Clean Air Gardening Blog — Gardening tips and advice.

Save Those Late Tomatoes: How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

by blair on October 14, 2009

Photo courtesy of skyehopper at Flickr.com.

Tomatoes are almost exclusively warm weather fruits; even a light frost will ruin them. So what do you do if your last tomatoes aren’t quite ripe and a cold night’s been forecast? Well, you could knit little tomato cozies for each unripe fruit, but even Martha Stewart probably couldn’t accomplish that in an afternoon. Here’s a better way: carefully pull up the tomato plants, roots and all, and then hang them upside down in a dry, warm location indoors. This will give the tomatoes enough time to ripen right on the vine. It’s not the best solution, but at least you don’t have to worry about wasting veggies. And remember: there’s always fried green tomatoes, if you want to go a more traditional route.

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Managing Mints: How to Grow Mint Successfully

by blair on October 12, 2009

mint morguefile

Most mints (including catnip) are pretty easy to grow in the organic garden, and it’s gratifying to see your mint plants spreading lushly. But be careful; it’s also easy to get too much of a good thing! Mints are extremely aggressive plants, and tend to take over a garden given the least bit of encouragement. They propagate through underground runners, popping up elsewhere unexpectedly—so if you’d rather not maintain a running battle with your mints, be sure to create a barrier around its section of the bed, down to about a foot. One way to avoid this problem is to gird it around with aluminum sheeting; another way is simply to grow it in containers, and never let any seeds or cuttings escape.

Check out this book on growing herbs for your kitchen!

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10 Cool Gardening Apps for the iPhone

by Libba on October 9, 2009

Do you love gardening? Do you think about your garden at work, while you’re running errands, or do you get inspired to grow certain things in your garden when are out to eat at a restaurant?

And do you also love your iPhone and/or iPod Touch?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, keep reading! Because we’ve gone through and picked out what we think are the top 10 best gardening apps from iTunes for your iPhone and iPodTouch.

1) Botany Buddy by AVAI VENTURES Inc.

This reference application seems to have it all, and for a whopping $9.99, I wish it could make my iPhone do the work in the garden for me. Maybe that will come with the next generation of the iPhone? Who should I talk to at Apple about that? Anyway, back to the application.

With more than 1,300 (and growing) native and ornamental plant species, you won’t need to buy another plant application. You get free updates, too, so when they add more plants and features (if that’s possible), you get all those goodies for free! Search for plants you know you want to plant and even those you see but can’t identify on your own. Quickly find all you could want to know about any of the 1,300+ plants in the database.

Best of all, it doesn’t require an internet connection, so you can search for and keep track of your favorite plants while out on hikes or out in your garden. The large library requires internet connection for installation, so be sure you sync up your gadget before you head out of the house.

Cost: $9.99

2) Botanical Interests by Netframes

Of the seven people who have reviewed this gardening application on the iTunes store, all have given it 5 stars, and at $5.99 (the second most expensive app on our list), you’d expect the users to love it. If you have a vegetable garden at home or are thinking of starting a vegetable garden, this app may be just the one you are looking for to help you with gardening success.

Learn “tips and tricks” for helpful advice for gardening successfully, create a list of your favorite veggies and plan your garden with nearly 300 different “botanical high quality varieties.” Get comprehensive growing and harvesting information on any variety and send questions directly to Botanical Interests, the company behind the application that is a producer of organic vegetable seeds.

Cost: $5.99

3) Pocket Garden by At Media

Calling all vegetable gardeners! This app is ideal for identifying and tips for growing hundreds of types of vegetables in your garden. Quite literally from Artichoke to Zucchini, you can easily scroll through seed types to find the exact varietal you want to learn about and/or grow.

In the My Garden section of the application, you can keep track of all the vegetables in your garden, make notes on each varietal and monitor the expected harvest date of your veggies. With this app, I’ll no longer have an excuse for my slight black thumb problem.

If you’re weary of this application, try the free version first before shelling out the $0.99 for the ad-free version.

Cost: $0.99 (or Free with the Ad Supported Version)

4) Garden ToDo by Building Rainbows Software

Because sometimes a pen and paper just don’t cut it with ToDo lists, this gardening todo application really makes the chore organizing process so much easier. With this app, you can quickly organize gardening tasks by priority, time entered or even customize the order based on your own needs. Assign pics of your garden from your phone for specific tasks for the scroll wheel and cover flow options.

When entering new tasks, you can choose options from the scroll wheel or enter tasks manually, making this application great not just for your garden, but also for indoor tasks as well.

Cost: $1.99

5) Flower Garden by Snappy Touch

Not actually that helpful for gardening, this application is really a game where you plant and grow flowers. As you water your plants, they grow, and you can clip the flowers to create bouquets to send to friends and family via email. It’s a virtual garden in potted plants with real sounds of a garden.

Based on a water meter, you can tell when to water your plants for growth and health, when you add the water, it actually sounds like drops of water. Want to turn your terra cotta pot to see other flowers in your bunch? When you slide your finger across the screen, the pot turns and sounds like a real terra cotta pot moving against cobble stones.

The $2.99 version comes with up to 20 different types of seed to unlock, you can “grow” a beautiful bouquet arrangement. There is also a lite version for free that come with only three types of seeds.

Cost: $2.99 (or Free with the lite version)

6) Gardening by Jeff Hale

For people like me who really need help with new plants and who seem to always forget, this application is keeps a database of plants along with instructions on how to care for them. This application helps with knowing how to plant your seeds or seedlings and average harvest time of each varietal.

You can add plants to your personal garden list and keep track of each plant until you harvest them. This application also allows you to create todo lists and keep a journal (along with pics) of your garden’s progress. Take note, this application may help turn that black thumb into a green thumb!

Cost: $1.99

7) iPlant by Lundgren Consulting, LLC

For all those times you wonder if the plant that just brushed across your leg was poison ivy (yikes!), now there is an application that helps you identify more than 300 different types of plants.

This application goes into detail about plants common, scientific (Latin) and alternative names along with descriptions, common usage and value (medicinal vs. food) and any warnings that might be associated with the plants. This reference application would come in handy in the kitchen, on hikes and in the garden, and with more than 150 photos, it’s sure to be a breeze to find the plant you need.

Cost: $1.99

8 ) iGarden USA by NanoSoft, LLC

This is another application to help you plan and track your garden. It gives advice on the best planting dates for each US climate zone based on where your phone is located. You can also learn the best planting practices for each type of plant in your garden. After you’ve got your seeds planted, use the garden tracker to monitor your garden’s process and get ready for the estimated harvest date.

This application was recently updated, and the update includes lots of new features that make this application more informational and easier to use.

Cost: $4.99

9) Flower Pedia by Muli Mobile

Flower Pedia. Get it? Like an encyclopedia for flowers. This reference application boasts more than 1,500 photos of flowers, each toting a rating feature, ability to email and save the photos to your phone background and loads in information about each flower.

While 1,500 photos is a lot, this app holds information about 100 flower families (with over 500 of their genera, or closely related species) represented. All together, this application shows pictures representing more than 100k species of flowers from all around the world. Impressive, maybe, but their disclaimer explains that if you are a serious botanist, you should be advised that this is not a complete botanical encyclopedia. Rather, this application is geared towards those with a casual affinity for flowers.

Good news about this app is that no internet connection is required to access the thousands of flower photos. Take this application with you wherever you go to get information and photos of beautiful flowers from around the globe.

Not sure if this is the application for you? Be sure to try out the lite (not free) version available that includes 100 photos and flower info.

Cost: $4.99 (or a lite version available for $0.99)

10) MyGarden by Perceptive Designs

Although this application doesn’t have a database of different plant types (yet), you can still keep track of all the plants in your own backyard easily and on a clean interface.

Easily input data for your plant in the appropriate fields (like plant name, light requirements, watering needs, bloom time, soil requirements and much more) and keep track of your plant throughout the season. From the comments section, it looks like this garden application may have some bugs to work out, but who doesn’t have a few bugs in their garden from time to time, right?

Cost: $1.99

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Clean Greens: Cleaning Lettuce, Cabbage, Turnips and other Leafy Vegetables Effectively

by blair on October 9, 2009

Photo courtesy of thebittenword.com at flickr.com.

One of the challenges of preparing greens for cooking is cleaning them. Lettuce, cabbage, turnips and the like can be bad enough, but when you get down to the frillier greens like mustard, cleaning them can be a downright pain: these greens collect dirt like nobody’s business in all the folds and crevices of the frills. And hey, nothing kills the thrill of eating your organic vegetables like having to crunch grit between your teeth.

If you don’t mind washing and washing and washing your leafy greens, more power to you. But you have to admit that doing so can waste a lot of precious water, so here’s a purely organic, simpler solution: Don’t let them get dirty in the first place. If you’ll lay down a 1-2 inch layer of chemical-free bark, grass clippings, or straw around your plants and water it well to make it mat down, viola—you’ve got a nice fertile mulch that will not only retain moisture and control weeds, it’ll keep rain from splashing mud onto your greens. And if the weight of the rain itself causes the leaves to bow down, they won’t lie in the dirt. Of course, you’ll still need to wash your produce, but it’ll be a lot easier to get clean.

Also, check out our ozone sanitizer for fruit and vegetables!

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New Organic Gardeners, Start By Growing Cucumbers

by blair on October 7, 2009

cucumbers my photo

If you’re new to the organic gardening lifestyle and want to start out with something that’s super-easy to grow, try cucumbers. These pickle-friendly vegetables come in a wide selection of varieties, they’ll grow in most environments if planted after the last frost date, and they’re so hardy that they can thrive with a minimum of care. One thing that you need to supply in plenty, however, is water; the average cuke is 96% water, so be sure to water your cucumbers every day. And keep an eye out for their nemeses, striped cucumber beetles and squash bugs, which can be controlled by applying organic pesticides containing pyrethrum and potassium bicarbonate.

Don’t miss our store section on organic garden pest control!

Want to learn more about how to grow cucumbers?

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New Products: Laundry Drying Rack, Double Clothesline, and Umbrella Style Outdoor Clothesline

by blair on October 6, 2009

We’re big on clotheslines! Actually, we’re big on doing easy things to help contribute to a better environment. And, that makes us big on clotheslines! Hanging your clothes out to dry takes very little effort and it’s a great way to reduce your carbon footprint!

See the review on our collapsible clothesline for more details on line drying. But, this post is really to tell you about our new models of clotheslines, and which model might work better for you.

3 Tier Laundry Drying Rack

Ok, hands down, you can’t lose with a laundry drying rack. Click on the link to see the details of the product. But, here’s what you need to know about a drying rack:

The main reason it rocks is because you can move it around! If it starts to rain, you still have no worries. Move it inside. Dry quickly in the winter inside in a warm room, or by a fireplace. Keep the drying rack a safe distance from a fireplace, of course.

The design of a drying rack supports clothing, including delicate sweaters, while drying. So, they won’t stretch out, like when you hang them up with a coat hanger. Also, these are well designed to fold up and be tucked away, even beside your washer.

A drying rack is great if space is an issue, or you want the option of drying indoors.

Double Clothesline

This Retractable Double Clothesline is pretty cool. Inside the reel, there are two drying lines side by side, so it doubles your drying space. What a great idea! Click the link for complete product details.

A retractable clothesline can be used indoors or out. This one easily mounts on a wall, and would work perfectly in a spare bathroom. Or, take it outside!

One of the downfalls of a clothesline is that a typical fixed clothesline can get in the way. Not this one! When the clothes are dry, retract the line!

Outdoor Clothesline—Umbrella Style Dryer

Got a lot of clothes to wash, or have a family?

The Umbrella Style Outdoor Clothesline will be a good one for you. This one can hold two loads of clothes. And, hanging clothes on an umbrella style clothesline goes quickly since the lines are all right in front of you. The design makes it really easy! Even sheets are easy to hang on the umbrella style design.

The compact design doesn’t take up a lot of space. And, can be folded down when not in use. If you want maximum drying space without a clothesline running across your backyard, this design is the way to go.

So, check out our new clotheslines! Consider you the space you have to line dry. You really don’t need much, and clotheslines can be used on balconies, patios, or indoors!

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Natural Dyes from Your Garden

by blair on October 5, 2009

Photo courtesy of AnnaKika at Flickr.com.

If you’re the (hand) crafty type, here’s an excellent way to combine organic gardening and green living: by growing your own herbal dyes. You see, back in the good old days, most dyes were derived from plants; it’s only been a few decades since we abandoned most of them in favor of brighter petrochemical dyes.

If you’re looking for a nice, delicate green, try spinach leaves or plain old grass. You can achieve a pink hue using strawberries, cherries, or even raspberries. Various reds can be derived from red onion skins, dandelion roots, rose hips, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) beets. If you prefer blue or purple, you can experiment with red cabbage, elderberries, and blueberries. Walnut hulls, coffee grounds, and tea will impart browns, while for golden-yellow you’ll need to look to yellow onion skins.

Of course, you’ll need to boil the appropriate material in water to create the color; the dregs can then be tossed on the compost heap (try that with a petrochemical dye). Incidentally, these aren’t just good choices for fabric dyes; they all make great Easter egg colorings, too. Not only are they organic, they’re non-toxic to people and pets.

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A Hotbed of…Well, Hotbed Information: Growing Vegetables in Coldframes and Hotbeds

by blair on October 2, 2009

Photo courtesy of greengardenvienna at Flickr.com.

We’ve all heard things described as a “hotbed” of something or other, usually in disapproving tones: a hotbed of vice, a hotbed of violence, a hotbed of intolerance. In fact, you hardly ever hear the term used in any other context these days. But in the home gardening world (where the word actually originated), a hotbed is simply a type of cold frame or mini-greenhouse in which the soil is artificially maintained at a temperature higher than the air temperature. They’re not as common as they once were, but they’re still a good idea, because they offer an effective way of a) starting seeds for your garden and b) lengthening the gardening season for fall flowers and vegetables that won’t mature before the first frost.

In a sense, any hotbed can be considered organic, since they don’t use artificial chemicals or destructive gardening practices to warm the soil; but some hotbeds are more organic than others. The classic version of the hotbed uses purely natural biochemical reactions in treated manure to warm the soil. However, the old-fashioned way isn’t as accessible as it once was, so in most cases it’s simpler to use more high-tech equivalents. Not only that, but the direct heat varieties work more quickly than the manure-powered kind.

One ingenious and economical way to provide heat to a hotbed is to install a series of hot water or steam pipes at the base of the bed before adding the soil, or around the inside edge of the top of the frame. All that’s required to force the steam or hot water through the pipes is a small pump, and ideally it can all be reclaimed and recirculated. Similarly, you can create a flue-heated hotbed, which warms by means of dry heat forced through underlying pipes; the heat is provided by a coal- or oil-fired furnace. However, the electric variety of hotbed is more common than flue or water/steam heated hotbeds, and uses electricity to directly heat a grid of cables underneath the soil.

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The Benefits of Raised Beds

by blair on September 30, 2009

There’s a certain satisfaction to planting directly in the good Earth, but the fact is, it isn’t always the best choice. Raised beds can be a boon for a number of reasons. For example, not everyone has the right kind of soil for a garden; if the soil is exhausted, too clayey, or contaminated, raised beds may well be the best option. It’s a lot easier to control the soil condition and quality when you have to provide the soil in the first place. Not only that, you don’t have to worry as much about erosion or, conversely, compaction; and raised beds tend to drain better than most in-ground gardening beds, so you needn’t be concerned about soggy soil, either.

Here’s another good thing about raised beds: it’s easier to suppress weeds. This not only has the result of providing your plants with less competition of resources, but also has positive physical benefits for you. Here’s what we mean: given that there are fewer weeds to pull, you won’t have to bend as often. Add that to the fact that you’re unlikely to have to bend as far when cultivating a raised bed, and the result is less wear and tear on the joints and muscles, and fewer of the inevitable aches that result.

Don’t miss our whole store section on raised bed gardening here!

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Best Vegetables to Grow in Compact Spaces and Containers

by blair on September 28, 2009

Photo courtesy of maggiejane. at Flickr.com.

It’s always a challenge to grow vegetables in a limited space, such as a patio or apartment balcony, but there are ways to maximize your yield despite the lack of room. Most of these solutions involve concepts like vertical gardening, and of course container gardening is more or less required in such situations. However, there’s another way to make the most of what little room you have: plant compact varieties of your favorite vegetables, those that take up a minimum of space and other resources as they mature.

For example, if you’re a tomato fan, consider Window Box Roma, a compact variety that won’t take up much room and won’t outgrow its container. The Tumbler variety is ideal for hanging baskets. If you’ve got a yen for cucurbits, Sunburst yellow scalloped squash is a good variety for small spaces, and so are Spacemiser zucchini and Miniature White cucumbers (which are, in fact, miniature and white).

You can also plant compact pea varieties like American Progress and Greater Wonder (maximum 12-inch and 18-inch vines respectively), miniature eggplant varieties like Easter Egg and Little Fingers, dwarf cabbages like Baby Head, and carrots such as Thumbelina and Tiny Sweet, which won’t exceed three inches long.

Check out some of our planters and start your own container garden!

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← Previous Entries

Next Entries →

Gardening tips and advice.

Save Those Late Tomatoes: How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

Managing Mints: How to Grow Mint Successfully

10 Cool Gardening Apps for the iPhone

Clean Greens: Cleaning Lettuce, Cabbage, Turnips and other Leafy Vegetables Effectively

New Organic Gardeners, Start By Growing Cucumbers

New Products: Laundry Drying Rack, Double Clothesline, and Umbrella Style Outdoor Clothesline

Natural Dyes from Your Garden

A Hotbed of…Well, Hotbed Information: Growing Vegetables in Coldframes and Hotbeds

The Benefits of Raised Beds

Best Vegetables to Grow in Compact Spaces and Containers

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