Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical advice on growing food and flowers, improving soil, and making the most of small spaces. Start anywhere — the garden will meet you.
Crops demanding the most water are grown on the raised bed. These include a succession of lettuce plantings designed to fill the summer salad bowl, summer spinach, spring kohlrabi, my celery patch, sc...
The chances are that you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all except the very worst of soils can be brought up to a very high degree of productiven...
Having considered, as thoroughly as the limited space available permitted, the matter of plant foods, we must proceed to the equally important one of how properly to set the table, on or rather in, wh...
The food of plants consists of chemical elements, or rather, of numerous substances which contain these elements in greater or less degrees. There is not room here to go into the interesting science o...
Many a home gardener who has succeeded well with vegetables is, for some reason or other, still fearsome about trying his hand at growing his own fruit. This is all a mistake; the initial expense is v...
There are other things of minor importance but worth considering, such as the shape of your garden plot, for instance. The more nearly rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the more...
_Sowing date:_ March. Parsley seed takes two to three weeks to germinate. _Spacing:_ Thin to 12 inches apart in a single row 4 feet wide. Five plants should overwhelm the average kitchen. _Irrigation:...
Do not spray peaches. For the curculio, within a few days after the flowers are off, take a large sheet of some cheap material to use as a catcher. For large orchards there is a contrivance of this so...
Success with peaches also will depend largely upon getting varieties adapted to climate. The white-fleshed type is the hardiest and best for eating; and the free-stones are for most purposes, especial...
Pears are sometimes affected with a scab similar to the apple-scab, and this is combated by the same treatment--three sprayings with Bordeaux. A blight which causes the leaves suddenly to turn black a...
This early crop matures without irrigation. Both pole and bush varieties are planted thickly in single rows about 4 feet apart. I always overlook some pods, which go on to form mature seed. Without ov...
Pepper plants on raised beds spaced the usually recommended 16 to 24 inches apart undergo intense root competition even before their leaves form a canopy. With or without unlimited irrigation, the pla...