Garden advice, tips & tricks for the home gardener

Garden sweet potatoes will keep for several months after they have been harvested from you garden, if you provide the sweet potatoes with the right environment.
Handle the sweet potatoes carefully and as little as possible to avoid bruising them (a bruised sweet potato is more likely to rot).
Place the sweet potatoes in a single layer in dark, dry location where the temperature will be close to 80 degrees. Leave the sweet potatoes there for 10 days. Then the temperature needs to be cooled down to 70 degrees for the next 20 days for the sweet potatoes to dry and cure for proper long term storage.
If you have abasement furnace, that is the ideal place to cure your garden sweet potatoes. After the 30 day curing process, store your sweet potatoes in a dry area that will remain below 60 degrees but above freezing. Check you sweet potatoes weekly and remove any that begin to rot.

Garden sweet potatoes will keep for several months after they have been harvested from you garden, if you provide the sweet potatoes with the right environment.
Handle the sweet potatoes carefully and as little as possible to avoid bruising them (a bruised sweet potato is more likely to rot).
Place the sweet potatoes in a single layer in dark, dry location where the temperature will be close to 80 degrees. Leave the sweet potatoes there for 10 days. Then the temperature needs to be cooled down to 70 degrees for the next 20 days for the sweet potatoes to dry and cure for proper long term storage.
If you have abasement furnace, that is the ideal place to cure your garden sweet potatoes. After the 30 day curing process, store your sweet potatoes in a dry area that will remain below 60 degrees but above freezing. Check you sweet potatoes weekly and remove any that begin to rot.

Hopefully, you have already been keeping a garden journal. Keeping a written record of what grew well, what didn’t, what variety of vegetables you planted and where, how often you fertilized and watered, etc. can help improve your gardening skills and success over the years.
If you haven’t begun a garden journal, it’s not too late to start one now for a better garden next year. Jot down what vegetable varieties you planted and what type of harvest you received from each plant so you will remember when it’s time to purchase.
Write down everything you recall from this past garden season: what type of fertilize you used, how much was used and how often. Did you have problems with specific pests in your garden? What did you do to correct the pest problem? Did it work?
All this information gathered over a few garden seasons and written down in a garden journal will begin to show you a pattern of what works and what doesn’t work in your garden endeavors.

August is the best month to apply well rotted cow manure to your garden soil to get it conditioned and ready for next year’s garden (or for your fall garden).
Apply well rotted cow manure 3 inches deep over your entire garden plot and till it in good. After the cow manure is tilled in, you can go ahead and plant your fall garden vegetables or plant a cover crop in your garden.
The cow manure will condition and fertilize the soil so the food will be ready for the tender garden plants to absorb next spring.

If you have transplanted peony rhizomes and the peonies didn’t come up, it’s usually one of two problems; you either planted the peony rhizomes to deep or the division of the rhizomes were too small.
Each peony rhizome needs to contain 3-5 eyes and should only be planted one inch deep.
If your peony transplants don’t come up this spring, dig up your transplants and inspect them. Discard any peony rhizomes that are dry and shriveled or that are soft and mushy, they will not produce a new peony plant.
Re-plant the healthy looking peony rhizomes in a larger division at the proper planting depth of one inch.

If you live near the ocean, you have some great garden soil amendments right at your fingertips, sea weed and kelp.
Sea weed and kelp add organic matter and nutrients, nitrogen, phosphate and potash to garden soil.
Several ways to add the riches of the ocean to garden soil; you can dry the sea weed and kelp out before adding it to your garden soil, add the sea weed and kelp to your compost pile or during the winter months just add a layer of sea weed and kelp to the top of your garden soil and when spring rolls around, just till it in.