Hi My Organic Gardening Blog,

My name is Paul Kita and I am an assistant editor over at Men’s Health magazine. I write a food and nutrition blog for our website, and recently made a gardening post I thought my interest your readers:

http://blogs.menshealth.com/guy-gourmet/guy-grub-at-their-peak-cherry-tomatoes-two-ways/2010/08/03/

I’m not sure if this qualifies as a guest post, but I’m always looking to share recipes with readers outside of the Men’s Health demographics.

If you’re interested, feel free to repost my post (I can send you the images, too, if you’d like), with a nod to the blog.

Thank you,

Paul Kita
Men’s Health
http://blogs.menshealth.com/guy-gourmet/

During summer, evaporation and plant transpiration (together termed evapotranspiration) reach their peaks. The hot air and sunshine quickly suck the moisture from the soil and the leaves. Without adequate rainfall gardens will need more watering. Evapotranspiration is especially hard on hanging baskets, which are exposed on all sides. In a sunny location it is not uncommon for hanging baskets to need watering twice a day. Small pots fare no better. Of course, large containers can hold more water, but even they require watering every couple of days during the height of summer.

Here are a few tips that can make watering during a heat wave more effective and tolerable. First, water early in the morning. Dawn is best, but definitively before the heat of the day. Water thoroughly so it soaks deep into the root zone. Try to keep the leaves dry to limit fungal blights like powdery mildew. (For obvious reasons spray organic fungicides, pesticides, and repellents after watering.) While you’re letting the hose soak an area, put on some gloves and pull some weeds. Weeds take valuable water and nutrients from garden plants. Mulching will help control weeds and retain moisture in the soil. If you mulch with rich compost, then you’ll feed the garden as well.

These same tips work in container gardens on balconies and patios but you have to be extra diligent about monitoring soil moisture in your pots. Ideally, you want to water after the soil begins to dry but before the plant wilts. Most plants are very forgiving, but some wilt permanently if the roots dry for even a short time and others will rot if kept constantly moist. It can be a tricky balancing act. Avoid leaving standing water in buckets or deep trays to control mosquitoes.

Most importantly, take care of yourself. Put on sunscreen. Drink plenty of water before you go out and keep hydrated. Don’t stay out in the heat too long. For those that are capable, help some neighbors or friends that are less capable. Heat waves can be rough on gardens and gardeners, but they don’t last forever. And if we stay on top of watering, we’ll be rewarded with beautiful flowers and bountiful veggies.

Get Out & Grow

My tomato plant gave me my first two perfectly ripe beefsteak tomatoes of the season just in time to make a delicious salad for our family gathering!  I added fresh, sweet basil which is growing like crazy in my garden and some delicious mozzarella cheese.   Then I mixed in a delicious balsamic dressing that I got at our local farmer’s market (you can get it too at www.cheftimfoods.com) and presto… delicious summer salad with fresh local and backyard organic ingredients!

So…  are your tomatoes ripe yet?  When they are… you could use them to win up to $300 from SaferBrand.com!  Just take a photo of your tomatoes with the Safer Brand products you used to help them stay healthy and enter to win.  You can vote daily and tell all your friends too because the photos with the most votes on September 10th Win!

Happy Gardening!

In South Carolina, where I was born, sweet potatoes are as common in the garden as on the plate. My great grandmother gave me a piece (slip) from one of her plants back in 1998. Since then, we’ve grown that same plant every year. After cutting the vines and harvesting taters, we take slips and save the smallest taters for planting the following year.

They were grown in my community garden plot for years before the rabbit and vole populations exploded. The rabbits ate the foliage and voles ate the taters. You can’t afford any sweet potato setbacks in Chicago since there is such a short growing season for tropical crops. Because of the pest populations, our sweet taters have been container grown for past three years. Although not ideal, in a rich, well-drained soil mix they’ll produce a good crop of taters. In fact, they won the Moss Award for Best Container Crop in 2008.

Sweet potatoes need hot weather, so this year ours have only been potted for a little over two weeks. Growth is phenomenal once established. They produce heaps of lush foliage just like the ornamental varieties. However, you’ve got to monitor regularly, because rabbits and rodents aren’t the only pest that like sweet potatoes. Aphids, caterpillars, grasshoppers, thrips, and others can quickly get out of hand and stunt development. But be careful when choosing insecticides.

Insecticides with toxic residuals are particularly bad for root crops, because the residue can be absorbed into the roots. This also applies for stem crops, like celery and broccoli. Although fruiting crops absorb fewer residuals from their surroundings, it’s just healthier to go completely organic in your veggie garden. Even on heavily harassed sweet potatoes, organic vegetable gardening techniques using natural pest control and/or OMRI approved products work for me.

Last week I saw some aphids in one of my sweet potato pots. Aphids like to feed on the underside of leaves and on the growing tips. There were too many to wash off or crush. First I sprayed some insecticidal soap to knock the aphid numbers down. Then the next day, I released about 20 ladybugs to mop up the scragglers. Because the OMRI approved insecticidal soap is a contact killer with no residual effects, it can be used in conjunction with beneficial insects without fear of harming them. The ladybugs hung around feeding for a few days before they flew away.

The sweet potatoes are just now beginning their growth spurt. Soon they’ll be a mounding mass of decorative foliage. I won’t be able to check every leaf, but general monitoring will help control any insect problems til harvest-time in early October.

Just like there is no tomato as tasty as a homegrown tomato, there is no sweet potato as creamy and buttery as a homegrown one. If you have the space, it’s not too late. They grow fast during hot weather. With 3 months of summer left, anyone south of the Arctic Circle can still get some slips, pot ‘em up in a good soil mix, put ‘em in the sun, and harvest taters this fall. What’s good for sweet potatoes is also good for tomatoes, peppers, and squash. They all grow well in large containers and they all respond well to organic gardening techniques. With a little extra monitoring, small space gardeners can have containers of organic crops on their patio, porch, balcony, etc… from now til frost.

Get Out and Grow

This time, you are not just raising Red worms for worm composting but you are raising Red Wigglers for fishing baits.

Why Red Wiggler worms?

Red worms are good for fishing because they can survive for at least 5 minutes while in the hook. Fishes won’t give in to your trap if your bait is dead.

The worms’ ability to wiggle while inside the water makes them tempting. Second, though Red worms are just around 4 inches long, they can still be as good as the European Nightcrawlers. Lastly, since Red Wiggler worms are very popular you won’t have problems with supply even if demands are high.

How to Raise Red Worms for Fishing?

Raising Red Wigglers is never hard if it’s just in small scale. You may buy worm bins in the market. It comes in different size and designs. Depending on the amount of wastes and the number of Red Wiggler worms that you want to raise, you have variety of choices. You can also opt to make a worm bin on your own.

When your bin is set, see to it that the bedding is equally prepared. When you use shredded papers, those should be soaked into water first. Remember to keep the bedding moist at all times because worms breathe through their skin so too dry or soggy places won’t suit them. Also, make sure that the bin is not transparent because worms also hate light.

To do better in raising Red worms for fishing baits, give them enough food. Well, you can also have some treatments for the foods like freezing. Freezing will help potatoes and other foods to break down easily.

After 90 days or so, you’ll have lots of healthy Red Wiggler worms for your fishing escapade.

With so many things trying to attack my tomatoes its a wonder I even end up with enough to make a BLT! – Animals, blights & disease, insects and those darn caterpillars who are my current problem! One of the most damaging caterpillars is the Tomato Hornworm.

He is the larval stage of a hummingbird moth. when he emerges he is about 4.5 inches long, bright green and has a horned tail and I’ve seen them eating my tomatoes, fruit, stem, leaf, everything! He may also been eating peppers and eggplants.

So of course I don’t want to put harsh chemicals on my tomatoes…I plan to take them to work and share them… I plan to can them and make sauces… It seems yucky to be canning pesticide and sharing that stuff with my coworkers and family!

So, I’m using Garden Dust. It has Bt which stands for Bacillus thuringiensis which you can see is why most people just call it Bt. This stuff is OMRI listed and it kills leaf feeding worms and caterpillars…IMPORTANT…It does NOT kill earth worms… Earth worms = healthy garden… I wouldn’t dream of killing them.

So when I go to harvest my tomatoes that have been protected from the evil hornworm by my Garden Dust…I’ll just wash them and enjoy. Safer Brand products are not systemic so they don’t get into the fruit and end up in your body, they just wash off so I can enjoy my chemical-free sauces, sandwiches and feel confident sharing them with everyone.

Stay tuned… we are starting a tomato photo contest in July! Take a photo of your prize tomato and your safer Brand garden product and enter to win up to $300!

Romance. This is not a rose I grew. It was from a Valentine’s bouquet. There is no denying it, no matter how hardened one’s heart gets, roses speak to a woman’s heart. Roses say more than words. They smell, feel, look like the luxury of blooming, undeserved love.

Everywhere I have lived I have planted rose bushes. Last summer I drove by a house I once lived in and there by the front door was the David Austin English rose bush that I planted 9 years ago. A “Mary Rose” type.

It had reached its full height, about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It’s very fragrant and evidently had survived and even thrived in the cold Vermont climate.

My favorite David Austin Rose is the Graham Thomas, a soft yellow, extremely hardy, piece of growing Sunshine!

A few years ago I went to the Chelsea Flower Show in London. There were buildings chockfull of roses, new varieties, old standards. I roamed like a woman in love. My eyes were glazed over by the time I was done. But there is nothing like raising your own roses.

Some people are afraid of these queens. Don’t be. Face the fact that they might die. And that they will get fungus and bugs. But so what. They also bloom and sometimes they take root and live for decades. And walking out of your front door to the vision of a rose that is opening, a rose that you brought to this spot, that you believed in. Nothing compares to the feeling of watching an individual plant grow – not even a big fancy flower show. It’s a different kind of being in love. So take the chance. Plant a rose.

(P.S. Use fertilizer, organic pest control and herbicide, watch vigilantly for Japanese beetles and kill them on sight, water well, and believe. )

Leaf miners got their name because in their larval stage while they are feeding on your plants, they go deep into the stem so we don’t know of any truly effective spray for the larval stage of this insect (organic or chemical)…The larval stage typically lasts about 3 weeks. To treat this problem… first give your plants some organic fertilizer. (Talk to your local garden center specialist if you’re not sure which to buy for the type of plant) The fertilizer will help your plant grow despite the damage.

We recommend using our new EndALL® Insect Killer (with Neem Oil, Pyrethrin and Insecticial Soap) to kill the eggs and adults of this insect to prevent a next generation of infestation after this one matures. You’ll want to spray every 7-10 days for at least 3 weeks to make sure you get all the adults and their eggs as the larvae develop. If you want to try to kill the larvae you could order parasitic wasps online. They are a beneficial insect that will feed on and kill these pests while they are still in the plant.

Our Insect Library is an excellent resource for more information visit: http://www.saferbrand.com/advice/insect-library

To learn more about these specific insects go to:
All about leaf miners»
All about parasitic wasps»

To learn more about EndALL®»

As a gardener, I’m always looking for ways to save money and grow the most organic garden. I compost, I share seeds and plants with neighbors, I can my own produce . . . but every year I spend at least $300 watering my garden and lawn! That’s why I’m collecting rainwater this summer.

For centuries, people have collected runoff – our old house still has the “cistern room” in our basement! Back then they used this water for everything from bathing to drinking – that would be a little too much for me! But using the water that runs off my roof to water my flowers? Now that sounds like a good idea! Not only will I save money but I’ll keep the rainwater from eroding through my lawn as it eventually just ends up in the sewer. Plus this water is free of all the chemicals they add in before the tap water gets to my house. Best of all, it’s pretty easy to do!

Rain barrel designs range from very simple to decorative to downright complicated! Most depend on gravity to collect the water and disperse it throughout your garden. They usually are made out of a lidded twenty- or fifty-gallon plastic barrel that sits under your main downspout to collect the rainwater. Most come with an on-and-off handle so you can attach your hose to the barrel just like your outside spigot. Assembly is easy for any skill level and it makes a great project to do with the kids. The supplies usually run around $50 so you’ll easily recoup this upfront cost within the first month of use.

This water-saving practice has become so popular, you can find instructions for building your own rainwater barrel just about anywhere! I used wikiHow.com to get started. http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Rainwater-Collection-System. Or if you’d like a more hands-on approach, Many local utility companies and community education groups are now offering rain barrel classes – just look through your local paper. Most large garden supply stores or home improvement centers now offer pre-packaged, do-it-yourself kits at.

This is a such a fun project to do for your garden (and your wallet!). You’ll be able to give your veggies a clean, organic drink of water. You won’t be taking water from your city’s municipal system. You’ll be helping in eliminating erosion and runoff. And all it only takes is an empty barrel and a good downpour!