Peppers, problems with the freeze

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The peppers start well, but cold nights stopped their growth. Now, with the days beginning to be warm while Summer is arriving, we hope that peppers awake and begin to develop strongly. As you can see the leaves are shriveled and with a withered aspect due to the cold.

Sowing pumpkins

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Pumpkin is a fruit very important, especially for its nutrition values and by its diversity inclusion in meals. The pumpkin seeds are considered protein supplements.

Most soils can be used for growing pumpkins, if properly prepared. The way the soil is dug, its fertilization, the sowing, the weeding, the watering and the area of ​the ​land required for the pumpkins to develop and expand themselves are important to have the expected good results.

Broad beans: end of the harvest

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The beans came close to a month to be taken and 90% went to the freezer to be consumed throughout the year. The beans are a vegetable that does not require great care in their development. In the end there are only the branches that will be buried to enrich the soil.

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Potatoes branches to be buried

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This year the potatoes were not watered. The weather was very rainy, and too much water does not favor a large production of potatoes, in addition of being smaller than in previous years. After potatoes uprooted from the land, they were left a day in the sun to dry. The next day they were collected, cleaned and stored in a clean and no light environment, while the branches remained on the surface of the ground to be buried in the future.

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Broad beans best fixing nitrogen plant

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Broad beans is the best fixing plant of nitrogen because it fixes the nitrogen from air into their roots. Plants need nitrogen and much of them are not that really good nitrogen fixing plants, so the farmer needs to give nitrogen to their roots. You will enrich the soil it you bury the board beans plant after the harvest to recover the levels of nitrogen. Culture after culture the soil will need more nitrogen so it is better if we rotate between a culture of board beans and a culture of plants which needs much nitrogen. You will enrich the soil and it will thank you for that.

Digging up potatoes

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After two days digging up potatoes, it's time to pick them. First were harvested the larger potatoes, then the smaller and finally the trimmed ones and the potatoes which were tapped by the hoe. The big and small potatoes were cleaned and placed in a clean place with low light to avoid becoming green. The trimmed ​​potatoes or tapped by the hoe were cleaned and separated from the rest to be eaten in the short term.

Little beans are born

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The cultivation of beans, starts in the month of March and can go until September, the process always follows the same principle: DO NOT LET THE SEED IN CONTACT WITH THE FERTILIZER.

Covering the fertilizer to place seed

Placing the seeds in the intermediate spaces between fertilizer or the first covering with a little soil and then the seeds.

Own seeds of portuguese kale

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This year we will enjoy the old spindly kale to sow seeds of their own. After all, we have the seeds ... and is simple to remove the small pods after completely dry. If we succeed, we will of course do our own crops.

Has always been our option to purchase these vegetables to plant in the garden here, to private producers in the area.

They can have larger stalks, be more open or closed, with leaf more or less dark ... I believe that much of the population does not exempt the Portuguese kale, above all, cooked with cod.
To protect the kale seeds from the wind we involve the pods with a kind of net so they don't be destroyed.

Planting lettuce

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The planting of lettuce can be done throughout the year. Its seeds, because they are too small, can be mixed with fine sand and spread best if sowing in beds.

The germination takes 4 to 6 days. The lettuce prefers sandy-clay soils, rich in organic matter. When they are 6 to 8 leaves and 8 to 10 cm, they must be transferes to well fertilized plots, so that the plant keep the neck above the ground and distance between plants of 30 cm. Only the seedlings more developed, strong and healthy should be planted . Another important is that we must be careful is to plant the seedlings with roots tangled or bent and they should not be planted too deep.

The fertilization of the beds can be made ​​only with organic fertilizer, which is made with animal manure. When the bed is ready, we put a layer of manure evenly distributed over the surface, on the basis of 20 liters per square meter, spread it well and mix it at the surface layer of the soil, leaving her in planting conditions. To prevent the lowering of the land due to irrigation and rain, the soil should be slightly compressed, avoiding the vegetables from having their roots out of the ground.

The crop must be be cleaned, watered and irrigated as needed. All weeds that grow between the vegetables should be torn with their roots, with one hand or a hoe. This is necessary because they compete with the planting, stealing nutrients from the fertilizer and shading, avoiding vegetables receiving the amount of sun required.

Sowing coriander

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Each region has its most appropriate time, but it is recommended to be done in the early spring. Sowing should be programmed so that the harvest does not coincide with periods of heavy rain, which damages the crop. You should avoid sowing on the winter period, mainly due to the risk of frost. For crops in commercial scale due to rapid ripening of fruit, it is suggested that seeding must be carried out gradually, in steps. Avoid harvesting the entire cultivated area being performed only once, because it cause losses during harvesting. If you don’t do so, the dry mature seeds fall into the soil, reducing the yield.

Organic fertilizer

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The soil organic matter results mainly from vegetable waste, although the animal remains contribute significantly in its composition. Thus cattle, microorganisms from the terrain, insects and man himself, directly or indirectly, participate in the decomposition of plant residues and their distribution through the layers of soil. For this and other reasons, we find plots with different levels of organic matter. These levels reach the maximum in peaty soils and down to the minimum value in desert soils. Manure is what is most precious on a farm.

Our garden is very well fed with organic fertilizer, most of it is manure. It is bought always in the same place because we trust on that person. It is important that the manure is of good quality to avoid diseases and have a good harvest. It comes always with many earthworms which is very good for your soil, a soil with earthworms means it has life and it breaths. Only one thing the seller told us, is that there are some plant roots inside the manure which are bad for the soil. That is because that kind of plant roots are not digested by the animals. To solve that problem, while we distribute the manure on the garden we are checking for the roots and we take them off and leave it in the garbage because it's not useful even for waste compound.

Hydrangea

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Known by the name hydrangea or hortênsia, it is native from Japan an China but now is cultivated as an ornamental plant in all temperate and subtropical regions. There are different species presenting blue flowers or pink ones depending on the soil PH, in acid soils there are blue flowers but in alkaline soils are pink ones. My hydrangeas are pink so it means the soil is alkaline. You can have a multicolored field of hyndrageas (hortênsias) if you control the ph of soil in different areas. Hydrangea can be shade or semi-shade plant. It is very difficult to have beautiful hydrangeas on a dry environment, hydrangeas only can survive on a hot and sunny climate if it has high humidity. Attention to winters too, they can't be too cold, temperatures lower the -3ºC the hydrangeas can freeze and burn because of it. They can recover just with a heavy pruning. In colder environments we can protect the stems with leaves wrapped in plastic from the late spring frosts. Thankfully in Portugal, this winter wasn't too cold and it was full of rain so we'll have beautiful hydrangeas because the well is full too for the summer.

Preparing potatoes for seed

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Potatoes are tubers developed after sown mature potatoes.They're called stem tubers because tops or sides of the tuber produce shoots that grow into typical stems and leaves and the under sides produce roots. If the mature potato produces with more than one shoot it can be separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. The mature potato is used as storage for starches, proteins, and other nutrients by the plant. These nutrients become useful for the plant when new shoots must be formed or when the plant dies back for the winter. This is a process known as vegetative reproduction and is used by farmers and gardeners to propagate certain plants. The mature potatoes are first prepared before going under soil. They're placed in dry and light environment to germinate previously. After germinate the ones which have more then two shoots and they're big enough are separated. The reason why it's better they have to be big to be separated is because they have to handle some cold when they're seed at the end of winter.