A lot of staple spring and summer crops are best started from transplants, including things like tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and broccoli. I also like to transplant many of my annual flowers instead of direct sowing them; that way, I’ll get earlier blooms, which help attract pollinators to the garden. Moving baby plants from their safe…
Tomatoes are on the must-grow list for every home garden, each spring. Your little tomato transplants are tough and eager to get growing, but diseases such as wilt and several common tomato blights can become a challenge, once warm, wet weather arrives later on in the season. Fortunately, good growing practices and some defense measures…
Conventional grocery store tomatoes are grown in sheltered greenhouses or tunnels, picked while green, and ripened under meticulously controlled conditions using ethylene gas. That’s why they’re blemish free and perfectly red, like a generic stock photo of a tomato. Backyard garden tomatoes usually have a bit more…character. Once you start growing them, you’ll start to…
Apparently, cabbage has this reputation for being difficult to grow. But really, it’s a hardy and reliable crop, and it’s less prone to bolting than some of the other brassicas like broccoli and cauliflower. Turns out, some of the worst cabbage problems that can cause total crop loss are easy to avoid with the right…
Summer is a challenging season for growing, since it’s prime time for just about every living organism that wants to trash your garden. Thankfully, pepper plants are more resilient than other crops against the different things that can go wrong during heat wave and bug invasion season. There are, however, a handful of problems that…
One day your cucumbers or tomatoes are trucking along and looking alright. The next, you find brown spots popping up on the leaves. What’s going on? More than likely, fungi or bacteria are laying siege to your plants. Welp, you’re not alone. Most of our veggie plants are highly vulnerable to a handful of diseases,…
Disease is one of the less glamorous aspects of gardening, but every gardener is going to see it at some point. Some plant diseases are a minor setback, while others can cause total crop loss. Conventional and commercial gardeners have synthetic fungicides at their disposal to prevent disease, along with potent pesticides to wipe out…
Are your plants struggling after their move out to the garden? Maybe they were thriving and healthy in their little seedling pots, but now, they’re wilting, yellowing, and refusing to grow. If so, they’re probably experiencing transplant shock. It’s discouraging to see your seedlings take a sudden downturn, after all the care and hard work…
