Gardening Basics

Healthy Soil: Winter Cover Crops

Healthy Soil: Winter Cover Crops

It’s fall and our annual and vegetable gardens are winding down for the season. Now is the time to invest a little extra time and effort to prepare your soil for next year. Whether your garden is large or small, all annual planting beds will benefit from the addition of a winter cover crop.

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Rotating Your Vegetable Crops

Rotating Your Vegetable Crops

Whether you just plant a few tomatoes, herbs and some lettuce or an elaborate garden complete with exotic selections of lesser known veggies, you’ll want to rotate your crops each year. All types of vegetable crops – brassicas, onions, legumes and root crops – require a slightly different blend of…

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Seed Starting

Seed Starting

Starting seeds indoors is a rewarding gardening experience and can help extend your growing season to include more plant varieties than your outdoor season may permit. Furthermore, a larger selection of seed varieties doesn’t limit your opportunities to growing only those transplants that are available at planting time. The key…

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Family Gardening: Attracting Wildlife to the Garden

Family Gardening: Attracting Wildlife to the Garden

Attracting wildlife to the home garden is an enjoyable and creative way to teach children about nature, evoke their respect for the environment and provide meaningful family together time.

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Sod Installation

Sod Installation

Preparation:  Remove existing grass and weeds.  Loosen topsoil to a depth of 4-6 inches.  If topsoil is brought in, use a minimum of three inches and incorporate into existing soil; layer the area using a rake.    Apply starter fertilizer, following bag directions.  Do not use weed and feed type fertilizer…

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Dormant Seeding

Dormant Seeding

Your lawn may not be ready for the mower, but seeding the lawn now will help your lawn get a leg up on spring growth. Dormant seeding is the practice of sowing grass in the winter months when grass seeds are inactive. While there is little value in scattering seed,…

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Pruning in the Fall

Fall is a great time to prune and shape trees and shrubs! There are many reasons to prune this time of year and a few tricks to help know what can be cut and how far to go.

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Preserving the Harvest

Was it a bumper crop year? Now that the harvest is in, the decision needs to be made as to what to do with the abundance.

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Winter Vegetables on the Table

Winter marks a seasonal change. Our bodies seem to crave the deeper tantalizing tastes rather than light fruity flavors of summer. Harvesting vegetables in the late fall, and sometimes into the winter, presents us with bounty for slow, simple and savory cooking. All winter vegetables may be boiled, roasted, grilled, stewed, sautéed, steamed or eaten raw.

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