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I buy my seeds from Territorial here in Oregon. According to their catalog, start the seeds in Jan/Feb. With soil between 65 and 75 they will take 10 to 20 days to germinate. There is only a 70% germination rate and about 20% of those will not produce high quality plants. Honestly, to me...

Anyone ever grow them? I read one source that said to harvest everything in the summer and replant the best bulbs in the fall (like garlic). Another source said something (of course I can't remember exactly what)about leaving some in the ground at all times for a continuous fresh harvest...

Every year I grow a variety of hot peppers, including serranos, to dry. Keeps me and my 3 kids in pepper flakes for the year! A half bushel sure is a lot. Do you use a lot of pepper flakes? If so, dry them. They will stay hot for a long time. Freezing would also work well. I made chili...

I will be planting mine around the same time. I usually get a yard or two of soil and make raised beds. After the garlic is pulled in the summer, the soil gets turned into the garden. We have very wet winters and the raised beds work well to keep the garlic from rotting. I don't mulch but...

As you probably know, garlic should not be watered for about the month before harvest. So much for the perfect world! If you garlic is ready to pull and it's raining, you have nothing to gain by waiting. I would pull before it all splits because then its storage qualities are just about...

Fry some bacon. While that's cooking, chop up some onion. When the bacon is done, drain most of the fat, crubmle thebacon, add the onion, and let it go a couple of minutes till soft. Throw in the peas, add a tad of water so they can steam covered. Everthing is better with bacon!

Ridgerunner, you hit the nail right on the head! Canners are certainly expensive so having one that offers options makes all kinds of sense to me.,,,,,IF it can be used on your particular stove. I do believe the All American canner specifically says not to use it glass stoves due to weight issues.

I have a GE Profile glass top and this is what I learned. I believe the reasoning behind the water canner and the glass top stove is that there are ridges on the bottom of the canner, making contact with the stove more difficult. That being said, a water canner can be pretty heavy, so I...

I bought my first pressure canner this year and was planning to do exactly what you said--can my own recipes. Then I heard the same thing as you, that it's not safe. After some thought, that made sense to me. For example, say a quart of your spaghetti sauce has 2 cups of meat in it and mine...

I have to agree with Pat. I was hoping to be able to store roasted garlic in the fridge covered in oil, called my local extension service and was told no way. Preserving anything with any moisture whatsoever in oil is risky. :( But again, that's a personal decision.

I always plant my garlic in October, so I'm not sure how garlic planted later will look and behave. Different varieties are ready to dig at different times, some as early as early June, others late July. I generally harvest when there are about 5 green leaves left. Don't wait until all...

I bought blueberries last year and did some research. According to what I read, you should strip the blossoms off the bushes the year you plant them to encourage good root growth. The second year you can let them flower and fruit. I'm looking forward to some berries this year!

When I got rid of my chickens, I started putting only kitchen scraps in my compost pile. After a while, I noticed the pile was filled with red wigglers. When we moved a couple of years ago, I filled up some of the zillion planting pots we had and moved the compost pile with me. (At one...

We grow Armenian cukes every year. They are light green and very mild, never bitter. They can grow a couple of feet long but are best harvested around 12 inches. My Territorial catalog says they are burpless, but I was never bothered by burps so I can't swear to that!

I've started some habanero and serrano peppers. I bought habanero plants last year but probably only picked about a third of what they produced because time ran out. As of yet, nothing has sprouted, probably because the room is too cool. We just purchased some of those heating mats to place...

One year we wanted to grow about 75 tomato plants and were interested in various varieties that were not available as plants. Our small, local nursery was willing to start them for us. Now I realize he probably was accommodating to us because of the number of plants we were interested in, but...

This is from a booklet I bought called "How to Save Your Own Vegetable Seeds" from the Heritage Seed Program in Ontario, Canada. Re tomatoes: "Varieties should be separated by 20 to 150 feet. The old fashioned 'potato leaf' varieties which have a flower that is more open to insects should...

It is a beautiful plant that, in my opinion, looks best planted in masses as it is somewhat tall and prone to falling over. However, I've had the same experience. It will self-sow like nothing you've ever seen before. You absolutely will have it all over your property, which isn't...

I don't know much about the onions and shallots, but garlic is my hobby! It is exceedingly cold hardy, being native to Central Asia. A big problem with the freeze/thaw cycle is that it pushes the planted cloves out of the soil. In your location, I don't think you have a thing to worry...

Soybean - Regarding your question about light coming through a window and how that affects plants: I recall reading somewhere that the amount of usable light greatly diminishes with each foot away from a window. Having tried to get herbs and veggies to grow successfully indoors, I would agree...