Growing Cucumbers Vertically in Sunken Garden Containers

Growing Cucumbers Vertically in Sunken Container Gardens

Sunken containers allow you to concentrate the 'best' soil in one location for the vegetables or in this case the cucumber plants. This can save you money. The bottoms are removed or a large portion is cut out of the container to allow the roots to grow beyond the size of the container. This allows the vegetables to grow to full size without worry of root constraints and it allows them to get moisture.

Cucumbers are heavy feeders and should be fed 1 to 2x weekly, based on your choice of fertilizers, once they start producing cucumbers. Cucumbers in my area are prone to soft bodied insect attacks. Growing them vertically not only saves space in your garden but it helps you better manage pests and disease. It is much easier for me to get my soapy water spray on the undersides of the leaves when they grow up a tomato cage.




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How to Easily Clone Tomatoes and Root Tomato Suckers

How to Easily Clone and Root Tomato Suckers

A tomato 'sucker' is essentially a growing tip that will form a full size tomato plant. There are many ways to clone a tomato by rooting a tomato sucker. I show you an extremely easy method to root the sucker in water.

You can watch the roots establish and grow and when they are long enough (about an inch), you can put them into an 8 ounce cup of growing medium. Just keep the medium moist for about a week and you will have a clone of your original tomato plant that is ready for planting in your vegetable garden.





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Fennel: Attract the Entire Life Cycle of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly - The Rusted Garden 2013

Fennel: Attract the Entire Life Cycle 

of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly 

The herb fennel will attract the entire life cycle of the black swallowtail butterfly. It will host eggs, caterpillars and the chrysalis. You can plant clumps of fennel in your flower garden and the plants will host the the life cycle of many kinds of butterflies.


If you remove a branch of the fennel with a mature caterpillar... you can put it in a jar and watch the chrysalis form and the swallowtail emerge. A great project for kids!








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From Garden to Grill: Grilling Garden Beets - A New Rusted Garden Video Series

From Garden to Grill: Grilling Garden Beets

A New Rusted Garden Video Series

(Copyright June 2013)

I started a new video series called: From Garden to Grill. I will be grilling vegetables as they mature in the garden this season. Each video will be about 5 minutes long and it will cover harvesting the vegetable, the basic recipe, cooking and finally plating. My first video in this series is - Grilling Garden Beets.

Garden vegetables, in this case beets, offer a taste and flavor you will never find with grocery store vegetables. No matter how fresh they are... they don't compare to your home grown vegetables. As soon as a vegetable is picked the sugars begin to convert to starches and they begin to lose moisture. Events that change their flavor. From Garden to Grill, takes a freshly pick vegetable to heat and plate all within the same day.

Grilled beets take 45-60 minutes based on your grill. You initially roast them in foil and let them releases their juices. They are finished over heat to caramelize the sugars and bring out a great earthy sweet flavor that only beets can give you.




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What is 'Bolting' Lettuce and Why Does It Happen? or My Lettuce is Bitter!

What is 'Bolting' Lettuce and Why Does It Happen? 

or My Lettuce is Bitter!

Lettuce and greens are typically cool weather crops. They like 60 to 70 degree days and cooler nights. While the temperature is cool... your lettuces, endives and spinach happily produce leaves for your garden salads. Great tasting greens!

As the days regularly break the 80's and the 90's creep in lettuce begins the process of 'bolting'. Warm days with 70 plus degree nights starts the flower and seed production process for many garden greens. That is called 'bolting'.

Your lettuce stops producing leaves as starts producing a flower stalk. The chemistry of the plant changes and often a bitter taste comes to the green. The video shows you what 'bolting' looks like and it explains the changes in your now bitter lettuces.




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