All posts filed under: spring planting

How to Prepare Soil For Your Garden and Why You Should Do It

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Why Good Soil is Key in Protecting Your Investment: If you don’t have good soil, you might as well just throw your money out the window and watch it blow away. Plants living in good soil with lots of organic matter and good drainage will grow twice as big as plants planted in clay, or backfill from when the builders built your home.   3 Ways to Make Healthy Garden Soil for Healthy Plants                                                              Add Compost:  If you have poor soil that is hard, or sandy,  or clay like, and poorly drained amend the soil with about 4 inches or more of composted compost (the black compost) or topsoil, and then till it in down to 6 or 8 inches deep. Why? Compost is filled with nutrients your plants need to grow big and strong and to have lots of blooms.  Not only is it nutrient rich, …

The Basil 🌿 has Sprouted!

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WE DID IT!  WE HAVE ACHIEVED SPROUTYNESS!!!! Now What????? If you have made it this far, you might be wondering what to do next to keep your basil babies alive.  Here’s a short list of things to do to keep them going. Remove your seedlings from the top of the fridge once they begin to sprout Reduce the number of times you spritz your seedlings to once a day, and gradually taper down to every other day, and then just start watering them with a watering can as the soil starts to dry on the surface. Why?Seeds need to be kept moist constantly until they sprout, then you want to gradually reduce the amount of water you give them to avoid causing them to rot or suffocate. This could be another separate article! Take the set up to a warm, sunny room, away from heat vents(at least 5 feet away) I have mine sitting on the top shelf of a bakers rack that sits in my sunny foyer. Begin removing the clear lid from the …

Seed Starting Basics

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We Planted Our Basil! We Did It! Finally, after talking about it, we made some time to plant a few basil seeds.  It’s so easy to put it off, and then 3 weeks have passed by and still no seeds planted!  I try not to stress too much about it, because I know I can always buy a plant at the garden center if I get behind.  The point of all of this is to have fun and learn something anyway right? The Case of the Missing Basil Seed So I was all ready to get started.  I went to the basement, found the wooden box that we keep all of our seed packets in.  I began digging, and digging…..and digging some more. I am now the proverbial squirrel in search of the nut! No luck.  No basil seed to be found!  “I could have sworn I still had some of that basil seed!”  I did find about 3 packages of Arugula seed, and a bazillion packages of Zinnias and other garden flowers, tomato, pepper, …

It’s April. What Vegetables Can I Plant Right Now?

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It feels like spring.  Finally!  We can all get out, get some air and get our hands dirty again.  But what can we plant that isn’t going to freeze on us and have to be replanted again later?  Here’s a list to get you started in your veggie patch. Potatoes:  as of Good Friday, you can start planting seed potatoes. Carrot seeds Beet seeds Peas Raddish seeds Broccoli Plants Cauliflower Plants Cabbage Plants Salad Greens Kale Arugula Mizuna Bok Choi Pak Choi Sweet Corn Asparagus crowns Strawberries I’m sure there are many more, but this is just off the top of my head and will at least get you started:) Wilcox tools are great for digging holes for annual flowers and vegetables, especially for those of us who don’t like to get down on our knees!  The extra long handle is 18″ long, super sturdy from tip to tip, and made in my native state, Iowa!     Click here for a great online seed selection

I Garden Because I Can….Pun Intended

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Why do you like gardening? This is a poem I wrote about what gardening means to me, during the summer of 2012, when my family and I took on a huge garden plot…we planted around 100 tomato plants, thinking only a few would survive…but almost all of them did! I was in over my head, and it was so much work, but it was an experience I’ll never forget! Since then, I have taken on much smaller gardens, only planting about 6 tomatoes a year.