Planting Your Spring Vegetable Garden

Grocery prices continue to skyrocket along with fuel costs. It’s times like these when you want to grow your own. Learn how to plant your spring vegetable garden by following these guidelines.

Before you can begin a garden it helps to know what growing zone you’re in. If you live in the United States, you can go to the National Gardening Association’s website (www.garden.org/zipzone/) to find the USDA Hardiness Zone Map. This map will help you find which zone you live in and give ideas on when it is safe to start planting.
Or if you’re in the UK, check out Ours – https://www.rhs.org.uk/

You’ll also want to prepare the ground before you can begin planting. Do this by tilling the area you have planned for your garden. You’ll want to remove the clumps of grass as much as possible or till deeply to incorporate the organic matter into the soil. Test the soil to determine if it has the right mineral content. Tests can be obtained at County Extension Agencies and home and garden stores. Add any nutrients to the soil ‘before’ you begin planting.

Growing your first garden is much easier if you start with seedlings rather than growing your own. If you do plan to grow your plants from seeds, you’ll want to start them indoors about eight weeks before they can be planted in the ground. Purchase the plants you want and keep them indoors until your area has reached the last average frost date.

When the ground is workable, the first vegetables you’ll want to add to your garden are spinach, peas and onions. Onions are sold in sets and you may be able to find seedling spinach. You can plant the pea seeds directly into the garden. You may be able to plant lettuce, beets, carrots, cilantro, dill, radishes, cabbage and broccoli about two weeks before the last frost. Celery, kale and potatoes can also be grown outdoors.

When you know there’s no chance of a late frost, you can plant melons, squash, cucumbers and beans. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, pumpkins and basil can also be planted at this time. When you plant corn, set out at least four short rows rather than one long row because they pollinate properly that way. You’ll also want to use poles or trellises for beans. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are best transplanted or purchased as plants prior to setting them in your garden.

If you follow these guidelines and learn how to plant your own spring garden, you may have produce in as little as four weeks. Take time to pull weeds and keep your garden watered but not muddy. As the produce is ready to harvest you’ll be enjoying the fruits of your labour on your kitchen table.

CONCLUSION;
Remember; having the right information will make your job much easier and can help ensure the lasting success of your garden. Did you get your free copy of the E-book ‘Absolute Organic Gardening’? It goes into far more detail there.
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Why Gardening Is Good for Your Health and Life

Gardening is a fantastic activity in many ways. It’s a great form of exercise, stress reliever, creative outlet, and just plain old good fun. Studies have shown that regular exposure to nature and fresh air is good for us. Not only will you feel energized and refreshed after a gardening session, but you’ll also feel a great sense of achievement.

Here are a few other reasons why gardening is a great all-around exercise:

#1 – Stress relief. Many of us lead very stressful lives. Gardening is a good way of relieving that stress. It’s a quiet, gentle activity that also helps you connect with nature and clear your mind. There’s something very nurturing about getting close to the earth and having a part in helping something grow.

#2 – Great for joints and flexibility. As we get older, so do our joints and mobility. Gardening is a great option for keeping your joints supple and flexible without too much pressure. Simple exercises like bending, lifting and light digging will help your flexibility and muscle tone. All of this will lead to improved health and quality of life.

#3 – Keeps you busy. If you already have a busy schedule then gardening may be something you fit in on the weekends or in short spurts. However, if you’re out of work or retired, keeping a garden is a great way of staying active, fit and healthy. You’ll also feel a wonderful sense of achievement when you see the fruit of your labor.

#4 – Great social activity. Gardening is becoming increasingly popular. Many people are joining community garden projects and schemes. This is a great way to bond with your community. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for swapping home-grown produce and teaching your kids and family about healthy eating. Gardening is a great link for friendships. It’s a good way to meet like-minded people doing something you enjoy.

#5 – Great for children. Children are naturally geared to love gardening. They have an inbuilt instinct for connecting with the earth around them. Give a young child a small shovel and a vegetable patch and they may happily dig for hours. Exposure to gardening also shows kids the importance of food and healthy eating, as well as caring for their environment. Many schools now have gardening clubs and projects to help children get involved as gardeners too.

On the surface gardening seems like a great health activity, and it is, but there are also many other wonderful benefits. Along with getting plenty of fresh air and exercise you can relieve stress, make new friends, show your kids the importance of our environment and keep your joints and muscles supple. It’s a fantastic all-around activity to enjoy.

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How To Maintain Your Garden Pond.

Garden Pond Maintenance 101

Many people have installed garden ponds at their homes. They add interest to the garden, encourage wildlife to visit the garden, and provide a place for peace and contemplation. Using these garden pond maintenance 101 tips, it won’t be long before your pond is ready for spring’s visitors.

Ponds require regular maintenance. The better care you take, the longer your pond will be enjoyed by your family. There are things you should do during each season of the year, but here’s how you can ensure your pond is ready for the spring.

* Remove the de-icer or heating unit from the pond. Replace the filter and pump, then turn them on.

* Remove any leaves or decomposed organic material. Keep an eye out for algae and remove it as soon as you can.

* If the water appears black, remove at least one-third of it and then replace it with fresh water.

* Purchase the beneficial bacteria, chemicals, and water conditioners you’ll need for the spring and summer. Now would be the time to decide on any new items you’ll add to your pond as well.

* Check the level of the water in your pond and add a small amount at a time so the water temperature or the chemical balance isn’t disrupted too drastically. If you wintered your fish indoors, increase the water and chemical level before returning the fish to the pond.

* Begin feeding the fish once the temperatures reach or exceed 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Since any fish you might have in your pond are cold-blooded, they’ll begin getting interested in eating once their body temperature rises.

* Check the netting around the pond and repair it where necessary.

* Reset any rocks around you’ve placed around the border as well as prune the shrubs and any plants which are around the pond. You may also want to add new plants or features to the pond.

* Clean the filter as recommended by the manufacturer, being sure to clean the water intake more often to keep it from becoming clogged with debris.

If you take the time to care for your pond the way it requires, you’ll be able to enjoy it for years to come. Pay attention to any organic matter that falls into the water and clean it out. You’ll also want to remove any fish which may die.

What else can you do to benefit from your pond throughout the year?
You may want to place a bench so you can sit near the pond watching the fish. Another option would be to set up a canopy swing. Then take the time to sit outside by the pond to enjoy being outdoors among nature.

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How To Choose Which Garden Pond Idea Is For You

Small Garden Pond Ideas

People often use landscaping and flower gardens to beautify their yard. Perhaps you’d like to use something different. Why not try some of these small garden pond ideas and see how distinct they can make your yard appear.

Consider where you might like to place a small garden pond. Some people choose an area away from their homes while others choose to create a garden near their porch or patio. Which window would allow you to look out over the garden pond and enjoy the wildlife that may gather there?

You may only want to have a rock pond. This is a pond which has plenty of natural rocks and plants around them but won’t necessarily contain fish or other animals. These are mostly for beautification and to entice nature to come into your yard.

Other people want to have a small garden pond which already has life in it. Most people think about putting Japanese Koi in their garden ponds because they’re a hardy fish. You can choose from other fish as well – Shubunkin goldfish and Comet goldfish are often sold for garden ponds. Start with a fish that is at least 3 inches long with a caudal fin. They come in a variety of colors.

Take time to do some research about pond fish. There’s a science to knowing how to take care of them. Depending upon the weather and water temperature, the fish will be more or less active and their appetite will also change. Feed the fish more during the warmer weather and much less when the temperatures drop.

You could hire someone to design and build a small garden pond, although this is one DIY project everyone in the family can pitch in and help with. Depending upon whether or not you put fish in your pond, shade is important. You’ll also want to consider the condition of the soil in your yard, and the elevation. Rocky or hilly terrain could make some modifications necessary, so keep those in mind.

Always – And I Mean Always, keep your pond ‘fish safe’ and ‘child safe’.
Even if you don’t have children yourself, other people’s children will ‘wander’ as if magnetised towards water. There are too many cases of children drowning in ‘other people’s garden ponds’. Plus! there are many wild-life-predaters out there that would just love your fish to be on the menu at ‘any’ time of the day or night.

Be sure to invest in some heavy netting or mesh so that you can still see and appreciate your fish and the pond, but will keep out the enemy (and the children).

Plants to include in a garden pond include floating plants such as water lilies and water hyacinths. You can also find other aquatic plants to add to the pond. Again, plants are important should you have fish in the pond, because they will need someplace to get out of the direct sunlight.

Pond kits are available at most home improvement stores but it isn’t really necessary to buy one. You can choose the location for the pond, dig out the area, and then place a thick, plastic pond liner into the hole. Cover the liner rim with natural material such as rocks or logs. Make the pond look as natural as you can and it will definitely be something beautiful for you and your family to enjoy.

Remember that you’ll also need to filter the water and keep the pond clean. Rock ponds may take more care keeping them clean because you’ll have to remove the water and rocks each year. If you choose to add a waterfall feature, a pump will be necessary. The pump will help keep the water clean and circulating so the amount of maintenance required is reduced. The best way to ensure the waterfall doesn’t fail is to have a second pump and filter system on hand in case the primary pump breaks down.

Adding a water feature can make all the difference in how your yard looks. These small garden pond ideas will give you some place to start, and then you can research more to decide what type of pond is right for your budget and yard.

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How To Make Your Wild-Life Friendly Garden

Making Your Garden Wildlife Friendly

Having a garden that is friendly to wildlife and therefore entertaining in it’s own right does involve certain techniques and approaches to lawn care, some of them unconventional. The perfectly-groomed, square-cornered lawn with the carpet-like grass that never gets above 2 inches tall is not, unfortunately, the ideal environment for wildlife. So you may need to re-think things a bit to make your yard attractive to wildlife! Here are some tips.

What Kind of Wildlife?

First, identify what kind of wildlife you want in your yard. Bees? Deer? Birds? Making this decision early on will help you be able to be more focused in your yard care and design. Also, another first step you’ll want to take is determining what kind of wildlife is in your area. Then you can tailor your yard to fit the needs of local wildlife.

Let It Go

It’s been said that mowing, trimming, weed-killing, and other typical yard care regimens may actually repel most wildlife. If possible, let your yard or a part of your yard simply go to weeds. You could fence it off and label it “For the Birds” or some such if you are worried about what the neighbors will think. But many sources say that simply leaving an area of your yard alone and letting nature re-claim it can make a nice area for attracting birds, bees, and small animals. Adding a ‘Bug Hotel’ in the form of a simple pile of small or larger scraps of old wood, metal, twigs and branches will entice the little heebie-jeebies to feast on all that lovely decaying stuff, and the other wildlife will call in to get their breakfast and supper 😉

Water

No matter what kind of wildlife you want to invite to your yard, water is important. Every living thing needs it and is attracted to it. Ground-dwelling animals like chipmunks enjoy water sources placed on the ground, whereas birds appreciate water sources a bit higher up (making it safer from predators).

Make sure the containers are heavy enough to accommodate an animal’s weight on the edge, and putting a rock in the center also helps to weight the container and to provide a safe “island” in case a small animal goes in too deep. Sources say water should be no more than about 2 inches deep, and that you should empty the water container daily and refill with fresh water.

Although refreshing all the time deters the little Water-Bugs that other wildlife love to feed on. Just topping-up daily will ensure that the water stays ‘alive’ for all and birds/wild animals cope very well with mucky water. Hence the title – ‘Wild-Life’ 🙂

Provide Food

There are several different ways to do this. You can hang out a traditional bird feeder, invest in deer feed, or plant fruiting shrubs or other plants that provide food for foraging animals. Some plants to consider are:

* Sunflowers (many birds like sunflower seeds)

* Flowering and fruiting shrubs, like cranberries, blueberries, elderberry, and raspberries will attract birds and small animals. They may even attract bears and deer.

* Flowering and fruiting trees such as dogwood, hawthorn, and conventional fruit trees such as pear and cherry attract birds.

* Flowers such as Echinacea (purple coneflower), thistle, and black-eyed Susan appeal to small, seed-eating birds like wild canaries and finches.

You might want to invest in a notebook to record what creatures visit your yard once you begin making it more wildlife-friendly, and always have your smart-phone/camera to hand so that you can ‘capture’ those surprise moments in an image or video when something unusual vists your garden.

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Organic Gardening Is Great For Relieving Stress!

Stress definitely takes a toll on your mind and your body, and the longer you’re stressed, the worse it gets.

You don’t have to be a doctor to recognize the negative effects of stress on your body. It makes you feel anxious and out of control, and over time these feelings can escalate causing negative effects and even depression. Even a short period of stress can take its toll, but the longer it goes on the worse our physical health gets.

Chronic stress causes the body to be flooded with negative hormones which leads to inflammation in the body. Can stress kill? …. Absolutely!

Recently Will Young – Singer/Pop Star – has told how Organic Gardening has been his salvation. He was in therapy for a while with quite debilitating ‘anxiety’ and discovered the calming, soothing feelings to be got via his daily gardening activities. He now has a wonderful Organic Garden down in the West-Country of England that his Mother designed for him and She and his father did the donkey-work constructing it so that Will only has to keep it all ship-shape and bristol-fashioned

Negative Effects of Stress:
* Insomnia – stress can cause sleeplessness, restlessness, poor quality sleep, and waking up multiple times during the night. And the less sleep you get, the more stressed you feel.
* Changes in eating habits. Stress can either eliminate your appetite and cause you to eat little to no food, or it can cause you to overeat or binge.
* Long-term stress can lead to anxiety. The symptoms of anxiety include stomach aches, feeling on edge, moodiness, shortness of breath, racing heart, and dizziness, and even full-blown panic attacks.
* Depression can occur after a period of long-term, unchecked stress.
* Long periods of stress can wreak havoc on our immune systems causing you to become more prone to catching colds and other illnesses.
* Stress can aggravate existing health issues such as IBS, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and lupus.

The bottom line is that stress is a serious issue in our fast-paced society and more of us are finding it hard to relax.

So, what does organic gardening have to do with stress?
Well, it may surprise you to learn that gardening is a scientifically proven stress reducer. The Journal of Health Psychology published an article which compared gardening to reading. The experiment found that the gardeners experienced a more significant decrease in stress when compared to the readers.

In addition, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has designated gardening a moderate-level intensity activity which uses most of the body. A study they conducted found that people who gardened, exercised on average, 40 to 50 minutes more than people who chose biking, walking, or other activities. Regular exercise is one of the things doctors recommend people do when they’re feeling anxious or stressed because it increases the flow of oxygen to the brain, so this is an additional benefit provided by gardening.

In addition, being outdoors is a natural “high” for many people and their bodies respond by releasing endorphins, the body’s “feel-good” hormones. This feeling of well-being helps reduce stress and leads to improved sleep and overall physical relaxation.

The effects of stress on our lives is enormous. It’s impossible to escape it with all our responsibilities at our jobs, in our family life, and with the stressors we’re exposed to on a daily basis. And it’s clear that stress takes an enormous toll on our emotional and physical health. That’s why it’s encouraging that gardening can help reduce stress while also providing us with healthy food to assist us on our journey to better health.

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