GardenBeds-NJ.com, offers NJ zone 6-specific organic gardening tips on their website, and recently launched a comprehensive gardening guide that is available for instant download by email.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE–
March 20, 2015
Hunterdon County, NJ
Just in time for the 2015 spring gardening season, GardenBedsNJ.com has compiled a comprehensive, raised-bed gardening guide that’s designed to provide basic understanding advice, as well as clear up confusion for the new or newish gardener who lives in NJ Zone 6.
Author Dina Hyde, who wrote the e-guide as a way to increase value for her husband Mike’s garden bed installation customers, saw a definite need for gardening how-to information that is region-specific.
Says Dina, “When you Google gardening tips online, pretty much anything can come up for any area of the world. I was researching how to plant strawberries, and found myself on a site that ended up being local to Australia.
While some of the info was helpful, a lot of it was clearly not going to work for the area where we live. Gardening advice differs according to climate and weather patterns. We wanted to make it easy for people in our part of NJ to find the information they need to grow vegetables and herbs right in their own backyards.”
While technically the USDA has broken up their Hardiness zones into subcategories, Hyde see no reason to distinguish between, say, Zone 6A and 6B. “The difference is minimal,” says Dina, and for the most part you’re relying on the weather outside your window as your decision on what to plant when over the course of the gardening season.”
Hyde also points out that, despite what the planting instructions in her NJ gardening guide may advise, you really must follow the specifics on the seed packet of whatever you’re planting. “They’re coming out with new varieties all the time,” she says. “So everything keeps changing. Say for example we caution you in the gardening guide about cucumber beetles. Well, if you happen to come across a cultivar of cucumber that has bred to be resistant to these insects, then our advice suddenly doesn’t apply.”
GardenBedsNJ.com‘s general advice is to be aware that in gardening, everything affects everything else. “You might plant a crop of carrots, and on the seed packet it says “80 days to maturity” but then you don’t follow the instructions too closely. So maybe your plants are too close together, and it didn’t rain much that spring, and other factors… and now you’re looking at 4 months before you have any carrots to show for your effort. But just because the crop didn’t come in when you expected it so, doesn’t mean you should just give up! Just keep trying different things and learning all you can.”
Her point in saying this is that The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening in Zone 6 is just a starting point. “New gardeners need a reference,” Hyde explains. “In the beginning, it’s very confusing, and people just want some simple how-to instructions for each plant. They also want to know when to plant which vegetables and herbs. We have provided an easy way to look up this information without having to do a lot of online research.”
In addition to how to grow vegetables and herbs, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening in Zone 6 also covers hot topics such as composting, organic fertilizer alternatives, and companion planting. For example, the guide has included planting instructions for several types of flowers such as marigolds, nasturtium, and sunflowers, all of which serve as companion plants that deter pests and disease from many different types of garden vegetables.
Finally, the topic of raised bed gardening is of special interest for people who want to grow their own organic produce but don’t have a lot of room or a lot of time.
“More and more people are searching for ways to be healthier, and to know what’s going into their food. Organic gardening is not a new practice; it’s just something that fell out of fashion for a long time, but now there is renewed interest. And grocery-store produce is getting more and more expensive. We wanted to offer people some insight into how you can successfully grow your own food without the use of chemicals and pesticides.”
“In the guide, we offer shortcuts and other tips that work for people who lead full and busy lives,” says Hyde. “Not everyone wants to spend their free time tending to tiny seedlings; some people may just need ideas on the quickest way to grow tomatoes and peppers and such, and to do a good job of it.”
Finally, she covers the obvious reason to go with raised beds as opposed to rows. “With raised bed gardening, you get the added benefits of not having to water as much; not having to dig out your beds past the first year; and being able to fit more plants into less space. All of these score big in areas of practicality and time saving for busy families on the go.”
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening in NJ Zone 6 is available for instant download and is currently being offered at a discounted price, for a limited time only.
Interested parties may also purchase the guide directly by clicking the below button:
