomatoes. If this is too expensive for you, use epsom salts. Epsom salts is something that is absorbed by your body when you take a bath and will not hurt the plants. Epsom simply replaces the magnesium in your soil medium to make your soil magnesium more readily available nutrition and it prevents blossum-end-rot on your precious tomatoes.
If your area is not being used for tomato's, then follow other instructions for the plants that you are planting. Plant lettuce in between your tomato plants. As the tomato plants grow they will provide shade for the lettuce as well as a moist environment in which lettuce likes to grow.

If you dont want to use the standard fertilizers, then simply make sure you have a trench compost set up between your plantings. Keep in mind that kitchen waste used in your trench needs to be pre-washed before cooking to eat due to the chemicals on the food you buy at the grocers and don't add, tomatoes, potatoes, meats or oils to the compost.

Another compost method is to dig a hole in an empty area of the garden periodically, when you have kitchen waste available...fill the hole with the waste and then cover with the soil you originally removed from the hole. The plants on either side of the trench or hole will gain nutrients while the waste decomposes. This type of composting is actually the best way to compost since most compost piles lose their nutrients into the ground when it rains. Granted, composted soils that have been exposed to rain are more nutritious than other soils (unless you live in a river bed area) but the whole point to composting is to reserve the nutrients from decomposing waste for the fruit and vegetables that you are growing. If most of the nutrients go into the ground below, then some of the nutrients are wasted for your project.

When talking about organic gardening there are some topics that people simply ignore. One of them is that many independent studies have determined that the organic weed preventative corn gluten causes cancer. Corn gluten also stays in the soil for years beyond what is natural. This is simply because the the gluten is removed from the corn and then used are a weed prevention in organic gardens. As far as I am concerned, this removes corn gluten from the saftey list.

An easier way to prevent weeds is to spread a weed filter on top of the soil in between the plantings. The question is, what type of coverings? In recent years, newspaper ink has under gone changes to protect the public. The ink no longer carries the carcinogens that it used to have and is now safe to hold in your hands as well as put in your garden. Many people use cardboard without thinking about the glues that cardboard inherently has within its walls.

 If you truely want to go in the direction of organic, the best covering for weed prevention is 8 inches of hay. Replace as needed (if a weed pops up through it.) You will only need one full sized bale for your 4 X 4 garden.  The hay decomposes slowly over time and adds nutrients to the soil that the soil would otherwise be without.

What to plant: packing nutrition into your four foot garden;

If you are interested in the most nutrition per square foot in your 4 x 4 garden, keep in mind that kale is a leafy green that people could live on if they had to. Kale has so many nutrients including protein in it, that you might live forever if you eat it everyday. The nutrative standouts are the high content of calcium, vitamin C which helps the calcium be absorbed and more readily available, vitamin B6 which is terrific vitamin for migraine sufferers, folic acid, vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), vitamin K which helps deter the aging process, potassium, manganese, copper, and even the plant form of omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid). In addition to the carotenoid beta-carotene, kale contains other important carotenoids: lutein and zeaxanthin (necessary for eye health, i.e macular degeneration), and zinc which combined with vitamin A encourages the body to produce white blood cells in the event of a virus or bacteria entering the body. Kale also has chemicals in it that assist in the prevention of colon and ovarian cancers.

With all these nutrients combined, Kale is the number one plant that can help anyone detox their system without going on a liquid diet with a side of colon cleanse. Keep in mind that Kale also has a large amount of tryptophan in 1 cup so when you eat it, you will feel sluggish for a short while, like you ate some turkey if not fall asleep altogether.

One deterrent of kale is the amount of oxalic acid it contains. if you have kidney or gall bladder problems already you might want to avoid kale or limit the amounts you eat to a comfortable-for-you level.

Other high nutrient vegetables for a 4 X 4 garden include, swiss chard, turnip and beet greens, broccoli, cauliflower,...and the rest of the brassicas. For a treat you can grow a tomato or two in between the more nutritious plants. Tomatos have longer roots and get their nutrition from deeper within the soil. Be sure to dig individual holes around the tomatos so that you can fill them in with compost when it is available.

To keep you garden cooler in the hottest weather, add some cheesecloth to the top of the plants in order to provide some shade. This will help the tomatos keep their cool and keep producing.

More on organic beginner gardening later.

Blessings!!!!!

Saturday, December 4

Crafting supplies

If your a crafter of soaps, perrfumes or body products , I found a terrific site for you to peruse. Try http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/ and you will be surprised at the selection and the prices!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, December 2

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