Growing Food Crops And Vegetables At Home

Spring is right around the corner and it will soon be time to plant your garden. I first started posting on Steemit while living on Skipley Farm, a blueberry/fruit farm in Snohomish, Washington. They grew a variety of blueberries, apples, blackberries, gooseberries, currents, strawberries, plums, cherries, and other farm products.

It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don't suppose anybody really understands yet. - Jane Goodall

While staying there posting instructions on how to grow food crops, we fed hundreds of people from the food we grew there and it holds a special place in my heart.

Below are some of the best tips on how to grow basic food crops that anyone cam learn to do. Click on the links and images below to learn how to grow food at home for your friends and family.

Growing Food Crops

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Growing fresh strawberries are a wonderful summer treat, especially if they're picked right out of the garden. There are two different ways to plant strawberries, depending on the type. Strawberry plants are widely adapted and they can even be grown as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska. Strawberries can be grown in hanging baskets* very easily. Use good soil and be sure to water it often. Remember, strawberries like lots of sun and a hanging basket in the sun will need to be watered more often to prevent it from drying out.

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The best time for growing carrots in the spring and in the fall. In the spring you want to plant them two to three weeks before the last frost and in the fall want to plant in 10 to 12 weeks before the first frost. Carrots are a fairly easy vegetable to grow once you get the soil right. The best growing soil is sandy, loose, well-drained, rock free, and high in organic matter.

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Peas are great crop to plant before the last frost. Direct sow peas as soon as the ground is workable, but not soaked. For many areas February and March are your prime pea planting times. Peas can also make a great fall crop and can be planted at the tail end of the season when the fall weather starts to set in. Did you know peas can actually fix nitrogen in the soil? And if you're planting in new garden you can at add some rhizobacteria when planting and not only will the peas grow better but the soil will be richer for the next crop.

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Beets, or beetroot, are a staple of my vegetable garden. I love them roasted with oregano and a grind of the salt mill - just delicious! Beets are very easy to grow from seed and you won't have to wait long until harvest time. Although beets have the highest sugar content of all vegetables, most people can safely eat beet roots a few times a week (and their greens in unlimited quantities), enjoying not only their sweet, earthy flavor but also their powerhouse nutrients that may improve your health in the following ways.

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Growing cucumbers is easy. I'll show you how. Cucumbers sprawl so they take up a lot of space. My cucumbers sprawl right out over the raised bed. If you don't have tall raised beds you can trellis your cucumbers vertically so that they take up less space and keep the fruit off the ground. One of my favorite things about cucumbers is you can make pickles with them and keep them for a long time. Making pickles is easy and it starts with the variety you grow.

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Blueberry muffins, blueberry pie, blueberry ice cream, blueberry pancakes, plain old blueberries, and my favorite, blueberry daiquiris. if you like them you can grow them in containers or in the garden bed I'll show you how! For successful blueberry garden its important to choose the right variety. The number of chill hours in your area will help you make a decision on what blueberry varieties to plant and you can contact your local ag department to find out the chill hours in your area.

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There are some major benefits to planting potatoes in your backyard. You can plant varieties that are hard to find, or are very expensive, and you can harvest virtually all year long if you live in a climate like I do. The best way to plant potatoes is to start with certified seed potatoes. It's not a good idea to use the potatoes you find in the grocery store, because they're not certified disease-free and sometimes they're treated to prevent sprouting.

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Onions, leeks and shallots are all staples in the kitchen and they're good for you and healthy for your heart. Onions can be grown a few different ways, either from transplants from onions sets, or you can start your own onion seeds. Onions, leeks and shallots can be planted in the spring or the fall, but between October and December is a great time to plant onions and leeks in just about everywhere in the U.S.

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Lettuces and greens are some of the easiest greens to grow. Start your lettuces and greens in trays about four weeks before you wanna transplant outside into the garden and they like daytime temperatures between forty-five and sixty-five degrees. You can succession seed lettuce every ten to fourteen days and that way you'll get a continuous supply When it comes to direct seeding loose leaf lettuce there are a couple ways you can do it.

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Learn how to plant artichokes! Artichokes are a wonderful vegetable for eating, but they're also a beautiful landscape plant. They're native to the mediterranean and they're cold hardy down to about zone 6. You can grow them as an annual if you're in a colder climate. Artichokes are delicious too and the hearts can be pickled to extend the harvest into a supply of food in the winter.

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Basil is a wonderful herb that is a delicious part of both Asian and Western cuisine. I'll show you how to grow great basil and make delicious pesto sauce fresh from your garden. Growing and eating basil supports your heart and liver health, is loaded with antioxidants, improves your digestion and makes your breath fresh, it's antibacterial, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory, packed full of vitamins and minerals and helps detoxify for system. Besides all that it tastes great!

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Growing shiitake mushrooms is a lot easier than people think. The first time I grew shiitake mushrooms I did it on oak logs and grew about 1000 pounds of mushrooms, but these days anyone can grow a batch of fresh shiitake mushrooms even if they live in a small apartment and you don't need to cut down oak trees to do it.

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Microgreens are packed with nutrition* with 4 to 40 times more vitamin C, K, E, and beta carotene than the adult vegetable. The health benefits of growing microgreens, newly sprouted edible plants, are packed with concentrated nutrients, minerals and vitamins, very fast to grow, and a super healthy food that can be grown in your apartment.

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Garlic has several health benefits and has been used to treat many health problems. Here you will find some of the best 15 amazing benefits of growing garlic. Garlic can help fight bacteria and viruses, improve metabolism, reduce weight, regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and improve allergy symptoms, and it also tastes great. Every gardener should learn how to grow garlic.

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Why buy fertilizer when you can grow your own organic fertilizer? We’re growing comfrey for fertilizer in garden beds, around fruit trees, and even more along the fence. What is the fertilizer we’re growing? Comfrey increases nitrogen and phosphorus, but the amount of potassium is especially impressive. In addition to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, comfrey also accumulates magnesium, calcium, iron, and silicon, adding nutrients to the soil and taken up by food crops, these minerals will get absorbed by the plants and those eating those plants.

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Chickens are more than a food source, they plant my whole garden, working from sunrise to sunset, weeding, fertilizing, controlling pests and planting, if you know how to manage them. A closer look at properly raising chickens reveals that their usefulness as food just scratches the surface of what they can do for a farmer or gardener and properly managed, chickens can produce more food than just eggs and meat. We'll explore that more in this post but first, let's dig deeper into what 'services' a chicken can provide.

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Worm castings have a number of advantages over compost alone. Castings have a higher percentage of humus than compost, which improves water retention and aeration. They also bind micronutrients like calcium, magnesium, and sulfur that might otherwise be washed away by heavy rains. They’re rich in beneficial bacteria, and, very importantly, they contain plant growth hormones that increase germination rates, and make plants grow faster, larger, and produce more. Learn how to grow earthworms in your garden and growing food will get easier, tastier, and healthier.

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In today's world of instant gratification it can be a struggle taking a long-term view of anything. Companies, jobs, and opportunities come and go faster than we can keep up with and everything is always in a state of constant change. But how to be successful on Steemit requires a persistent approach that embraces a long-term view to get the results we strive for. To help keep me focused on the big picture I like to use an analogy of growing a tree. In many ways growing an active Steemit account is like growing a fruit tree. I have grown many varieties of trees and plants from seed and the similarities are striking.

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I wish every gardener the best of luck this season and would love to see what you plan to grow this year. Hope these tips help you grow a bumper crop.

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