BEETS – BROCCOLI – BRUSSEL SPROUTS – CABBAGE – CARROTS – CAULIFLOWER – CELERY – COLLARDS – ENDIVE – KALE – KOHL RABI – LETTUCE – LEEKS – ONIONS – PARLSEY – PARSNIP – PEAS – RADISH – RUTABAGA – SPINACH – SWISS CHARD – TURNIPS

Here are some Companion Planting Ideas for the fall: Mixing Vegetables with Herbs

Broccoli and Rosemary planted in a sunny area with good drainage.

Cabbage and Dill planted in fertile soil in cooler weather.

Celery with anything that enjoys being watered well!

Peas and Turnip are a great pair to grow together.

Brussels Sprouts and Thyme

Beet and Mint

turnip garden

Check this out → A fun and creative guide to companion planting: Companion Planting Guide: Soil Mates by Sara Alway

]]> http://nadiaknows.com/2011/11/03/november-planting-guide-southern-california/feed/ 0 nadiaqh DSCF7303 DSCF4147 DSCF4800 http://nadiaknows.com/2011/04/29/soil-mates-book-review/ http://nadiaknows.com/2011/04/29/soil-mates-book-review/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 06:31:25 +0000 nadiaqh http://nadiaknows.com/?p=4171 ]]> Book Review: Soil Mates: Companion Planting for Your Garden by Sara Alway

Author: Sara Alway

Length: 128 pages

Price: $16.96

Online- Amazon.com (Save $5.00 of the cover price)

Soil Mates is a creative and fun gardening book for companion planting (symbiotic relationships of plants in the vegetable garden). Author Sara Alway makes learning about companion planting simple by using humor and charm in her examples. Alway says that plants are in search of the “perfect companion” and just as people find the best condition for a relationship to grow, so do plants. Each section of the book has Turn ons and Turn offs  for plants and also Needy Alerts such as warnings on plants that are high maintenance. The Stalker Alerts give good advise on what pesty animals and insects will devour your plants. The Love Triangle gives a list of plant groupings that grow well together. Some of  (Twenty) Soil Mates listed are: Sweet Potato & Summer Savory, Carrot & Onion, Tomato & Basil and Eggplant & Marigold.  

After reading about companion planting, the second half of the book is devoted to understanding Garden Preparation, Planning and Care. Even for the practiced gardener there is great advise on Laying the Groundwork with crop rotation and making garden beds, or as author Alway puts it, “making the bed.” Another section in the book named Foreplay describes seed starting and the section on Aphrodisiacs covers the basics in fertilizers and composting. One of my favorite parts about this book are the many garden recipes included that I think most people would actually try out. You will also find a list of Botanical names and their “Quirks and Eccentricities”. There is yet so much more included in this book and I highly recommend it as a gift and as an addition to your library of garden references.

Thank you for visiting my garden blog: www.nadiaknows.com

Deciduous Citrus- Subtropical- Fruit Trees- Berries and Grapes

How to Prune Fruit Trees by R. Sanford Martin

Need a little help with pruning? How To Prune Fruit Trees by R. Sanford Martin is the best price for pruning advice you can purchase hands down. For a grand total of $6.99 I  bought this book at Armstrong Nursery with an original copyright in 1944 in its 21st edition. This simple 90 page book deals with pruning almond, figs, lime, pear, persimmon, plums, raspberry, strawberry guava, and berries to name just a few. There is also a chapter on planting and training young trees and the very interesting technique of Espallier Training. With each fruit tree described you will learn how that particular tree bears fruit and its individual pruning needs written with the most simple instructions possible. Taking the time and caring for potted or in ground trees is much more rewarding when the harvest outcome can be manipulated by how the tree is pruned. R. Sanford Martin born in 1900 was an author and horticulturist who spend years developing techniques in pruning, soil treatment and natural fertilizers known as humus. During his lifetime Martin’s ideas were not mainstream and yet today this book is still one of the most sought after pruning books, simple and straight forward. Interestingly the author is quoted in the forward of the book: “It is not my intention to make expert pruners out of everyone owning a fruit tree, but I hope that I may help those who have the desire and time to care for their own trees, thereby eliminating much unnecessary neglect and destruction by incorrect treatment.” Well said, this is my  book pick of the month!

Thank you for visiting my garden blog: www.nadiaknows.com

Cultivate- Harvest- Enjoy!

 1,001 Gardening Secrets The Experts Never Tell You. Editors of FC&A Publishing. © 2008 by FC&A Publishing. 

I stumbled upon this gardening book at a used book store in downtown Encinitas for $8.00 which was a real bargain when I compared it to the Amazon online price for $44.00. This book is an easy read with corny bold chapter titles, “Wet and Wild Watering Secrets”,”Pesky Plant Problems” and “Win the War on Weeds” to name a few. After placing posty notes all through the book at my favorite pieces of advice I decided to share them on this blog.  Many of these tips and tricks I plan to try out this week such as cutting up banana peels and digging them into the soil of my potted rose bushes. Another secret I read and desperately need in my yard is how to get rid of the fruit flies in the compost bin. Here are some top secrets quoted straight from the book to help make our thumbs a little greener.

→ For the sweetest, juiciest tomatoes ever, add powdered milk to their water. Milk is a great source of calcium, which nourishes the plant and can help prevent blossom end rot.

→ Roses love banana peels, so cut some up and mix them in the soil at planting time. The calcium, sulfur, magnesium and phosphates are good for your roses.

→Sprinkle some tea leaves under your rose bushes and give them some water. You’ll have roses that are bigger and more beautiful than ever.

→ Recycle a wine bottle and fill it with 1/3 rice vinegar and place near or inside compost bin to get rid of fruit flies.

→ Seed soaking Soak peas and beans in-between a wet paper towel placed inside a Ziploc bag over night to speed up the seed germination.

→ Place a drop of white glue on the top of each stem after pruning roses. When the borers come, the stems will be sealed.

→ 1 tbsp. of Vinegar in a Gallon of water helps your indoor house plants thrive. Do this once a month.

→ Cucumber beetles do not like radishes, so put a couple of radish seeds into the cucurbit hill at planting time.

→ Plant garlic, marigolds, and a wide range of herbs to repel critters. It’s organic and healthier than using pesticides.

→  Wipe out aphids in a hurry with this simple solution and a spray bottle. Mix powdered milk with warm water, spray it on the plants’  leaves, let the mixture dry. As it dries, the milk will kill the aphids.

→ Sprinkle cinnamon powder on the soil when you start plants from seed. It helps stop damping-off, a disease that kills tender, young seedlings.

→ Wait until tomatoes start to show fruit blossoms before you side dress the bushes with a low nitrogen fertilizer.

→ To keep leaf diseases at bay, trim off all the greenery below the fruiting branches of your tomato plant.

→ Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and potatoes love milky water because it kills the tobacco mosaic virus.  It also protects cabbage from cabbage worms.

→ If you want your tulips to stand straight and tall, drop a few copper pennies in the vase.

→ Add two tablespoons each of sugar and vinegar to a quart of water and pour the mixture in a vase to keep cut  flowers beautiful.

→  Orange rinds and coffee grinds around the garden repels cats.

→ Here’s a general rule of green thumb to use when deciding how deeply to plant a herb seed. Take a look at  the diameter of the seed. Dig a hole twice that deep for the seed.

→ Garlic spray is a popular organic pesticide, but it also works well as a fungicide, prevents downy mildew, cucumber rust,  tomato blight, and other fungal diseases. To make a spray, puree several garlic cloves with a little water in a  blender. Add the pungent mixture to a gallon of water.

→ Use large, flat stones for multipurpose mulch in your tomato, watermelon, and other heat-loving plants. The stones soak up the heat from the sun during the day and radiate it back into the soil at night.

O.K. I have to stop at some point! I think this is an easy read and getting out in the garden to test out these secrets is what home gardening is all about. With 1,001 gardening secrets anyone could probably learn a thing or two from this book. I wonder how much powdered milk I should put in the water to feed my tomatoes? The book never  gave an amount. Anyone?

Thanks for visiting my garden blog: www.nadiaknows.com

Knowing that learning and growing are essentials in life.

Eating In Season Fruits

BUY LOCAL – BUY FRESH – BUY LOCAL – BUY FRESH

Buying fresh, local and in-season fruits and vegetables has become one of my more recent goals. Last month I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Good Life, which described aspects of farming in America and how produce is transported from the fields, then to the grocer, and finally to our dinner tables. This book along with other sources inspired me to make buying local one of my New Year’s Resolutions. Although some book reviews described Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as sounding “preachy”, it seemed to me that it was more of a goldmine of information on a subject that is not often on the evening news or the cover of magazines.

These reprinted excerpts from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are specific quotes on this issue of “why buy local?”. Read the entire book for more and other very in-depth information on organic gardening, sustainable gardens, recipes from the garden, commercial poultry factories, etc., etc.  You will most likely learn more than you wanted to know, or as it was in my case, I was quite surprised at how much I knew nothing about.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle : A Year of Good Life : “Quotes” by Barbara Kingsolver

- “Eating home-cooked meals from whole, in-season ingredients obtained from the most local source available is eating well, in every sense. Good for the habitat, good for the body.”

- “Waiting for foods to come into season means tasting them when they’re good, but waiting is also part of most value equations.”

- “Find your nearest farmer’s markets and local producers on the USDA Web site:

www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets

www.localharvest.org

www.csacenter.org.”

- “Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging and tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice, for actual flavor.”

- “Transporting fragile produce dates back to the early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the mountains as a midwinter novelty….in just a few decades the out-of-season vegetable moved from the novelty status to such an ordinary item, most North Americans now don’t know what Out-Of-Season means.”

- “Concentrating on local foods means thinking of fruit invariably as the product of an orchard, and a winter squash as a fruit of an early winter farm. It’s a strategy  that will keep grocery money in the neighborhood, where it gets recycled into your own school system and local businesses… it’s a win-win strategy for anyone with taste buds. “

- “Organic gardening nurtures and sustains the soil vs. depleting it with pesticides and herbicides.”

- “Locally grown is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible. Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging, and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story.”

- “The increased availability of local food in any area is a direct function of the demand from local consumers… First: in grocery stores, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, “Not really, I was looking for  local produce.” The smaller the store, the more open a grocer may be to your request.”

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On December 22nd I went to my local grocer and in the produce section picked up a cellophane “microwave-able” bag of green beans from (how many states away?) Ohio. I asked the produce manager standing nearby if he had any “local” green beans available. He advised me to come back on the 24th for a new shipment of fresh green beans saying: “green beans need to be fresh for the holidays and you don’t want them to be more than a few days old”. I asked him why they had this substandard microwave-able brand from Ohio if they could also provide local and fresh green beans? He replied, “people just want it fast and easy.”

I waited and bought the local fresh beans a few days later and they were worth it.

* Link to another garden blog I just discovered: 1greengeneration that supports local community building and organic gardening.

Thank you for visiting my garden blog: www.nadiaknows.com                      Creating-Growing-Learning