Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

If you have a hard time getting things pollinated in your garden I highly recommend planting cilantro!

First of all it’s super easy to grow, seeds go right into the dirt and keep moist until they are sprouted.

Second, cilantro is very tasty in soups, salads, and salsa!

Third and most wonderful, if you plant a lot and let it flower your garden will be full of bees!!!! And we all know the pollinating power of bees! This year I have a 4′ row of solid cilantro and bees galore! Almost ever blossom of tomato, and peppers and eggplant and zucchini have been pollinated! In previous years I have had to do the zucchini and some peppers by hand. It’s so much better to have the bees do it!

If you haven’t yet discovered how essential bees are to our food sources please visit

http://environment.about.com/od/biodiversityconservation/a/honeybees.htm

or read up on honey bees and the *essential* role they play in our food supply!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara Murray

So my sweet little tiny eggplant now has 4 blossoms on it!!!!!

I cannot wait to eat those lovely little veggies. The zucchini next to it had 3 zucchinis get blossom-end rot, so I watered that section of my garden bed with a mixture of water and milk last night to help any new veggies from getting it – such as the new little eggplants I am expecting soon.

I have several tomato plants that I need to get rid of. I dug them out of my vegetable garden last night to create some space between my existing tomato plants. There is one pear tomato plant, the rest are standard tomato plants. They are ALL producing tomatoes (green still).

They have been raised organic, never sprayed with anything. They are from NON-GMO organic seed stock http://www.stclareseeds.com/ a great company which has signed the safe seed pledge. So you could even save these seeds and get awesome tomatoes year after year! 🙂

Let me know where you planted them, and if you liked the tomatoes they produced! Join the forum and talk gardening with us all year round.

Thanks for stopping by

-Sara

Everyone knows that carrots love sandy pliant soil. I have tried them for many years with good success in the germination and health of the plant factors, but not so good in the actual root being a nice long carrot factor.

Carrots will turn and get knotty at the least resistance in the soil. You need to provide an easy path for these guys or you will have a knotty twisted mess of a carrot to try to peel!

For me the raised bed was the ultimate solution. I built square frames from 8×1 inch remnant wood and created a nice carrot friendly soil in that. I did not have to disturb the other soil which normal veggies can’t handle. I mixed in pearlite, sand, black dirt and manure to make a nice extremely soft bed of dirt for the carrots to go into. I planted straight from seed (which in Minnesota is sometimes not able to get any result because the season is so short). And I have some AWESOME carrots coming up right now because of all my hard work in preparing that bed.

If carrots are royalty then the carrot is the princess. It’s can’t handle any resistance, even deep down in the soil (this is a weak reference to princess and the pea!) 🙂 So, if you’re going to do carrots be prepared, or stick to short varieties.

So after letting my vegetable garden get completely away from me I finally hired someone to come help me out.

His name is John Beall (pronounced “bell”) and he did a wonderful job and was very fast as well. Very reasonably priced. We talked about gardening a bit and he had a lot of neat things to share about it. I found him in the gardening services on the Twin Cities Craig’s List here: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/fgs/2552468878.html

I highly recommend him! Now I can get out there and work on the projects I really want to be doing. Like staking my HUGE tomato jungle! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara

(I totally should have taken a picture – I might just sneak over to the neighbor’s and do it tomorrow.)

A friend of mine has built himself some awesome tomato supports! He took lath or about 1 inch wide wood and made square cages. They are at least 7-8 feet high (with more to spare under ground I’m sure.) They are awesome. They are sturdy enough to support indeterminate tomatoes which are topping 7 feet high and lots of tomato weight while they ripen and support for the plant and leaves. It looks awesome. Harvesting is easy. The plants COULD NOT be happier! I definitely need to build myself some of these for next year!!!!!

I tried a new plant this year – egg plant. I really love it in curry and am adventurous enough to try it other ways as well. I got just one little plant from a local nursery and I am hoping it is a good plant so I can save seeds and see what comes up next year.

this plant produces smaller egg plants and the skin is variegated purple and white (It looks like the globe egg plants in the picture that are variegated but it grows in an elongated shape like a Chinese egg plant . I love the white egg plant because the skin tends to be more tender than the purple. And I love the purple egg plant because well, it’s PURPLE! 🙂 So this little plant has the best of both worlds. Tender skin, and partially purple color. It’s awesome, it tastes great and  for the amount of space it needs it produces a lot of food! I have just 1 plant in my garden which is the size of about 1 very tall petunia and have gotten 3 good-sized egg plants off of it already. (The zucchini grew over it a bit so it wasn’t getting optimal sun all season or I am sure it would have produced more.)

Also note-worthy is that the Japanese Beetles did not touch this plant at all, and even though it was under the zucchini leaves the plant itself did just fine – although a bit stunted. So it is hardy and pest resistant. It gets my vote for a viable food source based on real estate per food ratio, pest resistance, and hardiness under not-so-ideal conditions.

LOVE IT!

Well, My broccoli plants are producing but to keep up with the needs of this family we would need a whole lot more than we have. The amount of space this plant takes up for how many florets you get is not very good. So, I will rely on my farmer’s market and our natural/organic local co-op grocery store for that particular veggie.

After all it’s taking up valuable real estate that could be occupied by cool veggies like egg plant! 🙂

The Japanese Beetles have struck again. This time they got my morning glories and my pepper plants!

Of all the things to devastate, pepper plants??? I have about 6 bell pepper plants and about 4 jalapeno pepper plants that all stopped producing and started dieing. They didn’t even need to be destroyed. The beetles just being on these plants turned them yellow and caused the leaves to start falling off.

I do my best to stay organic, so I just plucked them off and smooshed them by hand. The plants were too wreaked though. One bell pepper and one jalapeno plant are starting to product again, the rest are done.

So I finally got some milky spore powder. This should kill them all of including grubs within 2 years. It is completely organic as it is found in the soil normally and what you are doing is creating a culture of it in your soil. The grubs of this beetle eat the powder and when they die from it they release even more of it into the soil. Once you create your milky spore culture you don’t need to worry about these pests again!

Just go get enough milky spore powder to cover your area where the beetle were. Make a line grid with cells 3 feet wide and 3 feet long. Water the powder into the soil. You can repeat this in 2 months to get it really good. Within 1-2 years you won’t have these despicable and devastating beetles again.

I went to my local mega hardware store and bought a 20 pound bag. I have yet to spread it as I am just to busy at the moment, but I will let you all know when I do!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara