Growing your own pumpkin for Halloween is a rewarding adventure! The end result is a Jack O Lantern that you had a hand in from start to finish!  While most varieties of pumpkins are fairly hardy, there are tips and pointers that can help you produce a giant pumpkin sure to impress your family and friends when Halloween rolls around. Here is what you need to know about growing pumpkins for Halloween:

Starting the seeds. In order to have fully matured pumpkins in time for Halloween it’s important to start your seeds at the right time.  Keep in mind that the earliest pumpkin starts are for Giant Pumpkins that require 150 days or more of growing time. Giant pumpkin growers time their starts for maximum growth in order to produce a world record fruit in time for the fall weigh offs which run from early to mid October. You should note that there is plenty of flexibility on the start date for other varieties. These can be timed to mature from September to October, and can be started indoors or out. While fully mature pumpkins are particularly hardy, new growers should take note that pumpkins are tender annuals. Frost will kill them, and cold weather will stunt their growth. You should keep this in mind when starting your plants. Recommended “ideal” starting dates for your pumpkin plants are as follows:

• Giant Pumpkins:  Start indoors from April 25 to May 15th Set outdoors after the first true leaves form. Provide cold and frost protection.
• Jack-O-Lanterns / Field Pumpkins: Direct sow into the garden from May 15th to June 15th. Start indoors up to two weeks prior to setting outdoors Provide cold and frost protection.
• Miniature Pumpkins: Direct sow into the garden from May 25th to July 1st. Start indoors up to two weeks prior to setting outdoors

How many pumpkins will you get? One pumpkin plant will normally produce three to five pumpkins. Miniature varieties have been known to produce up to a dozen or so. There will usually be several more female fruit, but some of them will not develop for a number of reasons. Keep in mind that if you are growing pumpkins for size and weight (giant pumpkins), you will eventually select one pumpkin and remove the rest from the vine. By doing this, you allow the plant to direct all of it’s energy into growing just that one pumpkin. It should be noted that a small number of growers keep a second fruit on the vine as an “insurance policy” in case disaster strikes the first fruit. You should understand however that this does not preclude the possibility that you can grow enormous pumpkins if you keep more than one on the vine.

Adding weight to your pumpkin. If you so choose you can turn your everyday pumpkin into a giant pumpkin. To produce the largest pumpkins you will need to fuel their growth. Of special note is that in August, you also need to be diligent and guard against insects and plant disease, especially powdery mildew. Here are some additional tips for adding weight to your pumpkins:

• Keep your patch well watered. This is a great way to get your children involved. Turn over a small amount of soil and make sure it is moist several inches down.
• Adding a layer of compost feeds the plant and helps to retain soil moisture. It can also help to keep weeds down.
• Keep in mind that big pumpkins have big appetites. Regular applications of fertilizer will yield the best results. Switch to a fertilizer that is high in potassium to really bump up the weight of your pumpkin.
• Cover the pumpkin vines with garden soil. This will promote secondary root growth, and results in much bigger pumpkins.

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OK, you’d like huge, showy plants which will mature mutually to form an outstanding show within your yard. There are two ways of achieving this. The first would be to give food to the plants with one of many proprietry chemical substance feeds that promote a miracle plant growth having plants 10 times bigger than regular and a lot of large flowers.

This may probably do the job- for the short term. Sadly, after a comparatively short time, the plant will have expended all its vigor and die. Not the best display possible! It may also be problematic to grow other plants at that place without additional treatments of chemical feed. A costly plan to buy addicted to, and also time intensive. Furthermore, in the event you spill the feed onto the foilage of your plant, it looks terrible.

The second method would be to give food to the earth as opposed to the plant. It is neither as simple or as fast to give results, nonetheless, it will be definitely much better for the surroundings and in the long run provide you with improved, more robust plants. This is applicable to fruit and vegetables along with flowers.

Most plant life, no matter whether ornamental or cullinary, trees, bushes or plants need the same standard wants for development. Good fertile soil, water and light. The amount of lighting and also the types of nutrients change from plant to plant but the essentials are similar. We furthermore need tiny insects to polinate flowers to produce fruit and veg. So in order to create best conditions and create great plants we ought to know very well what the plant wants and provide it.

First test out the earth. Use a meter to check whether it is alkaline or acid. That impacts what type of plants you’ll be able to develop. There isn’t any point in trying to grow plants such as azaleas in soil that is alkaline, and although is is realively elementary to provide lime to soil to deminish its acidity, is quite a bit more difficult to remove it. Manage your land not against it. In case you really must grow a plant not suitable for your soil, raise it inside a pot, although you should definitely feed and water it frequently.

Check the fertility of your soil. You can get tools that will inform you of the equilibrium of the nutritional requirements in your earth. After that look at it. Will it get water logged anytime you have heavy rainfall, or would it be well drained. Last but not least, look at your yard throughout the day. Where is it constantly sun – drenched, where is it partially shady and where is it frequently in shade. Different plants prefer differant quantities of sunlight. After you have got the answers to each of inquiries, you are able to grow your plants to their entire potential with very little expenditure.

Before you plant, completely prepare the soil. Dig it over to aerate it and do away with any weeds and add fertiliser, whether in the form of compost or slow release proprietry fertiliser for instance blood, fish and bonemeal, or growmore. After that finally put your plants in. Look carefully at your plants and pick them to suit the situation. Theres no point in placing flowers which require full sunlight alongside a wall that may shade them. Equally there’s very little profit in putting shade loving plants in full sunshine, they’re going to just burn and die. The whole purpose of looking after your backyard is to get a great show.

When you feed your soil rather than your plants, you are going to grow better, healthier plants that will produce large flowers over a long period of time without any intervention on your part. They will be more able to resist deseases and deter assaults by predators such as aphids and if they are perennials, will be more able to survive their dormant phase and return another twelve months looking strong and ready to give you more pleasure, for not much additional expense or effort. And remember, to get really good results you should always start off with reliable seeds and plants.

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Mushroom compost is a product which is used by gardeners and landscapers all over the world, the product you actually buy is the by-products of the growing process after the mushrooms are harvested. This article aims at providing you with the information so you can make your own mushroom compost and save some time and money.

The ingredients you need to start to make mushroom compost is manure, hay, poultry manure, gypsum and mushroom spawn as well as a large compost bin and steam machine. Once you have these ingredients you are ready to go.

1. You need to begin by mixing the gypsum and manure.

2. You now need to get your compost bin and line the bottom with the just mixed manure and gypsum and leave it for 2 or weeks. After this has happened the bin needs to be covered to allow it to become hot and all the organic matter also decompose.

3. The steam machine needs to be used indoors this allows the compost to pasteurize. Make sure the room has ventilation to allow the steam to blow inside the room till it reaches an approximate of 1600.

4. Once the compost is pasteurized it needs to be placed on trays and the mushroom spawn added and mixed thoroughly.

5. Then added peat moss to the tray and this needs to be kept inside and the humidity and the temperature of the room controlled. The growth of mushroom then can be expected within 30 days.

A quality mushroom can be grown with the help of horse manure. The same can be purchased from the shops or in the case of the fresh manure 20% of wet straw has to be added and to be left outside in the heap. After a few hours the heaps will become hot in the centre. The process has to be repeated and it has to be kept moist. Once it has finally become rotten the centre will no longer be hot.

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I would like to have a small garden shed right at the side of my vegetable garden. It would make things much easier and perhaps we would even have our car garage back.

There are a number of convenient uses of shed kits. You can get maximum from shed kits if you have given some serious attention at the time of constructing the shed kit. It is important to customize the shed kit according to your location and personal requirements at the time of building it. Planning ahead of time so that it could become versatile too, is a thing to be worked out at the construction stage. Even if you did not or could not have much control over the construction of the shed kit or the garden cabin, they can be helpful for many great uses as it is.

Shed kits can be considered as an additional room to your house. Since it is easy to place anywhere you want, a log shed can be considered as a flexible room for your house. various sizes of log shed helps you to decide the use of the new extension. you can also use log shed as an external bed room by placing it near your other bed rooms.

Storage is the most favorite purpose of shed kits. You can store anything in a shed kit that is not adjustable in your house. There are many things that you do not require frequently in your household and such items can easily be put in shed kits. Depending on what you store, you can do minor modifications to the shed kits at the time of construction.

If you have a large backyard and if you do a lot of gardening, using shed kits as a garden cabins is one of the best uses. You can store all your gardening accessories in the shed kit where children will have no access and where you will have easy access to all material required while you are gardening.

Shed kits can also be uses as summer houses. Such shed kits will be larger in size and different in design. You can have summer houses built with a lot of space to cater and host entertaining events as well. So start planning on putting up a shed kit, from today!

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I was wondering about conditioning my garden soil?

Would it suffice for me to top dress a bed with soil conditioner or compost. Or, would it work if I took a shovel and pushed it into the ground and opened a slit, and then put some soil conditioner or compost into the slit? It wouldn’t be the same as working it into the entire soil bed, but at least there would be a little organic material in there.

Your Answer. I was just reading about this type of renovation to a garden bed. The writer was explaining that it is good to replenish organic matter every two years and one did not have to tear up the entire plot, but could incorporate it with digging down a foot or two, without disturbing the root systems of the existing plants. Fertilizer can be applied throughout the summer and this is called side dressing. Top dressing is merely laying organic matter on the surface. It will be beneficial, but will take much more time for the nutrients to reach down via leaching into the roots.

If there are no plants in this bed, you may dig all through it and add organic material, such as compost, dried leaves, peat moss or leaf mold. If plants are growing there now, then carefully dig away from the plants and add. Assume that the root systems will extend at least as far as the reach of the plant branches.

Here are some items to purchase and spade in. Read on with descriptions and several websites with lots of info for you, too much to print here!

• Perlite
• Vermiculite
• Dolomite Lime
• Magnesium Sulfate
• Seaweed Meal
• Soil Moist

http://dmoz.org/Home/Gardens/Soil_and_Additives/Fertilizers

This is one thing I just harp upon:

Soil drainage is critical to survival and growth of most landscape plants, especially evergreen trees and shrubs. When the rate of water movement through soil is restricted by fine-textured clay soils, subsoil, hard pan, or other material difficult to penetrate, a saturated zone may develop in the root zone of plants. Spaces in the soil normally containing air are filled with water, resulting in saturated soil. Wet soils cause more problems to landscape crops than any other single cause. When drainage is poor, roots are injured from the lack of oxygen, fertilizer uptake is limited, and plant growth is reduced. Soil moisture problems can be solved by installing surface and/or internal drainage.

http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~ohioline/hyg-fact/1000/1002.html

Building Fertile Soil

Healthy soil = healthy plants: when you build and maintain fertile soil rich in organic matter, you literally lay the groundwork for thriving plants that can develop quickly, resist pests and diseases, and yield a bountiful crop.

http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs/gardenideas/soilfert.html

The ideal soil would have sand, silt, clay and organic matter in about equal amounts. It would also be uniformly mixed to at least twelve inches deep. The subsoil would allow the excess water to drain away. No soil is ideal but soil can be improved with soil amendments and drainage.

Amendments that are commonly added to soil are:

• Sand or Profile Soil Conditioner: to improve aeration and drainage.
• Compost: to add organic matter, nutrients and to improve aeration and drainage.
• Lime or Sulfur: to raise or lower pH.
• Fertilizers: to add specific nutrients.
• Sharp sand or Mason’s sand creates spaces much better than river sand

http://www.rodsgarden.50megs.com/improvingsoil.htm

http://www.discountgarden.com/soiladditives.html

http://www.scdhec.net/recycle/html/compost.html

http://www.dinosoil.com

This was a first garden in this house. We have raised beds and had special soil called 4-way garden soil brought in. We tested the soil and had to add a bit to it to reach where we wanted it to be.

We had hail in June and it did stunt some of the growing, but we got a fair amount of produce. Our tomatoes had no real flavor. We planted Roma, Early Girl and Sweet 100’s. All were rather tasteless.

Our green peppers tasted good as did the carrots, radish, cauliflower, broccoli.

The watermelons and cantaloupe did not have much taste either. We got a lot of melons, just no flavor. What could it be?

We had no pests and no weeds to speak of either. Did we water too much? We did not fertilize since the soil was good. We had a lot of ladybugs.

Response. It is a hard call, as reading soil test results would assist. Take in some samples next spring as soon as you can dig, from a depth of 6-12″, in various locations, labeled, to your local Ag Inspection lab or Extension Service [even a nearby school or research facility for farmers and gardeners.]

The lack of added fertilizer is suspect. Even if the newly added soil was fine, with many spring and summer rains and hand waterings, the food leaches down below the root systems so is not available to the plants as they produce fruit and vegetables. This can lead to bland, tasteless food.

The hail and ladybugs would have no effect on flavor. Overwatering would lead to root, stem and blossom rot, and melons need plentiful water, so this also is not a factor. The soil and fertilizer are the issues which need to be analyzed next spring.

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