As the plant grows, you can bury the vining stems at 6-inch intervals to increase tuber production. The flavor of most varieties has a hint of lemon, but as they cook, they become more nutty or squash-like in flavor.
Curing Purple Sweet Potatoes Much like all sweet potato varieties, purple types need to be cured before long-term storage. Purple sweet potatoes are poised to become as popular as kale at trendy restaurants and farmers markets, even in northern climates...
Harvest Like A Pro Here is a harvest tip to avoid breaking daikon while harvesting: Don't pull straight up! You may snap the root in half and ruin your beautiful crop. Where were they?
When growing in containers, you can easily provide your carrots with a burst of phosphorous via supplemental organic granular or liquid fertilizers if necessary. Plus, it's easy to toss a light layer of floating row cover over the containerized plants...
Young beet greens can be harvested and used fresh in salads. Keep the soil moist until the seedlings germinate. After thinning, mulch with a layer of straw or shredded leaves to cut down on future watering needs.
Optimum spacing is 8 to 10 inches between bulbs because each set matures into a cluster of six or more inch-wide bulbs. If they protrude above the soil line, just leave them be. Shallot sets are far larger than even the plumpest onion set.
This will keep your family in radishes, without overwhelming you with too many. Best planted by directly sowing their seeds into the vegetable garden, the four root crops featured below easily shake off spring's cold soil temperatures and unpredictable...
Often confused with yams, usually thought of as just a holiday-dinner side dish (never mind the degrading marshmallow accompaniment), sweet potatoes are frequently referred to as “easy house plants for kids to grow in their schoolrooms.” Hummph! Somebody...
B-1 also speeds up root development of root systems on bare root plants such as roses and shrubs.Vitamin B-1, aka thiamine, does not stimulate root growth. Most of these are sold as root hormones.Indole butyric acid (IBA) is one of the most common auxin...
Don't be intimidated if you're a beginning gardener. What does it take to grow great fennel? Fennel is a versatile root vegetable and herb that can be grown in both spring and fall for a delicious harvest.
Use your home-grown potatoes in these recipes : Oven Lamb Stew with New Potatoes and Herbs Celeriac Mashed Potatoes Potato-Ham Spanish Tortilla Summer Potato Salad with Black Garlic Chilled Buttermilk Potato Soup « More Dirt on Gardening » Tags garden...
They stay relatively contained, though a few have hopped their boundaries. If you ask my family, I need no further encouragement to grow and eat horseradish. Horseradish can be used similarly to a mustard or ginger poultice to break up congestion.
Spinach bolts (or flowers) quickly in warm weather. Because its productivity is so closely linked to the weather, spinach harvests can be erratic from year to year for many gardeners.
Mixed with water and applied via spay or sprinkle on a cloudy or rainy day, Steinernema carpocapsae actively move through the soil, find the pests and eliminate them. Keep Them Covered As the carrots grow, their shoulders may might up out of the ground.
These lightweight, white fabric covers rest on the plant tops and create a physical barrier to all kinds of pests. Soil pH can also be a factor when growing radish. Waiting too long to harvest will result in woody, pithy roots.
You might have seen them at the farmers' market , but if you didn't know to look you could easily have missed them. My favorite benefit for eating the Jerusalem artichoke is that inulin is an important food source for the healthy flora in your gut.
Repeat the thinning in three to four weeks,” he says. While this requires more time up front, it pays off later in the season with less weeding and thinning. If members of the Apiaceae (carrot) family are your horticultural Achilles' heel, don't lose...
When to plant: Best planted in late summer for fall harvests, but can be grown season-long. Roots (and greens) are sweetened by frosts. Harvest greens 30 to 40 days after planting.
Tomatoes Andrew M. If you catch them early, however—sometimes literally catch them, as their defense mechanism is to fall off the plant—and put them in soapy water, you shouldn't have any long-term effects.
Be sure to prepare the beds well with an inch or so of compost and a good preemptive cultivation before planting. Soil Preparation Like most turnips, rutabagas prefer well-drained soil high in organic matter.
Then I found plants with glued stones as mulch, with spongy moss where I expected bark, or with some other impenetrable surface treatment that defied any attempts to know just what was in that pot.
Radishes will either break your heart or send your gardening self-esteem to the moon. “Radishes mature quickly,” says D.J. Herda, author of From Container to Kitchen (New Society Publishing, 2010).
As consumers of fruits and vegetables, the compounds found in these different plant pigments not only provide us with nutrition, but many of them also contain antioxidants with anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties.
New versus Mature Potatoes Susy Morris/Flickr Potato harvesting can take place at two different times. Before planting, cut seed potatoes into pieces. Hill Your Potatoes Regardless of which planting method you choose, hilling your potatoes is a necessary...
However, rutabagas are primarily grown for their starchy root that has a texture similar to a turnip or parsnip . While the greens are sometimes used as a livestock feed, they're also edible for humans.
It also contains essential minerals such as phosphorus, iron, calcium, copper, and manganese.Celeriac is a warm-season crop, so those of us who live in northern areas might want to start it indoors or in a greenhouse.
It was an exceptional year for the squash—I harvested well over a dozen butternuts and about 10 Delicata. I pulled up the green bean plants yesterday, too, because after producing several harvests, they simply gave up the ghost and decided to call it...
