Here are the main characters of In the Midnight Hour, which I’m writing under my pen name, Katrina VanBuskirk. It’s a detail of my new book cover. Ain’t it a dandy?
The best place to grow tomatoes will have full sun for six hours a day. Hotter southern locations might need a little afternoon shade to give the tomatoes a bit of relief so they can survive and thrive. A well-drained site with rich, loamy soil is ideal. If you don’t have a location with full sun for six hours a day, you might have to trim back some tree branches. If your soil isn’t ideal, start adding organic material like compost to it.
Summer means cantaloupes, honeydews, and watermelon. Plant them now to give ’em a good start.
If you’re a beginner, start small. You can always make the garden bed bigger if you are really crazy about gardening. If your interest wanes – or if some unexpected life event comes up that makes taking care of your garden difficult – then the garden is still manageable.
Unlike roses, which chug Miracle-Gro as if it were water, perennials don’t need a whole lot of extra fertilizer. In fact, if you give them too much fertilizer, perennials get leggy and tend to flop.
The very nice thing about sod is that somebody else – specifically, a team of people who knows a LOT about growing grass – has prepared this grass for the last 14 to 18 months, seeding it, feeding it, and blasting every weed that even tries to show its spindly head. So basically you’re paying to have a professional’s lawn installed at your house.
This time of year, you’re going to be seeing pests coming at you from all directions. Read on for some helpful, eco-friendly hacks to help you keep the damage to a minimum.
If you have a limited amount of space, or if you have terrible soil, then you can grow your tomatoes in a container. A number of determinate tomato varieties are specially bred for this purpose, bearing a nice bunch of tomatoes in a small pot.
It’s time to get those roses growing! There are many other organic ingredients that you can add to the soil to improve it, as well as stimulants to boost growth in your roses.
Once the potato vines blossom, you can carefully dig into the side of the hill to start harvesting new potatoes. Take only what you need so the potato plant can go on producing.