Weeds are unwanted plants which reduce nutrients and growing space needed by your garden. Before starting your garden plot, it is a good practice to begin weed removal and control 4 weeks before you are ready to plant.
Start by turning the soil with a shovel so that the roots of the old plant growth are exposed. This will disrupt root systems and encourage faster decomposition.
Once this is complete, cover the plot with black plastic to prevent sunlight from reaching any remaining weeds. This will also raise the temperature underneath and aid in the break down of old plant material.
Next, we will discuss weed control techniques that can be applied once your seeds or seedlings have been planted.
Compost is one of the best things that you can add to your garden. It allows you to use organic materials that would normally go to landfills. Organic materials make up approximately 24 percent of items send to landfills. It’s very inexpensive and much better than spending money on commercial fertilizers. It helps with soil texture and structure. It also adds nutrients to your garden. The best time to start your compost is in the spring. It will decompose faster due to the warmer temperatures. Just remember ordinary items may be used to create your compost, such as hair trimmings, kitchen scraps, newspaper, pine needles, cardboard, and wood ashes. Items that you should avoid: ashes from charcoal, kitty litter, diseased plants, dog or cat droppings and bones. It’s good to pick a site which is close to your garden and very accessible. It you have to walk the length of a football field then it will be very unlikely that this project will be successful.
Compost is decomposed plant material, so you don’t need to spend a lot of money on anything fancy. You can create a compost pile on top of ground which can be unattractive to others. You can spray paint it on the outside it you want to be artist about it. Many people purchase a compost bin but you can create your very own with garbage can. It can be old or new.
Items you will need:
- garbage can
- newspapers or cardboard
- plant materials
Step 3: Spray water over plant material and newspaper just enough to get it wet but not soggy.
Step 5: Turn the can as often as possible or you can open up can and stir or mix with a gardening hoe or pitchfork.
You may add more plant material and newspaper at any time. Keep watering as you add materials. You can use your compost after a month or so.
Indoor hydroponic gardening involves careful management of complex biological systems. When you garden indoors, you are essentially taking over the roll of mother nature. You provide the sun, the food, and the air that your plants need to flourish. The idea is to optimize each of these systems so that you are doing a better job than nature can. This involves a delicate balancing act that can be difficult to maintain at times. When things start to go wrong, it can be difficult for a beginner to diagnose the exact cause and decide on a course of action.
There are many sources online that are at your disposal when searching for answers but the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming unless you are able to search for the exact problem. It also helps to establish a relationship with your local hydroponic or organic gardening store. They are experts and enjoy sharing their knowledge with those interested in the hobby.
Whether you are searching online or asking a local expert, there are some general questions that you will be asked:
- What is happening in your garden?
- When did the problem first occur?
- What size is your grow room?
- How many lights and what type are they?
- What type of hydroponic system are you using?
- What type of grow medium is being used?
- What is the day and night time temperature?
- What is the temperature of your nutrient solution?
- What is the pH of the nutrient solution and the medium?
- What is the strength of the nutrient
and what type? - What stage of growth are the plants in?
- Did the problem start on one plant and spread or where all plants affected at the same time?
- What do the leaves look like?
- Are only certain areas of the plant effected?
- Have you seen any bugs on the bottom or top of leaves or in the medium?
- Have you done anything different?
Have you sprayed the plants with anything recently?
Knowing the answers to these questions will make your search for answers much easier. Who knows, you may even figure out the problem yourself.
Because it always provides “something to do,” gardening can be a year-round activity. And if you can’t think of any gardening tasks for the winter months, here are some tips to get you going.
Some assume that just because the weather is cold the ground must be frozen. “But the ground takes longer to cool off than the air does,” says Sharon Yiesla, Unit Educator, University of Illinois Extension. “As long as the ground isn’t frozen and can accept water, you should water at least your evergreens. Most of the other plants are fairly dormant by winter and not using much water. Evergreens, on the other hand, keep their needles all winter and can lose water through those needles.
“Keeping water supplied to the evergreen’s roots on a weekly basis as long as possible into the fall and winter season will help reduce stress.”
Winter means the threat of snow and ice damage to trees and shrubs is always a possibility. “When snow piles up on evergreens, try to gently brush it off,” Yiesla said. “Don’t shake the branches as this may cause them to break. If the snow is frozen on the branch and will not brush off easily, it’s best to let it melt naturally to avoid damage to the tree or the shrub.
“If tree limbs break due to the weight of ice or snow, it’s advisable to have the broken limbs removed as soon as the weather permits. Hanging branches can be a danger to passing pedestrians. Also, the tree will be able to heal the wound better in spring, if the wound has clean edges instead of ragged tears.”
A sudden warm spell in mid-winter is a good time to check for problems. If roses are covered with cones, it may be time to ventilate the cones to prevent heat from building up inside. The same should be done with cold frames. “If it is a warm, sunny day, the temperatures may be rising in the cold frame more than you expect,” Yiesla noted. “Remember to close vents as the temperatures drop again at night.”
Indoors, it is important to keep holiday plants fresh and blooming. Most of the blooming holiday plants prefer to be in a cool room. This keeps the plant in flower longer. Most holiday plants also need a bright room (some do well with direct sun, others do not). Keep these plants out of drafts to keep them in good health.
“If you order seeds from catalogs, get your order in by the end of January,” Yiesla recommended. “Early orders help ensure that you get the seeds you want and that you have them in time to start them indoors if you want.” It is very common to find insects meandering around the house in winter, she added.
“All of these critters come into the house looking for a place to rest for the winter. Common nuisance pests are box elder bugs, house flies, squash bugs, and the multi-colored Asian ladybeetles”. As you encounter these insects, just vacuum them up. Avoid smashing them as some leave stains or odors when smashed.
It is important not to store firewood in the house. Insects can come in with firewood. “Leave the wood outside until you are ready to build a fire,” Yiesla said. “Firewood should never be treated with insecticides, and insecticides are often not needed for most insect home invaders.”
Sharon Yiesla is a Unit Educator at the Horticultural Department of the University of Illinois Extension. For more information about gardening, visit the University of Illinois Extension website at http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/state/index.html.
Managing living systems usually goes better when our methods imitate
nature’s. Here’s an example of what happens when we don’t.
People who keep tropical fish in home aquariums are informed that to
avoid numerous fish diseases they must maintain sterile conditions.
Whenever the fish become ill or begin dying, the hobbyist is advised
to put antibiotics or mild antiseptics into the tank, killing off
most forms of microlife. But nature is not sterile. Nature is
healthy.
Like many an apartment dweller, in my twenties I raised tropical
fish and grew house plants just to have some life around. The plants
did fine; I guess I’ve always had a green thumb. But growing tired
of dying fish and bacterial blooms clouding the water, I reasoned
that none of the fish I had seen in nature were diseased and their
water was usually quite clear. Perhaps the problem was that my
aquarium had an overly simplified ecology and my fish were being fed
processed, dead food when in nature the ecology was highly complex
and the fish were eating living things. So I bravely attempted the
most radical thing I could think of; I went to the country, found a
small pond and from it brought home a quart of bottom muck and pond
water that I dumped into my own aquarium. Instead of introducing
countless diseases and wiping out my fish, I actually had introduced
countless living things that began multiplying rapidly. The water
soon became crystal clear. Soon the fish were refusing to eat the
scientifically formulated food flakes I was supplying. The profuse
variety of little critters now living in the tank’s gravel ate it
instead. The fish ate the critters and became perfectly healthy.
When the snails I had introduced with the pond mud became so
numerous that they covered the glass and began to obscure my view,
I’d crush a bunch of them against the wall of the aquarium and the
fish would gorge on fresh snail meat. The angelfish and guppies
especially began to look forward to my snail massacres and would
cluster around my hand when I put it into the tank. On a diet of
living things in a natural ecology even very difficult species began
breeding.
Organic and biological farmers consider modern “scientific” farming
practices to be a similar situation. Instead of imitating nature’s
complex stability, industrial farmers use force, attempting to bend
an unnaturally simplified ecosystem to their will. As a result, most
agricultural districts are losing soil at a non-sustainable rate and
produce food of lowered nutritional content, resulting in decreasing
health for all the life forms eating the production of our farms.
Including us.
The closest analogies to composting I can imagine are concocting
similar fermented products like bread, beer, or sauerkraut. But
composting is much less demanding. Here I can speak with authority,
for during my era of youthful indiscretions I made homebrews good
enough have visitors around my kitchen table most every evening.
Now, having reluctantly been instructed in moderation by a liver
somewhat bruised from alcohol, I am the family baker who turns out
two or three large, rye/wheat loaves from freshly ground grain every
week without fail.
Brew is dicey. Everything must be sterilized and the fermentation
must go rapidly in a narrow range of temperatures. Should stray
organisms find a home during fermentation, foul flavors and/or
terrible hangovers may result. The wise homebrewer starts with the
purest and best-suited strain of yeast a professional laboratory can
supply. Making beer is a process suited to the precisionist
mentality, it must be done just so. Fortunately, with each batch we
use the same malt extracts, the same hops, same yeast, same
flavorings and, if we are young and foolish, the same monosaccarides
to boost the octane over six percent. But once the formula is found
and the materials worked out, batch after batch comes out as
desired.
So it is with bread-making. The ingredients are standardized and
repeatable. I can inexpensively buy several bushels of wheat- and
rye-berries at one time, enough to last a year. Each sack from that
purchase has the same baking qualities. The minor ingredients that
modify my dough’s qualities or the bread’s flavors are also
repeatable. My yeast is always the same; if I use sourdough starter,
my individualized blend of wild yeasts remains the same from batch
to batch and I soon learn its nature. My rising oven is always close
to the same temperature; when baking I soon learn to adjust the oven
temperature and baking time to produce the kind of crust and
doneness I desire. Precisionist, yes. I must bake every batch
identically if I want the breads to be uniformly good. But not
impossibly rigorous because once I learn my materials and oven, I’ve
got it down pat.
Composting is similar, but different and easier. Similar in that
decomposition is much like any other fermentation. Different in that
the home composter rarely has exactly the same materials to work
with from batch to batch, does not need to control the purity and
nature of the organisms that will do the actual work of humus
formation, and has a broad selection of materials that can go into a
batch of compost. Easier because critical and fussy people don’t eat
or drink compost, the soil does; soil and most plants will, within
broad limits, happily tolerate wide variations in compost quality
without complaint.
Some composters are very fussy and much like fine bakers or skilled
brewers, take great pains to produce a material exactly to their
liking by using complex methods. Usually these are food gardeners
with powerful concerns about health, the nutritional quality of the
food they grow and the improved growth of their vegetables. However,
there are numerous simpler, less rigorous ways of composting that
produce a product nearly as good with much less work. These more
basic methods will appeal to the less-committed backyard gardener or
the homeowner with lawn, shrubs, and perhaps a few flower beds. One
unique method suited to handling kitchen garbage–vermicomposting
(worms)–might appeal even to the ecologically concerned apartment
dweller with a few house plants.
A compost pile is actually a fast-track method of changing crude
organic materials into something resembling soil, called humus. But
the word “humus” is often misunderstood, along with the words
“compost,” and “organic matter.” And when fundamental ideas like
these are not really defined in a person’s mind, the whole subject
they are a part of may be confused. So this chapter will clarify
these basics.
Compost making is a simple process. Done properly it becomes a
natural part of your gardening or yard maintenance activities, as
much so as mowing the lawn. And making compost does not have to take
any more effort than bagging up yard waste.
Handling well-made compost is always a pleasant experience. It is
easy to disregard compost’s vulgar origins because there is no
similarity between the good-smelling brown or black crumbly
substance dug out of a compost pile and the manure, garbage, leaves,
grass clippings and other waste products from which it began.
Precisely defined, composting means ‘enhancing the consumption of
crude organic matter by a complex ecology of biological
decomposition organisms.’ As raw organic materials are eaten and
re-eaten by many, many tiny organisms from bacteria (the smallest)
to earthworms (the largest), their components are gradually altered
and recombined. Gardeners often use the terms organic matter,
compost, and humus as interchangeable identities. But there are
important differences in meaning that need to be explained.
This stuff, this organic matter we food gardeners are vitally
concerned about, is formed by growing plants that manufacture the
substances of life. Most organic molecules are very large, complex
assemblies while inorganic materials are much simpler. Animals can
break down, reassemble and destroy organic matter but they cannot
create it. Only plants can make organic materials like cellulose,
proteins, and sugars from inorganic minerals derived from soil, air
or water. The elements plants build with include calcium, magnesium,
potassium, phosphorus, sodium, sulfur, iron, zinc, cobalt, boron,
manganese, molybdenum, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen.
So organic matter from both land and sea plants fuels the entire
chain of life from worms to whales. Humans are most familiar with
large animals; they rarely consider that the soil is also filled
with animal life busily consuming organic matter or each other. Rich
earth abounds with single cell organisms like bacteria,
actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa, and rotifers. Soil life forms
increase in complexity to microscopic round worms called nematodes,
various kinds of mollusks like snails and slugs (many so tiny the
gardener has no idea they are populating the soil), thousands of
almost microscopic soil-dwelling members of the spider family that
zoologists call arthropods, the insects in all their profusion and
complexity, and, of course, certain larger soil animals most of us
are familiar with such as moles. The entire sum of all this organic
matter: living plants, decomposing plant materials, and all the
animals, living or dead, large and small is sometimes called biomass.
One realistic way to gauge the fertility of any
particular soil body is to weigh the amount of biomass it sustains.
Humus is a special and very important type of decomposed organic
matter. Although scientists have been intently studying humus for a
century or more, they still do not know its chemical formula. It is
certain that humus does not have a single chemical structure, but is
a very complex mixture of similar substances that vary according to
the types of organic matter that decayed, and the environmental
conditions and specific organisms that made the humus.
Whatever its varied chemistry, all humus is brown or black, has a
fine, crumbly texture, is very light-weight when dry, and smells
like fresh earth. It is sponge-like, holding several times its
weight in water. Like clay, humus attracts plant nutrients like a
magnet so they aren’t so easily washed away by rain or irrigation.
Then humus feeds nutrients back to plants. In the words of soil
science, this functioning like a storage battery for minerals is
called cation exchange capacity. More about that later.
Most important, humus is the last stage in the decomposition of
organic matter. Once organic matter has become humus it resists
further decomposition. Humus rots slowly. When humus does get broken
down by soil microbes it stops being organic matter and changes back
to simple inorganic substances. This ultimate destruction of organic
matter is often called nitrification because one of the main
substances released is nitrate–that vital fertilizer that makes
plants grow green and fast.
Probably without realizing it, many non-gardeners have already
scuffed up that thin layer of nearly pure humus forming naturally on
the forest floor where leaves and needles contact the soil. Most
Americans would be repelled by many of the substances that decompose
into humus. But, fastidious as we tend to be, most would not be
offended to barehandedly cradle a scoop of humus, raise it to the
nose, and take an enjoyable sniff. There seems to be something built
into the most primary nature of humans that likes humus.
In nature, the formation of humus is a slow and constant process
that does not occur in a single step. Plants grow, die and finally
fall to earth where soil-dwelling organisms consume them and each
other until eventually there remains no recognizable trace of the
original plant. Only a small amount of humus is left, located close
to the soil’s surface or carried to the depths by burrowing
earthworms. Alternately, the growing plants are eaten by animals
that do not live in the soil, whose manure falls to the ground where
it comes into contact with soil-dwelling organisms that eat it and
each other until there remains no recognizable trace of the original
material. A small amount of humus is left. Or the animal itself
eventually dies and falls to the earth where ….
Composting artificially accelerates the decomposition of crude
organic matter and its recombination into humus. What in nature
might take years we can make happen in weeks or months. But compost
that seems ready to work into soil may not have quite yet become
humus. Though brown and crumbly and good-smelling and well
decomposed, it may only have partially rotted.
When tilled into soil at that point, compost doesn’t act at once
like powerful fertilizer and won’t immediately contribute to plant
growth until it has decomposed further. But if composting is allowed
to proceed until virtually all of the organic matter has changed
into humus, a great deal of biomass will be reduced to a relatively
tiny remainder of a very valuable substance far more useful than
chemical fertilizer.
For thousands of years gardeners and farmers had few fertilizers
other than animal manure and compost. These were always considered
very valuable substances and a great deal of lore existed about
using them. During the early part of this century, our focus changed
to using chemicals; organic wastes were often considered nuisances
with little value. These days we are rediscovering compost as an
agent of soil improvement and also finding out that we must compost
organic waste materials to recycle them in an ecologically sound
manner.