DIY: How to Prune Small Trees and Shrubs. Smart pruning when trees are small helps them grow to be strong and healthy. During a hot Texas summer several years ago, I worked at a summer camp. My job description as a camp staff member was garbage truck driver, dish washer, concessions stand cashier, and among other things, resident tree trimmer. My friend Melissa and I spent weeks that summer wielding our pole saws over our shoulders to prune all the trees on the camp’s acreage. We were two college girls in matching t-shirts with no prior tree-trimming experience.
You know what? When I look at houses to buy one of the first things that comes to mind before I do any mental decorating or interior renovating is what can I do to improve the landscape? Pruning is one of those things you can do for free to give remarkable results to your landscape, instantly improving the house’s curb appeal. To gain your tree-trimming skills and confidence, use the small tree and shrub pruning guides at This Old House.
Source: This Old House. Tips for Pruning Fruit Trees - Growing with Stark Bro's. By Stark Bro's on 01/04/2011 To get a new fruit tree off to the right start, after choosing the right spot and ensuring your soil is suitable for the trees you’re planting, virtually nothing is as important as pruning at planting time. If left unpruned, fruit trees may struggle in growth, and, if you encounter an unfortunate drought, they may not grow at all. More importantly, unpruned trees take longer to bear fruit! All bare-root Stark Bro’s trees are pruned in the nursery row for proper shaping, and our trees are also pruned right before packing and shipping. Why we take pruning seriously: • Survival First, a tree needs pruning to help it survive after planting.
. • Stimulation In addition, cutting the tree back stimulates stronger, more vigorous, growth from the remaining buds. . • Shaping The natural shape of a fruit tree is not always the best for maximum fruit production. Continue Pruning for Success “The best time to prune is when the knife is sharp,” old-time gardeners say. Winter Gardening Tips: Best Winter Crops and Cold-Hardy Varieties. When we think of eating homegrown food during the cold season, we often think of staples such as potatoes squirreled away in the root cellar, or of vegetables such as winter squash stashed in a cool, dry place.
But many gardeners are discovering the joys of harvesting fresh produce all winter long, which allows for feasts of cold-hardy crops that are just-picked and just right for the time of year. According to Jodi Lew-Smith of High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, Vt., the seed-buying season used to be January, February and March. “Now there’s also a surge in June, July, August and into September for fall-planted crops,” she says. Eating from the garden is just too pleasant to give up simply because the temperature — and the snow — may have fallen. I don’t mean growing tomatoes in January. Fruiting crops no doubt need long, sunny days and warm conditions to complete their delicious arc of softening, deepening in color and perfectly ripening.
Climate Considerations Leafing Out Spinach. Lettuce. How to Grow, Cure and Store Pumpkins. Harvesting Sweet Potatoes. If you’re like me, the start of fall is not only exciting for the refreshing cooler weather it brings: It also means I can put up my canning equipment. The wonderful, hearty fall vegetables — winter squashes, potatoes and, of course, sweet potatoes — can store themselves for several months if harvested and stored properly. Sweet potatoes, with the high vitamin content found in their orange flesh, are an especially great and versatile fall and winter food. After watching the beautiful, winding vines cover your garden beds through the summer months, it can be hard to know when it’s the right time to go grab the spading fork and dig out the fleshy tubers. While sweet potatoes can be dug as soon as the tubers have reached a suitable size — between three and four months after planting the slips — the flavor and quality improves with colder weather. Dry freshly dug sweet potatoes in the sun for several hours, then move them to a curing room.
Guide to Root Cellars – Homesteading and Livestock – MOTHER EARTH NEWS. From do-it-yourself project instructions to fruit and vegetable storage guidelines, the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Root Cellars is your one-stop shop for reliable building, maintenance and storage tips for your root cellar. Building a root cellar not only saves money at the grocery store on out-of-season fruits and vegetables, but it also allows you to live well and independently. With a well-planned root cellar, your produce storage can expand from the storage standbys like carrots and potatoes to make room for fresh tomatoes, crisp apples and even juicy melon. Through years of experience, our experts show how to build and maintain a root cellar of your own and properly store your fresh, organic produce to enjoy year-round. Build Your Own Root Cellar Root Cellars Pushed aside by the development of refrigeration technology, root cellars made a comeback among homesteaders in the 1970s and 80s.
Low-Cost Root Cellar: Bury a Boat! White Trash or Ingenious Invention? Root Cellar Management. How to Harvest, Cure and Store 20 Storage Crops. Learn how to harvest, cure and store 20 favorite storage crops — from beans and potatoes to cabbage and carrots. By Barbara Pleasant More information about food storage, including tips and tricks from our readers, can be found in Food Storage: 20 Crops That Keep and How to Store Them. Crops for Cool Storage (45-60 degrees F) These easy-to-store crops are best kept in a cool place, which could be a basement, an unheated bedroom or an attached garage. Crops for Cold Storage (32-45 degrees F) Very low refrigerator temperatures (32 to 35 degrees) prolong the storage life of these fruits and vegetables, but many can also be stored in slightly higher temperatures using time-tested, low-tech methods.
Contributing editor Barbara Pleasant gardens in southwest Virginia, where she grows vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers and a few lucky chickens. Grow Your Best Fall Garden Vegetables: What, When and How. Right now, before you forget, put a rubber band around your wrist to remind you of one gardening task that cannot be postponed: Planting seeds for fall garden vegetables. As summer draws to a close, gardens everywhere can morph into a tapestry of delicious greens, from tender lettuce to frost-proof spinach, with a sprinkling of red mustard added for spice.
In North America’s southern half, as long as seeds germinate in late July or early August, fall gardens can grow the best cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower you’ve ever tasted. In colder climates it’s prime time to sow carrots, rutabagas, and turnips to harvest in the fall. Filling space vacated by spring crops with summer-sown vegetables will keep your garden productive well into fall, and even winter. Granted, the height of summer is not the best time to start tender seedlings of anything. 1. If you’re already running late, you can try direct-seeding fast-growing varieties of broccoli, kale or kohlrabi. When is too late? 2. 3. 4. Food Storage: 20 Crops That Keep and How to Store Them. Related Content Under The Stairs Necessity leads to ingenuity in the creation of root cellar storage. Here in southwest Virginia, my partner and I take pride in growing and storing most of our fruits and vegetables. Knowing where our food comes from gives us confidence in its goodness, plus we save about $5,000 a year through our gardening and food storage efforts.
There is another benefit, which is the utter convenience of having a self-provisioned home. We bring many years of experience to this quest, and we’re still learning. Sleeping Quarters for Storage Crops Success with storage crops hinges on finding methods that convince the crops that they are enjoying a natural period of dormancy in unusually comfortable conditions. Most storage crops need to be cured to enhance their storage potential. Storing Potatoes Seeking out good food storage spots in your home or on your property can lead to interesting discoveries. Storing Crisp Root Vegetables Storing Squash. Square Foot Gardening Templates. March 19th, 2009 A few of you asked about the template I was using in my photo yesterday, so I decided to explain what they are and how we made them.
I use the Square Foot Gardening method in my raised beds. Which basically means that I break my raised beds down into square foot sections for planting. I don’t plant each square with something different as other people do, I usually plant large sections of different types of plants. Basically these are a square foot piece of some scrap plywood we had laying around. I contemplated having him make ones that had dowels or small squares of wood nailed for spaces so I could “punch” the holes into the soil with them, but we didn’t have any dowels and these were much faster (I think they’re 2 inch holes). You could drill smaller holes in these, but I decided I wanted larger ones to have room to work and so I wouldn’t risk getting any splinters or anything. I sanded and painted them yesterday to help protect them while using them in the garden.
Edible Garden. The easy way to start a garden. 16 Foods That’ll Re-Grow from Kitchen Scraps. By Andy Whiteley Co-Founder of Wake Up World Looking for a healthy way to get more from your garden? Like to know your food is free of the pesticides and other nasties that are often sprayed on commercial crops? Re-growing food from your kitchen scraps is a good way to do it! There’s nothing like eating your own home- grown vegies, and there are heaps of different foods that will re- grow from the scrap pieces that you’d normally throw out or put into your compost bin.
It’s fun. Just remember … the quality of the “parent” vegetable scrap will help to determine the quality of the re-growth. Leeks, Scallions, Spring Onions and Fennel You can either use the white root end of a vegetable that you have already cut, or buy a handful of new vegetables to use specifically for growing. Simply place the white root end in a glass jar with a little water, and leave it in a sunny position. Lemongrass Lemongrass grows just like any other grass. Within a week or so, new growth will start to appear. Ginger. Plant_502918c01db85.png (PNG Image, 1665 × 2094 pixels) An Assortment of Altoid Tin Survival Kits. Cincinnati-oh/planting-calendar/45219#below_plans. Square Foot Gardening Templates. Growing Celery Indoors: Never Buy Celery Again.
Remember when we tested and shared how to grow onions indefinitely last week? Well, at the same time, we've been testing out another little indoor gardening project first gleaned from Pinterest that we're excited to share the successes of today — regrowing celery from it's base. We've figured out how to literally re-grow organic celery from the base of the bunch we bought from the store a couple weeks ago.
I swear, we must have been living under a rock all these years or just not be that resourceful when it comes to food, but we're having more fun learning all these new little tips and tricks as we dive deeper into trying to grow more of our own food. This project is almost as simple as the onion growing project — simply chop the celery stalks from the base of the celery you bought from the store and use as you normally would. In our case, we had a particular homemade bean dip that needed sampling! Update 2: Here's how we are looking at almost 3-4 weeks of growth: Discover More:
The Experiment | unlocking the air. Last summer I heard about potato boxes and decided to try using one this year. When growing potatoes in the traditional way, you plant a seed potato and as the plant grows you keep hilling dirt up around its base, because new potatoes all grow above the seed and below the top of the dirt; hilling maximizes the vertical space available for the potatoes to grow in. The idea of a potato box is to increase the vertical space even more, by planting in a box and then raising the level of the dirt and the box's sides simultaneously.
There are a number of plans for such boxes online; there's a good example here. I decided that I wanted to build something that could be easily disassembled. Some people pile up old car tires and fill them with dirt, which is certainly minimal in effort required, if not aesthetically delightful. So ease of assembly/disassembly and the ability to access from the bottom without disturbing the upper growth is important.
Here's what the basic structure looks like: Garden Landscape Plans at GardenDesigner.com. Companion_Planting. Companion Planting Guide Anise - Plant anise and coriander seeds together. They will both germinate more quickly. Keep soil moist and separate when seedlings have grown a little. Apple - If planted with chives there is less chance of apple scab disease. Asparagus - Becomes more vigorous if planted with parsley. Basil - Basil repels white fly and makes a good companion to tomatoes, in the garden & the kitchen. Beans - Less likely to suffer from beetles if petunias also planted alongside. Beans (Bush) - Plant with sunflowers, they like partial shade and the sunflowers attract birds and bees.
Bee/Lemon Balm - Plant with tomatoes, it improves growth and flavour. Beetroot - Grow better if planted with onions, kohl rabi, basil, beans, lettuce, cabbage and tomatoes. Bergamot - Attracts beneficial honey bees. Borage - Plant with strawberries to increase crop. Broccoli - Planted with dill or mint grows better. Cabbage family - Cabbage butterfly is repelled by planting rosemary or sage with cabbages. Garden Organic - celebrating 50 years of organic growing - organic gardening, farming and food. Harvesting the wild: acorns by Jackie Clay. When I was just a little girl, I used to collect acorns by the boxfull as they fell in the fall. I didn't know why. They just felt nice in the hand and somehow a big bunch of them felt satisfying. Could that be because somewhere in my ancestors' time, acorns were a very important food?
Native Americans all across oak-growing North and South America harvested acorns, which were nearly as important a food as corn or beans. Such tribes as the Cherokee, Apache, Pima, and Ojibwa routinely harvested and used the acorn. These Indian gatherers taught early settlers how to harvest and use acorns in their cooking, as they did corn and other traditional foods. And those bright, shining round acorns are very good for you, besides tasting great. Health benefits of acorns Acorns have been tested and found to be possibly the best food for effectively controlling blood sugar levels.
They are rich in complex carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins while they are lower in fat than most other nuts. Oh gee! Plangarden Vegetable Garden Plan - Design Software. How to Grow a Pineapple Top Indoors. Once roots appear, plant the pineapple in a fast draining potting soil such as a Bromeliad or Cactus Potting Soil mixed with a third perlite. An eight-inch porous clay pot with bottom drainage is ideal. Layer about two inches of stones in the bottom of the pot prior to putting in the soil/perlite mix. The picture to the left illustrates the materials needed (the two pottery shards in the front are to put over the drainage holes; these came from an extra clay saucer that I broke up).
The first step is to cover the drainage hole with the pottery shard. Layer of stones followed by the soil and perlite mix. In terms of watering, the soil should always be slightly moist; not wet (which will promote rot) and not dry. After about two months, the pineapple should be supporting itself as a new plant. At this point you should notice that the original leaves of the pineapple will begin to die and turn brown, with new leaves beginning to grow at the center. Companion Plants - Grow Organic Food. How to Grow 100 Pounds of Potatoes in 4 Square Feet.
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17 Apart: Growing Celery Indoors: Never Buy Celery Again. My Collection of Funny Emails. Send funny emails to your friends! Heather Bullard: Our Chicken Coop. Dutch Oven Recipes. Wilderness Survival, Tracking, Nature, Wilderness Mind. Traditional Scouting: Boy Scout Adventure Activities Boys B-P Scouts Scuba Diving Merit Badge. Fishing - Fly Fishing, Bass, Lake Reports, Trout, Crappie, Salmon, Tips, More. Build a Backyard Wood-Fired Pompeii Oven. Grow Your Own Cooking Oil. Grain Mill Nutrimill Bosch Mixer Bosch Mixers Wheat Flour Grinder Mills Family Grain Mill Best Buy. DIY 275 Gallon Rainwater Collection. Grow plants from your groceries, like ginger root and pineapple!
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DWN: Garden Compass: Backyard Orchard Culture.