|
Rosy Outlook - Five Hearty Hybrid Roses
Are you drawn to the simple elegance and fragrant beauty of roses? Do you wish you had time to cultivate an extensive rose garden? If you're interested in roses, but don't have the time to tend a large rose garden, don't fret. Consider planting one or more...
Tea Time - Ten Tips for Choosing your Tea Roses
Tea roses epitomize our notion of rose beauty: they produce large, often fragrant single blooms dazzle us with their velvety texture, vivid color, and simple elegance. If you'd like to add this classic rose to your garden, be prepared to be dazzled by the...
To Form a More Perfect Union - Summary of Rose Grafting
Many people choose to graft their roses to help them grow better and to bloom better. Grafting is not necessarily difficult, but it does require some skill and some forethought before making the attempt. There are many reasons to graft roses, and you can find...
|
|
Plants for all Types of Dry or Drought-Prone Climates
There are different types of climates that fall into the category of drought-prone climates. These include Mediterranean (which is present in the U.S., though it is thousands of miles from the Mediterranean Sea), arid, and semi-arid. Even though each of these...
Don't Be Late - Propagate: When to Perform Rose Propagation
As a novice rose gardener, you might have heard the term rose propagation, but not really known what was meant by the term. Propagation is the term used for reproduction in the plant world and you can propagate roses by either seed or by taking a cutting...
Landscape Gardening Tips
Landscape gardening has often been associated with the painting of a picture. Your art-work teacher has told you that a good picture should have a point of interest, and the rest of the points simply go to make the piece more beautiful. So in landscape...
|
|
The Home Garden
The Home Garden
The garden should be near the house and away from trees. If it's some distance away from the house, it will not be as well looked after, nor will most use be made of vegetables grown. Vegetables near trees cannot get full sunshine; even more important, tree roots will rob them of water and fertilizer they need to do their best.
If you can, move the garden spot every 10 years or so to help keep down diseases. Proper rotation and use of disease-resistant varieties will help, but sooner or later the old garden spot becomes so full of various disease spores and nematodes that you cannot grow a good crop of many vegetables without use of special soil fumigants.
Soil should, of course, be well drained. Few vegetables can stand "wet feet." A sandy loam with a clay subsoil is best. Heavy clay soils may be made quite suitable by adding heavy quantities of stable manure or compost, or by turning under cover crops, preferably legumes such as vetch, clover soybeans.
Since the best quality quantity of vegetables cannot be duced on anything but a fertile soil, do whatever is needed to make it fertile.
Requirements for growth.
1. Proper degree of heat.
2. Moisture.
3. Oxygen in the air is essential for seed germination and good growth.
English peas, for example, will sprout when soil termperature is only a few degrees above freezing, while seed such as tomatoes will not germinate at all.
To start these
tender vegetables for early crops, artificial heat, as in hotbeds, is needed. Otherwise, for early crops, buy plants from commercial growers, or from local growers who produce them with artificial heat. Tender vegetables that do not transplant such as melons, cucumbers, cantaloupes, and squash, should not be planted outdoors until soil has warmed up. These may, however, be started earlier in small pots in a hotbead.
To make the most out of your gardening efforts, take time to do some planning. Also keep a record of wheather you had too much or too little of certain vegatables at any time during the season for a continuous supply. Don't trust it all to memory.
Things to consider when planting.
1. How much of each vegetable to grow to supply your family needs.
2. Which vegetables are most need for good health.
3. How much extra to plant for storage
4. Which varities are best to plant.
5. When to plant for continuous growth and supply.
6. Which pesticides are best for control of insects and diseases.
7. Supplies needed such as, sprayers, dusters, tools, fertilizer, or mulching material.
Jotting this down on paper, plus any notes made during the season about special pest problems or how a new variety or practice turned out, will be valuable the next season when planning and planting time roll around.
About the Author
Charles French is a freenlance writer and webmaster for Decorating Country Home
|
