1. Ignoring Soil Health: attempting to grow high quality plants from a low quality soil There’s nothing better than sinking your teeth into your own home-grown, delicious, nutrient-rich food. That kind of food not only tastes amazing, it works wonders for your health. Where do plants get the nutrients necessary to create such flavorful and [...]
Tag Archives: fertilizer
Starting from Seed
A lot of gardeners like to get a jump on the season by sowing seeds in pots indoors in early spring when it’s still too cold outside to start gardening. This is a good idea particularly for gardeners who live closer to the poles and thus have a shorter growing season. When starting a garden [...]
Disease-Free Plants
Plants don’t possess an immune system like we do. They don’t have antibodies or white blood cells that actively seek out and kill diseases that infect them. Plants fight their biological battles with chemistry. Plants manufacture chemicals that are toxic (called secondary metabolites) and move these chemicals throughout their systems in order to kill whatever [...]
Salty and Sodic Soils
What a Gardener Can Do When Confronted with this Problem The basic idea: Salty soils will squelch the productivity of any garden unless all the plant material chosen for your garden comes specifically from seaside regions. Salty soils have a high osmotic pressure, exerting a strong pull on water, thus keeping plants thirsty. Fortunately, there [...]
Preparing New Clay Pots
Before putting your plants into brand new clay pots it is a good idea to first soak the pots in a solution of compost tea or fertilizer and water for an hour or so. The compost tea at a normal dilution should be sufficient, or with the fertilizer and water mix, the concentration in the [...]
Plant Nutrition: Needs and Deficiencies
The basic idea: The essential nutrients required by plants are as follows: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, manganese, copper, boron, chlorine, and molybdenum. Deficiencies in any one of these elements results in biological complications, such as decreased crop yields, stunted growth, disease, and sometimes death when deficiencies are severe. [...]
What is Drift and How to Prevent It
Drift is the phenomenon where an applied substance (a fertilizer, pesticide, or herbicide, etc.) unintentionally happens to contact a non-target organism. For example: if you fertilize your lawn and some of the fertilizer from your spreader shoots out over your lawn and lands in your planter beds then that is drift. The lawn was the [...]
Lawn Care: Part Two
Fertilizing Your Lawn The basic idea: With organic fertilizers, you won’t be able to calculate exact amounts, but it has its benefits too. Clover may be a great natural fertilizer that you can grow amongst your grass – and it requires very little extra work. For another great inexpensive option, applying your own sieved [...]
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