organic gardening
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Joy of Sweet Potatoes
In our family, we have rediscovered the joy of sweet potatoes! I think it started out with an invite to a parent’s house where baked sweet potato was served instead of a russet baked potato. It was so yummy that I’ve been adding sweet potatoes to several of my main stay dishes since then. Did you know that sweet potatoes do fabulous in turkey soup? Well they do! We also cut up small potatoes and add a sweet potato to the mix when we saute potato slices as a side dish. So with all this talk about the joy of sweet potatoes AND it being prime planting season, it was…
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Soil Temp, Key Factor on When It's Time to Plant
My friends at Garden Supply have a neat article called When is it Warm Enough to Plant? It’s a neat approach to knowing what to plant in your garden without having to study each and every seed packet that you buy and looking up Gardening Zones, etc. While a zone is great for a broad range rule of thumb, this article will explain and chart the optimal temperature for planting as well as the temperature for germination! Another reason why Garden Zones are not fool proof is that they have recently changed. Whether you attribute those climate changes to our global warming or not, the fact remains that the zones…
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Rosemary Bush Trimming – Follow up on How to cut Rosemary
I always post a link to my blog post on twitter which then feeds to facebook. My last post was “How to clip Rosemary“. On twitter, a friend asked this question: @Margaret_3: How do you prune rosemary?. I have a bush that needs re-shaping. Can I really cut it back to the woody part? My answer in 140 characters: The rule of thumb is to cut back no more than 1/3 of the leaves at one time. Trim now, add to calender to trim in 1 mo. Since I have a bit more room than 140 characters, I’ll qualify what I said. The rule of thumb is really cut back…
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How To Clip Rosemary
How do you clip rosemary in your yard? The first question I’d ask, is how old is your rosemary bush? If your rosemary bushes have been around as long as mine have, the method of clipping rosemary can be a bit more involved. I live in gardening zone 8 which means that it’s warm enough here in the Atlanta area for rosemary to over winter without dying. That’s not to say that is doesn’t have its set backs from time to time, but over all my rosemary bushes thrive. Thriving rosemary bushes means they grow fast and must be clipped often. I usually remove the brown branches in the spring time…
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Tansy – Attraction and repellent?
Spring is coming!! This is tansy that grows as a perennial in my yard. (perennial meaning that it will come back every spring season.) The foliage of this plant is very much like a fern and the flowers are yellow, round and small clusters like the picture above. There is good reason why this plant is also called golden buttons. The odor tansy gives off is a bit pungent but it has specific purpose in the garden. Tansy is known to repel the “bad” bugs AND attract the beneficial bugs to your garden or yard. Some of the beneficial bugs this lovely plant will attract are lady bugs, spined soldier bugs, spiders, hover-flies, praying…
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Rosehips from Raintree Nursery
While you are busy planting those blueberry bushes…consider what to place in the planting bed with them. How about a rose variety that produce rose hips? I did the same thing as I did with the blueberry bushes. I planted them and forgot about them…until they began to bloom! Move over “knock out” roses! (they might be pretty but they don’t produce these beautiful rose hips!) I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have beauty AND purpose in my planting beds! The most Vitamin C you’ll find is in rose hips. It was recommended to me several years ago to plant a certain kind of rose bush that produces…
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Could growing stevia help your Organic garden?
Though nontoxic, stevia (stevia rebaudiana) plants have been found to have insect-repelling tendencies. You didn’t know it would be a good companion plant! Their very sweetness, in fact, may be a kind of natural defense mechanism against aphids and other bugs that find it not to their taste. Perhaps that’s why crop-devouring grasshoppers have been reported to bypass stevia under cultivation. Growing this fabulous plant in your garden also suggests a statement of protest for the banning of this plant in the past by the FDA. I find it quite interesting that this past spring season this lovely plant was actually available at garden centers even in Georgia! Does this…