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April Square Foot Gardening Tips
Finally the weather is getting warmer. We are getting ready to prepare our new square foot gardening beds.
More about that in following posts.
Today I thought you might enjoy a video with the The Garden Girl Patti Moreno & Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening. They are giving Square Foot gardening tips for April. They cover 2 topics in this video.
How to introduce the plants that you have been growing indoors in the window or under lights to the great out doors, and the advantages of rain barrels.
I ran into a few great tips when I was doing research for this article from a lady that was running out of room in her seedling area and needed to move some of her plants outside. She had a little green house like the one below. ( I found a picture of one on Amazon but you can find them at garden stores in your area.)
She used the little twinkle Christmas lights turned on just at night and put them at the bottom of her green house to raise the temperature. I would use a thermometer to test the temperature for a few nights to make sure it keeps above freezing before moving the plants in. Another good idea is a shop light with a 100 watt bulb.
Rain barrels are a great way to get free water. You can also get little kits to join your barrels together to take advantage of a good rain. Found this on Amazon as well but will give you an idea on how to build your own.
See the video below for April Square Foot Gardening Tips.
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I’m going to try this method. I’ll keep you posted on my progress throughout the growing season. (Which for me won’t start until the May long weekend.) My seedlings are underway, but ,for now I’m just waiting for the snow to disappear. I certainly can’t complain about the expense of the containers What a fun way to reuse.
To recap the project,you’ll need:
- 2 and 3 litre bottles (@ litre for peppers, 3 litre for tomatoes)
- A coffee filtre
- Strong scissors for cutting the filtre and bottle
- Nylon twine
- Compost
- Cut off the lower portion of the bottle
- Cut off the neck of the bottle
- Cut 3 holes in the bottle at the large opening for the strings
- Pull the strings and knot
- Cut the filtre in the middle and gently pull the plant through
-Gently pull the plant from the wide opening through the former neck of the bottle. Press the coffee filtre against the sides of the bottle
- Fill with miracle grow moisture dirt
- You can plant a marigold or decorative grass at the top
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Making Cute Garden Markers.
With Earth Day coming up and Spring in full swing, we decided to turn our attention to our garden. We had a glorious weekend planting herbs, tomatoes and strawberries. I love watching my little gardeners busy at work in the dirt. We had 9 strawberry plants last year but alas, it wasn’t enough for my berry picking children. This year we have planted an additional 8 plants… do you think 17 strawberry plants will do the trick? We’ll just have to wait and see…
With our new plants planted, we needed plant markers. I browsed upon some sweet spoon markers on Etsy the other day and thought T and K would have fun making a set of their own for our plants…
For Instruction on how to make these cute garden markers visit
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Greenhouse That Will Grow
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Play up the Season’s pastel hues with these cute Easter decorating ideas. Style doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Let these simple yet elegant ideas inspire you.
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An Attractive And Affordable
Greenhouse That Will Grow
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Seed balls are a fun and easy way for adults and children to get into the gardening spirit. These clay balls mixed with compost and seeds are the perfect remedy for drab areas requiring a splash of colourful blooms.
Used for years by guerrilla gardeners to green up urban vacant lots, seed balls are perfect for the garden. They don’t require planting. Just toss a few in an area and let the rain “melt” them. The clay protects the seeds from predatory insects. As the clay melts away, the compost nourishes the seed and small plant.
Seed balls can be made at anytime of the year and are easily stored. (Just don’t store them in plastic.) They’re perfect for gifts or for slipping into your pocket for your next walk. The seeds should be native to the area to avoid introducing invasive plants. Wild flowers and grasses are perfect for seed balls.
Recipe For Seed Balls
5 parts dry red clay (Dry powder, not wet)
3 parts compost. (In the video a mixture of coco fibre and compost is used.)
1 part wild flower seeds
1 part water
Add the water after all of the ingredients are mixed. Roll into balls(about 1-2 inch) and let dry.
Masanobu Fukuoka is said to have reintroduced the ancient technique of seed balls.(Or at the very least to have invented the seed ball technique.)
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An Attractive And Affordable
Greenhouse That Will Grow
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The dehydrator in the video is an Excalibur. Unfortunately, I don’t sell them, so if you want one you’ll have to look online. I use mine all year round. It’s perfect for dehydrating food from the garden, but it’s also great for year round bargain hunting. When there’s a sale on fruits and veggies, dehydrate them. You don’t have to worry about them spoiling, and you can store them for use at a later date.
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An Attractive And Affordable
Greenhouse That Will Grow
Anything In Any Conditions...”Click Here!
Jayne’s Garden Store
For the gardeners on this Blog.
Last year My daughter and I planted a four square garden for the first time and we were very pleased with the results, even through the weather in Alberta was not very co- operative. We managed to grow parsley, peas, garlic, zucchini, lettuce, cucumbers, beans, and potatoes. We got lots of potatoes and that was a big surprise to us as neither of us had ever grown potatoes before. We were not sure how they would work in a square foot garden. ( Since then we have done some reading and are now a little wiser. Sorry, Mel. ) We used the small red potatoes and they have worked just fine.
This year we plan to expand our garden and I’ll keep you posted. The ground is still covered in snow but we are tending to our new seedling under the lights. In the meantime while we are waiting for the snow and icicles to melt we have created a new category for the blog. It is calledJayne’s Garden Storeand it is a work in Progress. We continue to add items so check back often.
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An Attractive And Affordable
Greenhouse That Will Grow
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Ethical and Moral Farming
I adore Joel Salatin. He’s everything that I want to be when I “grow up”. Polyface Inc is multigenerational family owned farm in the Shanandoah Valley.
His guiding principals allow for landscape healing and nutritional superiority. If you’re interested in a common sense approach to ethical and moral farming, healing the land and healing the culture, Joel Salatin is worth a look. (And worth buying a book. Or two.
Enhance your relationship with the natural world more than simply growing some tomatoes and green beans in the back yard. Are you thinking of planting an orchard, consider starting a forest garden.
The typical gardener works with only one layer. Annual crop plants (ground cover only.) A forest gardener works with three layers, canopy(trees), shrubs, and ground cover.
Success of any agricultural (food-producing) enterprise is imitation of natural systems.
The goal of the forest gardener is to plant what feed the garden itself. The goal is to establish a perennial polyculture from which food is harvested with minimal disturbance. This means learning to plant the type of trees, shrubs and ground to mutually supportive a community of food-bearing plants in all three layers. That is the forest garden.
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An Attractive And Affordable
Greenhouse That Will Grow
Anything In Any Conditions...”Click Here!
Beginners Guide to Holistic Herb Gardening
herb book
Dear Fellow Gardening Enthusiast:
If you are interested in learning about holistic herbal Gardening. I found an awesome beginners Guide to Holistic Herbal Gardening. It basically covers every bit of information you’ve ever wanted to know about growing garden herbs.
This book contains
Points on deciding whether to start an Indoor or Outdoor Garden
How to preserve your herbs with these 3 simple techniques….
Secrets of expert herb gardeners that few people ever know about!
Little known, yet simple ways to design your own beautiful and aromatic home herb garden, which will be the envy of all your friends! There’s more to design than meets the eye!
3 proven steps to harvest your herbs for medicinal, culinary or aromatic purposes. (You’ll probably never want to harvest your botanical herbs, they’ll be too pretty to pick!)
Simple keys (that’s right in front of your eyes) to eliminate diseases, pests & insects!
What you never what to do when it comes to picking a location for your herbs.
You’ll discover in just a few short minutes how to design a time tested and proven strategy for planting companion herbs! What’s that, You Ask? I’ll show you!
When to transplant & harvest your herbs for maximum benefits!
Everyday tips and tricks for havesting, preserving and storing your herbs!
An inexpensive way to propagate new plants so you’ll never have to buy seeds or seedlings again!
How often to fertilize, water or “thin” back your herbs! It’s not as simple as it appears!
Growing requirements and uses of herbs!
The once famous but forgotten secret that instantly allows you to grow any kind of herb…
