Vegetable Gardening Questions Answered

Ok so I decided I would post this here. I did a free answer and question session with my newsletter and figured this might help some casual surfers who don’t sign up for my free newsletter.

You can sign up for my free vegetable gardening newsletter on the right and get free information like this all the time. But basically I let my readers ask me any questions they wanted and here are some that were asked that I answered.

Ok so lets get started with the first question:

QUESTION #1:

“Hi, what is the best way to test the Ph and temperature of your heap, and the best / worst ingredients to “pile in”. Thanx! ”

Answer To Question 1:

Well there are actually a few ways that I know about to do this. If I miss any im sorry but I will tell you what I do know. First you can purchase a home test in many garden centers that will give you the PH levels of your soil within only minutes. But these devices can be pretty pricy, so thats one option but lets move on to a free option!

Something you can do for free to test your PH levels of your soil that works fairly well is actually something that sounds a bit odd.

Heres what you do! Get two samples of your soil and put them in seperate containers. Glass will work well here so you can see everything well, maybe a glass jar. Fill the containers about 1/3 the way up with your soil. Next you want to add water to both containers to make the soil turn muddy. Now you want to add a tablesppon of vinegar to one container while adding a tablespoon of baking soda to another container.

If the container with vinegar begins to fizz then you have akaline soil. If the jar with baking soda begins to fizz then your soil is acidic. If none of the containers fizz after doing the above then your soil is more neutral. Pretty neat huh?

Lastly you can simply send your soil off to a local University. Many of them will test your soil for free but it can take weeks to get your sample back. They will send you a detailed report though which is great!

Now to the other part of your question. The best thing you can do is use a mixture of using greens and browns. You should use near equal amounts of both for best results.

Grass mowings and young soft weeds rot quickly but actually act to “activate” which gets your compost started well. Older and tougher plant materials are slower to rot and gives more body to the finished compost. Wood items that are chopped into small peices decay very slow. You can use all sorts of items for this, but make sure you mix your greens and browns for best results. Hope this helps!

For the reader who sent this simply email me if you need any more help and I will be glad to give you further information if you still feel like you need help. Its really such a broad area, theres alot of things you can use in your compost.

Ok lets move on to Question #2

QUESTION # 2:

“Last summer I had planted tomatoes and during the month Jun and Jul the harvest and the looks of the tomatoes were good . When we reached Aug and the heat was at the highest / too hot that is / some green round flying bugs appeared on the tomato plants and in particular on the fruits. They made gatherings on the tomatoes and changed the color of the tomatoes and finally almost all of the tomatoes were ruined. Those bugs in our Greek language we call : vromouses : and I think in English they are called GREEN STINKS and the scientific name NEZARA VIRIDULA.

I dont want to spray chemical pesticides so I ask you if you know if any biological pesticide will help control these pests. So please be kind and advise me if you have any clues . Sorry about my English not being perfect but it is not my native language.

Thank you in advance.”

Answer:

Bacillus thuringiensis is a non toxic biological pesticide which I think could work for you. I have not not had the problem myself with stink bugs but have heard that this does indeed work for them. I hope this helps, good luck

Lets move on to Question # 3:

QUESTION #3:

“Hi,
Thanks so much for the ebook. I do have a question. I’m concerned about older, treated lumber poisoning the soil. Is there any safe way to clean garden soil?”

Answer to question #3:

Theres a fluid known as Jeyes fluid which can work but it can also do more harm than good if your not careful. So im going to recommend another treatment known as the “Heat Treatment.” Basically what your going to want to do is heat up the soil to kill the undesired virus, poisoning etc.

But the thing here is that if you heat your soil up too much you will actually kill everything thats living in it which would rob it of nutirients. This would be bad if you used the oven heating method and would need to heat at a tempature around 160 F.

But im assuming you have alot of soil you want to “clean” so im going to give you a way to clean your whole area of soil. So we are going to use the good old natural sun to clean our soil! First you will need to break up your soil and make sure it is moist. If not your going to need to add water to your soil first.

After this you will need to get a large sheet of plastic to cover your entire soil area. Add more soil around the edges of the plastic to keep the plastic held down to keep the heat and moisture in place. Now you simply leave the soil alone for a few weeks before planting! I think most experts recommend you do this for around 4 weeks, so yea it does take some time but should do the trick.

I hope this helps some readers out there! It was alot of fun doing this! Sign up for my newsletter and enjoy the information I give you. Good luck