Garden advice, tips & tricks for the home gardener

Turn off the sprinkler that you run in your garden each evening and opt for a deep watering of your garden once per week instead. You will be saving water and helping your garden plants to grow deeper roots.
Once your garden has begun to grow, with tiny seedlings now turned grown into full fledged garden plants, it’s time to stop with the daily watering.
Daily watering promotes shallow root growth in plants, and should a prolonged dry spell occur during the summer, your garden plants would not be able to survive.
A deep, weekly watering encourages deep root growth for your garden plants. the deeper the plants roots grow, the more nourishment the plant can uptake and the healthier the garden plant will be. Plus in dry spells, your garden plants won’t suffer, since their roots are deep and can find soil moisture.

Garden corn needs an extra amount of water during two stages of the corn development; when the corn tassels at the top of the corn stalk are beginning to show and when the corn silk is beginning to show at the ears of corn. Water corn deeply twice per week during these two stages.
Only the uppermost ear of corn and sometimes the second ear from the top of the corn stalk will develop into mature ears of corn. The lower ears of corn can be pulled just after the ear begins to silk and used in salads and stir fry. You can even pickle the tiny ears of corn just like you would make pickles from cucumbers.

For the best tasting garden cucumbers, pick them early and often, since cucumbers have a short vine life and can double in size overnight.
Pick cucumber early in the day, before the sun hits them for the most flavor and early in their development stage. it’s better to have a small, edible cucumber than a larger cucumber that is tough because the seeds are too big.
Picking cucumbers often leads to the vines producing even more cucumbers too.
Store harvested cucumbers in the vegetable box of your refrigerator by themselves. Storing cucumber with other vegetables and fruits, especially tomatoes and apples, hastens the spoiling process after the cucumber has been removed from the vine.

If your strawberry patch is not producing like it did last year, or if the strawberries taste different this year, don’t worry, that’s normal.
The weather in the spring of each year plays a significant role in strawberry flavor and the amount of strawberries that your plants produce.
Heavy rainfall in the early spring dilutes the flavor of the strawberries and also creates an environment for fungus to grow and kill the strawberry plants.
Dry spring weather will cause your strawberry plants to produce fewer, but more intensely flavored, strawberries.
So if your strawberry patch is producing differently than last year, you can blame, or thank, the spring weather.

By now, the melon vines in your garden should be running rampant, and depending on the area that you live in, maybe even have produced blooms. It’s essential that you provide even and constant moisture to your melon vines now for large, juicy melons later.
Melons vines use a lot of energy producing long runner followed by melon production, plenty of water is needed to help produce this energy.
Keep all melons well watered, but not soggy. Mulch the garden soil to help retain the moisture so the melon vines will have a steady supply of moisture.
After the melon vines bloom and begin to produce melons, get the melons off the ground by placing mulch, straw, newspaper, chicken wire, cardboard, etc., under each melon.

Keeping your tomato plants pruned will give the plant more energy to focus on growing larger tomatoes.
Don’t break out the pruning shear arsenal for pruning your tomato plants, however. All you need to do to prune tomato plants is primarily keep the suckers pinched off, and you can pinch the top out the tomato plant if it outgrowing it’s cage or stakes.
Tomato plant suckers grow in the V shape created between the main stalk and a leaf. Suckers are aptly named little side growths that will suck the energy right out of your tomato plant for their own growth, robbing it from the tomato production.
Just pinch the suckers off anytime you see one growing below the tomato bloom or tomatoes, and they will develop throughout the tomato growing season.
If your tomato plant begins to outgrow it’s cage or other confines, you can pinch the top out of the tomato plant to halt it’s height growth. The plant will become bushier and produce just as many tomatoes.

We try to be totally organic gardeners and avoid the use of chemical pesticides. However, sometimes an application of pesticide, whether organic or chemical, becomes necessary to rid our garden of hungry insects and bugs.
A large metal salt shaker makes applying pesticides easy and gives you control of application for small gardens. Diatomaceous for ground application to kill slugs and bugs is easily done with a large metal salt shaker. A salt shaker with a handle works best. You can store the diatomaceous in the salt shaker by covering it with Reynolds wrap and storing it in a cool dry place. Be sure to clearly label the salt shaker when storing pesticides inside.
A metal coffee can works perfectly for apply and storing Sevin dust. For best results, you will need one metal coffee can and two plastic lids. Poke small holes in the bottom of the coffee can and place 1 plastic lid over the bottom. Fill the coffee can with Sevin dust and put the 2nd plastic lid on top. You now have a convenient shaker and storage container for your pesticides. Attaching a stick or bail to the coffee can increases the ease of use when applying pesticides to your garden by lessening the amount of bending over.
Recycle and re-use an old salt shaker or coffee can for use in your vegetable garden.

Those spicy red garden radishes should be coming in and there are several ways to use them besides eating them as is or sliced in salads. here are some radish recipes you might enjoy.
Tiny radishes can be spread with sweet cream butter or dipped in melted butter, then dipped in coarse sea salt for a treat that combines the taste varieties of sweet, spicy and salty.
Harvest the small, immature radishes for dipping in anything you like, like yogurt or ranch dressing.
Make a radish sandwich by spreading a thick layer of ricotta cheese on your favorite bread and a nice layer of thinly sliced radishes.
Don’t discard the radish tops when harvesting the radishes. The radish greens make an excellent taste addition to any vegetable or fruit salad for that extra kick of spice.