Organic Gardening – Page 3

Is Rototilling Necessary? To Till or Not to Till Your NJ Garden Beds This Spring

Garden Planting, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening / owner

“To grow healthy, productive plants you need healthy, productive soil. It is the organisms in the soil that provide the food plants need, in the form they need, when they need it.” -Dr. Elaine Ingam, SoilFoodWeb.com The first year we had our little backyard garden, we rented a rototiller and went to work processing the soil […]

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Organic Gardening: Updates from the Experimental NJ Gardeners

Gardening for Beginners, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Summer Gardening / owner

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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Harvesting Tomatoes in NJ Zone 6: Q&A

NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Summer Gardening, Tomato Gardening, Zone 6 Gardening / owner

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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How to Grow Vegetables from Seed

Garden Planting, Gardening for Beginners, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Spring Gardening / owner

by Maria G. I wrote a recent entry about how I grew some beautiful lettuces from seed. Today, at a garden center, I came upon a rather expensive shallow pot filled with the same types and colors of lettuce that I had successfully cultivated myself. These ready-to-eat lettuce plants were large, and evidently heavily fertilized. Looking

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Growing Vegetables in Shade

Gardening FAQ, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening / owner

A Shady-Yard Vegetable Garden: Is It Possible? A reader emailed us asking if there was any hope for growing garden vegetables in her shady yard, in which the sun was being blocked out by several mature oak trees. We did some research, and some thinking, and this is what we came up with. If anyone

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Growing Tomatoes from Seed in NJ

NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening, Tomato Gardening, Zone 6 Gardening / owner

Ever considered planting tomato seeds? Perhaps you’ve grown tomatoes from transplants for a few years now, like we have, and are looking to get a little more experimental and hands-on with your NJ tomato crop. As my NJ gardener pal, Laura, is likely to tell you, growing tomatoes from seed requires a bit of extra

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Growing Tomatoes for Sauce

Garden Planting, Organic Gardening, Tomato Gardening, Zone 6 Gardening / owner

Growing NJ Tomatoes for Sauce Are you confused when it comes to selecting varieties of tomatoes to grow in your garden? Tomatoes are bred for specific characteristics, hence the thousands of choices. You have tomatoes that ripen early, and those which take longer to mature but are worth the wait… also plants that fill the

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Garden Planting Dates for NJ Zone 6

Garden Planting, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening, Zone 6 Gardening / owner

Garden Planting Dates for NJ Zone 6 Mid-May isn’t the only time to plant a veggie garden, you know! New gardeners who are looking to expand beyond tomatoes and cucumbers may be interested to learn which crops should be planted at what time of year – spring, summer, and fall. Below, an overview of our

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Fall Garden Vegetable Planting Guide for NJ Zone 6

Fall Gardening, Garden Planting, NJ Gardening, Organic Gardening / owner

Fall gardening can be confusing for those of us who haven’t been gardening our entire lives. Can you really plant vegetables in September? What are the cutoff dates for getting cold-weather loving veggies in the ground? The answer to this depends on the type of vegetable, and the days that it will take for a

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Choosing a Fertilizer for Your Vegetable Garden

Gardening for Beginners, Organic Gardening, Raised Bed Gardening / owner

Choosing a Fertilizer for Your Vegetable Garden Vegetables grow best in soil that contains 5 percent nitrogen, 10 percent phosphate, and 5 percent potash. The commercial fertilizers list this ratio on their bags, so if you see a fertilizer that’s labeled 5-10-5, then you know you’re buying the right thing. That being said, we do not generally

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