Always harden off transplants for eight to ten days before you set them out in the garden. Expose them to short, then gradually longer periods outdoors. (If you purchase transplants, find out if they’ve been hardened off. If not, make sure you do it.)

If seedlings are in flats, slice the roots into squares with a knife about a week before transplanting. Repeat the process before removing from flat.

Feed transplants with fish emulsion the day before setting them out. If possible, transplant on a cloudy or drizzly day. Or set out seedlings in the late afternoon or early evening. It’s more comfortable for you, and the plants will thrive without requiring shade or constant watering. Read the rest of this entry »

For your perennial vegetables and fruits, pick a spot separate from or on the edge of (second best) the main vegetable garden. The easiest way to get a bed started is to stake it out the season before you plant. Cover existing sod with a thick layer of newspapers, magazines, or cardboard. A friend of mine declares that covering sod is the best use she’s found for cast-off issues of the Congressional Record. “They’re so thick nothing will grow through them,” she says. So they don’t blow away, pile something on top —hay, wood chips, sawdust, branches, whatever. By spring, the sod will have decomposed and added green manure to the soil without a struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you water frequently? Leave a section of hose laid out down the center of the garden. Drive double stakes of wood at intervals to keep the hose from decimating the vegetables as you pull it back and forth.

Double stakes protect garden from hose

Another gardener, who has several small vegetable plots, drives a stake at the corner of each bed to protect plants while he drags the hose around. Read the rest of this entry »

The extreme case of the lazy gardener might be the college professor who planted his entire vegetable patch in spring and never looked at it again until it was time to harvest. He overplanted and just let the whole business go weedy. He got enough food for the family out of the enterprise, and that was all he was after in the first place.

Most of us aren’t that lazy. We take pride in order and control. The specter of carefully planned and planted crops being choked by weeds makes us shiver. Read the rest of this entry »

Get a head start on newspaper mulch in winter. As you finish reading today’s paper, staple it to yesterday’s. Make strips of newspapers as long as a garden row, roll them up and store until spring. When you need mulch, unroll on the garden.

When I was a young, newly married gardening novice, we lived on the sea shore. A violent December storm drove high tides within a few feet of our front door. When the waters receded, a huge pile of eelgrass and seaweed ringed our home. Too lazy to cart it away, we raked the debris a few feet closer to the house and stuffed it under foundation plantings. Read the rest of this entry »

I maintained a year- round hay mulch at least eight inches deep in her Connecticut vegetable garden. In her fifty-by-fifty-foot plot, I used twenty-five bales a year. I never turned the soil, sowed a cover crop, hoed, weeded, watered, or built a compost pile. I just mulched, making compost on the spot, for as the bottom layer of mulch decomposed, it added rich organic matter to the soil— a continuing process. Ruth didn’t bother with manures, but used cottonseed meal or soy bean meal for added nitrogen. I sprinkled it on top of the mulch in winter, at a rate of five pounds to one hundred square feet, so that snow and rain carried it down through the hay by planting time. To plant, I pulled aside the mulch and sowed the seed. Read the rest of this entry »

“Black plastic has freed me from hours of weeding. I never used to finish that chore,” explains a Massachusetts gardener. “I resisted black plastic because it looks so awful, but we put dirt along the edges and scatter some on top, and that helps. We use three‑foot-wide rolls in our entire vegetable garden. We plant a row, lay the plastic, anchor the edges with dirt, plant another row, and so on. The weeding always had hung over me. Now I just hand-weed in the row itself, and we have more time to canoe or play tennis.” Read the rest of this entry »

If weeds are growing around the perimeter of your garden, scattering seeds into the garden, cut those weeds with a scythe, then add them to the compost pile. The scythe is a remarkable and efficient tool in the hands of an expert. An able hand doesn’t flail at the weeds with the scythe. He holds it loosely, comfortably, and moves the blade by pivoting his body, keeping the blade parallel to and close to the ground. He stops often to sharpen the blade. The scythe doesn’t actually get dull that quickly, but frequent sharpening is a good way to relax shoulder and arm muscles. Read the rest of this entry »

Freeze green beans whole to prevent sogginess. Blanch in boiling water for three minutes, cool in ice water, and blot dry before freezing.

Chop or slice onions and green pepper and freeze raw. Toss into cooked dishes straight from the freezer.

To quick-freeze berries, pour them, unwashed if possible, or well-drained, on a cookie sheet and pop into the freezer. When frozen, spoon into small plastic bags or containers and return to freezer. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a root cellar, keep it cool in the fall when it’s full of produce by opening ventilators on brisk nights and closing them on warm, sunny days. That’s an easy way to keep the temperature and humidity at ideal levels.

Choose to grow thin-necked varieties of onions rather than thick-necked ones, and you’ll have less incidence of onion-neck rot in storage. Cure them in sun for a week or two after harvest, then lay screens in the rafters of your garage or attic and spread the onions one layer thick. Leave them there for a month or so. Make sure onion necks are thoroughly dry before clipping to an inch or two. Store in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. Read the rest of this entry »

Lazy gardeners, here’s a crop that has no weeds or insect pests, needs no soil, grows in any kind of weather, and is ready for harvest in two to five days. Grow your own sprouts in winter, for a continuing supply of high-vitamin greens. All you need to invest is a minute or two a day for rinsing. Read the rest of this entry »

Your kitchen garden can be as simple as a few herbs in pots outside your back door, or a proper vegetable and herb garden.

The type of garden you choose will depend upon the space you have available, the amount of sun it gets, the time you have to spend in the garden, and to a certain extent, your own taste in food. A small-scale kitchen garden could perhaps consist of a few herbs and some tomatoes, lettuce and carrots. Read the rest of this entry »

Every garden needs a little mulch. Mulch is a thick blanket of material laid on the ground near plants or in the walkways. It blocks sunlight, keeps weeds from growing, holds moisture in the soil, and keeps the soil temperature steady and cool. Mulch is a must for many dry-country gardeners who are trying to cut down on their watering, and for folks who haven’t got the time to stir up the soil every week to stop weeds from getting started.

People use all kinds of organic matter and material for mulch—grass clippings, bark chips, peat moss, pine needles, leaves, sawdust, black plastic, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

Only two rules for thirsty plants

Water from this “impact” sprinkler hits a deflector, causing the head to rotate continuously. In most cases, sprinklers should run until soil is moist to a depth of 4 or 5 inches.

There are only two rules for watering the garden correctly: water at the proper time and water deeply.

Too many gardeners, especially beginners, feel they must water a garden. But you should water your plants only when they really need it. How do you tell? Look at your plants in the morning. If they are wilted, it’s a sure sign that the soil has very little moisture left to provide for plants. It’s time to water! Read the rest of this entry »

1. Gamble and Plant early

There’s more moisture in the soil in early spring than any other time of the year. As soon as you can work the soil and prepare seedbeds, gamble some seeds and plant some early crops. Push ahead your plantings of corn and potatoes, too. These crops take lots of water, and the more growth they can put on before dry weather, the better it is for you.

2. Don’t Fertilize too much early in the year

You’d be amazed at how few roots will develop in over- fertilized soils. Plants can get all the food they need close to the surface with just a small root system. So they don’t bother to go down deep. When a dry spell occurs, look out! They suffer quickly, you wind up watering them every day. It’s better for your crops if they have to work for their food and water. Let them develop far-reaching root systems which penetrate deep in the soil before you give them big helpings of plant food. Read the rest of this entry »

Composting is one of the most important things we gardeners can do. A good compost pile recycles vegetable scraps and other wastes from the garden and yard. We can “harvest” some free fertilizer for the garden, save money, and lessen our need for outside fertilizers. Composting also helps the community because it reduces the amount of garbage other people have to deal with. One of my dreams is to see every household in a town with a compost pile. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember to cut Greens for a second and third Harvest

I force many of my greens to give me a second and third harvest. I never pick only the outside leaves of my lettuce, spinach, chard, or mustard. They’re the oldest and toughest on a plant. Instead, I give the row a clean cut, slicing the plants about 1 inch above the ground. This encourages the plants to send up new tender growth and to try again to develop seedpods. For the harvest, I have a pleasing combination of young, tender leaves from the center of the plant mixed with the older ones. Read the rest of this entry »

A few summers ago I taught a short course on gardening for the University of Vermont. The classes were held at my test gardens. During a discussion about root crops, Willie, one of the students, said, “Dick, I grow real nice carrots, but I don’t like them too much. I can hardly eat them; they seem so woody.”

“How big do you grow them?” I asked.

Willie smiled, “Oh, they get real good size. I’ve got nice loose soil for them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Start Transplants in the Garden

Three or four weeks before the planting dates for cabbage, broccoli, head lettuce, and cauliflower, I sprinkle their seeds in short wide rows out in the garden. It’s an easy (and cheap) way to grow a lot of transplants in a very small space.

For my fall garden, I choose the best-looking plants, dig them out of the short wide rows, and put them in another row with more room around them. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve harvested peas and turned under the plants while they were still green and tender, you have put green manure in your soil. Any green plant spaded or tilled back into the soil can be called green manure. Some green manure crops are grown just to be plowed back into the soil while they are still green and rich in organic matter. Alfalfa, buckwheat, and annual ryegrass are a few examples. There are many others.

You might hear green manure crops being called “cover crops” or “catch crops.” These names indicate two of the jobs of a green manure crop:

1. To cover bare soil at the end of the season. This protects it from erosion over the winter. Read the rest of this entry »