Backyard Gardening Blog

Hail Damage on Crops and Plants

July 3rd, 2010

A few weeks ago we had a pretty bad storm that included some hail. I believe most people usually embellish the size of the hail they experience, I won’t do that, so let me honestly say we were dealing with blueberry sized hail. It didn’t fall for very long, but long enough to cause some misery.

Every large-leaved plant I grow got damaged. Spinach, hostas, grapes, lettuces, just to name a few.

The damage was pretty severe and in the case of my food crops, retarded their growth somewhat. It was like someone shot my garden with a shot gun, leaves had holes torn right through them, it was hail though, not bugs, because nothing was eaten, you could pick up the tatters and reform them into a perfect leaf.

As a home gardener it sucked a little bit, of course, but I cannot imagine what it’d mean for a farmer, a spinach farmer could have his entire field ruined, but I guess that is what crop insurance is for. Still, that did not always exist, in older times it had to have caused an immense hardship for communities if there was a hail storm.

In fact, I think hail is probably the worst weather disaster that can befall crops. A flood can be avoided through site selection, and floods tend to occur in Spring, leaving you fertile soil for summer planting, and a late freeze sucks, killing plants, but it is early enough in the growing season to start over. A mid summer hail though could kill or ruin everything, and it may be too late for another crop to be started. Definitely the worst of the lot if you ask me.

Posted in: Gardening | 1 Comment »

Gardening, Cooking, and Making Your Family Healthier

June 11th, 2010

I am really into nutrition, sometimes that zeal will permeate this blog, this post is one of those times.

I’ve talked significantly in the past about growing your own food, growing healthy foods, and whatnot, and I’m not going to merely be rehashing that here, you can look in the related posts in the bottom.

Instead I want to talk more specifically about nutrition and cooking, but in a way that is only applicable to gardeners, for a reason which will become evident.

My personal relationship with food has morphed into mostly considering it as fuel. There probably isn’t a person out there who would even consider putting substandard or contaminated or the wrong sort of gasoline in their car. Afterall, they don’t want their engine to break down and car repairs can be costly.

And yet people don’t seem to give the same care to their own body, and if you think mechanics bills are high you should see doctor’s bills. The fact is our bodies are engines, and if you don’t put in the right fuel your body will break down, and that affects your quality of life.

I don’t like salmon, I will never crave salmon, I would prefer almost any protein to salmon, even other fish (except for tuna, tuna is gross). But I try to eat salmon every week, because it is very healthy for you (wild caught as much as possible though, even if frozen. Frozen wild caught > fresh(thawed) farmed). Likewise, for the past quite a few years (5 maybe) I’ve had the exact same thing for lunch almost every day. Normally people might want variety, but I see my lunch merely as fuel for my body and I treat it as such. So I have a protein smoothy with bananas and either raspberries or blueberries depending on seasonality and what I have in the house.

I don’t mean to get all preachy, but I just think that if more people thought of food as fuel, rather than a daily source of pleasure and indulgence, we wouldn’t have all the obesity problems we have as a society.

But I digress. Today I am making shredded chicken enchiladas. I cook some onions and chicken with some salsa, stock, and other seasonings for a long time until it gets all shredded then I add some reduced fat cheese, assembled the enchiladas, and bake.

However I added some ingredients you may not typically think of for enchiladas. Swiss Chard, Beet Greens, and Purslane.

These three foods are superfoods. Swiss chard and beet greens are closely related (looking identical from the ground up) and extremely healthy. They are probably the healthiest leafy green you can eat, and they stand up well to cooking. They are also very easy to grow. If allowed to go to seed they will reseed here in Michigan. I don’t even have to plant swiss chard anymore, it just grows in my chard bed because I always end up letting a few go to seed at the end of the season. With swiss chard and beet greens you can eat both the leaves and the stalks, though I only added the leaves today, and with beets you of course get the superfood roots that have incredible nutrition benefits, beets are perhaps the single best food preventer of colon cancer. Both the roots and leaves are high in fiber as well, and tons of other nutritients.

Purslane is so easy to grow it is like a weed, in fact, it is a weed. Though I grow a cultivated variety of it that is more upright than the weed version. You can eat any version though. In addition to being high in nutrition, and like chard being able to stand up to the heat in cooking, it is the highest known plant source of Omega 3 fatty acids, including EPA type Omega 3s, which is the good kind also found in fish. Purslane also reseeds readily, plant it once and never plant it again. Of course, as a weed too, it tolerates drought, and can grow almost anywhere, needs little fertilizer, etc.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. It doesn’t always make sense to buy these plants at the store (nevermind that you can’t really buy purslane most places in the US), a whole bunch of swiss chard might be hard to eat if you’re only using it as an additive, but if you garden, you have the opportunity to grow these very very very easily to grow plants (both can go in containers too, especially purslane), and only harvest what you need when you need it.

So, during summer, I add one or both of these plants to almost everything I make. I can add them to soups, stews, stirfry, pasta sauce, casseroles, anything mixture like such as my enchilada filling tonight, and of course salads, basically anything I cook that is not grilled or a dessert. They add nutrition to meals for free, without changing taste (for those picky eaters) and most probably won’t even notice they’re in there unless you tell them. So you’re sneaking nutrition on your family. There is hardly any excuse not to do this really.

Spinach is another option for this manuever, but it isn’t quite as easy to grow (it has more pest problems, neither purslane nor chard/beets seem to be bothered by any leaf pests, at least around here), and also isn’t going to reseed for you. It also typically doesn’t get harvested all season like the other two can be. With chard/beet greens and purslane you can pick off leaves as you need them for a longer period of time and the plant will keep producing, spinach won’t do that for as long and bolts quicker.

If you can dedicate just a few square feet of your garden to these two plants you’ll have a perpetual source of sneaky goodness you can add for added nutrition to all your summer cooking. I highly recommend it.

Posted in: Edible Gardening, Gardening | 3 Comments »

The Right Type of Ivy to Plant Near a Wall

May 27th, 2010

There is one mistake you really, and I mean really, don’t want to make in your landscape. You absolutely do not want to plant the wrong type of ivy for the wrong reason. Very bad things can happen.

First a word on vines…

Vines climb through a variety of methods, and it is important for you to know what they are and how they work.

1. Mechanically This is where a vine twists or turns around some support or framework naturally. Through a natural process the vine senses a nearby structure, and wraps around it. Examples of this type of vine include kiwi and clematis.

2. Tendrils Some vines grip mechanically, but through special growths called tendrils that grow out of the vines. They reach out seeking supports and then wrap around them. Examples of this type include grapes and cucumbers.

3. Suckers Some vines grip surfaces with suction cup like devices that adhere, even to flat surfaces. This category includes boston ivy.

4. Roots Some vines have roots that dig into surfaces to secure them, most ground cover vines work this way. Examples include english ivy, sweet potatoes.

So, about ivy

The two main types of ivy people grow are boston ivy and english ivy. If you allow english ivy to grow up a wall it will do so, and it will use roots, and the roots will dig into your wood, masonry, stone, or concrete, and tear it apart eventually like water expanding in a crack or a tree’s roots lifting a sidewalk. It can destroy the side of your building, a very costly mistake. English ivy is a ground cover, a great ground cover, but do not let it climb on things you want to preserve. If it you let it climb a tree it’ll also tear off the bark and kill the tree. It is evergreen though, which is why people may be drawn to it.

Boston ivy on the other hand looks great climbing up walls, my wall in the picture has a yellowish cultivar climbing up it, which I chose to be different and because it was shady I thought it would brighten up the wall to use a lighter colored plant. Because boston ivy uses suckers it doesn’t really damage what it climbs on, though it can hurt painted surfaces. Boston ivy is not evergreen, it will turn pretty colors and drop leaves in the fall, the trade off of having it not destroy your walls.

When you’re at the garden center and looking at ivy they’re not labeled as such, and many people have made the mistake of training english ivy up a wall, including yours truly many years ago, don’t make the same mistake.

Posted in: Gardening | 6 Comments »

Planting Sweet Potatoes

May 26th, 2010

I planted my sweet potatoes the other day, and I’ve got to hand it to Burpee (where I ordered them), they said they’d arrive on the 25th, and they arrived on the 25th.

Sweet Potato Slips in a Jar

Wee Little Slips Planted in a Mound

Sweet Potato Slips in Containers

If you’ve never grown sweet potatoes, you probably can, most areas of the US and even southern Canada have a long enough and warm enough growing season. There are also certain varieties that require a shorter hot growing season.

Being in Michigan I ordered one of those varieties, Georgia Jet.

Sweet potatoes are generally sold as slips. You can make your own slips, you basically stick a sweet potato in a vase of water suspended with the aid of some toothpicks. Do this 8 weeks or so before your frost safe date, they take awhile to develop, then when you’re ready you cut them off and plant them.

Or you can order slips, which I did this year (the ones I made for myself in the picture was purely for the benefit of this blog post, the lengths I go to for my readers). When the slips arrive they typically look dead, but that is normal, just put them in cool water if you can’t plant them right away (But strive to plant them right away) and try not to plant them in the glaring sun of the afternoon, but towards sunset. Water well at planting and the next few days and they should perk back up. They are very hardy plants.

Sweet potatoes, like all root crops, prefer a loose light soil so they can grow big roots. In the bed which I planted them I turned the soil significantly with my pitch fork, and I used raised beds so it has no foot compaction, then I mounded up 10 inch high mounds of potting mix (which is as loose and as light of soil as you can find – if not cheap), and planted the potatoes in the mix. This thus creates the loosest lightest possible soil I can think of. Hopefully they do well. And of course next year, I can just reuse the same potting mix, so, it’ll be cheaper. Raised beds are also good because the soil tends to be warmer, and they need warm soil.

Sweet potatoes can also be grown in containers, if you have some big enough. I use those big black plastic containers trees come in from the nursery. If you’re big into gardening and landscaping you probably have a few hanging around. You can recycle them or throw them away but I never do because they’re so useful. For instance when digging a planting hole in an established bed they can be used to hold the soil so it doesn’t get scattered on your mulch, but that is another post. They just so happen to be very good as vegetable containers (regular potatoes too).

In an interesting bit of serendipity, not only are these containers big enough to grow sweet potatoes, but usually made of black plastic, which of course attracts the sun, gets hot, and heats up the soil, just what sweet potatoes like.

When planting sweet potatoes plants should be in hills 12-18 inches apart, with 4 feet between rows. When translating that spacing to our big containers, it basically means you plant 1 slip per container.

Sweet potatoes can be harvested any time throughout the growing season, but the longer you wait the bigger they will be. Towards the end hold on on watering lest they crack like a cabbage after a rain. Once harvested they must cure and dry a little in a fairly hot dry place, then you can store them in a cool dry place. If stored correctly they can keep months, which means your Fall harvest can last until Spring, at which point you can make your own slips from one, thus providing you with perpetual sweet potatoes.

Posted in: Edible Gardening, Gardening | 1 Comment »

Baby Robin Photo Diary

May 22nd, 2010

I actually took these pictures in 2008, but only just now am getting around to blogging about it.

In 2008 some robins built a nest in a barberry bush just outside our kitchen window, and so I was able to monitor it daily.

May 26th

I first noticed a single egg on May 26th. By June 1st there were 3 eggs, so apparently robins do not lay all at once, or even on the same consecutive days.

June 1st

By June 9th they had started hatching. First two, then the third.

June 9th

They continued their growth and I could watch their parents feed them from our kitchen. Here they are, 5 days old.

June 14th

Finally, just 2 days later, look at the growth spurt they put on, adult feathers are coming in.

June 16th

That was the last picture I had of them, the next time I looked they were gone. Apparently Robins will hop out of the nest at 10-13 days old, but they do not know how to fly yet, and I remember seeing a fledgling robin hopping around shortly thereafter. Still, they need two weeks to learn how to fly after leaving the nest, that has to be the most vulnerable time for a baby robin. Especially if you’ve got neighbors who do not understand why they should keep cats indoors.

One of the nicest things about building a nice garden if you’re also building a nice habitat for wildlife, and while we battle with the wildlife as well, seeing their life cycles is fun. Just the other day I watched a male and female red finch (which are rare around here) flirt with each other, and we’ve had cardinals build nests before, and robins. Even before this robin nest there was a fledgling robin in our yard for awhile and I helped protect it and fed it some worms and raspberries. I’ve also stumbled upon baby rabbits no bigger than the palm of your hand. I can’t wait to share that with my kids when they’re a little older.

Posted in: Critters & Creatures | 6 Comments »

Taxodium distichum ‘Gee Whiz’, Dwarf Bald Cypress

May 17th, 2010

The third and final tree I bought on my weekend trip to Gee Farms was this very cute little dwarf bald cypress called ‘Gee Whiz’. It is also called a witch’s broom, as that is the type of mutation it has.

Taxodium distichum 'Gee Whiz' Dwarf Bald Cypress

I have a thing, lately, for dwarf conifers. I have a thing for Japanese style gardens and bonsai but I can’t really do bonsai, the pots and all that, I don’t have any good spot for them. In ground bonsai, sometimes called niwaki or niwagi, I can do however, and I like doing it with little dwarf conifers.

See, normally, with bonsai, a big portion of the growth control is root pruning, with in ground plants you can’t dig them up and prune the roots all the time, so you need something else to reduce growth, and dwarf forms of plants are perfect for this.

Two years ago I built my water feature. I built it raised and in a thin area between the retaining stones and the pond I planted small dwarf conifers, sort of as a mini garden unto itself. Not all of what I planted survived though, so I used my new “Gee Whiz” to fill in one of the gaps.

Currently I’ve got a tiny dwarf barberry, a super-dwarf form of the already dwarf alberta spruce, a dwarf mugo pine in standard form, and a dwarf hinoki cypress. Pictures of them all can be found here.

This new dwarf bald cypress will fit in well, and I will be able to train and selectively prune it to form a really neat shape.

I think it’d be cool even without the water feature to build a rock garden with dramatic looking boulders and back fill it with soil and plant only dwarf plants like you’re a giant looking down on an alpine forest. I’ll probably do that one day.

Posted in: Gardening | No Comments »

Dawn Redwood: Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Gold Rush’

May 16th, 2010

In addition to the cedar I bought yesterday, I also bought a seqouia, a redwood, for here in Michigan. Crazy you say? Well, apparently, notsomuch.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides 'Gold Rush'

What gardener doesn’t dream about having a massive redwood in their yard, and if we could live for a thousand years we might be able to get one, but instead I guess we must just relinquish ourselves to younger versions of the trees, which yes, you can grow outside of California.

There are three species known as redwoods or sequoias. Sequoia sempervirens or Coast Redwood, is the tallest known tree in the world and is the one you think of when you think of giant redwoods. The Sequoiadendron giganteum or Giant Sequoia is also one of the biggest trees and while there aren’t any known ones taller than a coast redwood, they are the biggest, by volume, trees in the world.

The third one, the one I bought is Metasequoia glyptostroboides or Dawn Redwood which I will call ‘metasequoia’ because I hate typing the rest of it out. I paid $32 for it, a 3 footer in a 1 gallon container. Got it from Gee Farms here in Michigan.

Metasequoias were thought to be extinct. There are fossil records of them all over the world, but no known survivors were located until 1944 when they were found growing in a secluded valley in china. It has since been exported for gardeners to grow all over the world. It is perhaps a good ecological choice to grow too, considering how close to extinction it is.

It is the smallest of the lot, alas, topping out, it is believed, at 200 feet (in many many years) but like it’s relatives it is a very fast grower to 50 or 100 feet. The fact is we just don’t know how big this tree can get because we have no 1000 year old samples to check out.

It is also the hardiest of the three. I have seen reports of it being hardy in zone 6, or 5, but quite a few sources stating zone 4, including some university sources which I consider to be accurate. Coast redwoods are the least hardy, but Sequiadendrons will supposedly take zone 5 (until you get a really really cold winter I suppose).

Sheltering and putting it in a microclimate such as on the south side of a hill where it will be protected from northern winds will probably help. Additionally, it needs full sun, so a hill is good there to, and it needs lots of water, so the base of a hill is also usually pretty damp. I do not have a hill, so it is going in my backyard. However I also bought a couple for my parents, and they have a hill (and are almost zone 4) so I told them to plant it as I described above.

There are a variety of Metasequoia cultivars now, many of which do not grow as fast as the species variety. The one I bought, ‘Gold Rush’ is supposed to grow as fast or only slightly slower, so that is good. It also has striking golden foliage which it is supposed to keep all year, which is rare for a sun lover. I like designing with contrasting foliage colors so this is a good choice for those applications.

Like a bald cypress (a cousin) the plants are deciduous conifers, so they lose their needles in the winter and go dormant (which probably aids their hardiness). Also like a bald cypress, they develop gorgeous trunks when older, which have to be my favorite feature of the plant. Corded, complex, reddish trunks, very pretty.

I have a small yard, and if my house still stands in 200 years the tree will probably be too big. But whomever the current owner is I suppose can always cut it down and use the valuable wood to build a deck or something.

In the meantime I will enjoy, consequently, I also think they may do well as bonsai. I have a dream of going out and planting cuttings on public land near my house, which should be preserved forever. So in generations there will be some huge trees growing there, my footprint on the future.

Posted in: Gardening, Plant Profiles | No Comments »

Himalayan Cedar: Cedrus deodara ‘Karl Fuchs’

May 15th, 2010

My recent post about what a real cedar is was not a coincidence, I have been looking at buying one, and today I did.

I have wanted a cedar for years, even since I saw Paul James’ on his show. Paul has a weeping Blue Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica, and it is absolutely gorgeous… and not hardy in zone 5. No matter how often I now see HomeDepot or Lowes carrying it, it is not hardy here. Now… perhaps in a microclimate it might survive, a courtyard, or if you give it serious winter protection, but it really needs zone 6.

However in doing some research I discovered another variety, Cedrus deodara the Himalayan cedar, that is more cold hardy and one specific cultivatar, ‘Karl Fuchs’ definitely so. It is blue, which I wanted, not as blue as the atlas, and the needles aren’t quite the same, but I’ll make do. It is my only choice really, so I have to don’t I?

Anyways, I really like these true cedars. They have very short and tightly packed needles so you really see a lot of the tree structure. As my gardening tastes have evolved I find myself attracted more to the form or structure of plants such as in Japanese gardens where the stem or trunk and branching is as important and beautiful as the foliage.

So the cedars, with their short needles that cling in clumps to the trunk and branches, really show off the form, and it is a unique look for the garden. I wanted one specifically for the spot in which I planted it. In that area of the garden I’ve got a Japanese maple with red foliage, some yellow heucheras, and all sorts of green plants, but not a single plant with blue foliage. The closest plant with blue foliage was probagly 40 feet away, and using contrasting foliage colors in the landscape is always a good idea, so I needed something.

They do need some care to make sure they survive, even if they’re supposed to be hardy. The reason evergreens can survive the winter isn’t just because they handle the cold, but because their needles have adapted to handle the dryness. Winter is the dryest season, cold winter sun, drying winter wind, air without any humidity to it, it all takes a toll on plants. Most evergreens have a waxy coating on their needles or foliage to help prevent moisture loss and it is this that allows them to be evergreens. When an evergreen gets dried out it is called winter burn and you’ll notice it as a browning or bronzing of the leaf tips or exposed sections of the plant.

Well, cedars are less able to deal with these stresses than other evergreens, they just evolved where the winters aren’t so cold and dry.

So they need protection from the winter sun, and need protection from the winter wind. I have a very sheltered backyard with the house to the west and big trees pretty much all the rest around the perimeter. So my backyard is relatively low on wind, and I planted this Cedrus deodara on the north side of a large spruce which should protect it fully from the winter sun. I may also do a loose burlap wrap this winter to help it too. You might think that a plant that is marginally hardy in your area might do better with a southern exposure, and in most cases you would be correct, because it is warmer on a southern exposure, but for evergreens, especially Cedrus, the sun is more damaging than the cold.

If I have any problems with the tree in the future I will be sure to post an update, if anyone has any tips for growing one in z5, please leave a comment.

Posted in: Gardening, Plant Profiles | 2 Comments »

Now you Cedar, Now you Don’t

May 12th, 2010

I have a peeve, and thy name is Cedar. Or is it?

People are confused, I was confused, confusion abounds, what is a cedar? What isn’t? I’ve even seen articles, writing by some sweatshop overseas writing shops I’m sure, that are completely mishmashed confusing true cedars with fake ones. That is the quality you get I guess when you pay by the word at one of these generic article spam sites, and don’t give any bonuses for accuracy.

A Thuja, not a Cedar

A True Cedar

Anyways, what I mean to say, is that what you think is a cedar, probably isn’t. If it is native to North America, it isn’t a cedar, if it is growing in zone 5 or colder, it probably isn’t a cedar (though, there are a few exceptions).

True cedars have the genus cedrus and are native to North Africa, the Middle East, and regions around the Himalayas. If it isn’t a cedrus it isn’t a cedar.

Eastern Red Cedar

Eastern Red Cedar, the most common non-cedar cedar. Is what most people in North America think of when we think of the word cedar. This tree is native to most of the eastern US and Canada. It is evergreen, has blue berries (not cones) and scaly green leaves, not needles. The scientific name of Eastern Red Cedar is Juniperus virginiana for you see, it is a juniper, not a cedar.

However, if you want to be really confused. This is the tree that gives us the smelly and rot resistant “cedar” wood we all know and love, but again, it isn’t an actual cedar.

Western Red Cedar

Western Red Cedar also produces aromatic and rot resistant wood. It grows larger typically than the Eastern Red Cedar. It is a conifer, producing little cones as opposed to the berries found on the Easter Red Cedar. The scientific name of Western Red Cedar is Thuja plicata for you see, it is a thuja, not a cedar.

Western Red Cedar can also sometimes be called Arborvitae, which at least, is accurate if generic.

Northern White Cedar

Northern White Cedar is a tree which is again native to the Eastern parts of North America, it has cones, often starting yellowish before maturing, and scaly leaves again. It is, of course, not a cedar, but another thuja, Thuja occidentalis specifically. It is also often called Arborvitae. The lumber of Northern White Cedar is often used for log cabins and the like. It also has very many cultivars and is widely planted in landscapes.

So what is a cedar?

A cedar has to be in the genus Cedrus there are only a few types, worldwide: Cedrus atlantica or Atlas Cedar; Cedrus libani or Lebanon Cedar; Cedrus deodara or Himalayan Cedar. Others just aren’t true cedars. Additionally, most non-cedar cedars are the type of evergreen with scaly leaves, not needles. Cedars have needles. So an easy way to remember if it is a real cedar or just pretending, is if it has needles or not.

True cedars are very unique looking plants and make excellent specimens if they can grow where you live. They generally need mild winters (most can’t live in zone 5 or colder, there are a handful of exceptions) and shelter from drying winter sun. They certainly look nothing like the false ones most people think of.

Posted in: Gardening, Plant Profiles | 1 Comment »

Your Garden, The Most Local Food of All

April 25th, 2010

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been exposed to the new green trend of “eating local.” The idea behind the movement is that food that is transported less has less of a “carbon footprint” and it is also good to support your local community.

That is all well and good, but as with any “green” thing you sometimes have to wonder if they’re just doing it for the money. Marketing their food as local as a way to sell more of it.

Because, you see, I think that if someone were really advocating for local food they’d recommend the most local food of all, your garden.

Something Trendy This Way Comes

Front Yard Farming

Gardening is becoming more and more popular lately, especially edible gardening. I think it is a perfect storm of the green movement and the recession that has made people think that they will grow their own food to save money.

Just in my little neighborhood I’ve noticed two people put in front yard vegetable gardens. Yes, they are sacrificing their lawn and curb appeal for a fenced in utilitarian vegetable garden, and that is just front yards, I’m sure many more did as much in their backyards where I can’t see.

In a way a front yard farm, as I like to call it, is a beautiful thing in it’s own way, because it is an advertisement for something simple and easily to do, and that if everyone did it, I’m convinced the world would be a better place.

So, Why Grow your Own Food

There are four reasons to grow your own food.

1. It tastes better, seriously. Bananas ripen off the tree and get better with age, but many many foods start losing flavor and sweetness as soon as they’re picked, and also benefit from being allowed to fully ripen on the tree or plant (at which point they’d be too ripe to ship, so you wouldn’t find them in stores).

2. It is better for you. Just as plant flavors change, the nutritional profile does too, almost without fail produce that is fresher has more vitamins and minerals than stuff even a few days old.

3. You save money. You don’t always save money right away, because of the startup cost of starting a garden, but in the long term you certainly do, and with some times like an apple tree the savings can be enormous.

4. You get more variety. At the store your options are limited, even at the most well stocked grocery store. But the variety of available seeds for your planting at home is far larger.

So… how to get started

I’ve written a bunch of articles that should hopefully get you started in growing your own food.

Fall is for Planting Fruit
Grow Potatoes in a Trash Can
Garden for Dollars, Grow Asparagus
How to Build a Raised Bed Vegetable Garden out of Wood
How to Build a Hoop House for Frost Protection
Growing Raspberries
Edible Ornamentals
In addition to all of those, I have compiled guides to growing over 100 different specific food crops, you can find that full list here.

That should get you started, and if you want any help in planning your foray into edible gardening you can post in the forums attached to this site, or comment here. And remember, you don’t need a lot of room to grow some of your own food. You can plant a dwarf apple tree that’ll produce a couple bushels a year in a space as small as 4×4.

Posted in: Edible Gardening, Gardening | 9 Comments »

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