Backyard Farming the Natural Way

Archive for the ‘Growing Vegetables and Herbs’ Category

I discussed in a previous post, Artichokes in Florida, that I was going to try my hand at growing these. Well so far the results are outstanding. On the left is one of the artichoke plants which I planted from seed only last month! As you can see, it is growing like crazy in “my secret formula” (no secret really). I decided to plant them in deep containers Read the rest of this entry »

I previously discussed the cheap method I was utilizing for the purpose of staking indeterminate tomatoes. In case you haven’t followed, the first part of this process is here. Well, my tomatoes have gotten huge and some are already 4′ tall since I planted them from seed in the first part of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Well the tomatoes which I just staked are starting to load up with blossoms, and I even have quite a few fruit. However, one thing that I notice is that a few of the heirloom varieties are dropping most of their blossoms.  Seen here on the left is one nice Black Krim heirloom, but most of the surrounding blossoms just fell off. I have also noticed the same thing happening with two of my Kellogg’s Breakfast heirloom tomatoes. Read the rest of this entry »

Well the heirloom tomatoes that I planted from seed 2 -1/2 months ago are already in need of staking. Because one of my main goals for this blog site is to promote the practice of low space, intensive, and “frugal” home growing, I am always looking for new ways to accomplish these ends. Therefore, I decided to try a different idea for staking my indeterminate tomatoes. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a couple of the heirloom tomatoes that I grew from seed a couple of months ago. The two shown here are black krim and I have pictured them here to illustrate the genetic variability in  open pollinated varieties like the heirlooms. Notice the difference in leaf structure and plant shape.  Because of this variability, Read the rest of this entry »

Hmm, we will see about that(?) I tried to grow some globe artichokes a few years ago and some nasty fungus or other pathogen set into them when they had gotten about 2′ high. However, I am a sucker for challenges and especially like to try somewhat unconventional stuff that nobody else is growing in the area – that and the fact we love artichokes and they are now getting too expensive. Therefore, I am giving it another try. Read the rest of this entry »