How to prevent weeds in your garden
15.2 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
How to save pumpkin seeds
15.2 years ago harvest, pumpkin, seed saving, seeds
The kids and I carved several pumpkins this year but we waited carve the three pumpkins we grew in our backyard until Halloween since these were the seeds I wanted to save for planting next year. First, I know exactly how these pumpkins were grow, organically and free of any pesticides. Second, I was able to let these pumpkins grow undisturbed until the day I picked the seeds, so the seeds should definitely be mature.
The process is very simple, while getting the “goo” as my 5-year-old would say out of the pumpkin set the seeds aside and add to a colander. Give them a good rinse and remove any orange “goo” that may have snuck in. Pat dry with a towel and let the seeds dry on wax or parchment paper for a couple days. Once they are dry to touch put them layered on a paper sack and let them dry for a few weeks until putting them in homemade seed packets until the are ready for next year.
If you have way too many seeds than you need (I know I do) you can also use the great recipe to roast some of you extra seeds as a snack:
CVG’s Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
- Extra pumpkin seeds
- 1/2 tsp oil
- 1/2 tsp of Worchester sauce
- 1/4 tsp of seasoning salt
Directions: Add ingredients to bowl and mix well. Lay on a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake at 325 for about 25 minutes being sure to flip the seeds after about 10 minutes. Eat as soon as you can without burning your mouth.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, vegetables
How to save corn seeds (Kernels)
15.2 years ago corn, harvest, seed saving, seeds
Corn is one of those crops I really don’t have space to grow but still like to try every year. This past year I only had one ear that made it to maturity, in the plants defense we have a very hot summer and I didn’t have the most consistent watering schedule so I am to blame for most of their demise. Given I used the last of my corn seed this year and wanting to make the best out a bad situation, I decided to use this ear for seeds for next year.
I decided to go the natural route and simply let the corn stay on the stalk until I was ready to pull up my corn stalks my wife got tired of looking at our dead corn stalks in the backyard which turned out to be yesterday (October 31st) As you can see from the picture above the corn kernels have dried out pretty well, though still contain a little moisture.
To remove the kernels I started by braking the cob in half and then starting where I split the cob pushing the loose kernels off with my thumb starting from one end to the other. Once I have this first row off it should be pretty easy to attack these kernels at any angle.
Lastly I layered the kernels in a single row in an open ended brown lunch bag to allow air flow to allow the remaining moisture to be removed. I put the bag on top of our cabinets in the kitchen and will add them to a homemade paper seed packet after a few weeks or drying (or when I remember they are up there more like a few months late) then store in the refrigerator until time for planting next year.
Now I have more seeds than I probably will ever need for a few years and hopefully will have better luck (or at least remember to water them better) next year.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, outdoor plants, vegetables
Pickled jalapeno peppers
15.2 years ago jalapeno, peppers, recipe
My jalapeno peppers did great this year. So good I didn’t really know what to do with all of them. After making some salsa and having several mature red ones as snacks in the garden, I still have about two pounds that I didn’t want to go to waste. After a little thought I decided to make some pickled jalapeno peppers.
CVG Picked jalapeno pepper recipe
Directions: Mix ingredients and bring brine to boil. Either slice or leave the pepper whole. If you choose to do whole peppers, be sure to poke them with a toothpick so they won’t collapse. Fill jars with jalapeno peppers and then fill with hot brine up to 1/2 in from the top of jar. Boil for 10 minutes and feel free to pick some pickled peppers as fast and as many times as you want this summer.
Tags: garden seeds, led, pepper plants, salsa garden
Computer controlled grow box – Part 2
15.2 years ago indoor growbox, water
Though I have made some significant changes to the grow box controller, the actual grow box has undergone some minor but important changes over the past few months.
Automated watering
Now I must say this one is pretty darn simple. Though I will be planning on a slightly more complicated hydroponic setup later I decided to start with a very easy bottom watering technique. Just take a regular old fountain pump (I went with the cheapest I could find) drop it in a 5 gallon bucket of water and attach a hose long enough to reach your planting tray and plug in the power to the pump to your grow box controller and that’s about it.
To prevent evaporation and algae and little bugs making a home in my nice bucket of water, I added a lid with two holes for the water output and power input. The power input required me to make a straight cut with a utility knife to ensure a snug fit while not requiring me to cur the AC line to feed the wire through.
I also cut a hole of the same size as the water output on the bucket lid to the grow box to allow the line to enter while still keeping the box closed.
Exhaust fan control
Air circulation is important for plants to be healthy but when the box gets warmer than expected I installed two controlled CPU fans to help regulate temperate as well as one static fan that constantly pushes air from the top to bottom.
I added a 12 volt exhaust fan to the top of the box (pictured above) to help push hot air out of the grow box with another (pictured below) at the lower part of the grow box to push in cold air as needed. Both of these fans are powered by a 12 volt power wall adapter plugged into the grow box controller.
Heating
Though the computer and lights allow the box to create a comfortable internal temperature, sometimes it needs a little help. For this I installed a regular old seedling heater to hopefully take a little sting out of the cold floor the seed tray is sitting one. Like other components this was simply plugged into the grow box controller.
Putting it all together
My previous version was a little sloppily put together with duct/packing tape (lets just call it prototyping). Though this added some hackiness appear it wasn’t too functional so I added a little strip of wood to support a couple hinges which I created a top which holds the LCD panel.
Upon opening the top you can see the grow box controller and the state of the art 600 MHz PC in all their glory.
As you can see I have still have some cleaning up to do with compress air and maybe a few more zip ties but all in all everything seems to have come together nicely.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, grow lights, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
How to determine your seed germination rate
15.3 years ago germination, seed saving, seed storing, seeds
Whether you are trying to determine if those seeds you have been stored for 3-4 years are still good or questioning your ability to harvest seeds on your own testing germination is a great way to take away from of the guesswork and avoid disappointment next spring.
The process is very simple, I believe I did the same thing in second grade during our plant section. Though that was to observe how a seed sprouts/roots the concept is exactly the same.
Take a wet paper towel and place 10 seeds on it and place the wet paper towel in a Ziploc bag. After a few days (or weeks depending on the normal germination rate) check back on your seeds and count how many sprouted.
In my case six out of ten of the jalapeno seeds sprouted. So just do the simple math using the following formula:
Germination rate = (# seeds sprouted/# total seeds sprouted) X 100
So in my case:
(6 seeds sprouted/10 seeds total) X 100 = 60% germination rate
Of course the more seeds you use in your “trial” the more accurate the results will be for my purposes the error rate is good enough for me.
If I was a seed seller this would be disastrous since most distributors have germination limits (90-95%), but given these are for my own use and I have about 300 more seeds that I will use no major loss. Though I will need to remember when I plant these out I will want to plant 2 seeds per cell to have good odds one of the seeds will germinate.
Another option is to give your 4 year old a handful of seeds and a pot full of dirt and see if most of them sprout. Much less scientific but my daughter didn’t seem to notice.
Tags: garden seeds, outdoor plants
