Natural Pest Control for Your Garden

Chemical free gardening is healthier for gardeners, consumers, and the environment. Chemicals from farm and lawn runoff in Florida have been linked to red tide, which not only kills sealife, but causes respiratory problems in humans and animals. Lawn and garden chemicals leach into our groundwater, and are still present in municipal water supplies, even after processing. It is unclear what the long term effects of these chemicals is on human health, but in recent years many disorders such as infertility, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Autism have become more and more prevalent in industrialized societies where chemicals are most used.

I've written two articles on natural pest control that will educate you on what is available, and how to use it.

Very basic information can be found here:

Organic Gardening Basics: Natural Insect and Animal Pest Control

More detailed information on Neem Oil, Spinosad and Homemade Pesticides can be found here:

Natural and Homemade Pesticide Alternatives for Your Organic Garden

Enjoy!

New Site Map and More

I've added a site map to the sidebar. So far, it's not very refined, and I'll be working on that as time goes by, but I wanted to give you a way to just view certain things.

As you all know, I write articles all over the web on how to grow food, and also on how to recycle and reuse things. I'm getting together snippets and links to all those articles here, because I think it all pertains to Urban Homesteading. After all, we do more than just grow food, don't we?

I added "Grow Your Own Food" to the site map to show all the articles on growing food. Some of these are just for South Florida, but still have some valuable information for everyone. I'm writing more general vegetable gardening articles now, so I'll eventually have them all up.

I'll soon be adding "Green Living" to the sidebar, when I get some of those articles up and linked to.

I'm going to try to start a "Weekend Roundup", where I will just post pictures of the yard, and what's growing, and what's being done. This will save me having to post pics on every post, as that is very time consuming, and I'd rather be gardening and teaching others to garden.

"Friends and Neighbors Friday" will feature links to blog posts from other veggie gardeners and homesteaders, so if you have a post you think is helpful, or just interesting, email me with a link, and I'll check it out. No promises, but if I find it useful, I'll include it.

So stay tuned! I'm going to be promoting the blog more as well, now that it actually has some content, so hopefully some of you will get some traffic from that.

Growing Herbs Properly Prolongs Their Useful Life

Herbs are one of the easiest and most enjoyable plants to grow. Fresh herbs add a special flavor to your dishes, and growing your own guarantees that you aren't getting toxic chemicals with your herbs.

Harvesting herbs properly can extend your harvest considerably. Harvesting techniques are different for different herbs, but there is one rule you should always observe: No Haircutting! It's tempting to just chop off the whole bunch of herbs such
as parsley and cilantro, but this stresses the plant, and can even kill it.

You should harvest herbs as you need them. Harvesting can be done at any time you like, but remove no more than one-third of the total plant. Wait for the plant to regenerate that growth before cutting again. Read More

Tomato and Eggplant Worm Pile Experiment

I've been trying to build this worm bed with a base of horse manure, leaves, and kitchen scraps. So I think I killed the worms by piling too much on and not keeping it moist enough. I don't see any in there.

Still, there is all that great compost material, so I didn't want it to go to waste. I trimmed back some suckers and half dead branches (left over from the winter freeze) from the Park's Whopper tomato plant. I love these huge beefsteaks, but this plant seriously did not do well, and what tomatoes it got were getting eaten by something.

Just as an experiment, I stuck four of the suckers into the compost/worm pile to root. I had thrown an overripe ichiban eggplant in there, so I tore it open to see if some of those seeds will sprout. Since they are related (tomatoes and eggplant), they should grow well together. We'll see.

I moved the pot o' potatoes under the oak tree, because potatoes actually don't do too well here in the summer. Maybe by keeping them under there, I can keep them alive. Hope so, anyway. I'll be planting the sweet potatoes in the larger pot next week...got lots of plans for this weekend, so no more gardening.

That's all for today. Most of my gardening lately has been my edibles, but I'm going to try to put something in the gardening blog soon.

Tomato Report

I separated and repotted almost all the tomato seedlings today.

I had 10 Cherokee Purple seedlings, and I only need four at best, so I put the rest into styrofoam cups to share with neighbors.

I put both Husky Cherry Reds into 3 gallon pots. Never have grown these before, but they look like patio tomatoes, so I'm sure they'll be fine in the pots.

I cut some suckers of of the Park's Whopper, and put those into a 1 gallon pot to root. This is my favorite tomato variety, so I want lots of them.

I ran out of soil, or I would have separated and potted up the Black Pear tomatoes as well. I have 5 of those, so I'm going to keep two and give the rest away.

I need to go get more soil, and also I need to get more styrofoam cups. I didn't plan on working outside today, but the tomatoes needed desperately to be transplanted, so I did it. I can't walk outside without doing something! There is just so much to get done.

Tomorrow I'm going to dig up and move the Ice Cream bananas and replace them with Yellow Bell Pepper plants.