Top Ten Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

September 3, 2013

Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening

...eltdowns and temper tantrums of my adult life have their origins in failed vegetable gardening projects. I thought I’d list off my top ten vegetable gardening misadventures so that you don’t have to repeat them. 1. Not paying attention to soil fertility This is my number one mistake. Most vegetables suck up a lot of nutrients. They need lots of compost and a source of nitrogen (fertilizer, manure or a rotation of beans). The difference between our...

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Making It

Mr. Homegrown

April 26, 2011

Publications

12 Comments

...ctions for a wide range of projects, from building a 99-cent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to provide really stripped down, simple projects that use only inexpensive, easy to source materials. We also tried to use the same materials and ingredients over and over a...

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Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown

September 24, 2013

Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening

18 Comments

...be advantageous if you’re having trouble in your garden.] 2. Know how the vegetable is pollinated It’s much easier to save the seeds of self-pollinating vegetables such as beans, peas and tomatoes. Remember that bees can fly for miles–anything pollinated by insects have to be isolated or caged to prevent cross-pollination. And many vegetables have weedy cousins. Try to save the seeds of carrots without caging and you may get a carrot/Queen Anne’s...

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Front Yard Vegetable Gardeners Fights Back

Mr. Homegrown

December 17, 2013

Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

11 Comments

...up the front yard vegetable garden they’ve tended for 17 years. NPR has the details here. Listen to that story and you’ll get to hear an especially ridiculous grilling from a code enforcement official. It’s absurd when city codes single out “vegetables.” Broadleaf plantain is a vegetable and anyone who has a lawn is probably growing it. Many flowers such as calendula are edible. Broccoli is a flower. I could go on. Let’s just say that we wish Rick...

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What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown

November 27, 2012

Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening

15 Comments

...in my case some clover seeds) Use daikon and other radishes to break up hard soil Sow before weeds emerge Scott Kleinrock has used the same strategy at the Huntington Gardens. Here’s what his semi-wild vegetable garden, growing in the understory of some small fruit trees, looked like in January of this year: And there you have it–vegetable gardening with a fraction of the work....

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