June's Greenhouse Tips
Owning, using, and enjoying your own greenhouse can be fun and relaxing - but there are still "Things To Do" to keep it clean, healthly, and usable. For each month of the year we have gathered useful greenhouse tips and information from our customers, employees and friends like you to help you get even more enjoyment from your greenhouse.
We've gathered these greenhouse tips from a variety of sources, much of it has been over the years and is not known. Please feel free to send us some of your own ideas.
Seasonal Opportunities
When you are able to set out your tomato plants, remove the lower leaves and bury in a trench, leaving the top tuft of leaves showing. This gives the plant additional roots and strength. Remember that planting seeds in cold soil can promote disease and slow germination. Plant new starts inside a black plastic pot that has the bottom cut out and is half buried in soil to protect the plant from cutworms and warm the soil. Everything grows very fast as the weather warms, so keep the your garden spot weeded to give your crop optimum water and nutrients. Stressed or sickly plants invite pests and diseases. Seed fast-maturing crops every two weeks now for a continual harvest. This is also an excellent time to take cuttings for the greenhouse. Root cuttings in coconut coir on your heating mat.
Herb Thymes
Give yourself a special treat this summer by adding the beauty, color and flavor of flowers to your summer salads, ice cubes and cool drinks. Some flowers to have growing in your garden for this purpose are borage (cucumber flavor), nasturtiums (sweet & spicy), chive blossoms (sweet, subtle onion flavor), calendula (saffron color), rose petals (fragrant, calming), and common orange daylily (fresh green bean flavor). Also try honeysuckle, daisies, pansies, carnations, cornflowers, gladioli and geraniums. Pick fresh each day. Rinse quickly under cold water and remove pistils, stamens and white base before adding to your finished dish. Young violet leaves can also be used. They contain three times the vitamin A of spinach and five times the vitamin C of orange juice! Enjoy!
The Junior Gardener
Want to create your own rainbow garden? Try these unique garden varieties: red lettuce (Red Sails) or red corn (Ruby Queen); orange beets (Burpee's Golden) or orange bell pepper (Mandarin Hybrid), yellow carrots (Sweet Sunshine) or yellow tomato (Taxi); green eggplant (Green Goddess); blue potatoes (All Blue) and purple bush beans (Sequoia). Some seed companies to call toll-free for catalog: Burpee, (800) 888-1447, Park, (800) 845-3369, Tomato Grower's Supply, (888) 478-7333
Greenhouse Schedule
Start broccoli now for a fall crop and fragrant Nicotiana for your fall garden. Cooling the greenhouse can be done by using a shade cloth, placing a couple of black buckets of water inside for evaporation cooling as well as spraying plants and walkways. Also our greenhouse can be picked up and moved into the shade. If you are closing the greenhouse for the summer, this would be a perfect time to empty, clean, disinfect, sterilize soil and do repairs. Review previous winter/spring season and related expenses. Plan and buy supplies for the coming fall and winter season. Have you outgrown your greenhouse? Now would be the perfect time to add an extension.
Accessory Of The Month
The Shade Cloth is perfect now. Our 73% shade cloths come in 8' X 4', 10', 12' & 16'. We also have 12' X 12' or 12' X 16'. Custom sizes can be ordered at the same price per square foot. All edges are reinforced and have grommets.
Also available is our Water Supply Kit. Customize to your greenhouse needs with jets for spray or tubes and emitters for drip irrigation.
Our Greenhousing "How-To" Resouce Guide
|
