Hometown Seeds giveaway, and the winners are…
15.4 years ago giveaway, seeds
I believe Plato was credited with the quote, “Necessity, who is the mother of invention.” As the Cheap Vegetable Gardener I prefer, “Laziness, who is the mother of invention.” With laziness and some boredom on the bus while riding to work with my laptop this motivated me to create “CVG’s Contest Winner Pickorama.” Basically I pass in the comment RSS feed and it extracts any duplicates (or my name if it exists) and by using some complex super top secret logic to pick the winner(s).
Now you can see it in action now and see if you were a winner:
For those without Superman vision the winners are: Trailshome, Red Icculus, and David (There were two David’s so be sure to click the link to make sure you were the right one)
If you are a winner please click on the “Contact” link at the top of the page with your name/mailing address and your seeds will be sent out shortly. For those who did not win this time, no worries I have at least one more seed giveaway coming up.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, vegetables
Hometown Seeds – variety pack give away
15.4 years ago giveaway, seed saving, seeds
Recently I was approached by Hometown seeds if I would be interested in receiving a variety pack of their top selling seeds, my first instinct was “woohoo free stuff.” Though instead I decided it would offer the seeds to my awesome readers. Well that and with all the seed saving I have been doing this year I have more seeds than I know what to do with.
Hometown Seeds loved the idea so much that they have graciously increased the offering to three sets of garden seeds variety pack, so in normal fashion enter a comment and after a week I will somehow randomly pick three winners and the seeds will be sent out to you.
The variety pack includes (1) packet of each of the following:
- Slow Bolt Cilantro
- Alaska Shasta Daisy
- Giant Tetra Snapdragon
- Elite Mix Wildflower
- Marvel of Peru Four O’clock
- Yellow Pear Tomato
- Purple Haze Carrot
- Waltham Broccoli
- Casaba Mellon
- Gourmet Mix Lettuce
The total value of this package is $19.80 so good luck everyone!
Winner will be chosen at Midnight 12/9/2009 (Pacific)
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, tomato plants, vegetables
How to save Bhut Jolokia peppers seeds
15.4 years ago Bhut Jolokia, ghost pepper, harvest, seed saving
I was lucky enough to win some Bhut Jolokia pepper seeds from Red Icculus. In case you haven’t heard of these they are the hottest peppers on earth having a heat rating of over 1 million scoville units. Just to put that into comparison jalapenos are around 5000 scoville units. One property of this pepper is the way the heat builds after consumption, on first bite it is spicy but takes a few seconds until you really feel the burn which is where it gets the name “ghost pepper.”
Now when dealing with these peppers I recommend using extreme caution I have some pain in my nose hours later just from breathing around these things so vinyl gloves and possibly even a mask would be recommended.
Once you have the safety precautions in place the process is actually very simple. Just break them up and pick the seeds up and store in a homemade seed packet. Now eating the pepper whole is not a challenge I want to take though saving the dried pepper flakes and adding a pinch so some chili might be up my alley. Though if you want to watch some people in pain taking see these videos of people taking the Bhut Jolokia pepper challenge on YouTube. Here is my favorite and my inspiration to not take the challenge.
I am planning on trying to grow one of these using my new hydroponic setup, well at least once I get around to building…so stay tuned.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, pepper plants, vegetables
Teaching children patience with gardening
15.5 years ago germination, hydroponics, kids, seeds
It shouldn’t be a surprise that kids these days are not as patient as previous generations. Personally I feel this is less on a change of parenting but a result of children’s expectations created because of the advance of technology. For example, When my daughter asks to watch a particular show “On Demand” and then 5 minutes later asks me to “pause it” so she can go potty. This makes me think back to the days of having a single TV station we could pick up with our antenna, which seemed to play reruns of MASH 24/7.
The great thing about gardening is with the exception of seed hybridization, synthetic fertilizers, and maybe techniques like hydroponics the hobby hasn’t changed too much in the past few hundred years. It still takes 1-3 weeks for seeds to germinate not matter what technology you throw at them. This is why I feel gardening is a great activity to share with the young ones in your life to help offset the instant gratification they see on a daily basis.
Here are a couple of ideas how to do this any time of year:
Cup of Dirt: Give your young one a cup of dirt and some seeds. To keep them interested give them a spray bottle to water everyday to keep them coming back every day to check how their plant is doing. The spray bottle will provide just enough water on the surface to allow the seeds to germinate and what kid doesn’t like to play with a spray bottle.
Sprouting in a Jar: I have a complete post on this topic, but the process is pretty simple. Get a mason jar and add some seeds. Rinse, drain and repeat. In just a few weeks you will have tasty and healthy sprouts you can add to your salads, sandwiches, stir-frys, etc.
Growing plants in water: Now this can be as complicated as setting up a hydroponic environment or as simple as taking a spider plant start and placing it in some water and letting your young one watch as the roots develop and transplant and care for it as a new plant.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, outdoor plants, vegetables
Free tomato seeds
15.5 years ago cheap, free, seeds, tomato
If you head over to Campbell’s Help Grow Your Soup site you can get some free tomato seeds and while you are at it vote for a barn which Campbell’s will give $250,000 to restore. So free seeds for you and one dollar for a barn restoration.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, tomato plants
How to prevent weeds in your garden
15.5 years ago organic, weed prevention, weeds
I doubt there is anyone who enjoys pulling weeds, though now at the end of the season is a great time to do some preventive measures to prevent new growth next season.
Kill your weeds early: The sooner you pull your weeds the easier it is to keep up with them. In addition, if you pick the weeds before the mature and flower and drop seeds you will save a ton of time pulling weeds for every one of those seeds that drop. Call me old fashioned but I normally skip the whole herbicide method and just pull the weeds by hand. Not only does your lawn or garden immediately look better, there is no coming back to see if the weeds need another dose of spray and the whole environmental part of keeping some chemicals out of our water system.
Mulch: This is one I didn’t completely understand until I had been gardening for a while. I for one never have found “beauty bark” beautiful and have always preferred the more natural look and benefits of fertile soil. But that is entirely why you want to use a mulch such as ground bark, straw, pine needles, leaves, newspaper, rubber bark, or even some old carpet. This helps prevent weeds in twp ways. First, it blocks light from the potential little weed seedlings to make their way to the surface. Second, they are not fertile mediums to grow seeds, which is exactly what you are looking for for your large flower beds which like to create good crops of weeds. As a final benefit they help insulate and hold water down for the plants you want to thrive having great growth and eventually shading out those “poor” weed seedlings. just 3-4 inches during the fall and your back should be bending over much less next spring.
If you are thinking, “What about my vegetable garden? I want seeds to be able to grow in there next year.” For your vegetable garden I highly recommend chopped leaves and a vegetable garden mulch. If you happen to have a leaf blower/vacuum that will chop them up all you need to do is empty those bags in a thin 1-2 inch layer across your garden. I used to have one of these though accidentally sucked up a rock which didn’t “chop” well and broke it so the alternate method I use is the following. Bag your leaves throughout the fall and once the leaves stop falling dump them out in a long row in your yard. Then use you lawnmower with bagger attachment and run them over until they are all chopped up. You can also do this more frequently during the fall but I find this a good time to use all the gas in the lawnmower before the end of winter feeling more like I am doing something more meaning other than just letting the mower sit there until it burns off the remaining fuel. With these leaves on the surface you smother any weed seeds and also block out all light to the soil. When spring time comes you simply work in the decomposed leaves into the soil and your garden has a head start with some good organic matter.
Pre-emergent weed control: For some parts of your yard like your lawn mulching is not really an options so to protect against pesky weeds like one of my personally loathing weed, annual bluegrass. Which grows and seeds so close to the ground it is nearly impossible to pull the plants to prevent the spreading. Pre-emergent herbicides is the solution to this problem. Pre-emergent herbicides work by preventing weed seeds from germination by inhibiting cell division in their tiny root system. Given these plants are annuals a successful application can rid you yard of these weeds until they eventually blower over from a neighbors. Pre-emergent herbicides can be purchased as a chemical or the organic method is applying glutton corn meal which normally can be purchased from your local feed store. One thing to remember is that this also will prevent you normal grass seed from germinating as well so be sure to time your application after with with enough lead time to allow the pre-emergent from wearing off.
Grow a cover crop: Growing a cover crop has two major benefits to your garden. Various legumes, grasses, and buckwheat make good options for for cover crops to plants while you garden is empty. First it creates a natural shade from the sun making it hard (or impossible) for seedlings are the surface to survive under their great shadows. Second it provides organic mater as “green manure” to add nutrients to your soil. One recommendation is to make sure you do a little research on the plant you choose as a cover crop, if you accidentally wait too long to “harvest” your cover crop it could go to seed and you may have an entirely new weed problem on your hands.
Cook the soil: When all else fails apply some black plastic (thicker the better) covering to your planting beds and let them “cook” throughout the fall/winter. Like mulch this will prevent any light and most water from entering the areas covered. This will essentially cook the soil killing any weeds, seeds, fungi, or anything else living in that area. Though this is very effective in eliminating weeds and disease from your soil it also kills everything else including good bacteria that your friendly worms like to visit your garden, so you soil may take sometime to recover and return to becoming living soil. I would recommend this method as a last result when the previous methods have proven to be completely unsuccessful.
Just for some positive outlook, you can also think of weeds as green manure assuming you are adding these to your compost, so even out of control they still can decompose and help your garden…
Tags: compost, garden seeds, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, vegetables, worms
