Vegetable Gardening

Forest gardening (also known as 3-Dimensional Gardening) is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland edge ecosystems, substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to humankind. In part based on the model of the Keralan 'home gardens', forest gardening has been pionered by the late Robert Hart, whose one eighth of an acre plot at Wenlock Edge in Shropshire has been described as possibly the only fully developed working permaculture site in the UK. Robert began the project over thirty years ago with the intention of providing a healthy and therapuetic environment for himself and his brother Lacon, born with severe learning disabilities. Starting as relatively conventional smallholders, Robert soon

Know Any Teachers? Tell Them About the Free Virtua...
The Food For Everyone Foundation is prepared to donate valuable vegetable gardening training materials to interested and qualified teachers. All it requires is a demonstrated commitment to teaching gardening and a promise to use the materials. The Foundation's donation is part of their mission to "Teach the world to grow food one family at a time."

Corn Gluten - Can Animal Food K'O Crabgrass?
Spring is just around the corner and so is the emergence of crabgrass. You decided this year not to use chemicals on your lawn. Are there any other choices out there? Read this article and see that a byproduct of corn, called corn gluten, will not only kill your crabgrass but fertilize your lawn as well.

Plant Categories

In addition to the scientific classification of plants, or our more populist approach based upon that system, we may want to classify plants in a variety of other ways, some of which are considered here.

Plants may be organized according to their seasonal growth pattern. Of course simple plants like algae have individually short life spans and the following terms do not apply, but algae populations are commonly seasonal.

Vascular plants are either herbaceous (nonwoody) or woody. Woody plants may be trees with one or several trunks and branching occurring well above ground, or shrubs with no significant trunk, and branching occurring near ground surface.

Plants may also be organized according to how they are used. Food plants include fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices.

An Herb Container Garden In Your Home
Growing an Herb container garden is easy, fun and will spice up your food. With just a few techniques you will be growing your very own herb container garden in no time.

garden
Vegetables

Selecting a Vegetable Garden Site
Selecting a site for your new vegetable garden? Consider the top five factors in selecting your site and have an advantage for successful vegetable gardening.

Organic Gardening Advantages
Organic gardens are gardens that are free of pesticide. An added benefit is that if you grow an organic vegetable garden, your food is free of poisons. If you plant an organic flower garden the environment will benefit.

Backyard Bird Watching: Attracting Birds With Food...
For the avid backyard birding enthusiast, there are a few things that must be remembered at all times; don't wear bright colors, don't make any noise, and birds, like any creature, like food. If you feed them they will likely come closer to you than if you just sit in a bush quietly waiting for one to appear. As an added perk, the placement of a birdfeeder in your backyard might keep your neighbor's from asking you why you're sitting in a bush peering into the sky for hours at a time.

A Brief History of Modern Garden Design
Modern garden design has a very long history and all the years of garden design have played into the current trends. The first gardens that were planted purely for visual enjoyment date back to the 1500s in Egypt. There are paintings on Egyptian tombs that reflect gardens that were simply beautiful and not necessarily for food purposes.

Raising Mealworms
Mealworms are the larval form of the darkling beetle (Tenebrio molitor). They are clean, do not carry human diseases and most importantly, are a nutritious food supplement readily accepted by birds and fishes. Mealworms can be offered to birds to entice them to use a nest box or to assist the incubating female to find food quickly so that she does not have to leave her eggs for long periods of time. They act as supplementary food for nestling if food becomes scarce when weather conditions prevent the parents from finding insects and, help them survive during spells of severe winter weather.

By George Weigel/The Patriot-News

Q: My tulips this year are puny, sad-looking and some won't bloom at all. Is it the winter we just went through? Something else? Or maybe mine just need replacing? Some didn't come up at all, and I suspect squirrels or voles. My daffodils are fine.

A: Tulips are beautiful, but they're the toughest to grow well around here year after year. Various rodents like to feed on the bulbs themselves, and then the shoots and flower buds are favorite foods of rabbits and deer. Many types also peter out after a few years, which is why public gardens treat them as annuals and replant each fall.

A few quick ideas...
1.) Try tulip varieties that are best at perennializing, such as the fosteriana, kaufmanniana, Triumph and Darwin types.
2.) Put chicken wire over the beds after planting to prevent burrowing rodents from eating the bulbs. Or plant them in buried chicken-wire cages for total protection. (The shoots will grow out through the openings.)
3.) Use repellents once the shoots come up to protect against rabbits and deer.
4.) Fertilize with a balanced fertilizer in spring and fall and plant in compost-enriched, well drained soil.
5.) In May, dig up decent-looking tulips and group them together for a better display next spring. Remove the losers that didn't bloom and toss. Then make a note to replant with fresh tulips or other bulbs in the vacated spaces come October.

This winter also was a bit rougher than most for many bulbs. Growth got pushed along faster than usual due to the warm January, then the temperature plummeted almost overnight. It wasn't so much the level of the low temperatures that damaged early shoots but the suddenness of the change. Most bulbs are pretty adaptable, but this year's switcheroo was cruel and unusual punishment.

International Farmers Market Bulletin - Support yo...
Support your local Farmers Market. Enjoy the benefits of fresh, healthy locally grown food. Buy direct at your Farmers Market

Feeding Wild Birds... Bird Seed
Always consider native plants when providing food for the wild birds visiting your garden. Even when this isn't possible, providing bird feeders will still attract birds into your back yard. Interestingly, even from an ecological perspective, wild birds can use feeders safely. Studies have shown tha...

Feeding Wild Birds
Feeding wild birds can be quite an eclectic practice. This is wild birds have different food preferences. Some eat bugs while others prefer seeds or tomatoes. Other wild birds such as hummingbirds prefer to suck up sugar water. To make feeding wild birds even more complicated their diet can change from season to season. For instance some birds may eat insects for most of the year but then switch to berries in the winter when there are less creepy crawlies around.