Gardening – and without Chemicals

Each year, my husband I spend our summers on our vegetable and herb gardens.  Last year, we were able to enjoy fresh blueberries for smoothies.   We enjoyed the blueberries so much that we added a bush that would bear fruit earlier in the season (late June).    We have tomatoes, sweet peppers, squash, peas, beans, garlic, onions, kale, zucchini, and lettuce. Oh—   and potatoes and sweet potatoes.  Our herbs include tarragon, parsley, chives, marjoram, oregano, basil, curry, lavender, rosemary, and thyme.   My goal with the herbs was to make herbs de provence and italian seasoning instead of buying them.   We spend so much on spices-   this garden will keep that spending down.

We have a rain barrel system that is used to water our blue berry bushes.   At some point, the herb garden will also be watered by rain barrels.

To keep the weeds at bay, we use a mixture of 1 gallon of white vinegar, 1 cup of epsom salts and 1 tablespoon of dish soap.  This mixture is sprayed on the weeds usually first thing in the morning on a dry sunny day.  By the end of the day those weeds are showing signs of dying and are dead in a few days.

This past year we had issues with squash bugs.  The only thing I could do was watch the squash die.  Neem oil didn’t even work.  My understanding is that we’ll need to burn the areas where the squash bugs were to keep them from coming back.  I’ll let you know how that works this year.

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