GardenSpotlight

Now that you have a great new area to plant in after the last “double digging” article, what are you going to plant?  Last year, we saw a huge increase in vegetable transplant sales thanks to all the national food scares (more about that another time) and the cost of fuel rising so high that it affected just about everything. Vegetable gardening is very rewarding and is a wonderful activity to do with your kids too, instilling a sense of pride and self-worth after a realized accomplishment of a job well done and freshly picked vegetables to eat. It may even get your kids to eat more veggies since they helped to grow them. If you’d like to start early, try planting lettuces, spinach, peas, beets, carrots, rappini, radishes, onions, leeks, radicchio, braising greens, romanesco, kale, cabbage, cauliflower or broccoli. Those items can take lower temperatures and actually grow better in the cooler weather. Keep an eye on the lettuces and spinach, harvesting them while young so t...

I have had several people ask me how we grow such great looking eggplant and want to know why they had problems this year with their eggplant. They seem to have beautiful plants and lots of flowers, but no fruit on their plants. There are several answers to this problem, and the answer for each person's garden may be one or a combination of both. First, we need to remember that while it is important to fertilize regularly, too much Nitrogen will offset the fruiting capability of the plant. In essence, the Nitrogen encourages plant growth, so that the foliage and plant itself grow and remain healthy, but while the plant grows, the Nitrogen does nothing to encourage fruit set. In other words, the plant puts its energy into growth, rather than fruit production. Because of this, you may have some flowers, but they may be dropping off the plant prematurely, before pollination occurs. By changing the ratio of elements in the fertilizer, we can regulate how our plants grow on the ...