Home Garden Info

Home Gardener answers:

Our city has recycle bins for each home and we have trash receptacle’s that are plastic. Cans can be recycled. I use s small waste basket in all our rooms and recycle grocery bags to use a trash bags before putting them in their containers outside. I don’t use the dish washer and I also hang dry all my clothing.

Enveloped and junk mail I recycle whatever can be used for my scrap books since there is a lot of paper waste or I use them to make note paper out of it for short notes to my husband. Instead of sponges I use dish rags that can be washed instead of paper towels and as well we use old T-shirt rags. Hotel shampoo or sample size soaps and stuff I use to hand wash clothing, I do my own dry cleaning w/ Dryell and the list goes on and on. You can get very creative when cooking as well, cook in bulk and freeze so you don’t waste electricity for the same amount of time cook two roasts instead of one in the crock pot. Also, cheaper. Home made cookies is cheaper than purchasing them. Also, if you have a dollar store close to you, you’d be surprised what you can find in there.

Home Gardener answers:

Yummmmm……….humus would taste nice too with the crackers

Home Gardener answers:

Hate to break it to you but Vitamins for most people do little to nothing. If your eating lots of veggies your getting a good portion of your vitamins there. If you can afford it the easiest thing to do is to switch to olive oil. Olive oil has a lot of anti-oxidants in it and it has good fats which help reduce your cholesterol level. You can buy big jars of it at a warehouse club. You are eating just red meat which in moderation is Okay. But too much read meat can lead to heart disease and other ailments. Are you getting any complex carbohydrates like whole wheat bread? The worst thing you can eat is probably white bread. It gets converted directly to sugar in the body. If you don’t use that sugar for energy then it goes directly to fat. You should really be eating some fruits and that does not include apple juice. There is basically no nutritional value in apple juice it is basically sugar water. The V-8 juice or juice fusion drinks are very good tasting. Since you guys are in your 30′s and 40′s 6 hours of sleep is not good at all. 6 Hours is normal for people in their mid to late 50′s to the later years. You should at least get 7-8 hours most nights.

Home Gardener answers:

Not quite. A gamete is the actual sex cell, like sperm or egg.

Haploid on the other hand is more of an adjective, describing that the gamete has half the number of chromosomes of a normal cell (which would be diploid, instead.)

Home Gardener answers:

If that is true then I will be going to jail. Big brother can’t stop me from growing food in my garden and giving fresh produce to my neighbors.

Home Gardener answers:

POWER!!!!…they are stealing our money…they are stealing our rights…and they are stealing our freedoms. They are coming after our health care…and it won’t be long before they come after our guns…they want control of your thermostat in your house…they want to put a GPS in your car so they can tax you for every mile you move and will know every move you make…they are coming after the very businesses that hire many of us if they feel that business is presenting a danger to the economy………so whats left people????….WHATS LEFT???…..OUR FOOD!!!….Next time you go to the local produce market, produce stand, orchard market just stop your shopping and stand and look…LOOK at the bounty of wonderful food we are blessed with…take a real close look because YOUR GOVERNMENT WANTS TO DESTROY IT!!…YOUR president and his willful demons in congress despises YOU!!!….they despise our GREAT NATION!!!…if Americans don’t get some kahunas and stand up to this BLATANT TYRANNY then you DESERVE TO STARVE!!!…THIS crew that has infected the white house and congress will not stop until they control every once of YOUR PERSONAL LIFE!!!….IF we don’t know from history what happens to the population that ALLOWS the government to control everything including the food supply what hope is there for this nation….THANKS libs for the dumbing down of our population!!!…I guess today most people have no idea what Stalin did to his population…here is a hint…HE STARVED TO DEATH MILLIONS OF HIS OWN COUNTRYMEN!!!…WAKE UP AND GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR KEYSTER AMERICA!!!….

Home Gardener answers:

Hummm, I would mulch when I have the permanent plants to a height where I could mulch and not cover them or crush them by accident. Most direct seed sowing is for things like lettuce or beets and things like that and then you thin them. After that they take a while to get big enough to surround by mulch. I use straw not hay because it is cheap, not acidic and makes the soil lighter and breaks down well as well as lets the rain in and keeps weeds down. Hay is not good, it has a lot of seeds in it and can be bad for your back lol. Good luck.

Home Gardener answers:

I don’t know about any threat from chemicals leaching ito the soil but the black mulch will increase the soil temperature. Right now, that’s a point of concern here in Los Angeles with our heat wave. From fall to spring, that would not be a bad thing. But I can’t help regarding the dye and what it’s made from.

Good luck.

Home Gardener answers:

Nope no danger at all i have it in my garden and everything is growing well i also have the red

Home Gardener answers:

I’d have to disagree with both. My experience with both compost and straw has not been good. Many times you find compost with weed seeds in it. Straw often has to sit for several months for all the weed killers to wash out of it, and then it is often full of nutgrass seeds.
My best cheap mulch has been newspapers with a topping of garden soil to hold it down. If you’re not cheap, order the paper mulches from a garden supply outlet. The red ones are supposed to work wonders for Tomatoes.

Home Gardener answers:

While wood chips, sawdust and pine straw are good for a flower bed, don’t use them in your vegetable patch. They all can harbor insects, are high acid and the main disadvantage is that when they start to break down (rot) the process will rob much needed nitrogen from the soil. Compost, rotted barnyard manure, old hardwood leaves, sphagnum moss, hay and straw all work well for veggies.

Home Gardener answers:

With the exception of clear plastic (which warms the soil), mulch cools the soil but it does preserve moisture. Grass clippings and compost are a good organic mulch. They are relatively high in nitrogen, so they don’t need extra. Wood chips, bark, and leaves are good for mulch, but they tax the decomposition capacity of the soil. Vegetables will not get enough nitrogen as a result of too much organic material. Depending on the decomposition level, add enough nitrogen fertilizer to compensate for the added organic material. Forgive me if I don’t speak strictly organic language. I’m hybrid in my gardening techniques. I use the developments along with the experience of the ages.

I use grass clippings, peat moss,”Nutrimulch” (wood shavings and turkey manure), cow maunure, kitchen-waste compost, wood bark, and chips, depending on availability. I add NPK fertilizer to boost growth and decomposition of organic matter. I till vines and stalks into the soil as early as possible to provide food for microbes and earthworms. And I get big yields of delicious vegetables: peas, beans, carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic, parsley, herbs of all sorts, flowers, potatoes, and squash. I used a little greenhouse (what I call a hoop house) to warm my garden this year, and in spite of snows and freezing temperatures, my peas are nearly ready to bloom.

Home Gardener answers:

Moss harbor critters like red bug and mosquitoes,if you would like to put it to good use wash it in diluted Clorox then rinse well it is good for holding in moisture.

Home Gardener answers:

Grass clippings are all I use in my vegetable garden. I add them throughout the summer and they compost in place. My soil is terrific, with very little effort. Just make sure that you don’t turn green clippings in to your soil as that depletes available nitrogen. Once they’re dry it’s fine. I have a very weedy lawn but haven’t had much trouble with weeds in the garden at all. Straw does work great too but the years that I used hay I was overrun with clover. Between that and the fact that grass clippings are free it was a clear choice for me!

Home Gardener answers:

Living on a village has its good sides. I have made a a small hot-house and there, herbal plants that need care are growing and so do lettuces, peppers and tomatoes. Out on the open are growing spinach, cabbages, leeks and onions.
Many years ago we grew potatoes too, but moles got the best of the crop. So that was given up. In all, the bought green groceries are limited to fruit, mostly during the summer.

Home Gardener answers:

Absolutely! They taste a lot better than shop bought veg, no chemicals or artifical colouring. It’s also very satisfying when you’ve grown them yourself. You don’t really need a garden either, a lot of veg can be grown in large pots.

Home Gardener answers:

Yes, if you have a garden or allotment it’s a great way to supplement your diet. I shared a house with a friend for several years and in the garden, which wasn’t very big, we managed to grow runner beans, broad beans, onions, garlic, courgettes, rhubarb, peas, tomatoes and several varieties of herbs.

Home-grown vegetables always taste better and you have the satisfaction of getting something to show for the work you’ve put in. If you’re new to growing there are plenty of books on the subject which you can buy or borrow and when you buy seeds, the planting instructions are printed on the packet.

You need seed trays, a decent set of gardening tools, a greenhouse (or if that isn’t possible, a cold frame), flower pots, watering can, beanpoles, lots of twine, some bird netting (but you don’t want to discourage the birds completely – see below), some kind of insect repellent, a compost bin, a bit of muscle power and some patience.

One good thing to do is set up a bird table with plenty of seeds and vegetable scraps to encourage the birds, especially at this time of year when it’s nesting season and they’re raising their young. Not only will they be less likely to start feasting on your seedlings, they will also gobble up lots of creepy-crawlies that would otherwise attack your plants.

If you’re really lucky you might even find you have a resident hedgehog. These are called the gardener’s friend for a good reason – they eat slugs and other pests. So do slow worms. Slow worms like to hide under rocks – put down a few rocks on a patch of bare earth and who knows, you might find one.

Reward will come when you realise you have produced e.g. A year’s supply of garlic…

Home Gardener answers:

Yes.
Tomatoes, chillies, onions, green beans and leeks.
Rosemary, garlic chives, thyme, parsley and basil.
It is so nice to go and get your vegetables and herbs fresh from the garden.

Home Gardener answers:

For the first couple of years,

you will spend quite a bit on your tools, pots of different sizes, bags of compost to make your soil good, Insecticide and fungicide spray along with other sprays which you will need, garden canes, cloches, water butts and hose pipe etc.

Its hard work in preparing everything and keeping it that way, but once done you will get great satisfaction when picking them fresh from your ground plus giving a few left overs to your neighbours.

It depends on how serious you want to make it and it can be more expensive than buying from the shops at times, but once you get the bug you wont be able to stop.

As for your information. You can get all this from your own P.C. Just type in…for eg… (growing cabbages) and it will give you all the info you need. ( Or preparing a vegetable garden.)

It will tell you how and when to grow all types of veg.

As for your seeds…Buy them off ebay, there are some good cheap sellers there. Don’t get paying high prices from shops or garden centres when you can buy them for 99p a pack.

You will soon learn what to do and what not to do.

Its not the growing you have to worry about, its all about getting the soil right. Just like I said at the beginning. Buying compost and adding all what you can to the soil to make it a good texture, as your veges wont grow very good just in soil alone.

Happy Gardening.

Home Gardener answers:

Heck no! I grow my own veggies and just bought red peppers to tide me over until I can harvest the ones on my plant. They were on sale for $1.99 a piece. I only paid $1.99 for each of the three plants I have and they each have about 8 peppers in various growth stages that I am waiting till maturity to harvest. Same goes for my tomato plants. I have romas, grape, beefeaters and Big Berthas. I don’t believe I paid over $3.00 for any of my plants but just paid $2.99 a pound for romas, 2 containers for $3 for grape tomatoes while I’m waiting for them to turn red. Even if I throw in the water and organic fertilizer growing my own veggies, citrus, avocado and herbs is saving me money. Besides nothing beats eating veggies right out of your own garden, sharing your harvest with friends and neighbors and controlling and knowing what chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides WEREN’T used on what you are eating.

Home Gardener answers:

Salmonella and Escherichia coli (or e.coli) are passed on to edible plants when manure (of any kind) has one or both bacteria and has not been properly composted but is used as fertilizer anyway. The bacterium goes into the soil and is taken up by the plants through vascular absorption (or systemically) and is INSIDE the plant and fruit or vegetable tissue – so the bacteria cannot be washed off.

If you use chemical fertilizers, none at all or properly heated manure compost – and there are any harmful organisms in the manure they will be killed by the heat (during proper heat composting) and using the compost is fine. You still should wash all your fruits and vegetables before consuming them . I hope this information was helpful.

Home Gardener answers:

It is not. It is, however, part of “feel-good-ism.” It FEELS good to so it, but lends nothing to the earth’s so-called “sustainability.”

I made that last part up myself. – Thumper

Home Gardener answers:

I have some banana trees. I do not live in a tropical climate, I live near the Mississippi River in the upper midwest.
You grow them from trees. The trees shoot up new trees when they are about two years old. You can separate the new baby trees from the roots of the bigger trees to grow separately. They do not have seeds.

We take our banana trees outside in April where we plant them in sand and full sun. At about age five, they will drop a long rope with a beautifully sweet-smelling flower on the end of it. Small four inch bananas then form on the top of the plant that grow upward not down like you see them in the stores. After having bananas the big tree dies. By that time it is about ten feet tall or more.

Each fall in mid October, we dig up each tree, cut off all the leaves and wrap the roots in a garbage bag then haul them to the basement. They winter there where we dribble water on each rootball about three times during the winter. In spring we take them back out where they sprout new leaves and grow.

I accidentally killed some of them last year by fertilizing them. So just for reference, do not fertilize. Just let them grow. They are sturdy, hardy plants. And when you get rewarded with a flowering tree you feel wonderful. Their scent is beautiful.