When should you plant garlic? The common advice is to plant after the first hard frost. That advice may work but it is not right. The best planting time has nothing to do with frost!
Does Garlic Need Frost Before Planting?
Vegetables
How to Grow, Harvest and Eat Hostas
It’s hard to find an ornamental garden without at least a couple of Hosta, but did you know hostas can be grown as perennial vegetables? Hostas, also called plantain lilies, have found their way into almost every garden in Zones 3 through 8, and for good reason – they’re resilient, beautiful, drought tolerant, shade tolerant, and low-maintenance yet not aggressive. For the same reasons, hostas make a wonderful addition to a perennial vegetable garden.
How to Grow, Harvest and Eat Hosta, harvesting shoots, source: Practical Self Reliance
Soak Garlic Before Planting – Good Idea?
I have never soaked garlic before planting, but it might be a good idea. There is certainly a trend towards soaking with water, fertilizer, fish emulsion, or disinfectants. This post will examine these techniques to see if they affect plant growth and the size of harvested garlic.
How to Grow, Harvest and Eat American Groundnuts
American groundnut (Apios americana) is the North American equivalent to the South American potato. Unlike common potatoes, American groundnut is a perennial flowering vine which produces numerous tubers along its root system. The entire plant is edible though the tubers are highly valued by foragers and wild food enthusiasts for their nutty, slightly sweet flavor.
How to Grow Asparagus for Decades-Long Harvests
Asparagus is one of the best options for cold-climate gardeners interested in growing perennial vegetables. Most people – and mainstream plant retailers – have never heard of the perennial vegetables that grow in cold climates. You might be hard pressed to find American groundnut tubers or Good King Henry seeds but it’s easy to find asparagus cultivars and accompanying recipes and friends to use them up. Plus, asparagus prefers cooler climates and will continue to produce an abundance of delicious spears for up to 30 years.
How to Grow and Harvest Egyptian Walking Onions
Are you an onion addict who dreams of a steady supply of fresh Allium? Expanding your onion repertoire with perennial onions is your best bet. Egyptian walking onions (Allium x proliferum), also called tree onion or topset onion, is a three-in-one perennial onion that can be harvested from spring to fall in Zones 5 to 9.
Do Low Acid Tomatoes Exist?
My mother used to grow “low acid” tomatoes because high acid levels gave her mouth cankers, or so she thought. There is a concern that canning low acid tomatoes causes botulism because the acid level is too low.
Lots of seed companies and garden blogs talk about low acid tomatoes and usually identify yellow, orange and small fruited varieties as low acid. Some claim that modern breeding has increased the acidity of tomatoes and that heirlooms have less acid. Others claim that there is no such thing as low acid tomatoes.
It turns out that this story starts as a myth. People tried to correct the myth only to create a new myth in the process. I’ll have to debunk the debunkers.
Should You Prune Pepper Seedlings?
Pinching and topping refers to the removal of the top part of a plant. Pinching peppers results in more side branches and a bushier plant which, it is claimed, leads to more fruit and a higher yield. Is this true? Should you pinch pepper plants?
Some people also suggest removing the first bloom to allow the seedling to grow larger and develop a better root system. Does this really happen? Does it increase yield. Should you pinch the first bloom?
There are lots of opinions online and in blog posts, but I found none that actually presented any scientific evidence for their suggestions. What does science say?
Myths About Straw And Hay In The Garden
What is the difference between straw and hay? I am always surprised at all of the misinformation that is spread whenever discussions start about using straw or hay in the garden. Which one has more weeds? Do they improve soil? Are lingering herbicides a problem? Should either be used in the garden?
The answers to these questions are quite simple if you first eliminate the myths and that is what I’m going to do in this post.
Too Many Male Flowers On Squash And Cucumber
Squash, cucumber and pumpkin belong to the cucurbit family and most garden varieties produce both male and female flowers. Since only female flowers produce fruit, gardeners get concerned when they see too many male flowers and like any other gardening problem they invent lots of ways to fix the problem. Unfortunately most of these so-called fixes don’t actually work.
What causes too many male flowers on cucumbers, pumpkins and squash, and what can be done about it?
Vegetable Growing Master Class – FREE on YouTube
I have put together a 12 part class to provide all of the basic information you need to grow better vegetables. The course is designed for both beginner and intermediate gardeners and is offered free on YouTube.
10 Ways to Germinate Pepper Seed Faster – What Works and What Doesn’t Work?
What is the fastest way to germinate pepper seeds? They do germinate a bit slower than other vegetables and that is especially true of hot peppers, so gardeners try all kinds of DIY solutions to speed up the process. In this post I will examine 10 popular ways to speed up the germination of pepper seeds and report on my own experiment that compares most of these methods.
Finally, a definitive answer to the question, what is the fastest way to germinate pepper seeds.
