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Making vegetable, matter or manure

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Compost is important because it provides many essential nutrients for plants and growth

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This is Compost.

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To grow strawberries, start by purchasing a small strawberry plant or runner from your local garden store. If you want to preserve or freeze your harvest, choose a June-bearing plant for 1 large harvest a year. Alternatively, select a day-neutral plant for small harvests all throughout the year. Plant your strawberries in a container filled with potting mix, or in a sunny, well-draining spot in your garden. Afterwards, water the strawberries regularly to keep the soil moist, and pull out any weeds by hand, making sure to remove them by the roots.

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As both a food and a decorative plant, strawberries provide an abundance of beautiful red berries for around 5 years. Strawberries are rarely grown from seed. Instead, purchase a strawberry plant or runner from a nursery. Put this out in...

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The secret to the best-tasting broccoli is in the seasoning - not the spices, mind you, but the time of year. Broccoli that matures during cool weather produces healthy heads that taste sweeter than those you pick at any other time.

Broccoli grows best in fall because spring conditions may be unpredictable. Long, cool springs, for example, cause young transplants to form small, early heads. If temperatures heat up early in spring, heat-stressed broccoli opens its flower buds prematurely, and high temperatures as broccoli matures can cause bitter, loose heads to form, with smaller and less tasty florets.

Here's what you need to know about planting the perfect veggies.

When to Plant

You can easily calculate the perfect time to plant broccoli seeds this fall. If you want to sow seeds directly in the garden, do so about 85 to 100 days before the average first fall frost in your area. If you prefer to grow from transplants, figure the date for getting your plants in the ground by adding 10 days to the "days to maturity" for the variety you're growing and then counting backwards from your expected first fall frost date.

Where to Plant

Broccoli grows best in full sun and where the soil is slightly acidic - with the pH between 6.0 and 6.8 - fertile, and well-drained, yet consistently moist and rich in organic matter. The right pH and the organic matter help ensure that nutrients, particularly essential micronutrients like boron, are readily available. A boron deficiency can cause broccoli to develop hollow stems, but adding too much is toxic to plants, so a soil test is essential.

Fall broccoli has specific spacing requirements. If you're gardening in a raised bed, space your plants 15 to 18 inches apart; for gardening in rows, set the transplants 18 to 24 inches apart within the row and space the rows 24 to 36 inches apart. Be sure to set transplants slightly deeper in the ground than they were in the pot.

Keep Them Nourished

Broccoli is a moderately heavy feeder, so work in 2 to 4 inches of rich compost or a thin layer of well-aged manure before planting. Rabbit manure is a personal favorite, though most any aged manure or compost produces big and tasty heads.

After you've harvested a plant's central head, you can encourage extended side-shoot production by scratching a little nitrogen-rich fertilizer such as fish meal or aged manure into the soil around its base.

Shelter From the Cold

Freezing temperatures can cause chilling injury that turns buds purple and sometimes softens heads, though they are still good to eat. "I've had broccoli freeze solid, and when it thawed out it was fine," says Atina Diffley, co-owner of Gardens of Eagan Organic Farm in Minnesota. Just don't let heads freeze and thaw repeatedly.

Offer cold-weather protection with floating row covers, which provide an additional 4 to 8 degrees worth of warmth - shielding harvests from heavy freezes and extending the season by up to four weeks. You can also cover broccoli with tunnels or a cold frame, which can boost daytime temperatures by 10 to 30 degrees.

Protect Against Pests

Row covers provide some protection from pest insects, but the best protection is to grow healthy plants - and that begins with healthy soil, says Colby Eierman, director of gardens at COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts, in Napa. Insect pests are generally less prevalent in fall than in spring.

But if your broccoli does suffer an infestation of destructive caterpillar pests such as cabbage loopers, you can control them with Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, a naturally occurring bacteria that stops the pests from chewing but is harmless to beneficial insects.

Harvest Hints

For best flavor, harvest broccoli heads while the buds are just starting to swell but before the yellow petals start to show. Keep an eye on the head because when it begins to spread open, the individual buds start to flower. Harvest the central head by cutting the stalk at a slant, about five to eight inches below the head. This encourages side-shoot production for continued harvests.

Diffley says it's important to harvest broccoli in the morning before the plants heat up, because broccoli has a really high respiration rate. "Once the heat sets in, you need to cool it down quickly, or it's not going to hold up well and taste like it should," she says.

Now that you're set to grow the best-tasting broccoli ever, be sure to keep that flavor intact by not overcooking. Check out the Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen's favorite way to prepare broccoli below:

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6 Things You Need to Know Before Growing Broccoli

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The secret to the best-tasting broccoli is in the seasoning - not the spices, mind you, but the time of year. Broccoli that matures during cool weather produces healthy heads that taste sweeter than those you pick at any other time. Broccoli grows best in fall because spring conditions may be unpredictable.

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By Anni Winings, contributing writer
I first came across lemongrass while visiting a farmer's market in Florida while we were traveling.

The little old man handed me a bunch of lemongrass stalks and said, "You put those in water and they grow again." He picked up another stalk and showed me how to chop it and use the inner part of the lemongrass. It smelled amazing when he chopped it up, and I bought a couple of bunches of lemongrass.

Since then, I've used lemongrass to add a "what is that!" element to rice; to add a light, slightly spicy lemony flavor to smoothies (not to mention all its purported healing properties); and in all sorts of variations of stir-fries and soups.

As the old man promised, when I stuck the ends of the lemongrass in a jar of water, they did begin to sprout roots. I've moved twice since that time, and haven't been able to take my potted plants across the borders of the new states we've moved to, so I've regrown lemongrass both from stalks found in oriental shops and from seed.

Growing lemongrass isn't that hard. Once you get a thriving bunch established, you'll have more lemongrass than you know what to do with.

How to Grow Lemongrass

Lemongrass is a sub-tropical plant and it can't handle hard freezing temperatures. If you live anywhere colder than about a zone 9a, you'll want to grow your lemongrass in a pot, and bring it indoors for the winter. And even then, you might want to bring it in, just in case you get an unexpected temperature drop (the weather seems to be doing all sorts of funny things these days).
Here's a potting soil recipe that works great.
Grow your lemongrass in full sun, with plenty of water, in a rich, well-draining soil. If you're growing it in a pot, top-dress it with compost or worm castings every couple of weeks, to make sure it's getting plenty of nutrients.

Lemongrass will naturally propagate itself, once it is established. Small stalks of new plants will begin to grow off the side of existing stalks (see picture below).

There are a handful of different varieties of lemongrass, though a lot of times, it's not specified which variety you're purchasing, whether in seed form or in stalks. I've grown at least two different varieties of lemongrass, though I don't know what they're called. I only know they were different because one had red streaks along the lower half of the leaves, and the other one didn't.

I did a quick search to see who's selling lemongrass seed at the moment, and neither of the companies that came up have a specific variety listed. ( Baker Creek and ) Learn where to find heirloom seeds for your garden here.

Lemongrass will germinate within a week or two, and if our experience is typical, the seed has a high germination rate. Keep the seeds moist and in a warm spot until they germinate. Transplant them to a pot when they're about six inches tall, spacing them about 2-3 inches apart, and making sure they'll have plenty of space for good root growth.

If you want to root your own lemongrass from stalks bought in a store or at a farmer's market, simply place them in a jar with an inch or two of water, and let them sit until the roots begin to grow. Be sure to change out the water every couple of days. Once you begin to see new leaves growing, you'll know that the lemongrass has enough roots and you can plant them in a pot.

To harvest a stalk of lemongrass, grasp firmly near the base of the stem and pull. The inner, white core is what is used in cooking, though the leaves can also be used to make a light, lemony tea.

Remove the outer green leaves and finely chop or grate the lemongrass. When I use it to flavor plain rice, I put the chopped lemongrass in a kitchen muslin bag and sink it in the water the rice is cooking in. Once the rice is done, I simply remove the bag.

A Few Lemongrass Recipes to Try:

More The Prairie Homestead Gardening Tips:

About Anni

I've loved milk since I was a kid, I tend to collect books, my favorite season is fall, and I'm very allergic to cats. I'm a nutritional therapist, having obtained a Bachelors degree in Dietetics, but without the further qualifications to become a registered dietitian (I got married & had a family instead). I blog at Homestead and Gardens .

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Lemongrass - How to Grow it and Use it |The Prairie Homestead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Anni Winings, contributing writer The little old man handed me a bunch of lemongrass stalks and said, "You put those in water and they grow again." He picked up another stalk and showed me how to chop it and use the inner part of the lemongrass.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Anni Winings, contributing writer
I first came across lemongrass while visiting a farmer's market in Florida while we were traveling.

The little old man handed me a bunch of lemongrass stalks and said, "You put those in water and they grow again." He picked up another stalk and showed me how to chop it and use the inner part of the lemongrass. It smelled amazing when he chopped it up, and I bought a couple of bunches of lemongrass.

Since then, I've used lemongrass to add a "what is that!" element to rice; to add a light, slightly spicy lemony flavor to smoothies (not to mention all its purported healing properties); and in all sorts of variations of stir-fries and soups.

As the old man promised, when I stuck the ends of the lemongrass in a jar of water, they did begin to sprout roots. I've moved twice since that time, and haven't been able to take my potted plants across the borders of the new states we've moved to, so I've regrown lemongrass both from stalks found in oriental shops and from seed.

Growing lemongrass isn't that hard. Once you get a thriving bunch established, you'll have more lemongrass than you know what to do with.

How to Grow Lemongrass

Lemongrass is a sub-tropical plant and it can't handle hard freezing temperatures. If you live anywhere colder than about a zone 9a, you'll want to grow your lemongrass in a pot, and bring it indoors for the winter. And even then, you might want to bring it in, just in case you get an unexpected temperature drop (the weather seems to be doing all sorts of funny things these days).
Here's a potting soil recipe that works great.
Grow your lemongrass in full sun, with plenty of water, in a rich, well-draining soil. If you're growing it in a pot, top-dress it with compost or worm castings every couple of weeks, to make sure it's getting plenty of nutrients.

Lemongrass will naturally propagate itself, once it is established. Small stalks of new plants will begin to grow off the side of existing stalks (see picture below).

There are a handful of different varieties of lemongrass, though a lot of times, it's not specified which variety you're purchasing, whether in seed form or in stalks. I've grown at least two different varieties of lemongrass, though I don't know what they're called. I only know they were different because one had red streaks along the lower half of the leaves, and the other one didn't.

I did a quick search to see who's selling lemongrass seed at the moment, and neither of the companies that came up have a specific variety listed. ( Baker Creek and ) Learn where to find heirloom seeds for your garden here.

Lemongrass will germinate within a week or two, and if our experience is typical, the seed has a high germination rate. Keep the seeds moist and in a warm spot until they germinate. Transplant them to a pot when they're about six inches tall, spacing them about 2-3 inches apart, and making sure they'll have plenty of space for good root growth.

If you want to root your own lemongrass from stalks bought in a store or at a farmer's market, simply place them in a jar with an inch or two of water, and let them sit until the roots begin to grow. Be sure to change out the water every couple of days. Once you begin to see new leaves growing, you'll know that the lemongrass has enough roots and you can plant them in a pot.

To harvest a stalk of lemongrass, grasp firmly near the base of the stem and pull. The inner, white core is what is used in cooking, though the leaves can also be used to make a light, lemony tea.

Remove the outer green leaves and finely chop or grate the lemongrass. When I use it to flavor plain rice, I put the chopped lemongrass in a kitchen muslin bag and sink it in the water the rice is cooking in. Once the rice is done, I simply remove the bag.

A Few Lemongrass Recipes to Try:

More The Prairie Homestead Gardening Tips:

About Anni

I've loved milk since I was a kid, I tend to collect books, my favorite season is fall, and I'm very allergic to cats. I'm a nutritional therapist, having obtained a Bachelors degree in Dietetics, but without the further qualifications to become a registered dietitian (I got married & had a family instead). I blog at Homestead and Gardens .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lemongrass - How to Grow it and Use it |The Prairie Homestead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Anni Winings, contributing writer The little old man handed me a bunch of lemongrass stalks and said, "You put those in water and they grow again." He picked up another stalk and showed me how to chop it and use the inner part of the lemongrass.