Articles

By JOE LAMP’L Giving tomato plants the proper attention at planting time is the most important step you can take to ensuring a satisfying harvest. However, even with the best care initially, keeping your tomatoes growing strong will require some mid-season care as they head toward harvest time. Controlling Disease Once the plants start to [...]

By JOE LAMP’L Spring is the best time to start your vegetable garden! In the cold months of winter, we drool and dream of the gardens we hope to have. By late February, some of us have had enough of seed catalogues and TV! We set out to start our vegetable seedlings indoors, so as [...]

It doesn’t take an expert gardener to appreciate the virtues of a homegrown tomato. But even experienced gardeners can sometimes experience challenges in growing these beauties to perfection. Here are some ideas you can apply this season to improve your tomato growing talent. Start with great soil and a healthy plant. Although it sounds simple, [...]

By JOE LAMP’L Keeping pests out of your garden can sometimes feel like a full-time job. Whether it be hornworms on you tomatoes or aphids on your beans, getting rid of the bugs that feast on your veggies doesn’t have to be a laborious task. Plant early To help rid your garden of uninvited pests, [...]

By JOE LAMP’L I’m often asked about gardening in raised beds. It’s one of the best ways to grow productive and healthy plants and given the option, I’d choose raised beds every time. I attribute much of the success experienced on the set of Fresh from the Garden to building raised beds for the vegetables [...]

By JOE LAMP’L Gardening has been a part of my life since I was a kid. However, it wasn’t until recently, that I picked up gardening again and I am forever changed because of it. Last summer I needed to take a few hours of college credits to have a graduate teaching position, so I [...]

By JOE LAMP’L The summer can be a challenging time to grow vegetables in the south. Certain vegetable plants suffer through the hottest days, yet many more thrive! America’s most popular home crops, including tomatoes, corn, peppers, squash, melons, and beans, demand the heat of the summer to produce their fruit. But to get the [...]

By JOE LAMP’L I’ve been hearing from many impatient gardeners lately. They all have the same question; “My tomatoes are big and green on the vine, but they just don’t seem to be getting ripe. What’s happened?!?” If you stop and think about it, tomato plants have a lot going on at the same time. [...]

By JOE LAMP’L It’s official; food gardening is the hottest trend in home gardening right now, for several reasons. Obviously the economy has a lot of us looking for ways to reduce our grocery bills and growing your own can save big money compared to grocery store prices. In addition, we want to know that [...]

By JOE LAMP’L These cucumbers are likely the result of poor pollination. It’s a very common problem with cucumbers. Small cucumbers will form on the female blossom but without being sufficiently pollinated they will not develop and die. Bees are the major pollinators of cucumbers. Unfortunately neither the nectar nor pollen of cucumber (cucurbit family) [...]