Gardening and Time

When people ask me how to get started with a garden, one of the first questions I ask them is how much time do you have to spend in your garden each day?

The reason I ask this question is people often have great gardens in their minds but in their daily lives, they simply do not have the time to care for those gardens. 

Sure, the first few days are full of energy as the garden bed or beds are prepared and the seeds and seedlings are planted and everything is watered.

But then life happens and the busy schedule that is many peoples’ reality starts to take over and tending the garden gets put aside or left to the weekend. Now, once a garden is established, you do not need to visit it every day, although I do recommend that if you really want a thriving organic garden then allow yourself at least five minutes each day.

During those five minutes all you are doing is observing, looking for changes like any unwanted visitors or signs that something may be wrong, brown leaves, chew marks and so on.

This early warning will increase your odds of saving the plants before the problem zooms out of control.

Pondering 2017

The first seed catalogue came the other day Veseys.com is an east coast company and has a good organic seed section. I have purchased seeds from them for a number of years. It is usually the first of several seed catalogues that arrive via mail. I access others online and in a future blog I will talk about the companies I like best.

I enjoy having a seed catalogue in my hands. I can readily mark pages and flip back and forth. Vesey's catalogue gets my mind pondering the possibilities and that is how the new season begins.

It is still early and planting out even in the greenhouse is many months away. As the months, pass, the seed catalogues will become dog-eared and fragile but still full of hope and possibilities.

Next post: "How much do you need to know about soil to create a thriving garden?

A Basic Guide to Houseplants

Getting Started: Plant Placement

Step One: Light

Know your space; where will the plants live? Windows are the main source of natural light for indoor plants so which way do the windows face? If you live in the northern hemisphere, the sun will move in the southern sky which means that a window that faces north does not get direct sun; while an unobstructed southern window will get direct sunlight all day long.

An east facing window receives morning sun and a west facing window will see sun in the afternoon.

Step Two: Temperature

Plants, for the most part, will require a drop in temperature at night, why/ The nighttime temperature needs to be 8 to 10 degrees cooler than the day as during the day, the leaves of the plant manufacture their food and it is only the lower temperature at night that allows them to distribute it to the roots and other growing parts.

Step Three: Humidity.

House can become very dry especially in the winter time when the heat is on and plants will simply dry out. Humidity is the amount of water vapour in the air surrounding the plant; this affects how a plant transpires. Transpiration is how the leaves and stem of the plant give off water which then evaporates into the surrounding air.

If the air around the plant is dry, the plant will then give off too much water and may wilt.

Mist your plants on a regular basis especially in the winter and you will have few problems.

You can also arrange your plants into groups which will then increase their combined transpiration and humidity which will increase the water vapour.

Soil:

I recommend buying a potting soil, preferably organic to grow your houseplants in; there are specialised soils for African violets and succulents for example.

You now have enough knowledge to get started. There is only one thing more to do and that is  to determine how much time you have to devote to the indoor garden. There is work to do and if you start too big the chances of failure increase, start small, get used to the garden and then expand. I have seen a room go from 2 plants to be so full with plants that it was necessary to remove a chair and an end table.

This is fine if you can manage a garden of this proportion but a nightmare if it dominates all your time.

Indoor gardening is a great way to unwind; to slow down and enjoy, do not let your indoor garden outgrow you.

From My Garden on Facebook

Good day, I just set up this FB page. 

Selecting Containers

Make sure the container is big enough to allow the plant to grow, you may eventually want to repot it but then again you may not so allow enough space for the roots to develop. Strong healthy roots make for strong and healthy plants and strong and healthy plants withstand pests and disease better than weak plants will.

You will find that plants in containers may need more water than plants that have their roots in the soil. My experience with containers on a balcony, that was fairly high up and subject to strong winds, showed me the soil dried out much faster than the soil in my garden, even when the garden was situated in the same amount of sunlight as the containers.

The plants had less wind protection on the balcony and the roots, unlike the roots of the plants that were planted directly into the earth, could not reach out for water but counted on me to supply it. So check your container plants regularly to see if they need water.

Urban Agricultural Enterprises

All living beings must have nourishment better known as food. Food production and food distribution, carried out to meet this basic need, are the common ground upon which we can build sustainable communities.

Food production, otherwise known as agriculture and food processing, can create sustainable employment, healthy neighbourhoods and a strong local economy.

How we grow and transport food from the farm to the kitchen defines our society. Fast Food is becoming our most popular food delivery system and it is one of the most environmentally unfriendly.

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Late Summer Snack