Getting Ready to Plant the Vegetable Garden

If you love cool weather crops like lettuce, broccoli, green beans, spinach & potatoes than get ready for the best season of the year to plant them. Autumn gardens are often the most productive here in Florida as we often retain warm days up through the holidays and many vegetables can tolerate even a light frost at night.

The earliest recommended planting time for seeds here is July 15th and successive plantings every two weeks can be done for quite some time. The most important step is to first prepare your beds, containers or pots that you intend on planting which shouldn't be done the same day as planting if possible. It's better to have them ready a week before and let them settle. For those with limited space, large pots with one or two tomato plants may be all you can handle. If you have more space available, you may want to try raised beds which yields more per square foot.


Square Foot Gardening Beds
There's an abundance of information on the internet about how to easily build raised beds. Here's some excellent planning advice we found for you:
http://www.wikihow.com/Construct-a-Raised-Planting-Bed

How to Build and Install Raised Garden Beds
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/gardening/4308264.html

and more from the Square Foot Gardener here:
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/index.php/The-Project/how-to-square-foot-garden.html


Earth Boxes with Tomatoes with Hog Wire
If you are considering container gardening, you should consider purchasing one of our EarthBoxes TM that comes with a free bag of organic soil. My father has planted the same crops in them for several years as well as right next to them in the ground and swears the amount of tomatoes he gets from the Earth Box is double. He also wraps his in hog wire to keep the deer from eating his plants.



GREEN LIGHT SPECIAL!
20% OFF ALL Crepe Myrtles this week!


EXTRA EXTRA!!!
Some Tips we've gathered that you will want to know:

Visualize Plan It, Build It, Put It To Use!
In general, a north–south orientation takes full advantage of available light. Video

Building a raised bed with two people is much easier and faster than with one.

Deck screws work best to fasten the boards together.

Treated lumber no longer contains arsenic. It may however contain chemicals unsuitable for gardening

If there is no turf between your beds, put down some landscape fabric and cover it with pavers or a layer of gravel to improve drainage—after running out in the rain for a fresh bell pepper, you’ll appreciate the mud-free shoes.

SOIL
Where ever you decide to plant, we have Black Kow composted manure, Mushroom compost, Espoma's Organic fertilizers and organic sprays to help you be successful in growing your own food this year.

Beginner’s Guide to Fertile Soil and Raised Garden Beds

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2007-05-01/Beginners-Guide-to-Fertile-Soil-and-Raised-Garden-Beds.aspx

Do you have caterpillars in your garden? Then you won't want to miss next week's E-News.

Growing Together,
The Palmers Team

Under Ground NOTES

Do you have a question you'd like answered? Let us know and we may include it in a future newsletter!

Have you just started receiving our newsletters? Recent articles can be found online here: http://palmersgarden.blogspot.com

If at any time, you wish to STOP receiving this newsletter, simply reply REMOVE in the subject line and we'll take care of it for you, no problem.