Soil: Fertilizer, Nutrients & Compost
Healthy soil is the foundation of every successful garden.
Productive gardens begin below the surface. Soil quality, organic matter, compost, nutrients, soil biology, and proper fertilization all play critical roles in plant health and productivity. These articles explore practical methods for building and maintaining healthy soil, improving fertility, understanding plant nutrient needs, and creating growing conditions that support strong, productive gardens year after year.
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GARDEN : What Actually Creates a Productive Garden? (video)
I am going to try something really different…a standard article of mine and also a video from the same article. Why? I really don’t know. I just wanted to try something different. I will post…
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GARDEN : Fertilizer…synthetic vs organic
I’m going to avoid the usual “organic good / synthetic bad” trench warfare. This is a fact…Plants don’t care where nutrients come from. A tomato plant does not know whether Nitrogen came from composted chicken…
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GARDEN : Secondary Nutrients & Micronutrients
In the last article I covered N-P-K as the primary nutrients. < click here to read that article > Now I’ll cover calcium, magnesium, and sulfur as secondary nutrients. And I’ll include iron and micronutrients…
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GARDEN: Fertilizer N-P-K Numbers and What It Means…
Walk into any garden center and you’ll see fertilizer bags with numbers such as 10-10-10, 20-5-10, 5-10-10, etc. To many gardeners, those numbers look like some kind of secret code…they’re not. Those three numbers represent…
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GARDEN : Update! (05/20/2026)
An absolutely gorgeous morning!!! It is crisp and cool this morning, a bit more humidity freshening the air, and just enough cloud cover to make it a little different than most mornings. And best…
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GARDEN : Seedling & Potting Soil
I posted an article on soil amendments and what each is and does. < click here > What I will do today is tell you a bit about how I actually use those products with…
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GARDEN : Strawberry Patch Problems…again!
It just never seems to end with me and my strawberry patch! It is getting old…really, really, old. Over the weekend (last weekend) I went out and really studied my strawberry patch. Remember, it was…
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GARDEN : Soil Amendments…Better & Healthier Soil & Plants!
It’s vitally important to have healthy soil to grow healthy produce…and a lot of it. To that end I will cover; Biochar, Blood Meal, Bone Meal, Coco Coir, Compost, Gypsum, Leaf Mold, Mulch, Peat Moss,…
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GARDEN : Replenishing Raised Beds
It’s getting close to panting time so that means getting my raised beds ready for all those new plants coming from my greenhouse. I built the beds a couple of years ago and here’s how…
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GARDEN: Mellon Patch Disaster !
Follow-up article from < GARDEN : Planting butternut squash, cantaloupe, & watermelon… > Note: Originally written on April 28th, updated on May2nd. I’ve been working on a melon patch for a couple months. Why? Last…
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GARDEN : Planting butternut squash, cantaloupe, & watermelon…
Time to get them in the ground and growing ! ! Note: Originally written in mid-April…the actual planting took place at the end of March. It’s early but it looks like no more freezes at…
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GARDEN : Let’s talk mulch…ah, compost…
Funny thing…mulch and compost are often confused and used interchangeably. Well, depending on the “mulch” you can use it as compost. But, a lot of mulch isn’t compost. For this article I will be…
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GARDEN : Strawberries – Planting Live Plants
This experience couldn’t have been more different than the “bare root” experience. I bought my 20 Eversweet plants from an Etsy vendor…GrowYourOwnFoodShop. I’ve written about them before, they are the folks from whom I purchased…
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GARDEN : Strawberries – Planting Bare Root
First time for everything! I’ve been sharing my love of strawberries for years, and my desire to have a strawberry patch. After years of learning about strawberries and how to grow them in this area,…
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GARDEN : Disaster Strikes !
Some days you just wanna…well, wonder what the heck is going on. Last Saturday morning was one of those days…disaster had struck in the garden the night before. Well, technically in the greenhouse…but it is…
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GARDEN : Perlite vs Vermiculite
I am no master gardener…not by a long shot. But, my thumb is fairly green. In years past, pretty much all my life, I’ve done pretty well with vegetable and flower gardens. I did have…
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Q & A : Growing Onions
How do you start and grow onions? I found that onion variety is really sensitive based on the area of the country you are in. For us I found Wala Wala does really well. That…
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Q & A : Seedlings
I got a couple of questions from my latest “glamstead” article… < click here to read that article > What do you use for potting soil? I’ve used different versions. I’ve also…