garden

How to Grow Potatoes at Home

Potatoes, taters, spuds, tots… well, maybe not that last one. Knowing how to grow potatoes in your backyard garden is one of the first lessons I learned as a gardener. I was a brand new homeowner, my hubs had just tilled up a garden plot, and I grew at least seven hills of potatoes. The potato beetle did its best to ruin my harvest, but I won out thanks to some advice from an old-time gardener and fellow teacher. I ended up with a pretty large harvest of red potatoes! Now, storage is a different story. There are no cool root cellars in my area of North Carolina. It’s too damp and too warm… so those potatoes were a good lesson in planting what we (and our neighbors) can eat before they go bad.

How to Grow Potatoes

Potatoes are easy to grow in a home garden and one plant will produce a multitude of potatoes. (Take it from me, I know.) All varieties of spuds are easy to grow and can be grown in containers or raised beds. Here are some tips to help you know how to grow potatoes. Follow these and you’re almost guaranteed an abundant harvest this year!

Location

This isn’t just for realtors, y’all. While the actual potatoes grow beneath the soil, there is a green plant (a vine for sweet potatoes) that grows above the soil which needs plenty of sunlight. Select a location that is in full sun (6+ hours per day) for best results. Not sure which areas of your yard get the best sun? Try making a Sun Map of your yard, and you’ll always know the best place to grow full sun, low sun, and shade loving plants.

Growing Container

Potatoes can be successfully grown in traditional in-ground gardens, in buckets, stacks of tires (though I have reservations about what’s in those tires), special grow bags, barrels, raised beds, or any type of container that can hold soil and is at least 1 foot deep. Get creative when you consider how to grow potatoes. For the past several years, I have grown mine in containers instead of directly in my raised beds. This saves me space in the raised beds for plants that don’t do as well in containers. In fact, there are special bags just for growing potatoes, so they can be harvested as the plant grows. Amazing! I haven’t tried them yet, but my neighbor has enjoyed using grow bags for her tomato plants. If you’ve used them, comment below and let me know what you thought about them.

Getting Started

Seed Potatoes

The type of potatoes you use for planting are called seed potatoes. While I have had some friends who have had success using potatoes from their grocery store bagged variety, I like to head to our downtown hardware store and see the different varieties available there. Some varieties purchased at your local grocery store have been treated with growth retardant to prevent them from sprouting. (If you want to try those from the grocery store, stick with an organic variety, since they shouldn’t have been treated.) For your other seed potatoes, start with organic, certified disease-free seed potatoes purchased from a garden supply center or seed catalog. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is one of my favorite places to purchase seeds, and they have a great variety!

Cut and Cure

Seed potatoes need to be cut and dried prior to planting. When you pick out your seed potatoes, choose the ones that have the most eyes. Eyes equal plants. Cut large tubers into 3-4 pieces, making sure each piece has at least 1 ‘eye’ (sprout). Any tubers that are smaller than a golf ball can be left whole.

Place cut pieces in a single layer in the sun so they can cure. Or if the weather isn’t cooperating, leave cut potatoes on a paper towel on your kitchen counter for a few days. The cut sides develop a hard covering called a ‘callous’ during the curing process and will prevent the seed tuber from rotting after planting. This is important. Nobody has time for rotting tubers in the ground, am I right?

Planting

Soil Preparation

Potatoes grow best in loose, well-draining soil. A mixture of 50 percent soil and 50 percent compost is ideal to provide drainage, nutrition, and prevent soil compaction for growing spuds. My DIY Potting soil is perfect for in-ground gardens, raised beds, or any type of container you may be using. The potatoes need the loose soil for growing those new spuds!

Planting

Plant potatoes 3 weeks prior to last predicted frost date for your area. Potatoes need a bit of cool weather to grow well, since they don’t produce as well in the sweltering days of summer. To plant your potatoes, dig a hole 6 inches deep and place 1 seed potato cut side down (eyes facing upward) into hole. Gently cover tuber and water well. Space planting holes 2 feet apart. If you’re working with a container, don’t fill it all the way up. Instead make sure your container has 6-8 inches of space at the top after the tuber has been planted. This will give you room to “hill” your potato plant as it grows. You can also make potato towers, like Garden Know How, for a larger harvest.

Hilling

Developing spuds must be protected from sunlight and ‘hilling’ accomplishes this and promotes a larger harvest. When the plant is 8 inches tall, create a 4 inch hill around it by raking loose soil around it. You can also top that off with 2 inches of straw or leaves. It’s important to hill to protect those topmost potatoes from being exposed to sunlight. If you’ve ever seen green potatoes, then those are spuds that broke through and were exposed to sunlight too soon. Don’t eat green potatoes.

Repeat the hilling process again when plant grows another 8 inches.

Harvest Time

Small, new potatoes can be harvested when the plant flowers. To dig up the plant and potatoes in one large harvest, wait until plants die for large, mature potatoes. Harvesting new potatoes is a great way to enjoy some of your labor while the plant is still growing. My grandmother would always do this so we could have some new potatoes in with a pot of fresh green beans. Delicious!

Common Pests

The Colorado potato beetle is one of the most common pests that likes to destroy your potato plants. They arrive in the summer and lay yellow eggs on the underside of leaves of your potato plants. The striped backs of adults give them a very distinctive look, so be on the look out.

How to handle potato beetles:

For small gardens, seek and destroy is the best option. If you see a beetle, pick it up and put it in a jar of soapy water. Use a wet cloth to wipe the eggs off of the backs of leaves.
Be sure to check the backs of all leaves. A female can lay an enormous amount of eggs in her lifetime… who has time for that?!
Use Bacillus thuringiensis var. tenebrionis (BT), a naturally occurring bacterial disease. This will only be effective for the young larvae, not adult bugs. It’s the same spray I use to keep cabbage worms from destroying my brassicas.

And that’s it! All you need to know from start to harvest on how to grow potatoes. I can’t wait to see what kind of harvest you will yield and what type of potatoes are your favorites! Share below and tips you have and happy gardening!

by Courtney Leave a Comment

How to Make a Sun Map

If you’re new to the idea of how to make a sun map, no worries! Until last year, I had never made one myself. But now that I know how to make a sun map, it has revolutionized how I view the growing space in my yard. It’s become so important to me, and my garden coach clients, that I included it as part of my Complete Garden Planner. It’s a must for garden planning whether you have a full veggie garden, container garden, or edible landscaping. (And see the video at the bottom of this post for an example of my sun map.)

What is a Sun Map?

Despite what it sounds like, sun mapping is not making a map of the Sun. I feel like a large ball burning gas would be hard to map. A sun map though is a map of the sun’s presence in your yard. Simply put, you observe and map to assess how many hours of sun each area of your yard receives in a given day.

Why make a Sun Map?

If you’re interested in growing anything in your yard, then knowing how to make a sun map is essential. A sun map will help you to see what areas you can use for plants that require full sun, partial sun, and low sun. It can also help you map out the best areas for growing a vegetable garden, putting a compost pile, or placing a chicken coop. I guess the last option is for those who really want to go urban homestead and have farm animals in your yard. We currently do not have chickens after the fox/dog incident of 2017, but I’m hoping to add some back this year.

A sun map can help you know exactly where to put each of the things listed above. This is important in planning the landscape around your home and taking advantage of all that your yard has to offer. For those who live on small lots in town, you may be surprised to find how much full-sun and part-sun growing space you really do have available.

How to make a sun map

No permaculture degree is required to make a sun map of your yard, but I do recommend not doing a your map in the dead of winter. Late winter or early spring work if you’re trying to make a map for your spring garden would be just fine. But I notice areas of our yard get less sun during the winter months due to shorter days. Just take this into consideration if you are trying to make a sun map in late December. Now, onto the steps:

1. Grab a blank piece of paper (standard printer paper is fine), a pencil, and a ruler. Imagine the blank space is your property. Draw your home approximately where it sits on your land/yard. Don’t forget to include driveways and walkways, as well as hedges and trees.

2. Grab 3 colored pencils (I use yellow, red, and blue). Any colors will do; just make sure they’re different.

3. Shade in yellow the areas of your yard that receive more than six hours of sunlight per day.

4. Shade in orange the areas that receive 4-6 hours of sun per day.

5. Shade in blue the areas that receive less than 4 hours of sun per day.

6. Use your map to plan where you will plant your garden, shrubs, fruit trees, and bushes so that they receive the proper amount of sunlight for optimal growth.

The Results

Learning to make a sun map isn’t difficult, but it does require a bit of observation. I first learned about creating sun maps in Amy Stross’s book The Suburban Micro-Farm. Amy blogs at the Tenth-Acre farm, and even though she no longer lives on a suburban micro-farm, she has fantastic articles and resources for using every square inch of space your yard provides. Her more in-depth instructions for a sun map also delve into where water runs off into your yard, or where it tends to pool. This is important, since there certainly are many plants out there that do not like wet feet. (Kind of like me!)

So, as you jump into making your sun map, use the video below as a help, and imagine all that you could grow in the space you have right now. I can’t think of a better use for flower beds and open yard area than for growing fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and even grains. Check out Amy’s site and her book if you’re interested in learning more about using your yard productively!

by Courtney Leave a Comment

How to Winterize the Garden

Life in the southeastern U.S. sometimes feels like summer is endless, but the fact is winter eventually does find us. And now is the time to start thinking about winterizing your garden area. Thankfully, the process of winterizing the garden to get it ready for the spring growing season is relatively easy. No matter if you use a traditional row garden or have a raised bed garden, winterization is essential. While there are a few different methods for winterizing, it’s good to know why this is a necessary step.

The Benefits of Winterizing your Garden

First, winterizing a garden after a full spring and summer of producing delicious vegetables and herbs helps to give the garden a well-deserved break. The soil that worked so hard to feed the plants in your garden space, needs to be re-energized with nutrients.

The second benefit of winterizing, is that you, the gardener, may need a rest yourself. If you aren’t planning to grow a fall or winter garden, then chances are you just need a bit of a rest. And that’s perfectly fine! Taking a break from the garden for the winter will give you the chance to get recharged and reinvigorated to grow an even better spring garden. This is especially true if you also go through the tasks of canning and preserving a lot of your summer garden goods. This is why I am so thankful that the process of winterizing is easy. Even the most worn out gardener can quickly put their garden to rest, recharging their soil and themselves at the same time.

Before Starting Winterization

Before you select the best method of winterizing, be sure to clean out any dead or dying plants from your garden space. Amy Stross, the author of The Suburban Micro-Farm, recommends taking out completely, roots and all, any plants that may have been diseased. Plants that were healthy can be cut off at the base. The top of the plant can be composted, and the roots are left in the ground for organisms living there.

The next thing you want to do is submit soil samples to your local Cooperative Extension office. Why do you need to do this? Well, it’s a fantastic service that most counties provides for very little cost to you. By simply grabbing the small cardboard boxes that your extension office provides, you are able to take multiple samples of soil from your garden and send them off to be analyzed. These soil samples help tell you exactly what your soil needs in the winter months in order to be ready for the spring. Are your nitrogen levels low? Should you be adding lime to your garden soil? Would you benefit from using a cover crop as your winterization technique? All of these questions can be answered with a soil analysis.

Methods of Winterizing the Garden

The Feed and Rest Method. This is my go-to method of winterizing my raised garden beds. Several years ago, I transitioned from a traditional row garden to using the square-foot gardening method in raised beds. (If you are not familiar with square foot gardening, I highly recommend Mel Bartholomew’s book Square Foot Gardening.) However, the Feed and Rest winterization method could easily be used in a traditional row garden as well.

This method involves feeding the soil with good quality compost, and then covering the garden beds with mulch or leaf matter. The compost feeds the soil, re-energizing it with nutrients. And the thick layer of leaves or mulch help keep weeds from taking over and also provide a nice insulating layer for your soil. This is the easiest method of winterizing. Come the spring, simply rake away the layer of mulch or leaves, add it to your compost pile or flower beds, and get to planting. Comfrey leaves, a perennial herb, can also be used as a mulch for winterizing, and then turned into the soil come spring. I do not recommend turning wood mulch into the garden soil in the spring.

Cover Cropping

The second winterizing method I recommend is cover cropping. This can be especially helpful if your soil analysis comes back with news your soil is greatly lacking in one nutrient or another. Cover cropping simply means to grow a certain crop that covers the garden bed and offers the soil some kind of benefit. The results of your soil analysis will clue you in to the best cover crop for your garden. Popular cover crops include clover and legumes as these help fix nitrogen in the soil. Mustard greens are a good cover crop and delicious too.

If using a raised bed for gardening, don’t use a cover crop that would need to be tilled in the spring. Raised beds should have loose soil and should not require tilling. Want to see what winterizing a raised bed looks like? Check out my Youtube video:

So, regardless of which method of winterization you choose, your soil will reap the benefits of having a much-needed rest. It will recharge through nutrient-rich compost or a cover crop that provides the soil with exactly what it needs. So before you hang up your garden trowel for the year, take just a little time to ensure that you have a great start to next year’s growing season.

This article first appeared in the winter 2018 edition of My Lenoir magazine.

by Courtney 2 Comments

Benefits of Gardening for Children

Gardening is a long-time favorite hobby for many who enjoy being surrounded by nature and creating something beautiful from nothing. It’s also a fantastic adventure and learning experience for children who often spend too much time indoors. But hours being spent inside on screens doesn’t have to be the norm. Involving children in gardening is a great way to get kids outside and to engage them in a fun and fruitful activity. Pun intended.

So, what are some of the many benefits of gardening for children? And how can you cultivate their passion for growing things?

Promotes Balance

Cheap bulk candies and video games are often on the top of a kid’s to-do list. While these things are fine in moderation, it’s up to parents to promote balance. One of the main benefit of gardening for children is a form of physical activity that gets them moving and helps burn off the excess energy they acquire while sitting still.

In addition to providing a form of physical exercise, gardening can also help children develop healthy eating habits. Encourage your children to choose and plant a few vegetables during their gardening efforts. The novelty of eating something they’ve grown themselves may outweigh any arguments they might have about eating their veggies. And teaching them where food comes from helps give them an appreciation for farmers and other community members who help grow food.

Appreciation for Living Things

Another benefit of gardening for children is it can help develop mindfulness. As you work with your kids to grow things, discuss the hard work that farmers do every day to put food on your table. Talk about the bugs that you find in the dirt and how they all play a role in the natural world. (Boys will especially love this!) Teach your children about how the plants grow, and the differences between annuals and perennials. Examine the different leaf shapes from the different types of plants. The discussion possibilities are endless.

Not only will these practices help your child develop an appreciation for the living world, but it will also provide great learning opportunities and promote discussion and curiosity.

Develop Responsibility

Taking care of a garden is a great way to develop a sense of responsibility in children. Whereas the consequences for not cleaning one’s room might be a punishment, failure to take care of a garden means that the plants die.

Helping take care of a garden is a simple way to start setting a foundation for chores and responsibility for one’s actions or inactions. It can also be easily scaled to suit different age groups. A younger child might be responsible for watering the plants each day, whereas an older child might have to help with weeding. Giving your child a spot of the garden (or a few pots if you’re container gardening) will give them the freedom and responsibility to care for something on their own. This is one of the natural benefits of gardening for children, and it can come from taking care of any living thing.

Health Benefits

In addition to being more active, gardening has other health benefits that often go overlooked. For example, exposure to the sun can increase levels of vitamin D and have positive mood-boosting effects. Fresh air improves circulation, lowers blood pressure, and reduces stress. And while these may not seem like health issues that children struggle with now, learning to garden gives them a lifetime skill that they can carry throughout their entire life.

Gardening can help improve a child’s self-esteem as they look upon a plant that they’ve helped to grow. The sense of accomplishment and pride will flourish in both you and your child, as they look at their garden and you look at them. And the benefits of growing their own fruits and veggies are pretty tasty too!

Life Skills

The lifetime skill of being able to grow and care for plants and living things is something we all need. By teaching children early where their food comes from and how to grow it, we are setting our children up for success later in life. Being able to grow your own food saves money, promotes healthy eating (there are no Butterfinger trees), and gives them something to rely on if times get hard (Victory gardens were a very real thing.).

So encourage your kids and/or grandkids to get growing. Give them a bit of freedom in what they grow, but help to teach and guide them about how to garden well. You may reap the tasty benefits soon thereafter!

by Courtney Leave a Comment

Uses for Neem Oil in the Garden

Ever heard of neem oil but weren’t sure what it was? Uses for neem oil in the garden are bountiful, and it can be a big help to gardeners everywhere.

Pests, every garden has them, and if I can avoid spraying my garden veggies with poison or toxins, I’ll go that route. One of the benefits of gardening in your own backyard is knowing exactly what touches the food you feed your family. And neem oil is something to keep in your gardening arsenal when pests are trying to take over, but you still want to maintain a natural approach to pest control. (Here are my natural cabbage worm maintenance tips.)

Uses for Neem Oil in the Garden

Neem oil is an effective organic product that has many uses, one of which is safely controlling pests in the garden. This oil has been used for centuries as a natural pesticide, but it’s also found in other products like soap, toothpaste and cosmetics. (I’ll bet you’ll be checking labels after reading this.)

Neem oil is harvested from the seeds and leaves of the neem tree. This tree is native to India, but can be found growing in most tropic and sub-tropic regions. It has many different applications, but let’s look at some of uses neem oil has in the garden.

Kills Pests

Spray neem oil on garden plants to kill pests at any stage of their life cycle. This organic oil will kill pests in the egg, larva, or adult stage of life. It will smother adults pests and disrupt hormones so developing pests cannot continue through to their next stage of development. This is obviously beneficial for halting a pest infestation in your garden. I’ve been using it lately to clear out a Japanese flea beetle attack. Here’s MIGardener talking about using neem oil in his garden against aphids:

Safe For All Plants and Pollinators

Neem oil kills all pests on all plants. No need to have several different types of insecticides and pesticides; neem oil will do it all and is safe for use on all food producing plants. And if sprayed in the correct concentration (see your bottle), then it’s also safe for pollinators such as honeybees and butterflies.

Above and Below

This organic oil will kill above ground and below ground pests. It’s very effective at killing nematodes, which live in the soil and destroy plant roots. Neem oil works by preventing nematode larvae from hatching.

Earth Worm Safe

While the oil kills soil-dwelling nematodes, it won’t harm beneficial earthworms. Neem oil actually encourages earthworm activity, which in turn improves garden soil structure.

Organic Fertilizer

When neem fruits, kernels and leaves have been pressed, there is a ‘cake’ left behind known as a neem cake. When used in the garden, these cakes will act as an organic fertilizer and help control nematodes, white ants, and grubs.

Excellent Fungicide

Neem oil kills a wide range of fungi that are common to garden plants. Use the oil to control powdery mildew, black spot, rust, tip blight and scabs on your indoor or outdoor garden plants.

Indoor Plants

It’s safe to use on indoor garden, herb and flowering plants. It’s also safe to use on tender seedlings in greenhouses.

Safe for Pets

Neem oil is non-toxic and bio-degradable. It’s safe for use around pets and wildlife immediately after spraying, and it remains safe after being absorbed into plants and soil. The oil degrades quickly after a rain and won’t cause a toxic build-up in soil or nearby waterways.

How to Use Neem Oil in the Garden

Neem oil is not a traditional, chemical-laden insecticide, thankfully. Because it is an oil, and not poison, it can take neem oil longer to “work.” For those expecting neem oil spray to instantly kill any pests you see, you may be disappointed. The pests ingest the neem oil and it may cause them to stop eating and/or stop laying eggs, but the results are slower than chemical poison.

For application, spray your neem oil insecticide before pollinators are out and about. This would be in early morning hours or in the evening, and this reduces the risk of spraying any beneficial insects that visit your garden.

I’d love to know if you’ve used neem oil and how it has worked for you. Have a great week, and happy gardening!

by Courtney 2 Comments

Getting Rid of Cabbage Worms

As soon as the brassicas and kale start growing in the early spring or fall garden, the dreaded cabbage moth and her cabbage worms make their appearance. Getting rid of cabbage worms can be a non-stop battle, but over the years, I’ve discovered some helpful natural tips that fit almost everyone’s gardening style. And if you happen to have backyard chickens, they may benefit from your gung-ho, get-rid-of-worms attitude.

Getting Rid of Cabbage Worms

I take a live and let live attitude with some bugs in the garden, as long as they remember who’s in charge. However, cabbage moths and the worms that hatch from the eggs they lay can decimate greens and brassicas. And when I say decimate, I mean they can take a perfectly healthy leaf and devour it. My kids are cheering for the cabbage worms to eat up all of our kale, but not on my watch. Here’s one of our broccoli leaves that had recently become a snack for cabbage worms. If left unchecked, they would easily consume this entire leaf and others that were on the same plant.

Over the years, I’ve tried many methods for getting rid of cabbage worms. Here are the ones that I’ve found to be most helpful, and one that we’ve just started trying, so I’ll have to let you know how it goes. I do try to keep my gardening as organic as possible, so no Sevin dust or other chemical bug killers will be found in my list. To each his own in the garden, but with kiddos picking and eating freely from the garden, I want to keep things as clean as possible.

Methods for Getting Rid of Cabbage Worms

Seek and Destroy– As the name implies, this simply means going out, checking under leaves and in the base of plants, and picking off worms and eggs. It’s about as fun as it sounds, but interestingly enough, some kids LOVE it. I have a jar of soapy water handy and the worms get placed in the jar. If you happen to have chickens, put the picked-off worms in a little container, and then feed them to your little chickies. Obviously, there’s nothing you have to purchase for this method, but you do have to be vigilant about checking your plants.
Flour– A pantry staple and also an effective worm killer. Dust flour on leaves where you see worms present, and they will eat the flour. The flour dries them out, especially in combination with the warm sun, and boom, they’re dead. I have repeatedly used this method in the past, and while it is effective, it did tend to discolor the leaves of my plant. This isn’t a huge issue for cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, but for kale and other plants where the leaf is eaten, I prefer to use something else. For application, take an old plastic jar, punch holes in the lid, fill it with flour, and then shake onto leaves. Very simple!
BT (Bacillus Thuricide)- Though I tend to think that names I cannot pronounce are automatically harmful chemicals, BT is actually a bacteria that is harmful to cabbage worms and other invasive worms. It does not harm humans or other beneficial insects. I first learned about BT from several garden Youtubers (is that a word?) whose channels I enjoy and trust. MIGardener and Epicgardening both practice organic gardening techniques and use BT sprayed on the leaves of plants to battle cabbage worms. The worms eat the BT off of the leaves and once in their system, the BT develops toxins inside the worm. This toxin causes the worms to stop eating and then eventually die. For application, use a garden spray bottle and follow the mixing ratio on the bottle. Plants will need to be sprayed every few weeks to keep the BT on the leaves.
Cabbage Moth Decoys– So, this is the newest technique I’ve discovered, and we’re just now trying it out in the garden. While seek-and-destroy, flour, and BT all solve the problem of getting the worms off your plants, this method tries to prevent the cabbage moths from laying eggs in the first place. I ran across this post on The Good Seed Company blog, all about how cabbage moths are territorial. This means, they don’t like to lay eggs where other cabbage moths are already present and “working.” The decoy, which can be printed from their page here, are hung on string and dangle near your brassicas and greens. Ideally, the moths will see these paper moths and choose to go elsewhere. It’s an interesting concept that I’m totally excited to see work. Time will tell, and I’ll update this post to see how they perform. I’ve already placed some in my Salad Container Garden to keep the moths away from the kale growing there. So far, no worms or eggs. (And since I’m a homeschooler, I did use my laminator to make these paper moths a bit more weather resistant.)

So now you have four different tactics to combat the dreaded cabbage moth and cabbage worms. I’d love to know if you have any other techniques for getting rid of or preventing these plant-loving eaters. If someone could develop some ant decoys… I’d really be in garden heaven. Have a great week and happy gardening!

by Courtney 4 Comments

Container Salad Garden

Planting a container salad garden is a quick and easy addition to your porch or patio that also provides delicious lettuces and greens!

Salad, the types and varieties are endless. With a large selection of lettuces and greens, paired with an innumerable amount of toppings, every person can have their own preferences for what makes a great salad. My hubs loves a crunchy romaine topped with bacon, cheese, and sunflower seeds. I, on the other hand, love the peppery bite of arugula with chunks of feta, thin-sliced red onion, and fresh tomatoes. (Or strawberry salad, delicious!)

I’m willing to bet you also have your preferences for how a salad is constructed. Luckily, salad greens are some of the easiest things to grow in the garden and in containers. Whether growing from seed or plants from a local store, planting a container salad garden is fun and easy! And for instructions on how to make this particular metal tub planter, see my DIY Self-Watering Planter post.

Planting a Container Salad Garden

For those without garden space, or who just want to try their hand at a small salad selection, planting a container salad garden is the perfect solution. And if you’ve struggled a bit with a black thumb in the past, growing a container salad garden can help to ease you into gardening success! Here’s what you’ll need for your container salad garden:

Medium to Large Container (I used this fabulous metal tub) If you use a tub or bucket, be sure to drill holes in the bottom for drainage.
Quality Potting Soil (I made my own, and here’s the quick DIY Potting Soil recipe.)
Granular Fertilizer (Espoma or an organic fertilizer is my pick.)
Seeds or Plants (My favorites: Romaine, Kale, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Mesclun, Spinach, Buttercrunch, and Mizuna greens)

Creating Your Salad Garden (See video at end of post.)

Begin by making sure your container has adequate drainage. If you purchased an actual “flower” pot from the store, you should be good to go. If you’re using something that wasn’t intended for plants, you may need to grab a drill and make some drainage holes in the bottom. (For my steel tub, I actually made it into a self-watering planter, which I’ll post about later in the week.) Once you have your container chosen and ready, begin by filling 2/3 of the way up with potting soil.
Place fertilizer in the middle of your container. The amount of fertilizer depends on the size of your container (the fertilizer bag will have proportions). I put fertilizer in the middle, and once filled, will plant my greens along the sides, so the roots aren’t sitting on the fertilizer, but it’s still being released to the plants.
Fill your container the rest of the way up with potting soil, covering up your fertilizer.
Now comes the fun part, planting your salad! For seeds, simply follow the packet instructions for depth and spacing, and for plants, choose the varieties you like best and place them around the container, being aware of where your fertilizer is. Choose plants based on color, too. A variety of colors and heights will make for a beautiful, and tasty, container salad garden! (Here I am using Red Russian Kale, Buttercrunch, Mizuna Greens, and Swiss Chard.) Space your plants out so they have plenty of room to grow. You can always come back and add more later if there is room.
Water your seeds or plants, being careful to avoid wetting the leaves. Finally, if you’ve used plants, mulch around them, because this helps retain moisture, which is important when planting a container garden. If you have used seeds, you can sow thickly enough that the plants themselves will help to shade the soil and keep in moisture. Now sit back and watch your little babies grow!

Here is the container salad garden three weeks later! Harvest as the leaves get large enough and be sure to keep your salad well watered, but not swimming. I’d love to know what you choose to grow in your container salad garden!

Here’s a video of how I planted my container salad garden:

by Courtney Leave a Comment

Preschool Edible Gardens

Getting kids to eat their fruits and vegetables is a full-time job. Young kids aren’t exactly known for their diverse food tastes, and they like to stick to things they know and love. If you’re trying to introduce your kids to healthier produce, you might be using the wrong methods. Gardening is a great way to help children not only learn how food is grown, but also gain excitement about trying new things.

Creating an Edible Garden

Creating an edible garden for your pre-school aged children is a fun activity for the whole family! It’s easy to create a garden that’s safe and educational in your own backyard or even in your home kitchen. Keep reading for tips for creating an edible garden that’s perfect for pre-school and beyond.

Plants for Kids

Not all plants are ideal for children to grow. Some require more complex gardening skills or aren’t easy to eat for wandering fingers. Start with plants that are not only tasty and packed with nutrients, but that are also easy for all ages to grow. Your kids will be eating their veggies in no time.

Here are the best plants to grow with kids:

Beets

Not only are beets nutritious, but they also introduce kids to root crops. Kids will love to see the bright colors like red, orange, white, and yellow, and they can even eat the leaves of these cold-season plants. Young kids can dig for the beets like looking for buried treasure, so there’s a lot of opportunity for play.

Carrots

While most kids already like eating carrots, they taste even better when plucked fresh from the garden. With both baby carrots to foot-long roots, there is a lot of variety you can look for when growing carrots. Carrots are also easy to grow, making them perfect for new gardeners.

Broccoli

We’ve all heard of the classic dilemma of getting kids to eat more broccoli. This healthy green veggie is high in nutritional value, but can also be easy to grow in your edible garden. Since broccoli grows like immature flower buds, you can offer your kids the chance to eat “flowers” right from the garden.

Basil

Growing herbs is an easy way to introduce kids to sights, smells, and tastes. Basil can be produced in its traditional state, or also in different flavors like lemon, lime, or cinnamon. Basil can also lead to flowers, though these should be removed if you’re planning to harvest leaves to use in the kitchen. Encourage kids to taste and smell basil and introduce it in their favorite dishes.

Make Gardening Fun for Kids

The most important part of creating an edible garden is to make it fun for your kids. Younger kids have short attention spans and might not understand how plants go from seed to veggie. The more you can involve your kids in the process, the more excited they’ll be every step of the way.

Let your kids take a hands-on role in helping you choose your seeds from myseedneeds.com or a local store. Next, give them small tasks to help with the garden. Kids might not be able to construct anything complex, but they can help with painting pots or plucking weeds. Together, you can make your edible garden as big or small as you’d like.

Your kids will be eating new foods in no time. Meanwhile, you’ll be teaching them valuable skills about hard work and the environment. Who knows what they might try next? Gardening with kids takes time, but it’s well worth it.

Guest Post by Wendy Dessler

by Courtney Leave a Comment

What to Grow in a Summer Garden

Not sure what to grow in a summer garden? The bright sun and warm temperatures of summer are perfect for certain plants and herbs, find out what to grow in a summer garden!

Summer Garden Season

The summer garden season is here, and we can’t wait to bite into some fresh, home grown produce! The variety of vegetables that can be grown in the summer garden is what keeps many gardeners growing and what entices new gardeners to try their hand at growing. The combination of hot weather and (hopefully) occasional rain makes summer a perfect time to grow.

While two of the most popular summer garden favorites are tomatoes and cucumbers, there are many other vegetables and fruits that can round out the summer garden. They can help you enjoy an organic, nutrient-rich, low-cost diet all summer. In fact, during our garden bed installations this spring, I was very surprised at the number of people who didn’t like tomatoes. And if you don’t like the taste of something, you certainly shouldn’t grow it! Instead, plant some of these other easy-to-grow summer garden foods.

What to Grow in a Summer Garden

Beans

There are many varieties of bean to choose from, green beans (aka string beans or snap beans) are the most popular. Select a bush variety to grow in containers or small garden spaces. Runners or pole beans to grow well in gardens that have space for trellises or teepees. (Find out how to construct a bean teepee in 5 minutes!) Beans are also perfect for getting kids into the garden. They love to harvest beans and eat them on the spot.

Corn

So easy to grow and prepare, corn grows on tall stalks but require very little vertical space. Corn will produce two ears per stalk, and the ears are great for grilling or boiling. And though you may be used to seeing corn grown in fields and row gardens, they are just as happy to grow in a raised bed or container!

Blueberries

Though not a plant you’d start and grow in a raised bed, blueberries in the summer garden add a burst of color and taste of tart sweetness. Blueberry bushes can be grown in-ground (like a flower bed) or in containers. They prefer moist, acidic soil and a location that offers them a little shade from the afternoon sun. Plant different varieties that ripen at different times so you can enjoy fresh blueberries all summer. (Try these blueberry covers for keeping birds and other blueberry lovers at bay.)

Eggplant

The star of several Italian recipes, eggplant is easy to grow and will add color to both your summer garden and your plate. Plant in a sunny location (in-ground or in a container) but not in the same location as it was grown in last year. If you live in a warmer climate, eggplant will continue to grow into the fall, so don’t take it up too quickly!

Melons

What is summer without slices of juicy watermelon, cantaloupe or honeydew? It’s a great choice to plant and grow with kids as a summer gardening project. Choose a variety based on the amount of garden space you have. Compact plants won’t require as much growing space as traditional varieties, but will produce the same juicy melons. We grow our melons in a south-facing flower bed. This gives them plenty of room to spread out, and they run underneath our blueberry bushes, so they’re not in the way.

Okra

Here’s a heat loving vegetable that is the perfect tall plant to grow in a summer garden. Upright plants don’t take up much space and produce large yellow flowers before producing okra pods. Harvest when pods are 4-5 inches long and add to soups, stews and gumbo. Slice crosswise, dredge in cornmeal and fry until golden brown for a southern favorite. Okra is also incredibly easy to freeze for later use.

Peppers

Peppers not only produce flavorful heat, they grow best in the hot summer. The hotter the better, making them ideal for a summer garden. Easy care plants grow equally well in-ground or in containers.

Now you know what to grow in a summer garden! (And take some risks and grow something you’ve never tried before.) So take up what is no longer producing from your early spring garden, and get some of these fresh summer veggies growing. These heat loving plants should take your garden into the early fall (if you live in a warmer climate). I’d love to know what you enjoy growing in the summer garden! Have a great week and happy gardening!

by Courtney 33 Comments

Earthbox: A Garden Favorite (and a Giveaway!)

I have been a backyard gardener for the past 13 years, and most of my gardening is pretty low-tech. There’s a lot of trial and error that goes into gardening and very few guarantees from year to year. My squash harvest this year can attest to that.

But five years ago, I received a Christmas gift from my in-laws that has been a staple in my garden ever since, an Earthbox Garden Kit. I had seen them before at our local hardware store, and I was a big fan of watching Rick Bayless’s Mexico: One Plate at a Time. In one of the episodes, he takes viewers to the rooftop of his Chicago restaurant, Frontera, and there he had an entire salsa garden covering the roof. I was familiar enough with Earthbox to know that this is what he was using, and the garden was amazing!

Earthbox: Easy to Use

As spring rolled around, I was finally able to test out the Earthbox by growing tomatoes. I had to purchase my own soil, but everything else was included with the kit:

the planter with watering tube
caster wheels (for easy moving)
fertilizer
dolomite
cover

The instructions tell you exactly how to put the dolomite and fertilizer into the soil, where to plant (determined by what you’re growing), and how to water. It’s so easy that my kids can do it on their own.

Maintenence

One of the easiest things about using an Earthbox is how easy it is to maintain and care for your crop. Because of the cover over the soil, there is zero weeding. There have been very few times as a gardener that I’ve ever been able to say this. Ha! And the black cover also helps absorb heat, and the plants love it.

Watering is also incredibly simple. The watering tube is located in the corner of the box, and you simply fill the reservoir until water begins to spill out from below. Once this happens, you know the reservoir is full and your plants have what they need. The plants get their water from the bottom, and you never have to worry about overwatering or wetting the leaves of your plants during watering.

Use Every Season

The Earthbox isn’t just for summer veggies. In fact, I use mine almost year round, giving it a little break in the dead of winter. Here are some suggestions of what you can grow in each season.

Spring- salad greens, kale, beets, strawberries, cauliflower, radishes, carrots
Summer- tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, corn, beans, peas, okra, eggplant, herbs, cucumbers, melons
Fall- collards, arugula, brussels sprouts, winter squash, turnips, cabbage, chard, spinach, lettuce
Winter- garlic (started late fall), spinach, winter greens (this will depend on your climate, of course)

Earthbox even has a recent post on how to use a garden kit to grow indoors during the winter months.

As I type, I have one of my Earthboxes planted with two tomato plants and one watermelon. (I’m a bit of a rebel and tried planting the watermelon between the two tomatoes just to see what would happen… so far so good!) In my second earth box, the squash has just finished up, and I’m about to replant with butternuts for the fall.

New and Experienced Gardeners Alike

The Earthbox is perfect for those who are just getting started with gardening and those who have been growing for years. I have two Earthboxes in my garden now, and I use them both in almost every season.

Have a little gardener in your home? There’s also a junior garden kit, perfect for little hands that want to grow big things. It’s a fantastic gift for a budding gardener.

Earthbox Giveaway

Because I love Earthbox so much, and I’d love to see you have one in your own garden space, Earthbox has graciously offered one free Earthbox Garden Kit (a $55+ value!) to one of my readers. It could be you!! So check out the giveaway below, and good luck!

The winner will be announced via email and social media on July 19th. For those who don’t win, but still want to try Earthbox (or gift one to a friend or loved one), I’ll have a coupon code for a discount on the Earthbox Garden Kit.

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How to Grow Potatoes

Location

Growing Container

Getting Started

Seed Potatoes

Cut and Cure

Planting

Soil Preparation

Planting

Hilling

Harvest Time

Common Pests

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What is a Sun Map?

Why make a Sun Map?

How to make a sun map

The Results

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The Benefits of Winterizing your Garden

Before Starting Winterization

Methods of Winterizing the Garden

Cover Cropping

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Benefits of Gardening for Children

Promotes Balance

Appreciation for Living Things

Develop Responsibility

Health Benefits

Life Skills

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Uses for Neem Oil in the Garden

Kills Pests

Safe For All Plants and Pollinators

Above and Below

Earth Worm Safe

Organic Fertilizer

Excellent Fungicide

Indoor Plants

Safe for Pets

How to Use Neem Oil in the Garden

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Getting Rid of Cabbage Worms

Methods for Getting Rid of Cabbage Worms

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Planting a Container Salad Garden

Creating Your Salad Garden (See video at end of post.)

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Creating an Edible Garden

Plants for Kids

Make Gardening Fun for Kids

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Summer Garden Season

What to Grow in a Summer Garden

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Earthbox: Easy to Use

Maintenence

Use Every Season

New and Experienced Gardeners Alike

Earthbox Giveaway

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