For those of you who have limited space to grow things, grow boxes are a great solution. It is a great way to have fresh vegetables and fruits in the summertime without needing to have lots of room to do it in.The number of plants you can grow in a box depends on the type of plant you are growing.

Grow boxes can be purchased locally in most areas and also over the internet. They come with full instructions on assembly and how to lay out the plants to get the best results. You will get high yields so therefore you may only need one plant to have enough for eating fresh. For instance, you can plant a tomato on the end and put a cucumber next to it because the cucumber will grow low and spread out and creep down the side of the box and across whatever surface you have the box setting on.

The other convenience factor about a grow box is that they have a self-watering resevoir in the bottom and therefore you just fill it up when it gets low and the maintenance in very low. There will be little to no weeds because you fill it with potting soil. You will want to use potting soil not topsoil because the potting soil will stay loose so that the roots can have plenty of room.

I have two grow boxes on the corner of the deck just for the convenience of having them close at hand. Last year I harvested two dozen anaheim peppers off of one plant in my grow box, which made for some yummy stuffed peppers and frozen peppers for the winter. One green bean yielded several meals worth. This year I am trying a cucumber, several types of peppers, two types of tomatoes, and a watermelon in my grow boxes.

So for limited space, these are the quick and easy answer. Give it a try and don’t be scared. You will enjoy the freshness and benefits of grow boxes.

You must be sure to wear gloves, long sleeves and pants, and not contact it with your skin at the time of harvest. If it contacts your skin you will get an itchy rash caused by the itch-inducing needles on the bottoms of the leaves. After harvest you can make a tea or tincture from the fresh leaves. The stalks can also be hung to dry and the leaves stored for making tea in the winter season.

To make a fresh tea, you need to infuse or steep the leaves for at least 10 minutes to avoid the sting from staying in and causing an irritation to the body. The tea is wonderful and usually you do not even need to add a sweetener. The tea can be consumed hot or iced. You should never consume more than three cups per day as this will give you bad diarrhea. Do not drink the tea if you get any kind of allergic reaction, such as hives, swelling or difficulty breathing.

To make a tincture you can use dried nettle leaves. Chop the leaves and place into a glass jar. Add ¾ cup vodka and ¾ cup water to the jar. Seal the jar and shake well. Allow the nettle to infuse for two weeks. Shake the tincture daily as it infuses. After two weeks has passed, strain the nettle from the tincture.

Place the tincture into a dark-colored glass jar with a dropper. Be sure to label it and put the date of preparation on the jar. Nettle tincture can be stored for several years if done properly.

Use 2 ml of tincture three times daily as an adult dose for such conditions as hay fever, seasonal allergies, gout, rheumatism, and arthritis.

Lighting is the next requirement. There is a lot of information on the great wide web about grow lights and wattage of bulbs and so forth. I have used only a four-foot fluorescent shop light that we had lying around and not in use. It has done very well. The important thing is to keep it lowered right over the top of the seedlings (about 2-3 inches above) so that they will not become spindly and tall. Keeping the light low over them will make them develop much thicker, stronger stems. You want the light on 24/7 until the plants have emerged. Once the plants have emerged and formed true leaves, you can put it on an automatic timer and have it switch off 6-8 hours per day. Preferably overnight so they are in total darkness.

Thinning is also very important. You want to make sure the little seedlings have plenty of room to grow. When you see which seedlings look strongest, you can take a scissors and snip the top off the weaker ones to allow for more room. After about two weeks of growth, take the seedlings, more pots, some potting soil, and water and gently separate the seedlings and split up into separate pots with potting soil in them. This soil will start to prepare the plants for outdoors. Place them back under the lights and continue to water and let them grow.  Good luck and happy planting!

Upon reading further it came to my attention that you should plant a variety of types of plants. There are June-bearing and day-neutral types of strawberries. When you plant both types, you are able to harvest fruit the first year. The day-neutral type will produce fruit quickly, while the June-bearing are not supposed to produce fruit the first year so that the plant becomes well established and is allowed to grow to full height before producing fruit. You will need to pinch off any blossoms that they produce for the first year so that you will receive a bountiful harvest the second season.

Strawberries need full sun and rich loose soil with a PH of 5.8 to 6.5. They also like a lot of organic matter or compost in the soil. My next bed with be a raised bed since I need to clear out all the grass that has overtaken the bed that they are currently planted in. To help prevent them from disease, they should not be planted in an area where potatoes, tomatoes, or grass has been growing in the past.

It is important to allow plenty of space between the plants so that the runners can establish in open areas and you can control the thickness of the plants. Starting with 25 plants should provide enough fruit for a family of four. Now remember after three or four years, it is required to get rid of the oldest plants as they will probably stop producing a high-yield crop or even producing all together.

I can’t wait to get started on my new strawberry bed now. The race is on to find the right type of soil and plants to be able to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie by the end of the summer. The rhubarb is doing well and just about ready to pick so the strawberries better grow fast.

All of a sudden I noticed that there was a bright orange butterfly sitting on the blossom just going to town deep down in the middle of it. I guess I have been oblivious most of my life since I had not noticed that they seem to be sucking up the nectar inside the blossom with just as much excitement as a honey bee.

Well, upon doing a nice little Google search, I found out that butterflies do not have a very long lifecycle and that the nectar is what the adult butterfly feeds on. With the slow emergence of Spring, I was surprised to see a butterfly out there eating its fill. I did not think that it was warm enough for them to have gone this far in their lifecycle yet. I guess it would depend on the species and let’s face it, that is a little too much in depth for my basic biologic understanding.  Another fun fact that I read was that a butterfly cannot fly if their body temperature is below 86 degrees.

Butterflies consume a liquid diet, so they consume nectar from flowers and water whereever they can find it. You can actually create butterfly feeders with mushy banana slices, oranges and watermelon. Butterflies are able to see blue, red and green colors so having those colors and possible flower shapes will attract them to the food.

I actually prefer to plant a lot of wildflowers to attract the butterflies, simply because I enjoy flowers and the other plus is that they are usually perennial and can be enjoyed  year after year. I hope this gets you a little more excited to pay closer attention the next time you observe a butterfly out in your yard. They are quite fasinating to watch, if you can sneek close enough without scaring them off. It took me several attempts before capturing this picture.

Click here to visit acclaimed IPM expert Stephen Tvedten’s Encyclopedia of Integrated Pest Management

According to Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition:

“Synthetic pesticides are the single largest class of toxic chemicals to which the total population worldwide is exposed. While their predominant use is in large-scale industrialized agriculture, other major applications include urban spraying, uses in offices, schools, golf courses, and the home lawn and garden. Such uses result in pervasive environmental contamination of air, water, and food…”

“There is overwhelming scientific documentation on the adverse public health impact of such exposures. These include carcinogenic, neurotoxic, and endocrine disruptive or hormonal effects. Yet the public remains largely uninformed of these largely unregulated toxic exposures, tantamount to chemical warfare. This reckless, if not criminal, conduct of the pesticide industry is trivialized by its PR assurances of safety, besides by those of industry scientists, and indentured academics…”

“Nothing could be further from the truth…”

Please stop and think before you purchase or use anything that increases the toxicity in your community. Synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers are not necessary with a little care, education, and elbow-grease.

-Pete Skenandore

Source:

The Best Control

About 1/3 of pesticide use is extremely toxic to humans and contain carcinogens, neurotoxins, and reproductive toxicants.

Pesticides are in everything nowadays with over $11 Billion dollars worth getting spread around our communities each year.

The pesticide industry has exerted intense pressure on the U.S. Government, farmers and the general public giving millions of dollars to state and national election campaigns.

If you think you are not causing harm to yourself, your family, your neighbor, your community and the environment by your continued use of toxic chemical pesticides and herbicides then you are a fool.

Here are my recommendations.

#1 Stop being so uptight. Bugs deserve some space. They will keep each other in check too. Beneficial insects and beneficial insect plantings work (see list below).

#2 Use a vacuum. I’ve tried this and it works. We had a sugar ant infestation and I simply vacuumed them up for about a week until they stopped coming in the house. No biggie. Caulking works too. Spiders, same thing. The only thing the vacuum hasn’t worked all that well on are house flies. haha.

#3 Crack open a book on organic farming.

#4 Research pesticide toxicity. Our number one rule is if we don’t know what that ingredient is, or where it comes from, we don’t buy it or put it on anything around us.

#5 Use some common sense.

Plant Repellant list:

Ant: mint, tansy, pennyroyal
Aphids: mint, garlic, chives, coriander, anise
Bean Leaf Beetle: potato, onion, turnip
Codling Moth: common oleander
Colorado Potato Bug: green beans, coriander, nasturtium
Cucumber Beetle: radish, tansy
Flea Beetle: garlic, onion, mint
Imported Cabbage Worm: mint, sage, rosemary, hyssop
Japanese Beetle: garlic, larkspur, tansy, rue, geranium
Leaf Hopper: geranium, petunia
Mexican Bean Beetle: potato, onion, garlic, radish, petunia, marigolds
Mice: onion
Root Knot Nematodes: French marigolds
Slugs: prostrate rosemary, wormwood
Spider Mites: onion, garlic, cloves, chives
Squash Bug: radish, marigolds, tansy, nasturtium
Stink Bug: radish
Thrips: marigolds
Tomato Hornworm: marigolds, sage, borage
Whitefly: marigolds, nasturtium

Do you have a favorite organic pest control method?
Please share!

Pete Skenandore

Sources:
NRCS
CPR

So if you love eating honey, or more importantly, eating food, you’re probably gonna wanna read this. And then please, dear reader, commit to doing something from the list at the end of this article.

$15 billion dollars worth of fruit, nuts and vegetables are at risk because of all the vanishing bees. Where did they go? What’s happening to them? Well, there are obvious answers, and not so obvious answers.

First let’s take a look at a list of crops that simply will not grow without honey bees:

Forage and Legume Crops: Alfalfa, buckwheat and clover.
Fruit Crops: Apple, apricot, avocado, berry, cherry, citrus, kiwi, mango, passion fruit, peach, pear, persimmon and plum.
Nut Crops: Almond, cashew, chestnut, coconut and macademia.
Oilseed Crops: Cotton, flax, rape, safflower, soybean and sunflower.
Vegetable Seed Crops: Asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chinese cabbage, collard, cucumber, dill, eggplant, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, leek, lima bean, mustard, onion, parsley, pepper, pumpkin, radish, rutabaga, squash, turnip.
Vegetable Crops: Beans, cantelope, cucumbers, muckmelon, pumpkin, squash, watermelon, eggplant, lima benas, peppers.

And this is just a partial list! Don’t forget ornamental and flower crops!

It is estimated by the USDA that 30% of our (US) food crop is dependent on honeybee pollination.

Ok, so first what is Colony Collapse Disorder? It is simply a name attributed to the disappearance of entire colonies of bees. For some reason they just simply never return to the hive. From October 2009 to April 2010 28% of beekeeping operations reported that some of their colonies perished without dead bees present totaling a 44% overall loss of their colonies.

Here are the symptoms:
-No adult bees in or around the hive.
-Pupa in cocoons.
-Honey and pollen in hive not consumed.

I’ll save the lecture on bee biological cycles for another post. But I will say that the varying stages of bee development are interdependent on each other. Developing pupae get fed by older generations.

Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder? Who knows? But we can guess at the obvious. Mono-crop agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, environmental pollution, air-wave pollution, migratory route interruption, global warming, etc.

Personally, I think, yes, all of the above, but largely that the commercial honeybee has been so overly managed (even “organic” honey producers are allowed to use noxious chemicals) that bee-strength and adaptability is probably the first thing to focus on. I’ll explain: Typically, commercial bee colonies are stripped of their hard earned honey, all of it. This is then replaced with simple sugar syrup over winter. All those health benefits of honey and pollen taken away from the species that needs it most? Make sense? So that’s the first place to start. Commercial beekeepers should implement a partial harvesting to allow bees to keep a store to sustain their strength overwinter. (much more to this, but this post is getting rather long)

Ok, so let’s cut to the chase about things you can do:
1. Give a hoot don’t pollute! This means not only automobile emissions, it means reducing your consumption period! A key indicator is how much garbage you put at the curb! Make a commitment to reduce household waste by 1/3!
2. Consider the toxicity of your yard. Do you spray and fertilize? Consider composting kitchen scraps, mulching, removing bugs with a vaccume? (I Do this when ants come in the house, I call it the whirling vortex of death, it works!) Really, this is my number one concern. STOP BUYING THAT TOXIC CRAP AT HOME STORES!!! ALL IT DOES IS INCREASE YOUR COMMUNITIES TOXICITY!!
3. Garden, garden, garden!!! Gardens are the most awesome thing you can do. If it’s not organic, then it’s not a Gardenview™ garden and you are not allowed to come back to this site ever again.
4. Replace your lawn with clover and let it flower! Bees LOVE clover!
5. Turn landscaping beds into mulch factory flower machines! Who needs beauty bark! (I’ll post about this specifically later)
6. Get your neighborhood to commit to green yard management. Send out a flyer, have a pot-luck or just simply talk over the hedge about being green!
7. Lucky #7 Buy an Organichive™ and enjoy being a honeybee naturalist! These hives are proven in the field, awesome, and probably the coolest hobby you could ever do. (I should know, I’m a honeybee naturalist)

So, Gardenview™ friends, there is the short list. I hope you enjoyed the article and that we can link arms to make this world a bit friendlier for our industrious friend the honeybee.

Pete Skenandore

Sources:
OrganicHive™
AH&OH STUDIO – image
Green Living Tips

After last years composting frenzy, I thought this year the soil would be loaded with all the nutrients needed to get a great big pumpkin.

As you may or may not know. I do not use any type unnatural fertilizers. It’s composted kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, leaves, and that’s it. So there is no secret “blue” formulas, no nitrogen loaded pegs, nothing.

So here’s the quick run down of the great giant pumpkin experiment of 2010.
I planted seeds in the ground early this year, ’cause, you know, it was sunny and warm outside. Those little guys burst forth out of the ground with vigor.
…then it froze.
…and they withered.
…and I cried.

So I “contemplated” meaning -procrastinated- about replanting for about a week, and low and behold one of the little guys just decided he wasn’t about to go visit the great pumpkin in the sky. My little bud poked his head up between the other frost dead leaves and fought back hard. And my friends, you are looking at the proud accomplishments of that little guy.

Note: basketball to show scale. The basketball is not a giant basketball. Repeat: the basketball is regulation size. -just in case you were wondering. And I know you were.

So the 2010 giant pumpkin experiment yielded a completely natural 24 -ish pounder. I’ve decided to try and dehydrate it along with all the birdhouse gourds my daughter grew. haha.

I’m naming this pumpkin Lazerus for obvious reasons (nothing to do with lazers).

Can’t wait til the giant pumpkin growing season of 2011.

There are many things you can do to color your birdbath, or you may want to leave it looking rather natural and leave it the color of the concrete with just a few shades of color left by the leaf. I also experimented with using a liquid concrete dye that you add as you are mixing up the concrete. You can use acrylic paints, spray paints, and even house paint. You will need to apply your color before sealing the concrete though.

It is important to seal the color and concrete with a sealer after about three weeks of drying time to allow it to thoroughly dry and become less porous before filling it with water. You may put your birdbath on a pedestal or just dig it into your existing landscaping to allow your automatic sprinklers to fill it. I placed mine on a tripod of rocks to lift it slightly off the ground and my sprinklers still fill it when they run.

This is a slow process and you may only make about five or six birdbaths a summer. The entire process takes about one month to complete from start to finish. I create a sort of assembly line and there is about a week in between each process.

Not everybody will get rhubarb leaves that are as large as these. You can create smaller versions and also use leaves from various plants and trees as well. You will need to adjust the amount of concrete used and the shape and size of the sand pile to accommodate the size of your leaf. You can also fill them with bird seed to create a lovely meal for all kinds of birds.

I wish you well on creating this wonderful project and don’t be afraid to experiment with colors, sizes, and techniques. They make wonderful gifts, can be sold for a little extra spending cash, and are a good conversation starter. For me, they have been all of the above.

Here is a fun and creative project to do over the summer. This is my second summer of creating these birdbaths using my rhubarb leaves, a pile of sand, and twenty pounds of Quickrete vinyl concrete patcher per birdbath.

There are many things you can do to color your birdbath, or you may want to leave it looking rather natural and leave it the color of the concrete with just a few shades of color left by the leaf. I also experimented with using a liquid concrete dye that you add as you are mixing up the concrete. You can use acrylic paints, spray paints, and even house paint. You will need to apply your color before sealing the concrete though.

It is important to seal the color and concrete with a sealer after about three weeks of drying time to allow it to thoroughly dry and become less porous before filling it with water. You may put your birdbath on a pedestal or just dig it into your existing landscaping to allow your automatic sprinklers to fill it. I placed mine on a tripod of rocks to lift it slightly off the ground and my sprinklers still fill it when they run.

This is a slow process and you may only make about five or six birdbaths a summer. The entire process takes about one month to complete from start to finish. I create a sort of assembly line and there is about a week in between each process.

Not everybody will get rhubarb leaves that are as large as these. You can create smaller versions and also use leaves from various plants and trees as well. You will need to adjust the amount of concrete used and the shape and size of the sand pile to accommodate the size of your leaf. You can also fill them with bird seed to create a lovely meal for all kinds of birds.

I wish you well on creating this wonderful project and don’t be afraid to experiment with colors, sizes, and techniques. They make wonderful gifts, can be sold for a little extra spending cash, and are a good conversation starter. For me, they have been all of the above.

Lori Voigt
via ProBlogPartners™

The more fragrant flower blooms will maintain that fragrance when they dry. Roses are
a great example. Many roses have a wonderful fragrance. The key is not to pile them up
until they are completely dried. You will need to lay them out flat for a few days to a
week to let them dry before putting them together in the bowl.

After you have about a quart of flower petals saved, you can create with them. They can
be used in potpourri by adding lavender buds, oak moss, and sandalwood. You can add
a complimentary spice such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, dried citrus peel or vanilla
beans. You can also add a few drops of essential oil, or if you like, some of your favorite
perfume. Seal your potpourri into a jar allowing it to mellow for about 10 days. Shake
gently every few days to allow the fragrance to mix well.

Once your potpourri is well scented you can stuff pillows with it, or hang it in a
pomander to keep your closet smelling fresh. Small sachets can be used in any drawer
or even in your vehicle. An easy way to make a sachet is to put a small handful of the
fragrant mixture into a lace or linen fabric and tie the four corners with a satin bow or
ribbon.

You can create a special gift for a friend or family member, possibly with the flowers that
you received from them or from some special family memory.

Lori Voigt
via ProBlogPartners™