Home Garden Info

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.