Toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls, the cardboard tubes that are left over when the toilet paper or paper towels are used up, are a rigid tube that can be used as starter containers for your seeds and small plants. 

To use them, start out by getting a flat tray container with an edge that extends up about a half an inch.  I use a window box drip tray.  This tray will be used to hold the tubes as your plants grow.  Now take a toilet paper tube and cut it into three equal height tubes and arrange the cut tubes on the bottom of the tray.  If you use a paper towel tube, cut it into six equal size tubes.  Fill each of the toilet paper tubes about half way with clean quality garden soil from a garden center or hardware store.  Do not use ordinary dirt from the ground since it has all kinds of vegetation already living in it (weeds, grass, etc.) and you will not know what is your seeds and what is weeds.  Place your seeds on the top of the soil and then cover the seeds to the top of the tube.

The beauty of the cardboard tubes is that they will absorb and hold water for a longer period of time keeping the seeds or small plants wetter for a longer period of time.  In order to water the plants, pour the water into the bottom of the tray and not on top of the tubes.  Pouring the water on top of the tubes will bore holes in the dirt and may displace the seeds.  By pouring the water into the tray, the water will fill the bottom of the tray and the tubes and dirt will suck the water up through capilary action keeping the seeds or plants moist.

Starting your seeds in this manner will allow you to bring them inside if cold weather or frost is suspected extending your growing season by starting earlier.  Once your seeds have sprouted and grown a couple of inches, you can take the whole cardboard tube and plant it in the garden or other final destination.  Any roots that the plant grows will extend below the bottom of the tube and into the ground without problems.  The tube can also easily be removed if desired before transplanting.

Pea Seed In Toilet Paper Roll

The picture shows the toilet paper rolls in the window box drip tray with a pea plant growing from seed.

e planted three cucumber plants this year. Last year we planted three as well, but lost two to frost very early on in the season. This year we lost one so we were net gain of an entire plant.

As young plants when they only had two leaves on the whole plant, their small leaves turn white and start to curl up underneath themselves at the ends when the frost hit them. Soon the two leaves were no longer visible and the stalk would wither away. At the end of this season, when it got cold at night, the larger adult leaves would turn brown from the outside in tward the stalk even though the plant still had fruit left to grow and/or harvest.

The amount of cucumbers that we got were about one full grown cucumber a week out of the garden. For the two of us, that was just enough to make whatever we were eating for the week: salads, lunches, salsa, whatever.

For next year we are planning on planting three again. If we get all three of them to grow we will give some of the cucumbers away.

W

ith the vegetable garden season beginning to wind down in the midwest. It is never to early to begin to think about starting your vegetable garden for next year. If you have never grown a vegetable garden before, you should really consider starting one. There are several benefits and reasons as to why you would want to start your own vegetable garden.

9 Reasons to start your own vegetable garden.

1. This can be a great activity to do with kids. Kids will love to plant the seeds and then watch as they grow. It can be the children’s responsibility to water the garden each day, and then you will see the smiles on there faces when they see the first vegetables that are ready to pick

2. The trips to the grocery store should be less expensive. With food prices rising at a fast pace, you will have your own vegetables instead of having to buy the pricey ones found in your local grocery store.

3. With the possibilities of pesticides having serious health effects on us when they are used on vegetables, it is great to have your own garden because you know exactly what is going in there. If you are going to use fertilizers or pesticides you can choose what you want to use. You will hopefully go for an organic, natural type.

4. Gardening is fun. It is a great hobby to have and can be very relaxing and enjoyable!

5. Gardening gets you outside to enjoy nature. With the time spent caring for your garden from watering, to weeding, to caring for your plants it will put you outside to enjoy the warm [hopefully], nice summer weather.

6. Vegetables always taste better when they are fresh! In theory you could be pulling something out of the vegetable garden, washing it and then eating it all within 5 minutes.

7. You can add tools to your collection that will help you with everyday gardening tools. You can select hand tools, cultivators, tillers or many more!

8. Commercially grown crops are frequently chosen for their high yields, uniform appearance and long shelf lives rather than for superiority and flavor. When you grow your own, you can focus on the excellence rather than the economics.

9. There are thousands of diverse varieties of fruit and vegetables, but supermarkets tend to give attention to only the most lucrative and easy to sell. This means that our choice is often limited to a few select varieties of apple, for example, rather than the hundreds of traditional kinds that exist. Growing your own lets you pick the varieties you like the most, and research to find new ones you’ll hardly ever see on sale.

These are just a few ideas as to why someone would want to start there own vegetable garden. Everyone does it for there own reasons, but most of all we have fun doing it!

About the Author:

For more information on vegetable gardens visit us at Home Vegetable Garden

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Reasons to start a home vegetable garden

I

n Today’s throwaway society, there is absolutely no need to go out and purchase mulch material for your garden, unless it is for the particular aesthetic appearance, “The Look”, sake of the mulch material.

Were you aware that there are a number of mulching materials that you can obtain from around your own community that are free, and some of which can even be even delivered to you for nothing as well?

Impossible you might say. Well I mulch my gardens fairly heavily, and I never pay a cent for the mulch material. As a matter of fact, most of the mulch is willingly delivered to my home for nothing. As the former owners are only too glad to see the back of it, as it would cost them money, time and effort to find other ways of getting rid of it.

I also combine these outside sources of mulch with my own compost, weeds and other organic matter mixed through to achieve a great result in my garden, and so all that it costs me is time and effort.

So what am I talking about? While some of the below list is delivered free, other items I pick up myself, depending on time, circumstances, importance etc.

Grass Clippings from other people in the area or from lawn-mowing contractors.

Wood shavings from local wood turners and carvers, ( Do not use shavings from treated timber).

Small amounts of solid fill from friends who are excavating. This is to assist in raising garden beds, in my heavy clay soil.

Light prunings from shrubs which is shredded by me or put whole into garden

Heavier sticks and logs, which are turned into trellis, garden stakes, garden edges, seats, frames, log planters etc. while they slowly decay.

Newspaper, cardboard, non-rubber carpet underlay, and even carpet and carpet squares. Which is put under other mulch to prevent grass and weed regrowth

Animal manures sometimes mixed with straw from places like Racetracks and Showgrounds, Pony Clubs, Stables etc. I contact them well beforehand to see if any is available.

To this I also add my own weeds, throwing away some which can still be a potential problem, or burying them below the bottom most layer of mulch material to stop them regrowing.

Another item I add is any old potting mix from deceased plants or when repotting plants.

Being a fairly lazy gardener, I throw the material around a bit at a time, as they are available, and let nature mix them for me. On a couple of occasions I have received a bit too much wood shavings so these became path material between some of the garden beds, with a heavy underlay of newspapers. People even tell me that it looks and feels good underfoot.

Never put a large amount of fresh animal manure on any garden, as it will burn any plant around it. Be extremely sparing or let it age first for a few months before applying it to the garden.

I have been living in my new house for about fifteen months, and the mulch layer in all my gardens (there were no gardens originally), is about 10 cm or 4 inches deep. None of which I have paid for and little that I have had to even pick up for myself.

People are even starting to comment on how fast the plants in my gardens are growing in the local heavy black clay soils, and they are surprised when I tell them that I have never bothered to fertilise the plants. The reason for this is that the earliest laid mulch material, is now broken down into plant nutrients and is now feeding my plants as a plant nutrient soup aided by the soil life which has suddenly started appearing in my gardens.

Another benefit that has started to appear in the last few months is the arrival of insect eating wildlife into my garden. Predatory insects and birds are now visiting my gardens on a regular basis, where I saw none this time last year. Bees and butterflies are also starting to visit many of the plants, which have come into flower for the first time this year.

So what can you do to start locating your own supplies of free mulch material, well here are a number of suggestions.

Put a little sign near your gate, something along the lines of ‘Organic mulch required’, or ‘Lawn clipping wanted’. There are sure to be a number of local people who are currently throwing theirs away in your community or even local area. Never mulch solely with grass clippings as they form an impenetrable layer that air and water cannot get through. Always mix it with other things to stop it ‘thatching’, just like a roof over the soil.

See if you can get into contact with local people who are into woodturning and carving, or even local sawmills. And come to some arrangement about unpreserved wood shavings.

Check the local phonebook for local showgrounds/racetracks/stables etc, to find out if any have stable or manure waste to give away, for people willing to pick them up

In other words, start talking around the place that you are after mulch materials and they will soon start coming to you.

The only caution with using other peoples waste material is the chance that you might also import other peoples pests and weeds. I have rarely found it a problem because of heavy mulch on mulch routines. But it is possible.

One point being that when you first start applying mulch to your garden you may see some nitrogen deficiencies occur in some plants. This is because the organisms that are breaking down the mulch material are using up all the available resources of it during the initial breakdown. Once you have gotten past this time the old composted material provide more than enough nitrogen for future processes.

Another thing to be careful of is not to bury or mulch up against the stems of wanted plants, as it may cause further problems for your plants in rot problems around the collar of the stems.

So get out there and talk around the community, find the contacts, believe it or not they will be as grateful as you to solve their particular problems of waste reduction. As well as that, you may start making some new friendships out of the deal; I know I have.

About the Author:

The Bare Bones Gardener is a qualified Horticulturist and a qualified Disability Services Worker. He hates spending money on stuff which doesn’t live up to the promises given. So he looks for cheaper, easier, simpler or free ways of doing the same thing and then he passes these ideas on to others.

Garden Blog – http://barebonesgardening.blogspot.com/

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Mulch and Feed your Gardens for Free

nce you have decided to use a soaker hose, the installation and setup is fairly easy and straight forward.  Here I provide the simple steps to use a soaker hose to provide irigation to your garden.

1. The first step is obviously to unpackage the hose from its packaging.  Place the male end of the soaker hose where it will be connecting your regular garden hose.
2. Unroll the hose from the female end along the route that you would like the hose to take in your area standing on the hose as you unroll it.  The hose will have a tendancy to roll back up, and by unrolling it as opposed to simply pulling it apart will aleviate some of the rewinding tendancies.
3. Ensure that the male end is capped off, or optionally connect it to the female end of a second soaker hose.
4. Connect a standard garden hose to the water supply faucet and connect the garden hose to the soaker hose female end.
5. I found these ‘U’ shaped metal stakes which are
   

   Landscape Anchors

   intended to hold down landscaping mesh that works great for holding down the soaker hose.  Place these in strategic locations to hold the soaker either closer to or farther away from the plants to be watered. 

That’s it!  The soaker hoses are extremely easy to setup and use.  You can optionally install a garden variety timer to automatically water your garden at specific times and for specific lengths of time.

soaker hose could be just the solution you need for your garden irrigation. Soaker hoses are similar to regular hoses but with thousands of tiny holes all along the length of the hose. These types of hoses drips out water directly where the hose is lying.  These hoses are much more efficient at watering since there is less evaporation and less water run off, the area to be watered is targeted as the only area to get water, and plants only get water at their roots and not on the leaves reducing the chance of the leaves rotting.  You must weigh whether soaker hoses are right for your application or not.  Here are some points to consider when looking into soaker hoses for your application.

Soaker Hose Benefits:

• Soaker hoses target the water right where it is needed as opposed to spraying an entire area with water and therefore use less water.
• Soaker hoses put the water into the soil at the base of the plants and do not spray water all over the plants.  Plants best use water at the roots and with soaker hoses, that’s where they deliver the water.
• Soaker hoses can be connected together to extend the covered area.  With sprinklers, the more you add, the less distance the available pressure can spray the water.  With soaker hoses, there is more pressure available since only a small amout of water is pushed through the tiny holes in the hose and more hoses can be daisy chained together.

Soaker Hose Drawbacks:

• Soaker hoses put water right where it is needed as opposed to spraying an entire area with water including the intended area.  If additional plants are added to the area that need to be watered, then additional soaker hose needs to be added, or existing hose needs to be re-routed to water the new plants.
• They can be cumbersome to work with when not being used in a straight line.  Bending them in a tight curve does not tend to hold them without some sort of clamps or without kinking the hose.  If water pressure is put through them they tend to straighten out.
• Covering a large area with soaker hoses is much more cumbersome and not recommended.  A large yard might be better off with a sprinkler since a single sprinkler can cover a larger area with out being as intrusive in the yard.  If a yard were to be watered with soaker hose, the hose would have to be picked up from the yard in order to mow the grass.

If your considering using soaker hoses, they can provide tremendous irrigation benefits to your garden and your wallet, saving you money and time in watering your garden.

pices will be a new addition this year.  Most of the spices are not in the garden, but in flower planters hanging on the side of the deck in back.  Within these planters we have transplanted:Thyme, Celantro, Oregano, Rosemary, Dill, and Basil.

Thyme

Celantro

Rosemary

Basil Plant

Dill Weed

which were purchased as small plants from Lucas Greenhouses.  Since the Celantro, Dill, Thyme, and Oregano are perinnal plants, it was decided that they would be put in windown box planters so that next year the planters can be returned to the deck with new growth.  Within the main garden we planted the Basil since it is an annual plant and will have to be planted over again next year giving us a flexable option for moving it, adding to it, or simply not planting it again depending on how it works out this year.