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Time to Plant Onions in NC
It’s strangely warm outside, and I thought I’d look into onion planting dates for NC. Last spring I waited until March or April and my plants bolted and never bulked up. According to the Department of Horticultural Science at NCSU, the window for Spring planting is January 15 – February 25. For more information on planting onions, check out this information leaflet from NCSU.
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Gardening – Just A Novelty?
Another issue of Organic Gardening came in the mail yesterday, and is still in the plastic wrap. I’m not sure how I keep getting these since I didn’t pay for them, but I am not complaining. Maybe I signed up for a free trial? My Fall gardening completely bombed due to one main factor: morning sickness. I wasn’t in the mood for anything green for about 15 weeks, and it seems to me that Fall gardening is all about green:…
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Let's Talk Soil Temp
Every spring, as soon as the sun begins to warm my face, I’m ready to put seeds in the ground. I cannot control the urgency I feel to begin planting. This past spring, I learned a valuable lesson: air temp does not equal soil temp. Every type of seed has an optimum soil temperature for germination. It so happens that beans like 75-80 degrees F, and at this optimum temperature, they will germinate in seven days on average. Planting them…
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What is Overwintering in the Garden?
In case you were under any false impressions that I am a seasoned gardener, I will go ahead and make this clear: I am a “Google gardener”. While I don’t have many years experience gardening, I spend a lot of time reading forums and articles about gardening and the specific crops I am growing or planning to grow. I’ve often used Google images to identify my garden pests and then research how to avoid them in the future. The past…
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Pesto!
I should have snapped a picture of the basil in my garden because it had grown into such a large healthy clump! The past couple days I’ve been meaning to harvest it before it tried to flower, and this morning Scooby and I went out in search of pine nuts, which we finally found at Fresh Market. I made my pesto with a colander full of fresh basil, three large cloves of garlic, about one-fourth a cup of olive oil,…
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TMI Tomatoes
Because I have no filter, I’m just going to put this out there – no apologies. I have been peeing a TON. Today I went to the doctor to submit a sample for testing in fear of a recurrence of an infection, but all was clear. The funny news is, according to my doctor, my ingestion of copious quantities of tomatoes from the garden has most likely irritated my bladder. Don’t believe me? Read this from the Mayo Clinic, go…
