Fiona Gardening

Oops! Shouldn’t have waited to plant the parsnips so late last year. They didn’t grow throughout the winter here in growing zone 7b so they put on too much growth in the spring. This caused them to be too tough. Lesson learned is to make sure the parsnips are mature by winter so they can be overwintered and harvested before they put on growth in the spring. Key tip there - harvesting before too much growth in the spring helps prevent them from becoming too tough. The planting time varies based on growing zone, and counting back the number of days to maturity from the first frost date helps. Note that parsnip seeds take a while to germinate in my experience, even when using the board method - 2 to 3 weeks! So, I add that time to the days to maturity. Also note that parsnips are tricky to grow in warmer zones like ours in 7b, but certainly not impossible. I’ve been successful for many years. I just have to make sure to not procrastinate if I can help it. 🤣😬 #organicgarden #gardentips #gardentipsandtricks #gardening101 #beginnergardening #beginnergardenertips #beginnergarden

Eazyleaf lettuce! Have you tried it? It grows beautifully into these huge, crispy heads of lettuce and it can be harvested as a full head (easily gift it to friends and family or sell it at market) or falls into a pile of perfectly sized leaves for salad. So convenient and tasty! I highly recommend. I started ours from pelleted seed indoors and planted the seedlings outdoors. 50 days later, beautiful heads of lettuce! In zone 7b, these lettuce heads thrived in our rollercoaster weather and even withstood slug damage and grew beautifully. And, it tastes amazing! #planting #gardening #beans #plants #gardening #plant #gardener #garden #growyourown #foryou #soil

Here’s how we harvest and cure our softneck garlic. I like to tie it into bunches and hang it on garment racks right out in the garden while I’m harvesting. If the soil is damp, I’ll lay them out in a spot out of direct sun for a couple of days before hanging to cure. They were dry this time, so we hung them up right away. Then, we rolled them into the garage and set up box fans for better air circulation. Our softneck garlic usually takes around 4 weeks to cure, give or take some time depending on humidity levels. We’ve been growing garlic for 10 years here in zone 7b and it’s taken plenty of trial and error to figure out what works best for us in our space. The trial and error pays off eventually! 😁🧄 #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Visual cues are more indicative of garlic harvest timing than calculating the exact date from time planted, in my personal experience. We all have different growing zones and microclimates which affect the garlic varieties we grow, and the harvest time. Also, weather varies each year (at least it does in our area) so the garlic might be ready a little earlier or later than other years. We’re growing two softneck varieties here: Inchelium Red and Sicilian. We’ve grown hardneck garlic here in Upstate S.C. in the past, and it hasn’t done as well in our little microclimate as softneck. I looked for the same visual cues as the softneck when harvesting the hardneck garlic. The plants are a different (hardneck has a stalk) but the foliage starts to die back similarly. #organicgarden #gardentips #gardentipsandtricks #gardening101 #beginnergardening #beginnergardenertips #beginnergarden

Do you live in an are where squash vine borers are a garden pest? Planting timing might be an efficient method that could help out: Here in zone 7b, South Carolina, it could be late August, allowing time before the first frost. We plant Cha Ching zucchini, with 50 days to maturity. In the South, the other option is planting early, as soon as the soil warms up. In the North, you could plant around mid to late July to avoid vine borers. in the north, the moths usually lay eggs in June to around July. In the south, it’s May and perhaps a second generation in August. What are your best methods for keeping squash vine borers from destroying your squash crop? #gardentips #gardentipsandtricks #gardening101 #beginnergardening #beginnergardenertips #beginnergarden

This heat tolerant broccoli variety is awesome! Check out Belstar broccoli, a hybrid variety that’s both heat and cold tolerant. We’ve experienced its success in both weather extremes here in 7b. Just wanted to share it in case you thought it was too late in the season for broccoli - I’d recommend researching it to see if it’s a good fit for your growing zone. 🥦 #gardentips #gardentipsandtricks #gardening101 #beginnergardening

How long your raised beds will last depends on lots of factors, especially the building material used. I thought I’d share our experiences with our garden beds made of untreated wood in case it might be helpful to you. We’ve been growing in them for 10 years, two different locations. We’re in our fifth year growing in our current raised beds, and we’re building our third location as we speak. We like growing in untreated wood beds - the only thing we’d change is the type of wood. We’d go for cedar, but it’s just so expensive, especially with a larger number of beds. We choose untreated wood because we’re doing our best to avoid chemicals which could leach into the soil - less of a chance of this happening than with pre-treated wood. Which building materials do you prefer for your raised beds, and why? #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Building raised beds is done so many ways, but here’s how we make ours. We’re hoping you can use some of the ideas that have worked for us so you can come up with a plan that works for you. We’ll show you the soil we use to fill our beds in a future video. This 4x10 bed will take two 2x12x10, one 2x12x8, and approx. two 2x4x8 boards. (The materials were around $50 from a big box store in our area). We currently grow in 28 4x8 beds and we’re starting our new garden with 10 4x10s. Using a wood like cedar would be very expensive for us. We use decking screws to attach the stakes. The stakes are pretty easy to pound into the ground using a sledge hammer, to anchor the bed into place. We think it works best to build the bed upside-down on a level surface, then flip it over to pound the stakes into the ground. We put either cardboard or omri-listed weed barrier (shown in the video) in the bottoms of the beds to smother weeds initially. #planting #gardening #beans #plants #gardening #plant #gardener #garden #growyourown #foryou #soil

We’re potting up this year! I don’t usually do this with my tomato and pepper seedlings here in zone 7b. For the past 10 years when I’ve planned the timing of seed starting, I’ve usually planned on hardening them off (gradually introducing them to the outdoors) for 1 to 2 weeks and planting by mid-May or early June (I plant hybrid varieties that set fruit over 90 degrees - Skyway, Roma, San Marzano). Due to logistics (moving) this year, I need to buy some time to figure out where to plant these seedlings. When we do pot up, we use the same potting soil we start our seeds in - Fox Farm Happy Frog - because it’s a rich, but well-draining soil. We plant our tomato seedlings as deep as possible so they’ll grow roots from their stems and grow strong before transplanting. We’ll plant even deeper when we plant them out into the garden. We usually don’t need to fertilize until we transplant, but if we do, we use fish emulsion (1 oz. every gallon of water) - this is what we do when we put them into the ground. We let the plants speak to us, and if they’re visibly struggling, we’ll feed them. The fish emulsion really helps them take off, in our experience. We just do it once every week or two for the first month after transplanting outside. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

So many of us are frustrated by this common garden pest - slugs. There are also so many different ways to deal with them. Please share your tips that have worked for you (or haven’t worked for you) so we can all help each other out in the garden! 😁🌱 We grow organically and focus on building healthy soil for a balanced ecosystem that supports beneficial animals (the same birds that pull up our corn seedlings help control our slug population) so we don’t use chemicals that could harm everything in the process. Even many natural methods can harm beneficial insects. Hand picking pests like slugs works well but can take lots of time. There has to be a healthy balance! #plants #gardening #plant #gardener #garden #growyourown #foryou #soil

This is the method we use for a better germination rate of carrot seeds and other little seeds. There’s such a thin layer of soil on top of these seeds, the boards really help provide protection in a few different ways: - Keep the soil moist - Keep the soil cooler when it’s hot - Keep the seeds in place - When propped up after germination, help give the seedlings shade and protect from heavy rain Other materials gardeners use for this method are cardboard, burlap, etc., but we like the weight of boards and the straight rows they provide (I press the boards into the soil before planting to make a “template” for the rows). We also like the convenience of propping the boards up to protect the little seedlings until they get bigger. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Hey, a few onions are better than zero! But, a lot less than the few hundred we originally panned for. 🤣 Just have to roll with it, because we can’t control it all. We’ll just fill the extra bed space with other things we love to eat, and take note of what we think went wrong with the original plan. Sometimes we’ll never know! Do you grow onions? Which varieties? #garden #gardening #plants #homegrown #harvest #fyp

What went wrong? We think it was about timing in this case. This has happened several times, when I just got busy and planted late. Last year, we planted the last three beds of carrots too late, and then we harvested too late this spring. Here in zone 7b, it’s tricky to get carrot seeds to germinate in the heat of August, but I think that’s the best time to plant for a late fall/winter harvest. Wait too long, and unpredictable weather combined with shorter days might not give the carrots enough time for growth before winter. If they had enough time, they may have been in good shape by late winter/spring and we could have had a better harvest like the one we planted in August. When do you sow carrot seeds in your growing zone? #garden #gardening #plants #homegrown #harvest #fyp

Tag a friend and send them some sunshine. ☀️🌻 Hang in there, spring is right around the corner. It’s cold and dreary here today and I was looking through photos of last year’s sunflower patch. Cannot wait to get out and plant these again! #homesteading #chickens #deepbedding #bedding #farmlife #chickenmom #smallfarm #winter #countrylife

Optimum temperature for carrot seed germination is from 45° F to 85° F so depending on your growing zone, they can be planted soon! We just harvested one of our four raised beds of Danvers carrots and pressure canned 15 quarts. We plan ahead so we can eat them about once a week for a year. We plant in late summer/early fall in zone 7b so they’re in the beds through most of the winter. That way, our beds are freed up for our spring/summer plantings of things like tomatoes, peppers, and corn, but we can still eat carrots all year! Here are the main things we’ve done for successful carrot harvests: - We plant Danvers carrots, a variety that’s great for growing in raised beds and canning. - We plant a few seeds every few inches and use the board method for better germination rates (I made a reel about that.) - Using that planting method uses less seeds and makes thinning much easier! - We add compost before planting to feed the soil and to make sure the soil is never compacted for better root growth. - We water deeply during dry spells, but never water too much. - We thin the carrots to make sure there’s just one carrot every 3 to 4 inches, so each carrot has plenty of space to grow. Our chickens LOVE the carrot greens! (I made a feel about this, too.) - We harvest when we get time - in our growing zone, our raised bed acts as a refrigerator until we pull the carrots. We harvest a few at a time to eat fresh or cook with, and harvest all the rest at once for canning. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Do you like beets? I love their flavor, especially roasted with other root veggies! I also love that they’re easy to grow and they’re a 2-in-1 crop with the greens, which I think taste amazing sautéed! I could go on and on about beets, not overlooking their beautiful color - I used to have my kitchen painted that color when I lived in Michigan and it helped me through the long winters. If you haven’t grown beets before, maybe you’d like to give them a try! We also made a YouTube video with more info about how we grow them, harvest, and store. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Early freeze warning! Instead of panic mode, it helps to think through it to figure out what really needs covering, and what you need to do for your own peace of mind, which is worth a lot! Meteorologist @reedtimmer was in our garden this morning when the temp reached its lowest during our freeze warning. We’re always grateful for his expertise and forecasts, because weather and growing food are so closely related! #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

Hope you and your loved ones had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday! We’re thankful for the first few carrots of our fall/winter harvest. We’re hoping the rest of them turn out as well! We wanted to show you our favorite variety to help give you some ideas if you’re thinking about planting carrots in the spring. We love Danvers because we grow them in raised beds that aren’t very deep - you can see how they’re shorter, but still a good size. We think they have such an amazing, sweet flavor that holds on when roasted or canned. They’re so good! #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

We’ve been tagging and releasing monarchs this week! We grow native milkweed in our garden, and my oldest daughter has been learning about how to safely raise monarchs over the past few years. She finds the tiny caterpillars on the plants and raises them to adult butterfly stage. This year, we wanted to tag them with Monarch Watch’s program to help scientists understand more about monarch butterflies so they can make decisions on how best to conserve the monarch population. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101 #garden #plants #backyard

We completed our harvesting and canning corn for this year! 37 pint jars put away, from 6 raised beds of corn. #gardentips #planting #gardening #soil #gardening101