I am wondering, have you ever bought any of your seeds from seed companies that specialize in preserving rare varieties to protect biodiversity?

Two such companies are:

http://www.seedsofchange.com/

http://www.heritageharvestseed.com/

If you have used heirloom/extant seed varieties, please let us know how that went for you!

Good luck with your 2009 garden!

[...] Plan in advance Plan your garden today to ensure summer success. Decide what you’d like to grow. How much space can you devote to the project? How much time [...]

[...] We grow some of our own food. [...]

[...] of frugality and simple living, Kris and I take pleasure in growing our own food. We started planning our garden in February. Today, on Easter — a day of rebirth — we paused to examine our [...]

Plant bush varieties, if you have room left over, at their feet. Learn to interplant and rotation plant. Google is your friend.

Here in Michigan I garden at least 9 months of the year. I start with lettuces before the last frost of one winter and finish up with cabbages and Brussels sprouts after the first frost of the next winter. WELL after that first frost!

Both freezing and canning are expensive up-front (need a freezer + containers + electricity or need jars + canning utensils + lids & rings) but fairly cheap (roughly 10 cents / qt for canned home-grown veggies) long run. Drying, however, is cheap from the get-go.

Skip fertilizer unless you’ve had your soil tested. It’ll cost you in some states, but is money well spent. The testing comes with application recommendations. Or garden organically … returning everything you don’t eat to the soil and also any leaves, etc. that come your way. Compost (lots of methods to make it, DAGS) builds soil structure, which is even more important than the nutrients … which it also builds.

DAGS on the term “French Intensive Gardening” and “Square Foot Gardening”. You won’t have all the ingredients the French do, but you will, with ingenuity, have enough.

I figure my garden supplies nearly half the annual food for my wife and I in only about 250 sq. ft. Yours can too.

[...] J.D. Filed under Gardening News by The [...]

garden for victory…

Since February is the time for garden planning, I’ve started thinking about what I’ll do with my rented garden plot ($18 for 20×25 feet) later ……

[...] Gardening 101: Plan Today for Summer Success [...]

Comment 21 asked about keeping critters out. We have lost much of our corn the past two years to the raccoons! They also love to rip squash off the vines (but not eat them!). So far, we just chalk it up to one of the pleasures of living with nature, but our damage has been minor. I have read that scent-type repellants are the way to go, assuming you don’t get too much rain during the growing season. You can buy granules, sprays, clip-ons with various scents aimed at rabbits or deer– don’t know about the turkeys. There are plenty of ideas about using garlic and bars of soap to do the same job, but I’ve never tried them. Search the internet to separate fact from fiction? Good luck!

[...] Vegetarians of all stripes may be interested in The Veg Blog. If you’d like to grow your own vegetables, be sure to check out my wife’s recent GRS article on starting a garden. [...]

[...] Gardening 101: Plan Today for Summer Success – J.D. has a great writeup on how to start an easy garden that can produce great food all summer. [...]

[...] If you’ve got some land a garden is a good way to save. Start planning now. [...]

[...] From the Get Rich Slowly blog, “Gardening 101: Plan Today for Summer Success“. I’d really like to plant something for this upcoming season, but since I’m just renting a room in the house where I live today, and I think that I might be moving this fall. Does anyone have suggestions for semi-portable vegetable gardening solutions? Or would that be enough time to do a summer harvest and let it go afterwards? Tags: gardening, questions [...]

[...] Get Rich Slowly » Gardening 101: Plan Today for Summer Success I am going to plant my first garden this year. This has some great advice for others who might be starting out. Wish me luck! (tags: gardening garden vegetables) [...]

[...] Get growing: A good, basic guide for starting your own kitchen garden — February is the perfect time. Get Rich Slowly [...]

We have a probably 5 year old grape plant trellised in our old backyard. This is a tiny backyard (probably 15 X 30 feet) and the support is three 4X4s, one in the center and one on each end, with wire between as you have it. There’s one central leader, two “arms” growing along the wires on each side, and the fruiting canes grow from the arms.

To keep this thing under control in the small space–to keep it more or less contained in the vertical plane–I prune several times a season. Cut essentially everything back to the arms when the buds break, thin when the canes are a few feet, do a little more control when the canes get really gangly. Those things put on a LOT of biomass each year! Good support matters!

My question for this coming year is: what is an inexpensive way to keep the critters out? We are in a fairly rural area in NH, so deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, and others seem to do their damage at the worst times.

The plot is approximately 12′ x 30′. That’s a guess, but it’s pretty big, so store-bought stuff gets pretty expensive. Twine around the plot didn’t do the job.

Thanks so much!

[...] Plan your veggie garden today for summer success [via Lifehacker] [...]

if i remember correctly, perhaps last summer, you had linked to some books on container gardening, and i’d be interested to pick them up (at the public library).
as we’ve moved into a new apartment here in Chicago, we now have a (almost) rooftop deck, which is (relatively speaking) huge. unfortunately, its not quite high enough to see into Wrigley, but we are completely open on 3 sides (with only our actual apartment on the 4th).
i’d love to turn some of that space into a garden, but i’m not sure where to start and what plants would be viable…and i thought i remember reading a tip or two here over the last year…

The State(s) of Credit…

…

Great article.

But you can’t use the supermarket variety. It generally has been treated to stop it from sprouting. Get some good organic garlic – pick the largest cloves (skin on) and plant.

Easy!