GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: gardening video

How To Plant Garlic In The Fall – GF Video
I made this video to show you how to plant garlic in the fall, which is the best time to plant garlic, FYI. Watch the vid then read through the how to notes below, there’s lots of info here!

To Plant Garlic, Do These Things:
- Order garlic ahead of time
- Prepare the garden bed
- Separate the cloves
- Plant root side down
- Wait Until Next July
Probably the biggest mistake people make when they want to plant garlic is to wait too long before ordering some seed garlic. The stuff sells out fast, so order early. The seed garlic supplier will ship just before planting time in your area. I order from Filaree Farm. Most seed garlic is not cheap, but keep in mind you will get many plants from one bulb. You can save your own seed garlic going forward.

You can obsess about prepping the garden bed for the seed garlic, or just do as I do. I make sure the bed has a good mix of compost and soil. Loosen the soil up with a garden fork. Garlic likes some nitrogen, so I sprinkle over the bed some time release fertilizer. I do add some rock powder like azomite, but I can’t say it makes a big difference, its just feels right. I can say that garlic does not like clay soils, or soils that are too sandy, but isn’t that true for most garden vegetables?

The ideal is to plant garlic 2 weeks before the hard frost in your area. For those in warm weather areas, you will usually plant between November and January.

Why Separate The Day Before?

Depending on who is doing the talking, some say you must separate the cloves of the garlic bulbs the day before, I don’t. Usually because I forget, and I have yet to see a difference in doing so. I would suggest getting some help splitting up the bulbs. Many hands make light work.

I plant garlic about 6″ apart in rows about 8-10″ apart. Its not rocket science. Garlic doesn’t like to be crowded, and it doesn’t do well with weeds. Plant about 2″ down, with the root tip facing down. The grow tip should be about an inch below the soil.

I don’t mulch my garlic with straw. I will put down a light layer of leaves I have run through the mulching mower, but its not a thick layer.

If your garlic starts to grow in the fall, don’t worry, the green tip will die back a bit with the frost, and will restart in the spring.

What to do in spring? Watch more of our how to grow garlic vids here.
November 30, 2016
Grow Salad Greens In Fall And Winter – GF Video
You can grow salad greens in fall and winter, its not rocket science, even I can do it. Watch the video and read on below:

Couple of key things to grow salad greens in fall and winter
- Plant cold hardy lettuces, mustards, kale.
- Use a mini greenhouse
- Start seeds earlier than you think
- Plant in your sunniest raised bed
Luckily, most salad greens don’t do well in hot weather, they actually like cold weather. You have that going for you when you want to grow greens in winter or fall. I usually have too many packs of mescluns, greens, etc, so I drop them into a shallow row right next to my soaker hoses [video here]. Fedco sells fall and winter salad seed mixes, which make this even easier.

Be sure the seed rows are on the sun side of the soaker hoses. The way my raised beds are oriented, one side of the hose gets more sun than the other, so I drop seed on that sunnier side.

The other key ingredient here is a mini greenhouse, aka hoop house, to extend the growing season [how to videos here]. The mini greenhouse will keep the plants warmer in the fall and early winter months, and can extend the season greatly.

If you don’t have a mini greenhouse, you can surround the salad greens with hay bales. Lay an old storm window over the bales. The bales will hold in the heat nicely.

In the northeast U.S., where we are, the salad greens will eventually freeze, and stop growing. But if you can manage not to let the frost melt and drown the plants in late winter, you can get the salad greens to start growing again. They may bolt, so plant new seed as well.

How do you extend your growing season? Let us know below.
September 14, 2016
How To Grow Peas – GF Video

I can show you how to grow peas because they are my favorite vegetable, bar none. So I made you a video about it, watch and let me know your thoughts.

How to grow peas, what you need to know:

Peas like cool weather, when the summer starts to heat up, they wilt quickly. So its key to get the seeds starting quick. You have two choices, seed directly in the garden, or start them in seed starting trays or pots. Both have advantages.

I now prefer to start pea seeds in pots and transplant them outside. I have found that the seeds germinate faster and better than seeding them directly. A big reason is that the soil outside is cold, and the seed starting mix is warm, because its inside. Took me awhile to figure that out. I also direct seed a bit when the weather starts to warm up, as a back up measure.

Have the bottom of your trellis right where the plants are. Peas start to climb right away, or else they will fall over. You can set some small sticks alongside the plants to lead them to the trellis above, if need be.

I do not have any problems with insects or diseases with my peas. I mainly plant sugar snap peas and snow peas. Many of them don’t make it out of the garden, we and the Labs eat them standing there in the garden.

You can shade the pea plants to keep them growing a bit longer, but I have not had much success with this. Part of the problem is the trellis is quite high. There are some pea varieties that don’t grow as tall, you could try those.

When the sugar snap peas start to fade, I plant string beans below the trellis, and leave the fading peas on the trellis. The beans will climb up and work just fine. This way you have used the trellis for two plants in one season. Nice.

May 11, 2016
Natural Weed Control in the Vegetable Garden – GF Video

Want to keep weeds down without spraying? Natural weed control is the way to go using this woven weed fabric. This video is an update to our previous how to control weeds video, showing how the weed fabric has held up to 6 years of New England weather.

I’m using the term natural weed control in a broad sense here, not wanting to get into the weeds about whether using a plastic material is natural. But rather in the sense that we are not using chemical weed killer, and by depriving the weed seeds of light, we keeping the weeds down in the garden.

This was purchased from a local greenhouse supply, you can buy the weed fabric online also. I’ve seen this fabric used as the floor of greenhouses and nursery yards. The fabric comes in rolls, and my neighbor got a friend to sew the fabric into a one giant piece. Each fall, the plants are pulled up and the fabric is rolled up and stored in the barn.

Large cement blocks hold down the edges of the fabric, and bricks are interspered between the plant rows throughout the garden to keep it from blowing up and away. To plant seedlings in the fabric, a propane torch is used to create holes. The torch singes the edges of the plastic, keeping it from fraying.

This natural weed control method works great for squash cucumbers, and whatever other vines you want to grow. It makes it much easier to harvest squash when the plants aren’t covered in weeds. It also makes it easier to spot damage by insects – watch our squash vine borer treatment videos.

This weed fabric is UV stable, meaning it is resistant to the sunlight degrading the material. If you use regular plastic sheeting, it will break down in the sunlight. You can see us use black plastic mulch in this tomato video.

Questions or comments? Let us know below.
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September 14, 2015
How to build a trellis for your vegetable garden – GF Video
Want to build a trellis for our vegetable garden that uses recycled wood and twine? I made this video to show you how. We grow peas, beans, & cucumbers on this simple trellis. (Want to learn how to grow peas? It’s easy: Watch how to here.)

Enjoy the video I made for you below, and then read through the steps to build your trellis.

Are you wondering if you can transplant peas? I finally answered this for myself.
And here’s an easy DIY soaker hose system video to water your trellised vegetables.

Build A Trellis, The GardenFork Way:

To build this simple trellis, you will need:
- Jute or twine (avoid synthetic twine)
- 1×2 pine stakes
- Cable Staple Gun
- Cordless drill
- Drywall or wood screws
If you have raised beds, you can build a trellis by attaching the vertical posts to the sides of the bed. I put the posts just inside the bed and drill into them from the outside wall. Two screws in each post will hold it. Make sure the screws do not jut out past the wood, the point could hurt someone digging in the raised bed.

If you are not using raised beds, I’ve found it helpful to cut a point at the bottom of your vertical posts, then hammer them into the ground where you want the trellis.

If you are building a trellis for a in-ground use, attach a cross bar about 18″ above the bottom of the vertical posts and drive the trellis into the ground. You may want to attach some wood triangles where the posts meet the top crossbar to make it sturdier and keep it from swaying side to side.

For a trellis on a raised bed vegetable garden, I don’t use a bottom cross piece. I staple the bottom loops of the twine right to the wooden sides of the bed. I do screw the top cross piece into the two upright supports. I then cable staple the twine up and down. Pretty easy.

If you want, you can just loop the twine across the top cross support. I’m all about making it simple.

I don’t think you need to use pressure treated wood for to build a trellis. I use regular pine or recycled wood from other projects, and they have weathered just fine. If you have some fallen trees nearby, the limbs work great for this, just cut them to size.

I like vertical gardening like this, it saves tons of garden space. I make sure that my trellises do not shade too much of the rest of the vegetable garden, because sun is already limited in my yard.

Why do I use twine for the trellis? In the fall, I can easily cut down the string with the plants, chop it up a bit, and toss it into the compost pile. The string will break down. For peas I run the string up and down, for a cucumber trellis, I will also run the twine across the posts, as they need more support. My favorite tool for attaching the twine to the wood supports is a cable staple gun.

I am all about keeping it simple and use what you got, but if you want to go fancy, see what my friend Erin has done with a super fancy trellis.

This is only the beginning of how you can DIY make a trellis. Let me know how you build a trellis in the comments below. Thx!
July 9, 2011
Weed Free Vegetable Gardening : GardenFork.TV

Want a weed free garden? Learn how to prevent weeds in your vegetable garden as we tour our neighbor’s vegetable garden where they use a weed barrier fabric and get great results.

You can buy this plastic mesh weed fabric online or at a local greenhouse supply. This fabric was sewn together by a neighbor to create a large wide piece of fabric that is rolled up at the end of the year and stored in the garage. You get what you pay for with this material. Make sure it is UV stable. You can see how the fabric has held up in our natural weed control update video.

As you can see in the above photo, if you just cut the mesh, it will fray eventually. Using a torch to make holes for planting works much better.

Some people have asked about crop rotation, and this weed fabric holes have been created such that if you rotate the big piece of fabric, the holes will be in a different place each year. So you are not planting in the same place every year. This has worked well for our neighbors.

Each spring they till in a time release fertilizer and then pull the weed fabric across. It is anchored down with cement blocks along the edges and bricks in between rows of plants.

You do get a few weeds peeking out of the plant holes, but this is so much easier than pulling weeds out of a open soil garden. Keeps your clothes a lot cleaner too.

The fabric is not great for planting salad greens or bulb plants like beets or onions, though you could lay narrow strips of this between the rows to keep down weeds. I’ve found its best for transplants or large seed plants like squash, peppers, tomatoes, etc.

Have you used weed barrier fabric or do you have another weed free garden tip? Let us know below and thanks for watching!

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October 1, 2010