Homegrown seedlings are great to have, and I love having them sitting in my windows, just waiting for the right time to be transplanted into the garden. But there is one step between sprouting them in the house and placing them outside that some people do not know about. It is a step that the plants from your local greenhouse have already gone through and one that you can do with your own plants to prepare them for their new life outdoors. The plants that you have carefully nurtured in your house are in the perfect conditions of temperature, water and sunlight, but the outside conditions fluctuate and can be quite inhospitable to these tender seedlings. You can give your sprouts a better chance of survival by hardening them to their new outside environment. Hardening off your seedlings takes some time but it is a necessary step in plant care, and is easy to do.
I can never seem to wait for the local greenhouses to open up and let me peruse their selection of herb and vegetable plants. I am just too impatient to get my garden started. While I like to get a good look at the plants that are lining the shelves, I have come to realize in these times that plants are expensive, not to mention trying to find heirloom vegetable plants is still something that makes my gardening top ten lists of annoyances. It’s getting better out there but still, of all the places I shop, the selection is still pretty slim. So to take care of both problems I have decided to start my own plants in the house. I get to choose from a much broader range of plants species and I also save some money. Bonus!
The practice of tilling in the Fall is something that I knew people did, but I have never done it myself. It just seems to be extra work which results in your soil being more exposed to the erosion of water and wind.
I began to wonder if other people felt the same, so I went online and I found several people who practice a no-till method, not only in the Fall, but all year long.
When looking into this no-till practice I found that it has been used for a very long time and for several reasons; such as keeping your good soil from going away (erosion control), helping your soil remain loose and fluffy (soil tilth), maintaining the network of organisms which keep nutrients available in the soil (soil nutrient matrix), and making sure that the soil is not compacted from over-working (soil friability).
The picture to the right is of my garden taken last November. The snow is covering the walking paths and the mulch is easily seen between them. This Spring will be my first time trying the no-till garden method which I am hoping will reduce the amount of time and energy I need to spend in my garden by eliminating the need for tilling, and to minimize the amount of watering, fertilizing and weeding required of this method.
Over the years I have been looking for ways to get more food out of small spaces. Let’s face it, most people today do not have the time, let alone the yard space to have the food growing capacity that they would like. Growing up gardening was part of my daily life in the summer, we also had a garden that most people couldn’t fit in a city lot; one of the perks of country life. Now, having the limitations of town living, I have had to rethink a few of the things that I took for granted when my yard was a few acres. Producing the amount of food I would like in these new town limits has been very frustrating for me, but also has led to some innovations and sparks of creativity that I have been able to implement, thanks to brain storming with friends and people online.
In an earlier article on summer squash I mentioned that Patty Pan Squash are very prolific, and well, that is so true. I have had more than enough throughout the summer for fresh eating and several have gotten way over-sized for that so I need to use these monsters for something else. I like to keep the feeling of summer through the winter months (and I hate to throw out usable food) and one way of doing this is to freeze some very over-sized summer squash for delicious sweet breads during the cooler months of fall.
