Organic Gardening How To Blog

Fall is quickly coming and our summer crops are coming to an end. In this organic gardening how to, I want to show you some secrets on saving seeds. Seeds harvested from your own garden will produce stronger and more bountiful crops the next time you plant them.

Saving seeds is easy and here’s what you need to do:

1. Wait until the seeds are ready. Sometimes this is the most difficult thing to do. But, your garden will produce seeds when the plants are ready to produce seeds – in their own good time and not necessarily when you want them to.

2. Collect the seeds. When your plants have produced seeds, you need to wait until the seeds have matured before you collect them. You can tell that the seeds or seed pods have matured when the plant starts to turn brown or when the seed pods start to open up . At that point, collect the seeds and place them in a brown paper bag.

3. Let the seeds dry. Place the seeds that have been collected in brown paper bags in a dry, airy location. Lightly shake the bags every 1-2 days so that all sides of the seeds are getting properly dried.

4. Separate and clean your seeds. Find a shallow container that is 1-2 inches deep and line the inside of this container with dry paper towels. Take a strainer that will barely allow the seeds to pass through it and place the contents of the paper bag in this strainer. Gently shake the strainer over your shallow container and watch the seeds fall through.

5. Label and store the seeds. Without touching the seeds, place the seeds that you’ve collected into a jar or seal-able plastic bag. Seal the jar or plastic bag and label them. Label them by identifying what type of seeds they are and the date that you sealed them. Place these collected seeds in a cool and dry location such as in your refrigerator. Freezing them would damage the seeds.

Now, you have all the seeds you need for next year’s organic garden!

Watch this organic gardening how to video for some further tips:

Collecting and storing tomato seeds is a bit different than most other seeds. Here’s another organic gardening how to video to help you with collecting tomato seeds:

That’s it! Hope this Organic Gardening How To has been helpful. Until next time…

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Potted herb gardens are so easy to make and that’s what this Organic Gardening How To is all about.

Wouldn’t life and food be boring without herbs? I know when I think about herbs, I can almost taste them in my mouth. Dill, cilantro, rosemary, basil – each has a spectacular flavor and smell.

The best place to plant herbs is in pots. That way, you can move them around to catch more sun as the season changes. And, you can also move them inside in the dead of winter.

Herbs require about five hours of direct sunlight per day.

There’s a wide variety of herbs that you can grow. Try tarragon, sage, dill, oregano, thyme, cilantro, basil, rosemary, parsley, marjoram, mustard, chives and many others. These can be raised from seeds or small plants can usually be found at your local nursery.

The only tools that you’ll need to make a potted herb garden are: pot , newspaper, organic potting soil , trowel , and a watering can .

Watch this Organic Gardening How To video to see how easy it is to make a potted herb garden:

That was easy, wasn’t it?! Why doesn’t everybody grow herbs?

Wishful thinking, I know! But, after this Organic Gardening How To Blog post, I know there will be a few more doing it.

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It’s now late July and in this Organic Gardening How To we want to talk about starting a fall garden. I know, we’re still picking a lot of summer vegetables, but if you want a fall garden, you need to think about it now.

To determine when to start planting your fall vegetables, you need to have some idea about when your “neck of the woods” is likely to get it’s first frost. If you’re not sure, you can click on this Farmer’s Almanac link to get an estimated date for the first frost in your area.

Now, that you know when your area is likely to get its first frost, you have to decide what kind of fall vegetables you want to plant. Once you know that, determine how many days it takes those vegetables to reach maturity and then you can calculate your latest planting date.

For example, the Farmer’s Almanac estimates the first frost for our location will be November 1. I just love home grown cauliflower and I want to be sure that I have some in my fall garden. Cauliflower has a maturity date of 90 days, so the latest date that I should plant these seeds is August 1 (that’s why I planted those seeds this morning!).

Below is a list of vegetables that are ideal for fall gardening and an estimate of their maturity dates:

90 Day Maturity Cauliflower Cabbages Carrots Beets Rutabega Brussells Sprouts Globe Onions

60 Day Maturity Turnip Leek Early Carrot Collards Swiss Chard Early Cabbages Winter Cauliflower

30 Day Maturity Radishes Chives Broccoli Mustard Spinach Leaf Lettuces Bunching Onions

In many ways, fall gardening is so much easier than spring gardening. In the spring, we had to plant our seeds indoors and had to wait until the last frost to move the young plants outdoors.

In a fall garden, we just plant the seeds into the soil and Mother Nature does the rest.

Watch this Organic Gardening How To video for some additional tips about fall Gardening:

Remember, keep notes on everything you do, when you did it, and how well it worked. Notes like these will make your Organic Gardening How To so much easier in the coming years.

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This Organic Gardening How To is about growing your own hardy kiwi. Hardy kiwi is a particular type of kiwi and the plant can survive temperatures down to -30 degrees F. The fruit is very sweet and has a terrific aroma and flavor. Start your own hardy kiwi from seeds and start them in 5-gallon buckets. If propagated, from the ground, hardy kiwi plants often don’t survive the first year because of inadequate drainage. Transplant the kiwis from the bucket into the ground after their root system is well established. This is normally done after their first winter and after the last chance of frost.

Hardy kiwi are not heavy eaters, but putting some compost or well-cured manure into the hole that you dug for them is beneficial. They like full sun to partially shaded areas. Be sure the soil drains reasonably well. Mulch the topsoil around the plants to help keep moisture in the ground. Hardy kiwi prefer soil with a pH of 6.5.

Plant hardy kiwi in rows, spacing them about 15 feet apart. Kiwi’s are a fast growing vine that can grow up to 10 feet high and produce over 100 lbs. of fruit. Thus, it’s important to grow your hardy kiwi on a trellis so you can properly manage the growth and access the fruit. Below, I’ve included an Organic Gardening How To video on how to build this trellis.

Once planted, prune the kiwi back to two buds. These two buds will develop into shoots. Once the shoots have developed, choose the stonger shoot to become your main trunk and remove the other one.

Tie this trunk to the main post of your trellis. Once it has achieved the height of the trellis, cut off the growing tip. Buds will develop here and grow into shoots. Choose 2-4 shoots to become your growing branches and remave all others.

Now that you’ve created the shape of the plant, future pruning will be done to ensure fruit growth. Hardy kiwi fruit develops on vines that were created in the previous year. Prune your kiwi plants in the early spring before buds develop. Remove any vines that are over 1 year old and remove any vines that had fruit in the previous year.

Harvesting kiwi fruit that is grown on a trellis is easy. To determine when to harvest, pick a few and let them sweeten on their own for 2-3 days. When you find the sweetness that you’re looking for, pick the remainder and refrigerate.

Kiwi fruit can be kept in the refrigerator for 5-6 weeks. Remove the ones that you want to eat 2-3 days ahead of time and let them reach their full flavor.

The following Organic Gardening How To video provides some more detailed information on growing your own hardy kiwi’s:

And this Organic Gardening How To video is a good video to help you build a stong trellis for all those kiwis that you’re going to grow:

And if you would like to learn more Organic Gardening How To tips, read Organic Gardening Magic or My Organic Food Garden. Or, read them both! They both have a 60-Day Money Back Guarantee.

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Hydrangeas are such a beautiful bush with big, lovely flowers that bloom from spring to fall. I have two in my yard – one has blue flowers and one has pink. This Organic Gardening How To is about why hydrangea flowers have different colors and how you can easily change those colors if you want to.

There are three standard colors for hydrangea flowers – pink, white, and blue.

Hydrangeas are unique in that it’s the soil that they are planted in that will determine their flowers color. Acidic soils produce a blue flower and less acidic soils produce the white and pink flowers.

If you have blue hydrangeas, you can change them to pink. If you have pink hydrangeas, you can change them to blue. Only the Almighty can change the color of the white hydrangea.

Watch this Organic Gardening How To video on how you can change your pink hydrangeas to blue one’s if you choose to do so:

So, if you have hydrangeas in your garden, you can change their flowers color by slightly changing their soils pH level.

If your hydrangeas have pink and you would like to make them blue, you now know that your soil needs to be slightly more acidic. You can add Bonide Organic Aluminum Sulfate to make it more acidic, but you should really test your soils pH level so you have a good idea on how much aluminum sulfate to add. I recommend the Luster Leaf Mini Soil pH/Moisture Tester to do that with.

For blue hydrangeas, it’s best to shoot for a pH level between 5.0-5.2.

Be cautious! If you add too much aluminum sulfate you will damage the plants root system and possibly kill the plant. If you have time, you can also increase the soils acidity level by mixing peat or coffee grounds into the soil.

If you presently have blue hydrangea flowers and you would like to make them pink, you can do that my adding Good Earth Organics Hydrated Lime into your soil. The pink hydrangea prefers a pH level between 6.0-6.2.

One last tip to this Organic Gardening How To – it’s best to make these changes to your soils pH level in early spring before the hydrangea blossoms.

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