From the ground up. Digging into garden basics and beyond.
The number and diversity of bugs that want to eat what you grow is truly staggering, but we’ll tackle organic garden pest control together.
With new insects coming into our gardens every season (thanks climate change) it can seem like a losing battle.
But looking at each insect as part of a larger ecosystem can calm fears and get us into the right mindset when finding yet another new bug eating our plants.
Continue readingLet’s get your garden dreams onto paper so you can make harvesting from your garden a reality this summer! A little planning can go a long way. To that end, I’ve created a step by step Garden Planning Guide for you.
First – let’s get clear on what YOUR garden goals are. Setting an intention up front (and knowing it will change with/in the seasons) can be a welcome guidepost later in the planning process. Try to not to compare your gardens or goals to anyone else’s.
Continue readingSoil blocks produce some of the best transplants from seed starting I’ve ever grown. This is my hands down favorite way to start tomatoes, peppers and my earliest cold hardy crops.
The method uses a metal ‘press’ that you fill with an oversaturated (think cement slop for the right consistency) seed starting mix. You get this mix packed into the ‘press’ and push a lever to pop out the cutest soil cubes you ever saw. And if the mix is done right, they stick together great, even though it seems like they’re defying the laws of gravity.
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Fall temps can quite literally cool our northern garden jets once fall hits its stride and apple season arrives. But for those of us that enjoy those frost sweetened crops and don’t mind gardening into the cool of autumn, Season Extension opens another mini-season of gardening and harvesting!
For those just getting started on season extension, you may be wondering why we bother with this extra work?
For me the reason is clear – by keeping plants alive in the ground, it allows them to hold onto their nutrients, compared to if we harvested at the first sign of frost. Food loses around 30% of its nutrients within three days of harvest…
Practicing season extension can add weeks or even months of harvesting FRESH FOOD from your garden. And isn’t harvesting healthy food one of our main goals?
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If you love growing beautiful medicine that also attracts the pollinators, then let me introduce you to Aronia Berry, aka Chokeberry. Actually, you may have already met Aronia Berry while walking in the woods or edges of prairies in the Midwest of America.
Officially named Aronia melanocarpa, this cold hardy North American native woody shrub is worth adding to your landscape for its adaptability, form, fall color, and, of course, its fruits!
The Aronia Berry tends to stay around 8 feet tall (depending on variety) and is much less picky about soil as it has deeper roots than the Elderberry. They are hardy to -40F or USDA Zone 3. They also don’t have any pest issues and are disease resistant.
Continue readingHarvesting from your garden is the moment we’ve all been waiting for!
You’ve probably heard it’s best to harvest from your garden in the morning. Maybe you’ve also heard not to harvest from your garden when wet… These can seem contradictory especially on damp, dewy mornings. But there’s more behind the ‘not wet and not wilted’ reasoning.
I’m sharing some best practices to harvest lots of delicious and nutritious food to make your garden healthier and more productive.
We should generally hold off harvesting from our gardens until plants are dried off because when we open a wound on a plant from harvesting by cutting or breaking off we’re leaving an entrance on the plant for diseases.
Fungal and bacterial diseases (blight, powdery mildew, rust, etc.) multiply while the leaves are wet. So, the chance of them getting directly into a wound is greater with a wet plant as well. This timing also makes it harder for the plant to fend off the diseases in general.
Continue readingLet’s get you growing Joi Choi! This is the Pak Choi (aka Bak Choy) everyone can (and should) grow.
There are few veggies that bring me as much JOI in the garden and on my plate as this veggie, so I’m declaring myself a founding member of the Joi Choi Fan Club! She’s as delicious as she is beautiful!
This has consistently been one of the easiest veggies to grow. It is ready also one of the fastest maturing early spring veggies, ready to harvest within 30 days of transplanting in all but the coldest spring weather. This means I can usually get at least three successions of Joi Choi in each season in my zone 4 gardens.
Read more about Succession Planting HERE
It is way more heat tolerant than other Pak Choi I’ve tried. Meaning it keeps growing a lot longer, and therefore bigger before it bolts. I mean look at those Thick stalks! All that stem equals weights of close to 2 lbs. per average plant if harvested all at once. Last fall I harvested a single Joi Choi that was over 4 lbs heavy and still tender and crisp in October!
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We love growing cucumbers! But there are many differences, so let’s do a cucumber comparison.
They’re a favorite of the vegetable garden and one of the homegrown treats my kids most impatiently look forward to munching fresh off the vine—as well as sliced (with ranch)—then fermented and pickled all winter long.
Needless to say, we grow a lot of cucumbers!
*This post includes affiliate links*
There are different cucumber varieties including slicing, English (burpless), pickling, and then you can get into the specialty varieties that have been saved for their unique characters for centuries. These specialty varieties have a special place in my heart.
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Like anything you grow at home- ginger just tastes better than store bought. And with how much I love ginger’s bold and distinct flavor of course I grow it. Plus, growing an exotic, tropical plant up in zones 3 and 4 is pretty darn empowering.
Then there’s the fact that most ginger sold in the U.S. is imported from China, Brazil or Thailand…and has been grown without much regulation and then shipped thousands of miles. Add in that is a beautiful plant that smells amazing and you’ve got to try growing this at least once!
Zingiber Officinale roscoe
Classified as an aromatic herb, the part of the ginger plant we most often eat is called a rhizome, the underground stem of a plant. But with homegrown ginger you can enjoy the stems as well- I chop the stems and enjoy them in tea!
Native to Southeast Asia this plant likes if hot and humid. So if you have a greenhouse you’re a step ahead, but dedicating your warmest space to this plant should get you a happy harvest too. Growing ginger is an 8-10 month project, so we try to get started at the end of January here in Minnesota zone 4. And yes, these plants will be LARGE before they head outside, so plan for space similar to a tomato and they may even have to stay inside longer.
Here’s A Ginger Growing Timeline
Filling your basket with fresh picked herbs is one of those garden routines. It is by far one of the more glamorous parts of gardening (much better than mixing compost or weeding, right!?!) so don’t skip this joyful garden practice.
Whether you are growing herbs for cooking, herbal tea or the medicine chest there are a few tips to harvesting and preserving that I’ve learned along the way…
Here are a few of my favorite (which also happen to be the easiest) herbs to grow. Watch a recent video of me harvesting herbs growing in my garden HERE on my @forksinthedirt Instagram.
Class: Vertical Gardening
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