Are Your Seeds Shooting BlanksAre Your Seeds Shooting Blanks? There is nothing worse than sowing a row of vegetable or flower seeds that won't germinate. So now, before you plant them, you should test to see if your seeds suffered from bad storage conditions or just from old age: Take several sheets of paper towels and moisten with water from a spray bottle. Sprinkle a...
Build Your Own Vegetable TrellisBuild Your Own Vegetable Trellis Short on garden space? If you build a trellis you'll get at least two crops of veggies and/or fruits in the same space as it takes to grow just one. Plus, as your plants are trained to grow upwards, they will get more light and air. And sunnier, dryer conditions mean less m...
Complex PlotComplex Plot Planning your vegetable garden? You might want to consider rearranging last year's setup, no matter how successful it was. The logic here is that many diseases and insects afflict particular plants, so by moving the vegetables around you won't give these plant assassins a head start on their destruction. Also, if you have a...
Few tastes rival that of homegrown tomatoes or freshly picked corn. Plan your garden well and enjoy tasty, wholesome vegetables all season. For best results, sketch your plan on paper before putting shovel to soil. Choose your favorite vegetables and space according to seed packet or plant tag instructions.
The best way to protect plants from cabbage loopers and cabbageworms—the larvae of two different moths—is to exclude the moths by using fabric row covers.
You can also treat the loopers with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis).
Vegetables demand adequate nutrients in the soil to see them through to harvest. An insufficient amount of nutrients will retard growth and this, in turn, will reduce both the quality and yield of your harvest.