Give Your Potatoes A Boost At Planting Time!

At planting time, there are two things you can do that will really help your potatoes do well.

1. Before planting, dust your potato pieces in sulfur. You can do this by simply putting some sulfur, and your seed potato pieces in a bag, and shaking them all up. The sulfur helps prevent rotting, and also makes the soil a bit more acid, which potatoes like.

2. In the bottom of your furrow, or if growing in a container, your pot, put about a 1/4 handful of a high phosphorous fertilizer like a 0-20-0 at 10 to 12 inch (24-31 cm) intervals (the distance between the seed potatoes). After you put that down, just make sure you to cover the fertilizer with a few inches of soil so the seed potato won't be in direct contact with it. Phosphorous helps with root growth which really helps your potatoes do well.

Cover your seed potato with soil, and continue with your normal hilling, watering, and care of your crop.

Overall - if you get them started with the sulfur and the phosphorous, you will see a nice improvement in the size and health of your potatoes.

Good luck!

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Grow Squash, Cucumbers and Melons Vertically

If you are planning to plant cucumbers, melons, or squash in your vegetable garden this year, think vertically!

The main thing you want avoid are any varieties that are labeled or marked "Bush Variety" because those won't climb properly.

Look for a "Vining Variety" because you'll want to make sure it can climb your trellis, stake, or netting properly.

Here are some standard varieties that will do well:

Winter Squash:
Hubbard
Acorn
Butternut

Summer Squash:
Straight
Crook Neck
Patty Pan

But NOT Zucchini! For some reason zucchini is too heavy and won't vine properly up a pole or netting.

Cucumbers:
Any that are vining type

Melons:
Cantaloupe
Muskmelon
Watermelon

Note: Many melons thrive on a trellis. But because they're heavy, you may need to support them with cotton or nylon slings.

Make sure you harvest squash while they very small; when the fruit is only four to six inches long. Any bigger and they just don't taste as good, and can get kind of woody.

Vertical Supports:

You can use string, netting or just a stake, as long as you place it very close to the plant. You can put a stake in the ground first, and then plant your seed or young plant around it. This way you don't drive the stake into the roots of the growing plant.

Then gently lift and bend the plant up, and tie it to the stake or string. After you get it started up your string or netting, every few days it will have grown out a few inches, and you'll need to train that new growth up the trellis. So every few days, just keep training the new growth up the stake, string, or netting.

The whole process is fast and easy and you will have saved a ton of room!

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How To Make A Mini Greenhouse

This is a handy trick, especially if you like to take cuttings, or start seeds, or try to grow different kinds of plants.

During the year most people drink some kind of soda. When you're done with the soda, don't throw those bottles away! Save a couple and make a miniature greenhouse.

Here's what you do:

1. Cut the bottoms off two plastic soda bottles

2. Fill one with a moist mix of sand and potting soil, remove the colored-plastic bottom-rest from the other

3. Put in 6-10 cuttings depedending on how large they are, or plant your seeds

4. Fit the two bottoms together

Depending upon what you are growing, it can take about six to ten weeks for your cuttings to root. It may take less time to germinate seed, again it depends upon what you are growing.

You can then transplant them to a pot filled with soil and let them grow on for another month or two. By then you will have a plant ready to go out in your garden.

Antique Your Clay Pots!

Depending on what kind of yard you have, sometimes it's nice to make a perfectly new clay pot look old. Making your pots mossy really gives them an antique look, and gives a new dimension to your yard.

Here is what you do:

1. Collect mosses either from around your yard or a friends or neighbors
2. Finely chop the moss up
3. Allow the moss bits to dry up for a couple of days

Then mix together in a large bucket or bowl:

1 cup flour
2 cups buttermilk
2 packages active dry yeast
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1-1 1/2 cups dried, crumbles moss

Once the above is mixed together, put the bucket in full sun for three days.

When the mixture is good and smelly, brush it generously on the outsides of your clay pots. Then wrap the pots in plastic wrap and put them in the full sun.

In two weeks the pots will start to grow mold, and by eight weeks the pots will be nice and furry with moss, and looking very antique and old.

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