The Veggie Garden!

I pick lettuce, radishes and spinach daily now, and I must say it is yummy. You should be wrapping up all your plantings and now be putting down salt marsh hay for weed control. I also use weed mat and other things. No weeds, no dust splash and just a much cleaner neater garden. Your vegetable garden can be a great learning experience. Every year I plant new items to try, asparagus and a few new tomatoes. I am also using red plastic mat around my tomatoes.

When planting tomatoes, it is best to plant them late. Dig a trench and lay tome on their side leaving the leaves exposed above the ground level. My brother David’s and my veggie gardens are very successful but we work at it. It is fun work.

Two products I highly recommend are Messenger, a natural hormone that triggers the natural defense mechanisms in the plant really works, and Neptune’s Harvest Natural Fertilizers. Come on in for more information.

Please feel free to come in when problems arise, do not wait, when you first see issues in the garden that is the best time to treat it. I had leaf miner on my spinach this week and wow does it spread fast. I used All Natural Spinosad and it cleared the problem up.

See Ya In The Garden
Tom & Dave

Vegetable Gardening

By now your vegetable garden should be up and running. PH tested and adjusted accordingly.

Last year was the year for problems in the garden. June was very hard on the garden with all the rain. Included in that was a lot of diseased tomato plants. The box stores had many large issues with plants that had Blight. If you had such a problem, hopefully you removed the plants that were infected, put them in a sealed trash bag and threw them away. That being said, the soil is still contaminated and needs treatment. Fungonil is what is best to treat the soil. Covering this soil last year with black plastic is another method of treating the soil.

Be sure to rotate your plantings. Planting your plants in a different part of the garden each year helps limit the spread of disease and or when in doubt, ask your Eric’s garden coach!

The beginning shipments of all annuals, herbs and vegetables have begun but please beware of the full moon, what I call the farmers moon is 5/28. From 30+ years experience, after this date is when I would say it is safe to plant. If there is to be a late frost, it is usually near or at that last full moon in may.

See Ya In The Garden
Tom & Dave

This is a real fun time for vegetable gardeners, where all the preseason planning now must be put into action.
Soil preperation is where it begins. Testing the soil for PH is a must to start the season. It is also a good time to beef up the soil. A good organic soil is dark, crumbly and has a rich earthy smell. If its not these things, COMPOST is the way to greatly enhance it. Our garden coaches can help with this, just bring us a sample of your soil.
If your early season cole crops are not in, they should be. We have a large selection in 6 packs ready for sale to get you started.
Along with the 6 packs, we have many seeds to be directly seeded or started indoors.

See you in the Garden.

Tom & Dave

Should I switch to organic?

Now is the time to make the decision to go organic or not. The organic advantage is large. Whether it's for the lawn, planting beds or the vegetable garden, organics are where it is at. The only thing needed to make the switch from synthetics to organics is time. It usually takes at least a full year to see the benefits when you first make the switch.

Organics are all about the soil. By replenishing your soils you are creating a healthy living soil where all the beneficial bacteria, fungi and other organisms work symbiotically with your plants.

For more information on Organics, sign up for our seminar:
"Simple Steps to Organic Lawn Care and Gardening"
Speaker - Chip Osborne from Osborne Organics
being held at our Reading location on Saturday 4/24/10 @ 10 am

To get more information on all our workshops and seminars, visit us on the web:
http://www.ericsfloweremporium.com/events.html
or call us at 781-944-0547

Seed Starting

Now is the time to think about seed starting and early season garden boxes. Cole Crops can be started now. You can condition them by putting them outside during the day and bringing them in at night. They will be ready to plant in mid to late April. Or these can be started in cold frames.

Seed starting indoors requires bright light with good soil and peat pots. It is fairly easy to do but be sure not to over water as this will rot the seed or slow the growth of the new seedlings. As the seed germinates, you can get your new seedlings acclimated to the outdoors. This will lessen the transplant shock when you plant them outside. Be sure not to leave your tender new seedlings outside on a cold, windy or rainy days.

The biggest mistake people make is starting a seed at the wrong time. Be sure you know when to start your seeds.

For seed starting advice, you can contact us via our webpage or speak to one of our many garden coaches.

We carry a large selection of both seeds and seed starting supplies at both our Reading and Westford locations.