Archive for Organic Plant Nutrients
Strawberry Plants-Garden Delicious Treasure. Care After The Harvest Is Over
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The sweet taste of strawberries makes growing strawberry plants very alluring. Eaten fresh off the plant or turned into baked goods and jams, the strawberry fruit has so many uses.
The strawberry harvest may be over, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to forget the strawberry plants. Strawberry plants should be renewed every three years or so, as there production rate slows down.
Strawberries are poor competitors, not only against invading weeds, but neighboring strawberry plants as well.Once fruiting has finished give your strawberry plants a haircut! Post-harvest care is an important part of keeping your patch healthy and productive.
The strawberry plant begins forming the buds that will turn into next year’s flowers within the crown after the harvest has completed. These buds begin forming in late summer and continue forming until early fall.
For strawberries, it is very important to renew the strawberry bed after harvest. This includes cutting all the leaves, narrowing the rows, adding a fertilizer, preferably a 5-10-10, thinning the plants and leaving only the strongest ones, allowing only the strongest two runners from each plant.
Old leaves are of little use to the plants, and may be diseased. Trim off the leaves with a pair of shears, aiming to leave just a few leaves around the crown. Remove old foliage, unwanted runners and spent flower stalks from plants, allowing light and air into the centre of the plant.
New foliage will develop within a few weeks. Remove the straw mulch (if used) and weeds and clear away all debris from the crown. Put old leaves and straw on the compost heap.
Within the row, thin plants to one every 6 to 8 inches, removing the older plants and leaving the younger, more vigorous ones. Giving the strawberry plants a little room to grow reduces the competition for water, light, and nutrients and also improves air circulation.
As a strawberry row becomes dense with new daughter plants or the row width increases to more than 24 inches, fruit quantity and quality begin to suffer.When preparing to narrow the row, choose one side of the row to keep, rather than the center. The following year, choose the opposite side, then alternate back and forth in succeeding years.
This method requires a small amount of extra space on each side of the strawberry row, but provides an annual supply of newer, more productive plants. Read More→
It’s A Season Of Marigolds. Marigold’s Secret Mission
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Marigolds truly live up to their name – a sea of molten gold flowers that have many more uses besides being beautiful in your garden. They are made for summer.
To meet the demands of their native lands–chiefly Mexico and Central America–members of the marigold family had to flourish in hot sun as well as tolerate poor soils and infrequent rain.These qualities make them one of the most foolproof summer annuals, whether you plant them in the ground or in a container.
Their leaves have another bonus: Like other plants whose foliage contains volatile oils, such as lavender and rosemary, marigolds seem to repel many harmful insects while attracting beneficial ones. Recent research indicates that marigolds contain compounds toxic to root knot and other plant-parasitic nematodes (microscopic round worms that damage plant roots).
If nematodes are bugging your crops, you won’t see them, but you’re sure to see the damage they cause: stunted, yellow, and/ or wilted plants, often with distinctly knotted and possibly rotting roots.
There’s no safe chemical cure for these microscopic, soil-dwelling worms except French marigolds.Plant them in rows or blocks between your crops (you have to plant a lot of them to get the benefit), and you’ll enjoy their flowers all season long. Marigolds suppress nematodes only when they are planted thickly and allowed to grow for many weeks. Read More→
Raspberries To Supercharge You With 9 Health Benefits
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Raspberries, plucked soft and sweet, are the most delicate of fruits. This makes them perfect for home gardens.
In a national survey consumers picked raspberries as their #2 fruit, just behind strawberries. Why?
It’s the uniquely wonderful raspberry flavor: sweet, tart, and delicious. The explosion of flavor throughout your tongue makes these berries almost inconceivable to resist.
Growing raspberries is relatively easy, and very rewarding for they produce the most fruit for the amount of work involved.
Raspberries come in red, black, purple, and golden. Golden raspberries are sweeter than the other varieties.
In the United States, about 90% of all raspberries sold come from Washington, California and Oregon. In Canada, the province of British Colombia produces about 80% of all raspberries sold in Canada.
There are over 200 species of raspberries. They also may produce in spring, fall, or be ‘everbearing’. The plants are very hardy, and there are really just a few tips to growing raspberries successfully. And, Read More→
Your Garden Herbs Have Higher Levels Of Antioxidants Than Fruits
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Can you guess that your garden herbs, in addition to making food tastier, are an abundant source of antioxidants .
Herbs have higher antioxidant activity than fruits, vegetables and some spices, including garlic, the researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture say.
Antioxidants have become synonymous with good health. They are thought to prevent certain types of chemical damage caused by an excess of free radicals, charged molecules that are generated by a variety of sources including pesticides, smoking and exhaust fumes.
Destroying free radicals may help fight cancer, heart disease and stroke, researchers believe.
The herbs with the highest antioxidant activity belonged to the oregano family. In general, oregano had 3 to 20 times higher antioxidant activity than the other herbs studied.
Oregano has 42 times more antioxidant activity than apples, 30 times more than potatoes, 12 times more than oranges and 4 times more than blueberries.
One tablespoon of fresh oregano contains the same antioxidant activity as one medium-sized apple. And, Read More→
Clovers For Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically
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If your garden soil is poor, consider giving it some help. One way to amend garden soils organically is to plant a green manure cover crop. It requires minimum effort.
For 4,000 years prior to the factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed.
Americans have never been quite so industrious. Unlike the Chinese, our culture treats the organic matter we should be putting back into the soil as waste material, shipping it off to landfills or flushing it down the toilet.
Even small gardens will benefit from the use of cover crops, or “green manures”. Tilling, weeding, harvesting and foot traffic of most home gardens tends to destroy soil structure.
Planting cover crop is an easy way to revitalize the soil, and help soil tilth and subsequent plant growth.
Cover crops are planted in vacant space and worked into the soil after they grow instead of being eaten. They provide a number of advantages to the otherwise wasteful use of space during your garden’s off-season.
Cover crops help to retain the soil, lessen erosion, and decrease the impact of precipitation on the garden by slowing the runoff of water. And, Read More→
