Man!  I forgot how much work tilling actually is.  We grow grass over our garden plot each autumn/winter as a cover crop, so each spring is like trying to till ground anew.  The ground is always a bit tougher, and the roots from the grasses always seem to get caught up in the tines, necessitating that I stop every couple of minutes to clear them out, but the results are worth it.  We add more organic materials into our soil, and, perhaps more importantly, we suppress those pesky early-season weeds just a bit.  They’ll try to make an appearance, to be sure, but any way to keep them away for any amount of time is worth it.  We would already have a plot full of weeds by now were it not for the cover crop.

In the next few days, after this next bout of rain, I’ll be spreading our soil amendments in preparation of our early season crop of romaine lettuce.

I’m thinking of a test, which involves the spreading of soil amendments over half of my garden, to show just how well our amendments work.  Granted, the only thing grown will be weeds (as it won’t be time to plant veggies for quite some time still), but since weeds and our veggies require the same nutrients to live and thrive, the test will remain apt.

We’ll also be introducing a couple of videos here on the blog so that we might show how to brew or steep our organic fertilizer tea bags to ensure maximum effectiveness in your garden.

Spring is here and the tilling season is upon us!  The smell of freshly tilled earth is everywhere here in the Bluegrass, and gardeners and farmers all around are out working their slice of the earth preparing for the busy growing season.  We’ve just now dried out enough from a much wetter (and colder!) than usual winter and we’re ready to start in the garden again.  Our lettuce and cabbage should be going in the garden over the next week or so after the soil amendments we added have had a chance to start their organic goodness and begin breaking down and releasing nutrients for our plants to gobble up once they’re in the ground.  Then in May we’ll plant the rest of this year’s crop, likely a good variety of both sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and maybe some carrots or cucumbers.

This winter has been a busy one for us testing out some new organic fertilizer tea bag product ideas in our indoor garden, and the early results are positive.  We can’t share quite yet what we’ve been up to, but we think these new organic fertilizer tea bags are going to turn in some very good results.

As a beginning of season special, we’ll be running our Kelp-Meal-in-a-Bucket on sale for 10% off the normal price until the beginning of May, so make sure you get your soil amendments soon so you can add to your soil before planting and get the process of turning your patch of dirt in to an organic gardener’s paradise going.

We’ll also be running a special 10% off the normal price for our specially blended soil amendments for your garden.  Please contact us for options and pricing.

We hope you enjoy the beginning of the season as you prepare your garden for the crop to come.

We’ve had an exciting 2009 growing season here in central Kentucky.  Plenty of rain and reasonable temperatures made for a garden far beyond what we could have expected considering the serious lack of precipitation and extremely high temperatures in the Bluegrass over the last several years.  Our romaine lettuce was sweet, the zucchinis and straight neck squash were incredible and should last us at least until next season, the various peppers we raised (green bell, red bell, yellow bell, cayenne, jalapeno and sweet banana) produced copiously until very recently with the recent cold snaps in the early fall, and the Mr. Stripey tomatoes were big, juicy, sweet and plentiful.

But despite the wonderful growing season, we didn’t rest with our product line and set out to make some improvements based on our own experiences in the garden as well as customer input.  Well you spoke and we listened.  By far the most widely voiced suggestion for our products was to make our tea bags suitable for larger gardens by making them bigger.  Rather than using multiple 1 gallon bags to feed your average garden, cutomers wanted to use a single larger one.  After sorting out a few issues via rigorous testing, we have come up with a solotion: the 5 Gallon Tea Bags.

These bags are more suitable for larger traditional gardens, and your brew can also go a much longer way in indoor or outdoor container gardens as well.  The concept is the same.  Drop the bag in a bucket and steep or aerobically brew it for 18-24 hours, pour in your favorite watering can or sprayer and feed to your gardens.  Now your work will be less, and the end product more.

We’re still working out a few kinks with the packaging and distribution, but these bags will be available soon at a special off-season price.  Remember to stock up for next year (or now if you grow indoors) so you can save some money and be ready to go once the sun starts shining bright and warm again.

Happy gardening!