Summer Gardening

What Vegetables Can You Plant in Mid Summer?

Being relatively new gardeners (this is our fifth year of growing organic vegetables here in NJ Zone 6), we occasionally still have to research certain aspects of gardening before being able to write about them. Mid-summer planting was one of them. My mother has been gardening for most of her life, and I remember that …

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What to Do with an Overgrown Vegetable Garden

What to do with an Overgrown Vegetable Garden At some point in the heat of summer, you may look at your raised bed vegetable garden and wonder when and how it ended up morphing into an out-of-control jungle. Tomato plants wrapped around each other and everything else, kales shading out parsley, eggplant cowering beneath a …

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What does Kale look like? (Kale vs. Collards vs. Swiss Chard)

What does Kale look like? (Kale vs. Collards vs. Swiss Chard) I recently opened my emailed copy of a certain big-name gardening newsletter to discover their big sale on kale. A well-timed message, but there was one problem. The newsletter had pictures of collard greens, not kale! This got me to thinking. Apparently, a lot …

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What can you do with your NJ garden in July?

Mid July heats up NJ like no other! If you thought it was time to ditch the shovel in favor of sitting in front of the air conditioner, guess again, organic gardener. There’s a whole host of garden veggies that live for the scorching summer weather. What sort of gardening can you do in July …

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Tomatoes Planting Instructions for NJ Zone 6

New Jersey is reputed as being the ideal climate for growing fine, fat tomatoes that burst with flavor. Even the most casual or inexperienced of NJ gardeners will probably put at least one tomato plant in come springtime to see what becomes of it. Tomatoes are most definitely a hot-weather plant, and do not fare …

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Organic Gardening: Updates from the Experimental NJ Gardeners

What’s happening in your NJ organic garden this July? We cleared the mesclun mix out, after enjoying a full spring’s worth of delicious, fresh salads. My husband took some cutting shears to some of the dead lower leaves on our tomato plants, and removed some yellowed leaves on our eggplant as well. The peas that …

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Jersey Tomato Plants: Common Problems

What NJ gardener doesn’t salivate at the thought of plucking the season’s first, plump red tomatoes from the vine? Unfortunately, while nearly every gardener from the garden state has tried their hand at tomato growing with some measure of success, there are some common issues that we all face. Tomato troubles? Try these preventive methods: …

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Harvesting Tomatoes in NJ Zone 6: Q&A

If you’re anything like we are, then you probably spent a good part of your summer watering, watching and waiting for those tomato plants to yield some firm, red fruit. And then just when you had all but given up, here comes a sudden windfall of tomatoes! So now you probably want to know what to do …

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