5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work. 1. With ‘no-till’ gardening, weeding is largely eliminated. 2. Gardeners are always on the lookout for free sources of clean organic mulch to add to their garden.
Growing Celery Indoors: Never Buy Celery Again | 17 Apart: Growing Celery Indoors: Never Buy Celery Again Remember when we tested and shared how to grow onions indefinitely last week? Well, at the same time, we've been testing out another little indoor gardening project first gleaned from Pinterest that we're excited to share the successes of today — regrowing celery from it's base. We've figured out how to literally re-grow organic celery from the base of the bunch we bought from the store a couple weeks ago. I swear, we must have been living under a rock all these years or just not be that resourceful when it comes to food, but we're having more fun learning all these new little tips and tricks as we dive deeper into trying to grow more of our own food. This project is almost as simple as the onion growing project — simply chop the celery stalks from the base of the celery you bought from the store and use as you normally would. In our case, we had a particular homemade bean dip that needed sampling! Update 2: Here's how we are looking at almost 3-4 weeks of growth: Discover More:
10 Killer DIY Garden Hacks Gardening is one of the most rewarding home hobbies you can do. It's fun, sustainable and you get healthy, tasty results. A lot of people like the idea of gardening but find excuses like it's too time consuming, it's too expensive, they don't have enough space, blah blah blah. There's no room for excuses when going green, all you need is a little initiative and a little ingenuity to overcome these so called excuses. Here are 10 killer garden hacks that can help you save time, space and money while satisfying your green thumb... 1. Vertical Gutter Garden When Suzanne Forsling moved to Juneau Alaska from Iowa, she found that it was a little bit harder to get her garden to grow. 2. Reclaimed Tire Garden If you have some old tires laying around that you don't know what to do with, you could burn them... if you hate the environment, or you could put them to work as cool looking raised garden beds. 3. DIY Earth Box An Earth Box is more than just a box with soil. 4. Self-Watering Garden 5. 6. 7.
Vinegar Tips - Vinegar uses for your Garden White distilled vinegar provides many safe alternatives to protect and enhance your garden and gardening tools. Not only will you feel good about keeping children and pets (and you!) away from pesticides and other chemicals, you’ll feel great about the low cost of vinegar compared to those other products. Kill weeds and grass growing in unwanted places by pouring full-strength white distilled vinegar on them. This works especially well in crevices and cracks of walkways and driveways. Give acid-loving plants like azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas and gardenias a little help by watering them with a white distilled vinegar solution now and again. Stop ants from congregating by pouring white distilled vinegar on the area. Discourage cats from getting into the kids’ sandbox with white distilled vinegar. Preserve cut flowers and liven droopy ones by adding 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar to a quart of water in a vase. Keep rabbits from eating your plants.
List of companion plants Dill is one of the few plants to grow with Fennel This is a list of companion plants. Many more are in the list of beneficial weeds. Vegetables[edit] Fruit[edit] Herbs[edit] Flowers[edit] Other[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] Further reading[edit] Cunningham, Sally Jean.
100 Best DIY Sites on the Web 100 Best DIY Sites on the Web Saturday, February 26, 2011 at 6:06pm by Site Administrator DIY offers a great way to take on personal projects and make things your own. Although often DIY focuses primarily on home improvement, the DIY ethic expands out to arts, technology, and so much more. Home Improvement In these sites, you’ll find fun and useful projects to take on at home. Arts & Crafts Whether you want to learn how to make your own macro lens, or just find a knitting pattern, these sites will have what you’re looking for. Tech Find everything you want to know about hacking gadgets, electronics, and more from these sites. Makezine: Learn how to make your own fun electronic and tech toys with this site.Freedom to Tinker: Check out this site to learn how to modify and repair tech devices.Hack This Site! Lifehacking These sites present great ways to apply the DIY principle to everyday life. General Check out these sites to find anything and everything DIY.
6,000 Pounds of Food on 1/10 Acre “In danger of being free.” That’s how Jules Dervaes sums up his journey from a small backyard garden to a super-productive microfarm. It’s a low input, highly efficient urban homestead right next to the metropolis of Los Angeles. Jules, his son Justin, and his two daughters Anais and Jordanne live in a 1,500 sq. ft. craftsman bungalow on 1/5 of an acre. Their mission is to live sustainably and simply, and they are doing it. 90% of their vegetarian diet comes from the homestead and 2/3 of their energy comes from solar panels. “Government can’t do it and corporations won’t do it,” says Jules in the short film Homegrown Revolution. With a corporatocracy running the show in Washington and millions of Americans addicted to television and fast food, the Dervaes family provides a model of what can happen if we change our priorities. Not only do they provide a model for suburban-style sustainability, but their efforts are beneficial to the community and local schools. Related Posts
Composting 101 Unfortunately for us, Earth is not getting any bigger. Therefore, we must do all we can to preserve and protect the earth that we live in. This can be done a number of ways: riding bikes/using fuel efficient cars, being vegetarian, recycling, and COMPOSTING! Composting is another type of recycling only for organic materials. I come from a composting AND recycling household, and let me tell you, the amount of trash we have saved is unbelievable. A little iffy about jumping on the composting wagon? Share This Infographic Get Free Infographics Delivered to your Inbox
Keyhole Gardens Keyhole Gardens First made popular in Africa, keyhole gardens are catching on in Texas and other hot, dry places. Keyhole gardens hold moisture and nutrients due to an active compost pile placed in the center of a round bed. Although most helpful in hot and dry locations a keyhole garden will improve growing conditions in just about any climate. From a bird's eye view the garden is shaped as a keyhole. Keyhole Garden in Central Texas, Deb Tolman uses keyhole gardens as the main source of her own food supply, and is working on ways to keep them producing throughout multiple seasons and conditions. Keyhole garden in Lesotho by Send a Cow, who first popularized keyhole gardens in Africa. Keyhole garden. Keyhole garden by Send a Cow. A keyhole garden in Ethiopia. Keyhole garden in Uganda by Send a Cow. Keyhole garden scheme. When it rains or when you water your compost, the nutrients will seep into the surrounding bed. Step by step photos of a keyhole garden build. libertygarden.us How to:
Organic Authority.com: Four Foods That'll Re-Grow From Kitchen Scraps Written by Lacy Boggs Renner You recycle your bottles and newspapers, you upcycle thrift store finds into decor treasures, and you reuse all your plastic bags. But do you upcycle your food scraps? We're not talking compost here, we're talking re-growing food from scraps you might have tossed. Turns out, several odds and ends you might have tossed can be re-grown into more food! Scallions When your recipe only calls for the green part of the scallions, don't toss the white end with the roots. Lemongrass This delicious, aromatic herb is really just a grass and will grow well in a pot in a sunny spot. Celery The next time you're chopping a bunch of celery, save the root end! Ginger Did you know that ginger makes a beautiful (and useful) houseplant?
Growing Carrots In Plant Containers Makes For Easy Cultivation I love growing carrots... at least NOW I do! Disfigured, maggoty, muddy, stunted carrots - does that ring a bell with your experience. That was certainly my experience a lot of the time whilst growing carrots. Container Gardening Ideas Video - Planting Carrots in Containers Pots, troughs, growing bags etc. are one of the answers to growing vegetables in your garden if you haven't got the room for a large vegetable plot - like I haven't. 263K+Save So now, growing carrots is a real pleasure, and that is because I do use plant containers. The advantages of growing carrots in containers are: No poor soil problems if using shop bought compost.No weeding and digging concerns.And no soil pest problems. What you do need to keep in mind though is a little more attention will need to be given to watering and feeding. What kind of plant containers are best for growing carrots?... I use several different kinds such as large-ish clay pots, plastic square and rectangular plant containers. Home Page
Square Foot Gardening