Home Kitchen and Garden Design

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel  The Rusted Garden Over 800 Garden Videos Designed to Quickly Present Information! Please Support The Rusted Garden by Shopping through my Amazon Affiliate Link How to Build A Hot-House Tomato Cage for Early Spring:  Be the First with Ripe Tomatoes!  These cages can be built in 5 minutes. They will allow you to get your tomatoes into the garden a lot earlier. It works. I use a few every year and am the first in the area with red tomatoes. Try it! I original put this on my other blog but wanted to elaborate some of the ideas here. Benefits Please Visit The Rusted Garden Vegetable Seed and Garden Shop Wind Break They act as a wind break and keep the plant from cooling from winds. They also allow transplants time to get used to the elements without becoming over-stressed. It makes a mini shelter for them. Heats During the Day They will collect the solar heat of the day. A sunny day in the 40's can easily heat the cage into the 70's. At night I...

How to Start Cilantro Indoors and Why to Start Cilantro Indoors If you like cilantro you typically love cilantro. It is a very hardy, cool weather vegetable. It is typically grown for its leaves. The seeds are actually harvested as a spice and go by the name of coriander. Cool weather helps promote lush leaf growth. When the warmth comes, cilantro moves to quickly flower and seed. It is often recommended not to start cilantro indoors because it is a tap root and it doesn't do well with transplanting. Not doing well as transplants doesn't mean it won't grow. It just won't realistically get to its 2 foot size. You will get leaves though! Cilantro can take 14-21 days to germinate so go ahead and start some about 4 weeks before it will go outside. Why? It takes some time to germinate. Start it indoors and get a jump on your season. You aren't going to hold it in the starting cells to become root-bound. Start it indoors, let it sprout, grow a bit and get it in the garden...

Garden Mythbusters Episode One:  Do Seed Tray Humidity Domes Promote Mold and Fungus Growth? I am starting a new series that puts garden myths, old wives' tales and urban farmer legends to the test. This is somewhat scientific but mostly done to have some fun and to shed some light on the things we hear we should or shouldn't do in and around the garden. You be the judge! If you like this series please let me know and certainly put some things you would like to be tested in the comments section. I don't use humidity domes ever since the ugly day over 10 years ago... 'damping off' diseases hit my germinating lettuces and other plants. I thought it was a sterile starting mix. I thought I did the right thing. I used the dome as recommended by the manufacturer. I opened it daily.  More than once in fact! I bottom watered.  But they died as quickly as they sprouted. I am not posing the question are humidity domes good or bad. I am not saying they cause mold or fungus. I ...

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel  The Rusted Garden Over 800 Garden Videos Designed to Quickly Present Information! Please Support The Rusted Garden by Shopping through my Amazon Affiliate Link A Complete Video Guide on How to Start Tomatoes Indoors from Start to Transplanting: Almost Time to Start Them! When to Start Your Tomatoes Indoors: I recommend you start tomatoes indoors about 8 weeks before they can go outside. So the first question is often:  When do you put them outside? A lot of vegetables go out when frost ends. Tomatoes are a bit different. Yes, frost will kill them and you need to wait but cold ground will keep them from growing. They can even turn a bit purple when nights and the ground stay in the 40's. You really want to time your 8 weeks or so to the date when your earth bed soil and nights are mostly 50 degrees. You can use water rings or black plastic and other tricks to keep the transplants warm and to warm the ground if you want and get an earlier start. ...

Join My G+ Garden Community for 2014 Called:  Our Tomato and Vegetable Gardens I am inviting you to join my  G+ garden community that was started last year. It is approaching 3000 world gardeners. It is a place where you can share your garden, talk to gardeners from around the globe and learn something if you need a bit of help. Or better yet.... help out another gardener that might have a problem that you have already solved. All aspects of gardening are covered. Seed Starting, Diseases and Pests, Planting and Tending, Greenhouses, Indoor Lighting, Container Gardening, Recipes, Fruits, Flowers, Perennial Plants, Herbs and Tomatoes of course are all represented. Come add to the fun! Our Tomato and Vegetable Gardens I am hoping the 2014 season brings a lot of pictures and videos from everyone's garden to the community . The cool thing is that a lot of gardeners are in full swing because it is summer in their area. There are also a lot of gardeners that live in the tropics and...

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel  The Rusted Garden Over 800 Garden Videos Designed to Quickly Present Information! Please Support The Rusted Garden by Shopping through my Amazon Affiliate Link How to Prepare Eggshells for Use in the Vegetable Garden:  Pulverize and Vinegar Eggshell are a great source of calcium for the garden. Calcium related problems can lead to tomato blossom end-rot. That is the disease that turns the bottom of your once great looking green tomatoes - brown. Many gardeners treat blossom end-rot preventatively.  That is, they make sure there is enough calcium in the soil for their tomatoes and vegetables to use. Use... is the key word. Eggshells are made up of calcium carbonate. Yes it is calcium but no it is not easily used by tomato plants in that form. The eggshells need to decompose and be broken down into a usable form of calcium. This is often done through composting. The eggshells you crumble into the planting hole will eventually breakdown over ...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays: Thanks, Good Luck and Just Enjoy! I started gardening when I was in elementary school. My grandfather taught me. He has passed but I still remember him through what he taught me and when I walk the garden. Life is like that. Those that care for us and teach us and those we encounter, shape our life. They not only  influence the quality of our life but they become part of our memories. While time and death do take, our memories hold those that pass. And for an instance they are alive. I started The Rusted Garden Blog about 5 or 6 years ago. I love gardening and enjoy computers... so I combined them. A couple years later, I shot 5 or 6 YouTube videos for an experiment. I shot my first YouTube video called:  Tending Zucchini and Squash and Finding Squash Bug Eggs: The Rusted Garden 2011 . I am laughing as I write this, again. Who was that guy? Who says, "I've been away on vacation for 5 days - It's time to tend the garden." I don't...