The Designer Gardens

Just a few pictures from my garden taken this morning. Nothing special other people do not have in their own gardens but I want to make my little contribution to our beloved G.O.Y. site. As I mentioned in my previous blog I will start painting the house to day. It’s a job I hate but I was ordered by O/H to do it and have no means to avoid it. I will still find some time to look at your pictures in short brakes and hope not to paint the computer in addition to painting myself and the carpet.

1. Part of my garden

2. M Read more…

Gardening has grown over the years into a very exciting pastime for both young and old alike.

More and more children these times spend all their spare time gardening, often with their personal area of the garden allocated to them.

With the increasing popularity of garden centres over the recent few years it truly is a lot easier to get into gardening nowadays and also for the younger kids as a lot of garden centres also have a lot of interesting pets.

Every little thing you require for your garden can be purchased from your local Garden Centres, and not just plant life, seeds and shrubs but also all your garden tools, some are even made just for youngsters.

These tools for young children range from spades and forks to trowels and even small wheelbarrows and the young children love it, helping their parents in the garden, it gives them a sense of importance too.

You can even get a small greenhouse for them to raise such things as tomatoes and cucumber for example, picture their excitement if you were to pay them for what they grew, they could go out and dig up some produce for dinner in exchange for some more pocket money.

An additional advantage of having your kids fascinated in gardening at an early age is that they will most likely carry on to when they are much older, maybe even keeping them off the streets.

Try to inspire your kids to get included as much as possible and continually take them with you when traveling to your nearby garden centres so they can understand as they go.

Some folks who love gardening but don’t have the space, or enough of it can apply for an allotment, these have been about for years, it could be as long ago as the 1700s and were at first provided to the very poor to raise their own fruit and vegetables to eat.

If you live in a flat you wouldn’t have a garden so you too might apply for an allotment.

The expression Kitchen Garden is an area of garden set aside for raising your own vegetables for your own kitchen cooking.

Commonly people will have their wonderful lawn or landscaped garden design with flowers and plants they can observe from their kitchen window, but often hiding behind a high hedge or garden wall you would find a vegetable garden and probably a greenhouse.

A nice landscaped garden with flowers and shrubs is very nice but you can’t eat flowers, well most of them.

Some people choose to use the whole of their back garden for growing their own produce, in particular in these times with the cost of buying foods.

If you’re just starting out as a gardener it’s really straightforward to get going, all you have got to do is go to your nearby garden centres, invest in some seeds, plant them and watch them grow.

Your local garden centre will have all that you need for your garden, including everything you will ever want to do your planting plus all the tools and equipment that goes with it from wheelbarrows to mowers, spades to trowels.

Many people with really significant gardens occasionally go to garden nurseries to get all their plants because as they need to buy so many they can usually get a considerably improved price.

You can grow vegetables virtually anywhere, you could grow them in a window container or maybe you have a roof top garden, these are very popular in some parts of the World .

The idea of gardening for food and raising herbs for medicine actually goes back to our prehistory, and then of course there are the renowned hanging gardens of Babylon.

Why not pick up your local paper or search the Internet for your local Garden Centres and see what you can achieve.

Not every single landscape is perfect and having a rock garden will help in a lot of those areas. You might have an area which is just too shaded and you cannot have plants due to the fact there just is not enough sun during the day to help them grow, or you may have an area that has become too dry because you are either going through a drought or rain just will not reach it.

Or, perhaps you have too much rain and your land is just too soggy to produce good vegetation and has now become really swampy.

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A lot of people appear to think that expanding all of their vegetation indoors is really a whole lot less difficult than developing every little thing outdoors. While this could be true in some instances, there is a lot more function also as time that goes into looking after all of the plants which are grown indoors. Without having the correct equipment and technologies, the grower will operate into several troubles. Appear into investing inside a hydroponic deep water tradition program and see how much help this alternative will give.

Due to the truth that this really is already a Diy task for most men and women, the new system can also be a Do it yourself addition. Read more…

Pickling is a diverse and delicious way of preserving the local bounty.  While most people think of the kosher dills at the grocery store, there is actually a wide variety of methods when it comes to pickled vegetables.  This class will delve into the rich cultural history of pickling while providing students with the foundations to start preserving at home. 

Some methods we will cover in class:    - Basic vinegar pickles    – Tsukemono (Japanese pickled vegetables)    – Sauerkraut    – Lactic fermentation    – Spice mixes and custom blending

We will cover preservation basics, equipment, food safety issues and variations on basic recipes.  The workshop will feature home canning techniques as well as fermentation-pickling for long-term storage.  Each student will have the opportunity to get hands-on in the kitchen as well as take home some of the fabulous recipes we’ll make in class.

ADVANCED REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED

Available Dates:    – Sunday, January 23, 2011  (Noon – 4pm, $95) SOLD OUT    – Saturday, April 23, 2011 (Noon – 4pm, $95) SOLD OUT    – Saturday, July 9, 2011 (Noon – 4pm, $95)

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If the workshop dates don’t work for you, if the class is full, or if you’d like to request that another class be added, please email us at loveapplefarms@gmail.com to let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Love Apple Farms gift certificates can be used toward classes, seedlings and merchandise and are available for purchase here.

Check out other classes at Love Apple Farms by clicking here.