Gardening And More

Planting and Growing Tomato Plants As the weather warms, we gardeners start thinking about gardening again. With this in mind I would like to mention the wonderful benefits of growing tomatoes. Home-grown tomatoes have a richer, fuller, and better taste than store bought since you pick them yourself. Home-grown tomatoes are easy and inexpensive to grow as well. Growing tomatoes has a lot of appeal: it can involve the entire family from the little ones to the teens. As well as being an educational tool, the time the family spends in the garden is quality time spent together and can give one a sense of pride. For gardener’s who live in a condo, apartment, or townhome tomatoes can be grown in a container. Choosing a Location: Choose an area that gets 5 - 6 hours of full sun; and if, you have an area that receives more than 6 hours of sunlight that’s all right, too. Choosing a Container(s) : Pick a container that is 14 inches or larger, and I would like to ...

Growing Herbs in Containers As a horticulturist, we have favorite endeavors such as growing plants especially herbs in colorful containers of all colors and shapes. Herbs make an excellent choice to decorate a sunny patio, deck, or balcony, and the flowers that are produced on herbs will provide twice the amount of fun to your growing area. The seeds and flowers will provide additional ingredients to recipes. Processing the seeds produced by herbs make additional ingredients to add to recipes. For example, when Cilantro goes to seed the seeds are called Coriander when crushed; and when Dill goes to seed the processed seeds are called Dill Weed. Most flowers produced by herbs are edible and are used in salads, garnishes, and cooking or can be used in dried floral arrangements. For example, add Mexican Marigold Mint flowers to salads and Lavender flowers can be dried and used in floral arrangements. Plants that are classified as Herbs are very diverse and have multiple u...