Starting a vegetable garden can be fun and an inexpensive way to bring healthy food to your kitchen table. But it can be overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. The secret to getting started vegetable gardening is to take a little time to make a plan. Take a look at your yard or
Summer fruiting crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants will benefit from a side-dressing of organic fertilizer when they first set fruit and every 4 to 6 weeks thereafter. An alternative is to water in a dilute solution of fish emulsion, seaweed extract, or kelp meal every 10 days. Feed fruiting crops that have flowered
Small tomato plants that deliver big flavor are just right for growing in small gardens and on decks, patios, and balconies. Small tomato plants range in size from 18 inches tall or less to no more than 3 or 4 feet tall. Small tomatoes require no staking or caging—but you can. Fruits on small tomato
Small cherry tomato plants in pots Tomatoes are easily grown in containers—clay pots, plastic nursery pots, and wood boxes Container-grown tomatoes have the same growing requirements as garden-grown tomatoes: 6 to 8 hours of sunlight each day, nutrient-rich soil, and enough water or soil moisture for steady, even growth. Best tips on How to Grow
‘German Johnson’ tomato Some tomato varieties are sweeter than others. They naturally develop more sugars which means they will be sweeter than tomatoes that naturally develop more acids. The combination of sugars and acids—there are more than 400 naturally occurring compounds that account for tomato flavor– makes for what is often called “old-fashioned tomato flavor.”
Beef broth, rice noodles, broccoli and carrots Vegetable and rice noodle soup is both light and hearty. Vary the stock—beef, chicken, or vegetable for degrees of intensity and complexity of flavor—and vary the vegetables with the season—root and cabbage family vegetables in the cool time of the year, leafy vegetables and summer squashes in the
AAS Winner Bell Boy Sweet Pepper Beginning vegetable gardeners can be easily intimidated by the scores and scores of vegetable seed varieties available from even the smallest seed retailer. There are hundreds of vegetable varieties available in garden centers and online each year. What to plant? Taste, quality, speed to harvest, total yield, ease of
Canning asparagus Home grown asparagus can be cut for canning the second spring after planting. The harvest time lasts 4 to 6 weeks and begins when temperatures rise above 55°F. Then asparagus sends up stalks from its thick underground roots. Asparagus stalks grow 2 to 3 inches a day in cool weather, 7 to 8
Flavor is the best reason to grow tomatoes in the home vegetable garden. (You can always find tomatoes without much flavor at the grocery store.) Choose flavor first when deciding which tomatoes to grow. Next, decide–before you plant–how you are going to eat and enjoy the tomatoes you grow. Tomato flavor comes from more than
Lilacs in full blooms Events in the natural calendar can be used to guide planting times in the vegetable garden. The study and observation of seasonal events and their correlation to plant, insect, and animal life is called phenology. Modern phenology got its start in England with the observations of naturalist Robert Marsham. Marsham began
