Welcome! This blog is dedicated to helping you grow food and have a better garden. Every year I do a real time garden video series that covers everything! Watch me as I grow in Maryland on my 2 acre garden homestead. Thanks for Visiting "A Garden Wants to Give. All You Have to Do is Help it Along!" Cheers!
This video focuses on explaining Greensand and its use for vegetable gardens. I discuss where it comes from, how to use, the cost and do you really need it. Do you absolutely need Greensand? No, in my opinion but I want you to decide. It has an application I like and therefor I use it for a specific need but it is not absolutely needed. My goal is to inform you about many of the products out there so you can determine if it is product you want to buy and use. Simple!
Good Luck with Your Garden,
Gary (The Rusted Garden)
Every wonder where those Fungus Gnats come from when you use new seed cells and bag starting mixes? Many mixes are organic and natural and therefore are outside before they are bagged. Insects lay eggs... the eggs hatch with your germinating seeds. Boiling water or 48 hours in the freezer will kill off the insect eggs.
Good Luck with Your Garden,
Gary (The Rusted Garden)
I will be doing quite a few videos on fertilizers with the goal to educate.
The truth is plants don’t care what you give them; compost, organic fertilizers or chemical/processed fertilizers. The NPK and all the rest are elements no matter what form they arrive in to the vegetable plants. Plants could care less. There is no harm to humans via consumption related to fertilizer. End of story. Unless you ...unwisely choose to eat the fertilizer directly.
Soil might be impacted more by over, over, over (did I say over) use of chemical/processed fertilizers. Organic fertilizers need to be broken down by soil life to release their NPK. That is good for soil life. P/C fertilizers are made into a form that is readily available to a plant. They don't need soil life. High use of P/C could harm soil life. That won't happen if you don't abuse them. I recommend using them by ½ of what the packaged instructions say.
If you have it, good old compost will save you money, feed your plants, fix the soil, retain moisture and you won’t need any fertilizers organic or P/C but for emergencies.
You will need to use fertilizer regularly in container gardens. Typically, I make, and people use mixes that have very little soil life in them. The goal is a good growing medium with water retention. Therefore, you often have to add water soluble fertilizers. You can choose what you like.
My goal is to help people have a great garden and a good life experience with their garden. I am not 100% organic. I use compost, organic fertilizer and C/P fertilizers. I will always do that. For insect and disease sprays, I am 90% organic because I will consume the product. That is, to be honest what I think of as organic, the sprays I ingest. I use chemical dust when needed in a very specific and targeted way. My old videos show more use of poisons, sorry about that. I changed over time as I learned.
Good Luck with Your Garden,
Gary (The Rusted Garden)
Save 75% on Garden Supplies by Shopping Clearance Items Now:
It's Not an Ad, it's a Method!
If you hit your local big box stores and even smaller local gardening jaunts, there is a good chance you will find clearance items for your gardening needs. The time frame for this is usually December through January, as things tend to go fast, check now! Basically, the new stuff is coming in and the old stuff is getting discounted. Your can really save a lot of money.
Every year I do sequence videos on what I do over the gardening season. This is what I do every year in January. This is how I save tons of money on my gardening needs. This video shows you why you should take advantage of the end of the year inventory clearances at stores like Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart. I highlight several products I got at nearly 75% off. I saved about $120.
Good Luck with Your Garden,
Gary (The Rusted Garden)
Some great reasons to seed start your own vegetables indoors are:
You will save money over buying transplants
You will be able to start different varieties of vegetable plants you can't buy as transplants
You will have a great activity to enjoy during the cold months
You will be able to maximize space and production in your garden
Cost does not have to be expensive. If you have extra money, you can certainly buy pre-made systems that are very effective as they can cost 100's of dollars. If you have a tighter garden budget, you can make grow light systems in your closet or even in totes pretty inexpensively. It is an upfront cost for that year but you can use them for years and years after the initial build. The money you spend building the lighting system gets paid back in the ability to plant more in your garden, spend less on transplants and through buying less store vegetables. Here is is video that presents a couple of design ideas.
Starting seeds indoors will actually save you 100's of dollars. Sometimes even in the first year. Grow light stations aren't just for vegetable plants. You can also start rosemary and lavender. All kinds of other herbs too. They easily sell for $3 a transplant. You can start perennial flowers and annuals. Add in starting peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and other transplants that can run $2-$3 a plant and the saving starts. Not to mention you can start flats of lettuces, peas, kale and all kinds of cool weather crops.
Aside from saving money on transplants, you also maximize space and production. Basically, while your garden beds are full with actively maturing plants... you start their replacement transplants indoors. As the cool weather crops might be coming to an end, you already have mature transplants of warm season crops to replace them. You easily replace them with transplants that mature more quickly and thus bring you more vegetable production. The indoor systems can also be used in mid July to start seeds as the house temperatures help manage the high heat that quickly dry out seed starting kits left in the sun. Here are a few light systems you can make for your home.
If you love growing tomatoes and peppers, you will have the chance to buy seeds from catalogs that literally opens your garden to 1000's of varieties you can't find as transplants at your local stores. A lot of people ask why not just put a seed in the ground? That of course works but we all don't have long growing seasons or we like to have vegetable plants mature earlier in the year so we end up with more production. And it is really a lot of fun to grow plants in the winter months.
The final thing you need to understand is lighting. You have to learn what the terms Kelvin and Lumens means and the videos below will explain it to you. These values come in ranges that effect the growth of seedlings. You need the right ranges.
Generally speaking, how long to leave the lights on varies in my videos. To keep it simple, you want the lights on for 16 hours and off for 8 hours. Absolutely invest in a timer to make this easier for you. It is worth it! Understanding these values will let you buy inexpensive lights at your local stores instead of paying too much for lights sold as plant grow lights. The two videos below are essentially the same but come from my two different YouTube Channels if you are interested in subscribing to them.
The videos above will give you enough information for understanding the principles needed to build you own grow light stations. I hope you give it a try. You will love having something to do in the cold months and it really saves money. Here are more videos on the subject too if you didn't get your fill.
Good Luck with Your Garden,
Gary (The Rusted Garden)
