Preparing them is not hard, but it’s nice to have a nice work area.  I have to settle for my bathroom Porcelain Sink or the stainless steel sink in my kitchen. I’d love to have a workspace with a sink, and know if I wanted one, it could be here in a flash with same day delivery, but am afraid that due to the size of my home, I’ll have to settle for one of my Porcelain Sinks.

To prepare the bulbs, it is important that they be dry during the storage period and be stored in a cool somewhat dry place over the winter, so if you do clean the bulbs off, which isn’t absolutely necessary, do so gently, allow to sit out and dry, then store in a bag or container that breaths. If the bulbs are large enough, an onion bag from the supermarket does just fine if you cut it open just right.

These are my grape hyacinths, they have come up and spread each year faithfully for over 25 years.  A tulip is peeking out in the background.  I know this is a simple grape hyacinth photo, but if you like it and use it somewhere, kindly link back to this post.

And then there are my beloved trees, I love trees, but when there are tropical storm or hurricane force winds to trees that have their leaves on them still, there is always potential for branches to come down as well as entire trees, and our house is in the “line of fire” for several trees.

There isn’t much we can do about the trees except let nature take it’s course, and my gardens are going to be protected by sand bags.  It is very close to the end of the gardening season as far as many of my vegetables and flowers go, but some plants won’t be blooming until into September.  My container garden on the deck will be moved very close to the house where the plants will be more likely to be protected from the wind.

I was very impressed by a document put out by a site in the UK on preparing the garden for flooding, as well as the home.  When you visit “Flooding in the Gardens” and page down a bit you’ll find a wealth of information on protecting the garden from flooding as well as restoring the garden and the lawn after flooding.  May we all fair well during Hurricane Irene.

Click for photo Credit

This week is said to be “Sun Safety Week”, but I wonder if those who thought up the day were more concerned with getting skin cancer because of exposure to the sun than they were with the benefits that come from the sun…including preventing Cancer?  The benefits that come from the Vitamin D that you gain when in the sun that is so important for the bones as it helps the calcium to do it’s work in building strong bones.  Many woman are LOW in Vitamin D when they have their blood tested.  Perhaps we are going too far the other way in avoiding the sun…balance is necessary.

For more information on the benefits of the sun, some not mentioned here, please visit a page I put together at my website on the benefits of the Sun (including preventing several kinds of cancer) and a natural sunburn remedy.

Gain the knowledge you need so that you can spend safe amounts of time in the sun this summer, enjoying your yard and gardens.

I went outside and saw the first rosebud today, and all the way down the tender new stem there were aphids, not just a few, the whole stem was completely covered.  So I came in and put together a solution of water and white vinegar, and sprayed the little bugs…I think it is supposed to kill them…and strange as it sounds, I don’t like killing anything, even little aphids, but it’s the rosebush or them, so we are going to give this natural solution a try, and see how it works.

I’ll let you know.  Hope you are having a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

My tulips are beginning to put out their buds, and when they flower I’ll be doing what I can to keep our cute but rascally squirrels from eating the flowers.

Deer are not a big problem for me unless they are making their way down to our lake during a drought, I believe I shared a story on this blog once before about how they came down from the woods on the way to the water and ate every one of my beautiful orange triple-flower Day Lilies. That was a major but rare disappointment, at least here on our property.  But deer can be real pests in many gardens…I have watched them grazing in yards and gardens very early in the morning when driving, while the homeowner/gardeners are still sleeping and unaware.

They are beautiful, but also do their part spreading Deer ticks that cause Lymes Disease, a disease that started here in NJ if memory serves me correctly?  Definitely somewhere nearby in the Northeast. It is quite common here, as are the ticks, I’ve found them on myself and my dog on a number of occasions.

“Deer Off”® is an organic/natural repellent that you can safely spray on your plants and in the gardening area to keep Deer away, after all that work, a deer repellent like this will save you from waking up to a great disappointment like the people that I just mentioned must have found.

havahart.com has a wonderful Havahart® Deer Off ® II Battery-Powered Sprayer that has a patented Dual Deterrent System™ formula that provides both scent and taste barriers to repel deer, rabbits, and squirrels…so not only will it take care of the Deer, but those squirrels I was telling you about that like to eat my tulip flowers.

My mother was a much better gardener than I will ever be.  I approach my garden with a feeling that it’s going to grow just fine, an air of confidence, and find myself challenged at times by it as the season goes on, while my mother would approach it with humility, always meekly saying “oh, I probably won’t get many tomatoes this year” or whatever the crop happened to be that was on her mind at the time, only to have more than she could handle by the end of the season.The first garden I recall from childhood was a plot in the backyard, it seemed huge at the time, but really the space was rather small.  Still, it had a nice yield at the end of the season.

I remember the pole beans Mom would grow, being so curious about how the beans climbed up those poles that my Dad put in the garden.  There were three tall sticks tied together at the top, similar to the picture below, and at the base, the seeds were planted, which grew and climbed up the stakes to the top, and provided beans throughout the season.  There were a few 3-pole groupings in a row, and since I was small, they seemed very tall!  Mom always told me that the difference between Pole Beans and Bush Beans was that that pole beans provided beans for a longer period of time.

Personally, I’ve never grown pole beans, have always opted for the bush variety as they look better in the area where I plant. My only “pet peeve” is those little cut worms that enjoy my garden so much, I have to make sure the soil is clear of them before planting my beans, they seem to especially love the thick, juicy bean seedling stems.  Sometimes I start them with a small paper cup around the seed-in-soil with the bottom cut out of the cup as those little guys usually snip the plant close to the surface.  There is nothing more delicious than vegetables from the garden.

By the way, if you have a large enough container, you can grow beans this way on your deck or wherever your container garden is on your property.

What kinds of beans have you grown in your garden?

• Gardening in Containers – this post contained some thoughts and ideas for those who don’t have space for a garden, or just like the idea of gardening in containers.
• Keeping Deer Out of the Garden – another post with some ideas and a helpful article, we have only had trouble with deer during droughts when they try to make their way down to our lake.
• Tropical Climate Gardens – for those of you fortunate enough to be able to grow tropical gardens, this is another helpful post.
• Vegetable and Organic Gardening eBooks that you might find helpful.

Do you have any favorite gardening articles or posts to share?  Please let us know in a comment!

1. Sage - This is a perennial, that means that you plant it once, and it comes up each year.  In fact, in spite of the cold, when I removed the pile of leaves I had over this one a week or so ago, most of the leaves from last season were still on the plant…and this is after a COLD winter.  You do have to replace this one as over time it gets “woody”, I tend to cut it back quite a bit for as long as I can and see if it will put out new shoots.  This is a wonderful medicinal AND culinary herb
2. Lily of the Valley – This comes up every spring, it is a little early right now where I live, but in only a matter of weeks the plants will put up their shoots.  I have the pink variety, which is somewhat less common than the white, so each year I sell batches of it on eBay in the spring to thin it down to the nice patch you’ll see in the picture if you visit the link.  It will be interesting to see how it has spread it’s runners over the winter and how many plants will be available to sell.  I love this plant, the smell of the flowers is just wonderful.
3. Day Lilies (Daylilies) -In our front yard the shaft to our water well comes up out of the ground and is capped, around it I have planted Daylilies, the double orange variety, and made a garden in the area.  These bloom later in the summer, and are just beautiful.
4. Comfrey - This one grows in the same garden as the Daylilies, and can become rather large and shrub-like.  It has pretty purple flowers.  It has the reputation for being a hard one to get rid of if you don’t want it somewhere, because even the smallest piece of a root left behind will form a new plant.  I chose to put the Comfrey in the same garden as the Daylilies because the soil is not the best and it takes a bit of work to take over the garden, so I haven’t had a lot of trouble.  I haven’t done a post devoted to Comfrey yet, working through the alphabet backwards for the most part as you can see in the upper right, but will one day.
5. Oregano - This favorite culinary herb is so easy to grow, and I have an abundance of it each year.  I do snip the ends to keep it from flowering for part of the summer, then later in the summer, let it go to flower as the bees just love the flowers, and happy bees are so good for my garden as well as surrounding gardens.
6. Mints - The mint plants are best put in a somewhat contained area, I let them spread and just pull up and use or give away what wanders out of the area it should be in the spring.  I love putting mint into my iced tea while brewing…just clean it well (small bugs like my mint too), then roll the leaves on the stem together between your palms (hands) to release the fragrant and flavorful oils, then put in your steeping tea. I sweeten mine with another herb called Stevia
7. Catnip - another one like Oregano and Mint…in fact all of these plants are “related”, part of the same family, so have similar growing patterns.
8. Lemon Balm – Another like the above, have had these coming up in my garden for so many years now I’ve lost count.
9. Chives - A wonderful culinary herb to add onion flavor to anything.  I use the greens throughout the spring and summer…they are already out of the ground.  Here’s a minor caution for you, each year mine gets pretty purple flowers on it.  My first year with the plants, I clipped the flower tops off when they died, then clipped a bunch of the chives to take in to cut into my salad…not realizing that the flower stems are terribly hard, and inedible.  Be sure when you remove the flowers to take them from the base of the stem so you don’t make the same mistake.
10. Strawberries - I have these in an old antique ceramic-coated wash basin on our deck.  These amazing plants had leaves from last season that remained for much of the winter, and are already putting out their new leaves.  Very hearty, and I look forward to a better crop of berries as we have more sun on the deck since they removed a couple of trees to install our new septic system.

These are just a few of the things that grow on my property, maybe you can share some of your favorites in a comment.

I post regularly to this blog, but today, this post was done as one of the lessons in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge.

The roots of the plant tend to stay close to the surface of the soil, and though the plants tolerate dry soil to a degree, when there are tomatoes growing on the plants, it is best to keep the soil somewhat moist between rains. I water every couple of days, and in very hot dry weather, daily. I have only once started plants from seeds, it’s not hard to do if you have a sunny place to keep them, or have grow lights. I like to give my local garden shop some business by purchasing young tomato plants.

What kinds of tomatoes do you grow successfully in your area of the Country? We are at about 900 feet in Northern NJ and planting season lasts from mid-may to mid-September, or a little later if we have a mild fall.   I harvest all of the remaining tomatoes at the end of the season, even if green, and put the green ones in a brown paper bag to ripen, which they do fairly quickly if they are mature enough.

Beets are a prized vegetable, both the beet root and the greens are usable in one form or another.  We look forward to a trip on our anniversary in only a few weekends to Lancaster, where the Amish use the red juice from the beet and some vinegar to pickle hard boiled eggs…without the shell.

• You can use the greens of the beets all year round
• You can harvest beets early, when they are small and sweet, they are called “baby beets” at this stage.
• You can harvest the later in the summer when the roots are much larger.

If you plant rows, you should allow 3 inches between plantings.  If you sow seeds, whether in rows or randomly (my favorite way to plant) plant the seeds about an inch apart, and thin as they grow, up to 3 inches apart.