Fruits, Veggies and Herbs Articles
Is Everything Organic also “Safe?”
As a horticulturist that spent years in school and countless (boring but useful) hours in pesticide training, I am always wary of people that give all organics a blanket approval. To be a true organic gardener, there are some things you need to know about organic gardening. One of the …
Brewing the Perfect Cup of Tea
Tea, the second most popular beverage, after water, has a horticultural connection. In fact, if you want, you can grow a tea plant on your patio. Black, green, white and oolong tea comes from the plant Camellia sinensis. Tea leaves are just that: the young leaves from the tips of the branches of this plant. Each type of tea mentioned above is dried and prepared differently, resulting in a different nutrient …
Vegetable recap 2009
If you read my blog posts early in the spring (around March/April), you saw that I was SUPER EXCITED to have my own vegetable garden again. My husband and I embarked on a gigantic re-purposing of our back landscape beds for vegetables. We put in edging, compost, and tons of veggie seeds. We moved …
Harvesting Your Apples: and Anyone Else’s for that Matter
As September gets into full swing, so does apple season. This is an exciting time of year as apples become abundant, and harvesting your apples from your own orchard (or someone else’s), brings pies, cobblers, and crisps to your table on a regular basis. It is a bittersweet time of year as well, because it signals the end of summer and the abundance of all of the crops that you have been able to grow …
How To Grow Green Tea in Your Garden
Nature’s Fat-Burning Herb
When you buy tea in the store, you can’t be completely sure of the quality of its production and packaging. Was it grown fully organically? How far was it shipped before it arrived at your local store? Packaging waste is another concern for the eco-conscious tea-drinker. And let’s not forget the expense of buying tea at the store, an unnecessary expense in these strained economic times.
Growing your own tea is a rewarding project …
Preserving the Harvest
Now that the plants in your garden are finally producing fruits and vegetables, the sheer numbers can sometimes be overwhelming. An organic gardener generally does not want to see any food go to waste. The easiest answer for this pleasant problem, is preserving the harvest.
There are a number of ways in which large quantities of produce can be put back for the rest of the year. There really is nothing better than having fresh frozen …
Creative Blueberry Garden Recipes
One very important thing to learn as a gardener is to eat seasonally. This means eating greens and wintered over root vegetables in the early and late spring, peas and beans in the early summer, and finding 317 ways to eat blueberries, tomatoes, and peppers in the mid to late summer. In order to accomplish this goal, it requires that the gardener has a number of creative garden recipes at their disposal.
Five Ways With Blueberries
If …
Tomato Troubleshooting
This is the time during the summer that tomato problems start to show you if they are happy with the way you are growing them, or unhappy. They show signs of stress and insect damage. In Northeast North America, there has been an outbreak of tomato disease affecting many tomato growers – both commercial and homeowners. Unfortunately, you can’t fix every problem that might plague your tomato plants, but you can help with some of …
Simply Berry Jam Recipes
This is quite possibly the most exciting time of the year for anyone with an appreciation of the harvest. Mother Nature planned her own crop rotation in such a way as not to burden us too much with her bounty. As a gardener from the northern part of the U.S., I start itching in anticipation for those first beautiful fruits. But, then they come so fast and heavy, there is no way to eat the …
Growing Your Own Berries – Raspberries, Strawberries and Blueberries
Berries are sometimes referred to as “nature’s candy,” and for good reason. They are naturally sweet and bursting with flavor – all originally intended to entice animals to gobble them up and spread the plant’s seeds far and wide. Berry season is creeping northward – starting in February in Florida with strawberries, with the last blackberry season not ending in northern Canada until late August. …
