Growing Basil

I love to grow basil.  The Italian Large Leaf variety of basil to be exact.  This variety of basil has such a nice aroma to it, you can almost smell the mozzarella cheese, home grown tomatoes and olive oil you can add to your basil for a nice summer dish.

Just as good as the smell of fresh basil, is how easy basil is to grow at home.  Basil is one of those plants that can be grown in your backyard vegetable garden or in pots, if limited space is an issue.  Either way, your basil will grow fine.  The downfall of basil (as if basil really had any), is that basil loves heat.  Even the slightest cooler temperatures (under 50 degrees Fahrenheit), may make your basil fall over and begin to wilt.

The upside of your basil, because basil loves heat, your basil will do very well in the summertime.  With your basil’s quick to maturity growing capabilities, you can be enjoying fresh basil in just a few weeks.

Basil seeds are fairly small and while you can plant your basil seeds up to a quarter of an inch deep, all you really need to do is lightly cover your basil seeds with some soil.  

If you are going to start your basil seeds indoors, just make sure your basil seeds, when planted, are placed in a warm location and receive at least 5 hours of sunlight daily.  If you decide to sow your basil seeds directly outdoors, you want to make sure that temperatures remain above 50 degrees, or otherwise cover your basil with a cloche, row cover etc.

The Italian Large Leaf variety basil, when given the room, will grow very large.  So make sure you space out your basil at least eight inches.  Your basil will use up that space.

Regardless of which variety of basil you decide to go with (there are plenty to choose from), most varieties of basil love full sun and require a light, but even watering.  As a side note, basil is a great companion plant for tomatoes.

A lot of people like to “warm” up their garden beds for their basil.  This can easily be accomplished by laying a clear .6 mil. thick plastic tarp over top of your garden beds and letting the sun do the work for you.  This process will create a nice warm area for your basil.

Expect your basil seeds to germinate in as little as 5 days, although 10 days is more likely.  

One of the beauties of basil is that you do not need to harvest the entire plant.  You can simply snip off basil leaves with a pair of scissors and use it when you need it, leaving the basil in the ground to continually grow.

The real hard part is finding recipes for all that home grown basil you are about to grow.

Compost, Vegetable Gardener’s Gold

There is a lot of talk these days about gold and precious metals, but for the home vegetable gardener, nothing is more “gold” than compost.  Compost is the ultimate source for everything your plants need to grow and produce.

Compost is more than likely the answer to any vegetable gardener’s question on soil improvement.  How do I enrich my soil? Compost!  How do I make my soil more friable? Compost!  How do I make my soil better for water retention capabilities? Compost!  Yes compost is really the answer to a lot of vegetable gardening questions.

If you think compost is too good to be true, then all you need to do is go ask any fellow vegetable gardener that has been growing their own veggies for some time and they will be the first to tell you that compost is the answer.

So what is compost?  Where do you get compost?  Is compost safe to use?  

Compost is nothing more than taking organic material and letting that material breakdown naturally.  Such material would include, grass clippings, leaves, wood ash, your leftover dinner, coffee grounds, tea bags and so much more.  It would not include, aluminum cans, plastic containers and so on.  That stuff is called garbage, but you probably know that already.

As you can see from this basic list of materials you can make your own compost from the items that you already have in and around your house.  Forgo the garbage disposal and start composting (which is the act of creating and making compost).  I will get to more on composting in a second.

So is compost safe to use?  The answer is absolutely!  In fact I truly believe you would be missing out on a successful garden without compost.   Compost, as stated before, enriches the soil by adding nutrients, and compost has even shown in some studies to help your vegetable plants fight off disease and insects.

Composting, the act of actually creating compost, is easy.  The two easiest methods of composting, at least to me anyway, is a compost pile or trench composting.  

A compost pile is as it sounds, a pile of the organic material mentioned earlier.  You would take an area of your yard, property etc, and simply make a pile.  Over time this pile would break down into healthy usable compost.  Of course if you live in a suburb development, town home area and so on, a compost pile may look unsightly to “non” vegetable gardeners.  So you can either convince your neighbor’s to get on board with what you are doing (the harder path), or simply enclose your compost pile, to make the pile look “neater”.

The second composting method is trench composting.  This is where you will immediately bury your organic material about 18 to 24 inches into your garden.  The downfall of this composting method is that you cannot, actually I should say, you should not bury anything while your vegetable plants occupy your garden area.  You don’t want to disturb your plants’ roots.  In the end you will have to keep a compost pile anyway.

So here is a breakdown as to why you should have a compost pile:

• Compost provides nutrition for your plants
• Compost will improve the aeration, friability and water retention of your soil
• Compost will keep your soil’s pH in optimal balance
• Compost is free!  Ok, compost is virtually free.  You still have to add the material to a pile to make it.

Start your own compost pile today!

Grow Carrots from Seeds

Every time I cut up a carrot, especially the carrots that I harvest from my home vegetable garden and have grown directly from carrot seeds, brings back memories of my childhood when my grandmother would pull some carrots from her home vegetable garden and use them in her homemade chicken noodle soup.

I remember the image vividly of those long bright orange carrots coming out of the dark rich soil in her home vegetable garden directly behind her Trenton, NJ house.  I remember her cutting those carrots up with a knife, using such precision that the sight of the evenly cut carrot slices would make an electric powered carrot slicer or food processor jealous.

She would then add the carrot slices to her homemade chicken soup broth to soften, and then finish the recipe.  While I have never been able to duplicate her chicken noodle soup recipe, no matter how hard I have tried, duplicating the process of growing carrots from seeds at home in my own vegetable garden has become almost second nature to me these days. 

Growing carrots from seeds, while challenging, is not impossible.  A couple of challenges you will find when growing carrots from seeds in your own home vegetable garden, include, the size of the carrot seed, spacing those seeds out, and, making sure the soil you are growing your carrots in is friable.   That is … the soil for your carrots should be very loose or able to crumble into small pieces.

Let’s first talk about the size of your carrot seeds.  Carrot seeds are very small.  Not as small as celery seeds (celery is another ingredient in grand mom’s chicken noodle soup), but hard to handle on an individual basis nonetheless.  If you plant carrot seeds too close to one another, the growth of your carrots will be inhibited and then you will end up with either small and fat carrots or your carrots will not grow at all.

A good friend of mine online, Gardening Jones, writes a wonderful blog.  On her vegetable gardening blog, she writes a step by step process on how to make your own seed tape and she uses carrot seeds for her example.  I have linked to that blog post here: http://gardeningjones.com/blog/2012/05/01/planting-seeds-made-easier/

A seed tape is nothing more than as out it sounds.  You take your carrot seeds, place them on a long piece of tape, usually a masking tape variety, spacing your carrot seeds out as per the instructions on your carrot seed packet, and then plant the tape (with the carrot seeds on it of course) at the depth that is written on your carrot seed packet.  Moisture and weather conditions will remove the carrot seed tape’s adhesive.  This allows your carrot seeds to be planted as normal except your carrot seeds are nicely and evenly spaced out for optimal growth.

As for the carrot seed tape, or in the case of Gardening Jones’ carrot seed tape tutorial, tissue paper, that will simply erode away and become compost in your soil.  So you do not need to worry about taking the carrot seed tape out once planted.

For the soil your carrots will grow in, it needs to be loose, friable and crumbly.  If you have soil that is heavy in clay, the quickest way to accomplish what your carrots need is to add plenty of perlite, compost and peat.  This will loosen your soil up for your carrots, very quickly.    While perlite and peat are available at any home center, you will more than likely need to make your own compost.  These ingredients also add other useful things to your soil for your carrots; however I will save soil enrichment for another time.

Proper spacing and loose soil will ensure that when you grow your carrots from seed, great results will happen, every growing season.

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. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list. 

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

Grow Tomatoes from Seed

Tomato Seeds Marglobe variety

Tomatoes are the number one item grown in the home vegetable garden.  And while many people will still and always refer to the tomato as a vegetable the tomato is botanically a fruit. 

Tomatoes are also one of the easiest fruits to grow in the home vegetable garden.  With the wide range of tomato varieties to choose from, you are sure to find the right tomato plant for your specific climate.

How you specifically use your tomato for consumption may also steer you into the direction of which tomato variety you will grow.  For instance, I find using home grown Roma tomatoes are the most ideal to make tomato based sauces and tomato based salsas.  The main reason being, besides the great taste Roma tomatoes have, is the fact that it is easier to remove the seeds from Roma tomatoes.

Now that is not to say that other varieties of tomatoes such as cherry, pear or beefsteak tomatoes would not serve the same purpose for a recipe.  From my own experience, removing tomato seeds can be time consuming in varieties not named Roma.  I will save the beefsteak tomatoes for my summer lunchtime sandwich with mayo and cherry tomatoes for salads.

Regardless of which tomato variety you choose, I believe that you will not find anything more rewarding in your garden, especially for your tomato crop, than growing all of those tasty tomatoes from seeds.  Something about the challenge of growing tomatoes directly from the seed, starting your tomato plants indoors before you can even move the tomato plants to the outdoors, strikes me (and maybe you) as one of those tasks where you say, “Yeah, I did it, I grew those tomatoes from seeds”.

Here is what I do, to maximize the success of my tomato plants, and of course yield nice juicy tomatoes for all of those tomato recipe items I mentioned earlier.

As with other seeds, you won’t have much luck in the germination process with your tomato seeds if you start with a terrible starter soil.  Here is where you have plenty of options to start your tomato seeds in.  You have the expandable peat pellets.  These are small hard and compressed starter pellets that you add hot water to and they expand.  I use these quite often to start my tomato seeds and do very well with them.  Using the peat pellets, I easily get about 95% to 97% germination rates of my tomato seeds. Of course I also use them in conjunction with a propagation dome. 

Along with peat pellets, you can start your tomato seeds in a pre-packaged starter soil that you can purchase at any home or garden center.  These starter soils are especially formulated for seed starting.  They now even make starter soils for tomato seeds.  Tomato seed starting soil includes specific nutrients that not only increase germination rates, but help build strong roots of the young tomato plants, when the tomato plants need it the most.

You can also make your own tomato seed starting soil with many recipes found by doing a quick Google search.  Tomato seed starting soil recipes are plenty in abundance online.  You are sure to find a tomato seed starting soil that meets your climate and zone requirements.

Under optimal growing conditions, and that means, your tomato seed starters are getting at least 6 hours of sunlight per day, are in a propagation dome (or something similar), and the soil is moist but not saturated, you can expect your tomato seeds to germinate in as little as 6 days.  If you do not see any activity out of your tomato seeds after day 10, something has gone wrong, and you may have to start over.

Tomatoes love to grow in climates that are hot and humid, which explains why we here in New Jersey do so well with growing tomatoes.  Even in the worse of years with drought, our tomatoes in New Jersey seem to produce above average.  With that said, do not transplant your tomato starters too soon.  If the threat of frost is still at a medium to high level in your area, keep your tomato seed starters indoors until fear of frost passes by.  A single night’s worth of frost will decimate your tomato seed starters.  You can always cover them at night with a cloche or a 6 mil thick clear plastic tarp, but I like to leave my tomato seed starters indoors until the time comes to move them.

I won’t get into too much detail regarding hardening off your tomato plants in this article and podcast series.  As a quick overview, hardening off your tomato plants simply means to get them used to the outdoors so as not to shock your tomato plants when you do make the move.

When planting your tomato starters outdoors, choose a location that receives a full day’s worth of sun and try not to plant your tomato plants in an area where you previously planted potatoes, peppers or eggplants. 

When it comes to spacing out your tomato plants, I have read a thousand different sizes that will work for hundreds of different tomato varieties.  For me, I like to prop up my tomato plants with tomato cages.  They cost a couple of bucks a piece from the local home center and are virtually maintenance free.  Getting back to tomato spacing, I use the measurement of the diameter of the tomato cage top and add 6 inches.  It is this measurement that I use to space out my tomato plants.  This method has worked out well for me for the better part of 30 years.

Some people like to use tomato stakes and other methods to support their tomato plants and all I am sure they are all fine.  In fact my dad used me and my brother’s old hockey sticks when we were kids to use as stakes for his tomato plants.  You are only limited by your imagination.  However, when in doubt, space out your tomato plants no less than fifteen inches, and even at that spacing, that will be tight.

As a side note, yes those Topsy Turvey™ upside down tomato planters really do work and produce a lot of tomatoes.  So if you are limited on space, it may be a good way for you to go.  You can also make your own upside down tomato growers out of some 5 gallon buckets, but I will save that for a future discussion.

Now that you have your tomatoes started, transplanted and supported, let’s talk about simple care.  While your tomato plants are growing give them a good watering making sure the soil your tomatoes are planted in remains moist but not saturated.  Once you begin to harvest your tomatoes you can reduce your watering, unless of course conditions are very dry.

Tomatoes required high amounts of nutrients, especially Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorous.  Be sure to add these as the season goes on.  Again there are plenty of choices for your tomato plants, from organic, to Miracle Gro™ and tomato specific formulas.   Me personally, I create loads of compost and will continually add this to the base of my tomato plants throughout the course of my gardening season. 

Good luck with your tomato crop for many seasons to come!

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. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list.

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

Storing Your Vegetable Seeds Part 1

There are a number of manufacturers and suppliers of Vegetable Seeds. Farms that sell vegetable seeds in large quantities to vegetable seed distributors to smaller clearing house vegetable seed providers that you can find selling quantities of vegetable seeds more suitable for a small to medium sized vegetable gardens  such as those selling vegetable seeds on eBay and the like.

As a disclaimer, I too operate a company that sells vegetable seeds. Specifically we sell those vegetable seeds to home vegetable gardeners. We buy our vegetable seeds in very large quantities, from farms that, obviously, sell vegetable seeds in bulk. We do so to keep the costs of those vegetable seeds at the lowest possible price and in turn we pass those savings onto our customers.

I would imagine that other vegetable seed companies, who cater to the same home vegetable gardening audience, do the same when procuring their quantities and varieties of vegetable seeds.

But specific vegetable seed companies are not what I wanted to talk about in today’s article on vegetable seeds (or for those that are listening to this transcript via our vegetable seeds podcast).

I wanted to address a great issue on vegetable seeds that I receive questions for from our followers on our Facebook page, where we discuss vegetables seeds and vegetable gardening all the time.

The most popular question on vegetable seeds that I receive, is without a doubt, “how do I save and store my vegetable seeds so that they can be used for future growing seasons?”

For me personally, I like to store my vegetable seeds in a cool dry location. That would translate into putting my vegetable seeds in a plastic container, such as a tupperware or rubbermaid bowl. A resealable ziploc bag works great as well for storing vegetable seeds.

I make sure, that whichever packaging I use to hold the vegetable seeds, they are sealed tight. The vegetable seeds, will then go in a cabinet that I have in my basement, specifically for the purpose of vegetable seed storage. Well, ok, the vegetable seeds do share space with some of the kids’ toys. But that is a whole other topic.

The temperature in my basement is fairly constant throughout the year, which is a perfect storage environment for my vegetable seeds. I have vegetable seeds that are over 5 years old and am still getting great germination success rates on them.

For example, the rule of thumb on many variety of onion vegetable seeds is two years and then the germination rate begins to decline. This past season I grew some onions directly from seeds, sewn into a four foot by four foot raised bed and did well with them. These particular vegetable seeds were 6 years old! I had about an 85% germination rate of these particular vegetable seeds.

Let’s say you do not have a basement to store your vegetable seeds. What do you do then? That is exactly what I will talk about in Part 2 of Storing Your Vegetable Seeds. Some of our Facebook followers came up with some great and unique ways to preserve their vegetable seeds.

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. Be sure to join Mike`s vegetable seeds mailing list. 

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