While I have heard many times that the pesticides that we find on our fruits and vegetables that we buy from the local grocery are bad for you, I really never took it seriously. That was until I saw exactly what residue came off some fruit that I rinsed under our water ionizer. This lead [...] Read more »
Lasagna Gardening
Anyone who has tried lasagna gardening will be sure to tell you how much easier it is than traditional methods of preparing soil. It is a procedure for building up soil, usually in a raised bed for a flower or vegetable garden, that basically involves layering different organic materials on top of each other – [...] Read more »
Square Foot Gardening
One gardening method I have found really useful when space is limited is the technique of square foot gardening. Pioneered by Mel Bartholomew in the 1980s, there are a series of books available explaining the tips and tricks to making Square Foot Gardening work for you, I recommend this one, the All New Square Foot [...] Read more »
New House, new Garden!
Having recently moved to a new house, I have an entire new garden to work with. My former residence, a townhouse, had a postage stamp sized yard. The new place (in Keller, TX) has a good sized yard. I do have to work around a pool, but even so I have a lot more real [...] Read more »
Delicious Healthy Salad recipe
I threw together this unusually delicious salad last night. I am certainly no gourmet chef, but I thought it worth sharing:) 1/2 head of red leaf lettuce, chopped 1 tomato, wedged 1/2 mango, diced 1 appled, chopped 1/4 stick of celery, chopped fine 1 clementine, pulled into wedges It tastes great without any dressing. The [...] Read more »
Texas Pure Soil Blend – Get the Dirt!
I plan to talk about the construction of my raised beds in a future post, but today I will address the soil mix I utilized. The City of Plano, under a contract for the North Texas Municipal Water District, puts out a line of garden mixes under the brand name ‘Texas Pure’. These products are largely created from recyclable [...] Read more »
Texas A&M – Home Gardening Resource
In the process of planning my plantings for the year I have done a lot of research on the Internet - I tend to suffer from Analysis Paralysis! I would have to say that one of the most useful resources I have come across in my reading is the information provide by Texas A&M. There [...] Read more »
Growth Update
Today I am performing some record keeping, logging some information on the growth in some of my beds so far. It will be interesting to look back at this over the year and monitor my progress. First of all the tomatoes. Today I finally put some twine up to help guide the growth of these [...] Read more »
Blackberrys Planted – Apache and Araphao
Today I planted my Apache and Arapaho Erect blackberry cells from Stark Bros (3 of each). There are both thornless varieties, and with any luck I will get an extended harvest from having two different breeds. I have planted them in a row of 6, with about 2 feet between each seedling, in the front [...] Read more »
Blueberry Bushes Planted
Last night I finally got around to planting the two Blueberry bushes I have had parked in a box in the house for a few days. Both plants are ‘Rabbiteye’ varieties…one is of type Tifblue and one of type Climax. The theory is that having more than one variety of Blueberry improves the yield, I shall [...] Read more »