Turnips for your Home Vegetable Garden

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Whether you grow them for their greens or the root they are best when harvested in cooler temperatures. You can plant turnips in the midsummer time and have them ready in the autumn months. Turnips also make for a great spring crop in your home vegetable garden.

Turnip seeds are a small to medium sized seed and should be planted no deeper than ½”. A ¼” will suffice as it will not be too much soil on top so it can produce enough energy to break through. It is not recommended that you start turnip seeds indoors. In fact you really don’t have to. When the fear of frost in your area subsides, start planting.

The soil temperature range for turnips is very wide. Although many experts believe that 85 degrees Fahrenheit is the best temperature for the seeds to germinate, some studies have shown the soil can be as low as fifty degrees Fahrenheit. If you are planting in the early spring where the soil will still be a bit cold, you can heat up the soil by laying a clear plastic tarp over it which allows the sun to warm it up, but prevents the cool winds from hitting it.

Turnips germinate quickly under optimal conditions. What are optimal conditions? Good soil, temperatures in a range that the seeds can tolerate and a pH level, discussed in the next section, that is slightly acidic, and good spacing. When you can meet these conditions you can get your turnip seeds to germinate in as little as 2 days, however for most of us, 5 is more likely.

This is the measurement of how acidic or alkaline your soil is. The scale ranges from zero up to fourteen. Anything below seven is considered acidic and anything above seven is considered alkaline. Seven is neutral. Your turnips like the soil to be a bit more acidic. They will do best in the 5.5 to 6.5 range. Invest in a good pH soil tester. It will help you out immensely.

You will find spacing requirements for your turnip seeds on the back of your seed packets. We only sell one type and those are the purple top white globe variety. They like to be spaced out at least four inches for optimal room to grow.

Turnips do best with a moderate watering that is more even and steady. In other words do not over or underwater. And although they can tolerate light shade, they grow best in full sun.

If you are like me and practice crop rotation and companion planting, avoid following all crops in the cabbage family in a rotation. Turnips grow well next to onions and peas, however avoid potatoes.

So the time has come to harvest the turnips. If you are growing them for the greens, you can start when the plants are still young, although you do not want to take too many of the greens as the root of the turnip will suffer. The greens are great in salads and soups. If you are harvesting the turnip for the root, anytime it is one to three inches in diameter you are ready. If you let them get too big they may develop too strong of a flavor.

If you are a fan of turnips or their greens, and have not grown any for yourself…what are you waiting for! They are easy to grow and because they are a cooler weather crop you can grow them in the early spring and again for the fall.

About the Author
Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Tips on How to Make the Most of Your Greenhouse

A greenhouse gives you a haven in which you can grow different plants regardless of the time of year it is. Greenhouses are avidly used all around the world, and provide many gardeners with a carefree gardening experience.

In many respects, since plants are kept safe under the protection of the greenhouse, many of the qualms that people complain about when it comes to environmental conditions are completely eliminated. This is one of the many reasons why so many people seek a greenhouse for their homes.

But are you getting everything that you should be getting out the greenhouse that you have nestled in your backyard? Believe it or not, there are many different products that are presently available that ensure you are getting all that you can get out of your greenhouse structures.

A product that has been able to make growing plants in greenhouses so incredibly easy and care free are electronic, or automatic water sprayers. There are sprayers that you can set to water your plants a certain number of times and at a specific time throughout the day.

We have all seen these automatic sprayers in different locations. One location where these sprayers are extremely common is in grocery stores. You will normally find these sprayers in the produce section because they are used to spray the plants that are on the shelves in order to allow them to maintain their vibrancy.

The light factor has always been a problem with greenhouses as well. During the summertime the light from the sun, as well as the radiation that bounces off of the sun, can become too much for plants that reside inside your greenhouse. As a means to solve this dilemma, many people are actually opting to obtain roller shades for the windows of their greenhouses.

These shades will ensure that enough life is coming into the structure but not too much to kill off the plants that are trying to grow within it. Another great way to get everything that you can possibly get out of your greenhouse structure is to make room for more plants to be harvested within its barriers.

You can begin by installing additional shelves in the building by basically grabbing a few planks of wooding and drilling them into the wall of the structure. The possibilities of what you can do to enhance your greenhouse experience are virtually endless.

Learn more information about us, please visit greenhouses

Pictures from my own garden

Sugar Beets...and if you sent away for the free seeds this is what they will look like.








Green Squash ... aka... Zuchinni










Butternut Squash










in the front are green bell peppers, and behind them are more sugar beets

Going Green as a Gardener

By default gardeners are green, green thumbed that is. They take necessary steps to cultivate their land, regardless of the size, and do the things to make their gardens a success. But did you know you can also do some other things that not only will add to your green thumb but make you go green and be more environmentally friendly? Here are some things as a gardener you can start implementing today for a cleaner environment.

Recycle Water
Well you are not really recycling water but what you are doing to trapping rain water to be used at a later date so you do not pull more water from the municipal supply. You do this by using a rain barrel, which is just really a fancy word for a container that catches rain water from your down spouts. Just use a garbage can, rubber maid container or something similar and instead of your rain down spouts just going to the ground, redirect them into your containers. When they get full, use the water in your garden.

Battery Power to the Rescue
Whether it’s mowing your lawn or tilling the dirt, there are battery powered alternatives to gasoline that can do just as good a job. Today’s lithium batteries are far superior to the ones built just a couple of years ago. They have become lighter, stronger and they last longer meaning longer use in between chargers. Grab yourself a solar powered battery charger (or make one if you are handy) and your power tools will never need gas or the grid.

Reuse Old Wood
Do you build things for your gardens such as benches, tables and so on? Instead of going to your local home center and buying new, find someone who is giving away old wooden pallets. A simple search in your area on Craigslist or your local newspaper will yield you plenty of results. Then take that wood and your building.

Cardboard Egg Cartons
From now on buy the eggs that come in the cardboard style egg cartons as opposed to the Styrofoam version. Styrofoam takes hundreds of years to decompose, where as you can use the cardboard cartons as planters for your seedlings, and get his, you can plant the cardboard because it is biodegradable. Now how’s that for going green!

Plant the right Plants
You are already a gardener so that makes you an expert at planting right? Did you know by planting trees and shrubs to block out the sun from your house will cool it down in the summertime? Better yet they can block the wind in the wintertime and that will keep your house warmer. Trees take years to grow so it would be best to get started right away.

Compost
Last but not least, but last for a reason, all good gardeners do the ultimate environmentally friendly technique of composting. This is where you take organic material, such as food waste, leaves, grass, twigs, etc., and let it rot. This is done either by burying it so the ecosystem underneath your soil can do it for you, or in a container called a compost bin. The United States creates over a trillion pounds of organic waste per year that ends up in a landfill. We can reduce 100% of the space if composted our organic material.

As you can see none of these ideas will cost you an arm or a leg nor will they cause you to make life altering changes. But what they will do is get you closer to being greener by helping the environment.

About the Author
Mike is the co-author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds.