The Simple Garden Life

This week Jim & Mary are talking hostas - or more importantly - how and when to fertilize hostas to keep them beautiful all summer long!

Unlike most perennials and annuals, hostas are almost always grown for their beautiful foliage. Although they do produce a long, slender stem of blooms in the summer, it is their incredibly colorful and large leaves that are really the star of the show.

With massive leaves that come in a variety of solid and variegated greens, whites, creams and blueish-green colors, they are simply perfect for brightening up the shadier portions of a landscape.

But if there is one trait of hostas that give gardeners fits, it’s that their amazing foliage often begins to fail long before fall arrives. In fact, for many, their hosta plants struggle just to make it through the middle of summer!

The good news is that with just the slightest of extra care and attention, hostas can keep their leaves strong the whole season through. And without a doubt – one of the easiest ways to ensure that is by giving them the perfect dose of energy!

Getting your tomato plants off to a great start is one of the biggest keys to growing a big harvest of juicy tomatoes in the summer – and there is no better way to jump start your crop than putting a big dose of power in your tomato planting hole with four simple but powerful ingredients!

Tomato plants are one of the heaviest feeders of all vegetable plants. They need a lot of nutrients. Not only to produce delicious tomatoes, but to power all-important early growth. And strong, early growth is the key to setting the stage for a bumper crop of tomatoes. Jim and Mary cover how to plant your tomatoes with the power they need right from the start - with four key ingredients in their planting hole!

When it comes to growing healthy, productive vegetables and flowers in raised beds – success all begins with filling your raised beds with the perfect mix of soil! The soil you put into your raised beds matters. To grow great plants it needs to be lightweight, full of nutrients – and also drain well. Which is exactly why how you fill them up matters! 

It’s important to think of raised beds just as you would a container or potted plant. This is because they both have limited soil capacity. To be successful, a potted plant needs to have great drainage as well as be loose and lightweight. In addition, it also needs to packed with nutrients.
That is exactly the same formula for success when growing in raised beds. The soil has to drain excess water away in quick fashion. If it doesn’t, plants will struggle to grow and can easily rot out in the soil.

On this week's episode, Jim & Mary take a look at the best method for filling up your beds, and why simply loading them full of just plain soil is not good for your plants – or your raised beds life and longevity either.

When it comes to maintaining healthy plants and weed-free flowerbeds, mulch is the answer. There is little doubt that it has tremendous benefits for the flowers growing in your flowerbeds – especially when it put down correctly.

But let’s face it, the number one reason gardeners put down mulch is to stop weeds. And unfortunately, for many who go through the expense and effort of mulching their beds each year in hopes to finally put an end to their weeding chores – their mulching process actually only helps their weed problems multiply!

So how can you avoid all of that hard work and heartache? Jim & Mary look at the three most common miscues gardeners make when mulching, and how to put down your mulch perfectly for weed free and care free flowerbeds!

Are you using egg shells correctly in your garden and flowerbeds?
Egg shells are one of the most commonly recommended organic ingredients for powering up garden soil and plants. And for good reason! Egg shells are rich in calcium, which happens to be a critical nutrient for strong plant cell walls. Calcium is also vital for overall plant health.

Calcium also plays a critical role in the formation of fruit. In fact, when there is a lack of available calcium, common garden ailments like blossom end rot on tomatoes and peppers can be a big issue.
For all of the reasons above, egg shells, which are made up of over 90% calcium carbonate, can certainly help provide calcium to your plants and the soil they grow in.

But here’s the issue – most gardeners don’t use them in a way that maximizes their benefits. Today - Jim & Mary cover the best ways to use egg shells to give your plants and the soil the power it needs!