Store Potatoes, Onions, Garlic and Squash During the winter months, when the ground is covered by a thick blanket of snow, there’s something particularly satisfying about still being able to eat food from your garden. There are many summer-grown crops including potatoes, onions, garlic, beets, carrots and winter squash, can be stored with relative ease to nourish you right through until the next growing season. Even a modest-size garden can yield a substantial crop of winter keepers. To be successful storing these keeper crops at home, here are a couple factors to keep in mind: Some varieties store better than others, so be sure to seek out the ones that are known to be good keepers. Crops that are harvested at their prime – not before or after – store best. There are so many wonderful kinds and colors of potatoes to choose from: fingerlings, bakers, boilers, white, yellow, pink, red, and even blue. Potatoes can be grown in a standard garden row, in a raised bed or in a container such as a Potato Grow Bag. Onions Garlic
Tips on how to properly store fruits and vegetables Mon. Dec. 23, 2013 by Linda Kordich (NaturalHealth365) Whether we are juicing, blending or eating fresh fruits and vegetables, there’s nothing more frustrating than to witness our produce going bad, either because we forgot about it, or we didn’t store it properly. In this article, I have listed several fruits and vegetables, commonly used, and will show you how to store them effectively – so you can extend their freshness as long as possible. At the end of your weekly food – it’s a great idea to find what you haven’t eaten, blended or juiced and make that last healthy juice or smoothie. Simple storage tips: If you live in the Northern part of the United States, you can usually find a good storage bin to store your produce such as, carrots, beets, turnips, potatoes, apples, celery, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower. Sometimes, if you have an extra refrigerator in the garage or basement, you can buy in bulk and save up to 50% off your grocery bill. Veggies in the refrigerator 1.
How to build My 50 Dollar Greenhouse First off – you really can build this thing very cheaply, but to do so you have to recycle, freecycle, and scrounge. If you just go out and buy new everything it will probably cost over $200 – still not bad all in all.This Article is featured in Jan 2010 issue of Birds and Blooms Magazine!Want to find out if this thing works before you read all this? Read 6 months in the Greenhouse first.Want to see what happens when a few inches of wet snow accumulates on this? My $50 Greenhouse Welcome Stumbleupon Gardeners! Materials list Construction Steps Hind Sight – What I would do differently The planning is over and construction on my hoop house greenhouse has begun. After some research I’ve decided to build the structure of the hoop house out of 20 ft. joints of three quarter inch PVC plumbing pipe. My hoop house green house is going to be 11 feet wide and 15 feet long, and will be about seven and a half feet tall in the center. If your Greenhouse is too Flat it will collapse! Thusly Thusly.
5 New Solutions For Growing Healthy Produce Indoors Jeffrey GreenActivist Post An increasing number of people are moving into urban environments and away from traditional agriculture. As a consequence, those who have a mind for self-sufficiency can find themselves falling short. Even produce from farmers markets and store-bought organic food will lose peak freshness faster than one might imagine. Most people do not realize that vegetables will lose about half of their nutrients within the first week of being picked. Nothing can beat growing your own fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. However, several high-tech solutions are becoming available for city dwellers, or those who have a less-than-green thumb. The following inventions offer an exciting way to have fresh produce year-round ... right in your own kitchen, while also presenting a potential reduction in overall cost. 1. Visit the site here. For restaurateurs, here is what the commercial model looks like: 2. 3. 4. 5. Recently from Jeffrey Green:
Building Fertile Soil - Organic Gardening Building fertile soil means learning how to feed the soil to feed the plants. It's a fundamental axiom of organic gardening and farming, and once you understand what "feeding the soil" means to building fertile soil, you'll also understand why organic methods, and no-till techniques in particular, work so well. Even though you can't see most of it, a complex soil food web lives in your garden; it's teeming with earthworms, mites, bacteria, fungi — all kinds of mostly microscopic, interdependent organisms that release mineral nutrients and create the loose soil structure crops need to thrive. Beneficial mycorrhizal fungi (see "The Magic of Mycorrhizal Fungi," page 24 in this issue) grow in and around plant roots, mining subsoil for nutrients and water to share with your crops. Other microorganisms prevent diseases and help plants withstand insect attacks. Your crops actually help feed all this underground life. But this complex, mostly invisible soil ecosystem can be damaged easily.
Storing Vegetable Seeds - Gardening Our Self Sufficient Home Every spring we invest in a variety of garden seeds, plant as much as we can fit into our garden, and stash the remaining seeds. When the seeds are pulled out the following spring I always question how viable they are after being stored in a ziplock bag in the pantry all summer and winter. So, the challenge is how to store garden seeds to maximize shelf life. The 3 most important factors in seed storage are moisture, light and temperature. Seeds germinate in warm, moist, and bright environments. Therefore, to successfully store seeds a cool, dry, and dark environment must be created. The amount of light seeds are exposed to is simple to control by the container used to hold the seeds as well as the location of storage. My solution is this: seeds vacuum sealed inside mason jars then stored in a cabinet in the basement, which maintains a fairly constant temperature, or in the refrigerator. Once sealed, the jar sealer attachment is removed and the vacuum seal remains intact.
{how to} Cold Storage 101 | FROM SCRATCH CLUB I’ve pretty much wrapped up harvesting crops on Silly Goose Farm. Apples are done, tomatoes are done, and all that’s left to put-up is a couple of cabbages, a few rows of rainbow carrots, and a whole bunch of pears. The pear trees on our farm are over 100 years old and positively drip with fruit. The gentleman who lived here before us would pack up the pears in bushel baskets in our house’s root cellar and pass them out a Christmastime. While many of you might partake in canning and freezing the harvest, cold storage is another option that is less familiar for the home preservationist. Where: In a cellar/basement (in a spot free from water… so if your basement floods in the spring, think about investing in shelving to keep produce out of water’s way), in an outdoor shelter/shed that protects from the elements, or in a dark and dry pantry. What You’ll Need: Large container (bushel baskets, 5-gallon plastic buckets, Rubbermaid tubs, clean trash cans, etc. Like this: Like Loading...
How to grow a kiwi plant from seed | Growing Wild Kiwifruit is so tasty; it’s intoxicating. All my life, I’ve enjoyed the unique flavour and texture of kiwis but never stopped to wonder where they come from and how they grow. It took 24 years, countless fruit salads, and the digestion of innumerous tiny black seeds before I thought about planting some. After my first kiwi sprouts emerged from the soil, I did some research and realized that Canada, with its uncomfortably cold winters, is not an ideal environment for growing kiwi plants. While fairly hardy, kiwi cannot survive temperatures below -18 degrees celsius. This news didn’t; however, change my mind about continuing to care for my seedlings. Whether you’re planting to observe or to consume, here’s how you can get growing your own kiwi vines: Things you’ll need: 1) A kiwi. This is they type of kiwifruit I used! 2) A small mug or container. 3) Paper towels, a plate, and a clear plastic container. 4) Potting soil. 5) Containers/pots. 6) Sun, or a grow light. 6) Plant your seeds!
10 Interesting Facts About Earthworms By Roger Di Silvestro As winter draws to a close, gardeners begin their spring migration into the outdoors, leaving winter dens behind and coming into contact with the harbingers of the shifting seasons: shovels, hoes and trowels. Oh, and earthworms. Anyone prone to working the soil knows that upturning the earth exposes these shiny, wigging, pinkish-brownish tubular life forms, sending them thrashing in hasty retreat into the comforting, moist darkness of the soil. Earthworms: A Garden’s Friend or Foe? That depends. 1. One of the most familiar of them, the sort you may see in your garden, is commonly known as the night crawler (it typically surfaces after dark), the angleworm (its makes popular bait for fishing) or the rain worm (it leaves waterlogged soil after storms). 2. 3. 4. 5. They mate on the surface of the earth, pressing their bodies together and exchanging sperm before separating. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Visit EcoWatch’s BIODIVERSITY page for more related news on this topic.