5 Easy Steps to Grow GIANT Vegetables and Flowers

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Many gardeners enjoy the competition of growing the largest vegetables and flowers - giant vegetables and flowers. It is truly amazing how large some of these giants will grow. I’m not talking about that baseball bat zucchini that hid out under the leaves. I’m talking about 100 pound cabbages and pumpkins that gain 25 pounds in a day. These giants take planning and care.

To seriously compete with the seasoned giant vegetable growers, you’ll need to put considerable effort into your soil, your choice of site and your gardening technique. But to get you started having some fun growing giant sized vegetables, here are 5 easy steps toward success.

Choose the Right Seed

This is the most important step, because some varieties simply grow larger than others. Serious giant growers will often seek out rare seeds to grow. You can start your own giant lineage by selecting a promising variety, like Atlantic Giant Pumpkin or Old Colossus Heirloom Tomato and then saving the seeds from your largest fruits for planting next year. (This only works with open-pollinated varieties, so steer clear of hybrids if you plan to save seeds.)

You may have to do some research on varieties that dependably grow into giants, but the name usually gives it away, like Russian Mammoth Sunflower, that grows upwards of 17 feet tall. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Cabbage: Northern Giant Cabbage (100 lbs.)

Carrot: Japanese Imperial Long Carrot (12+ inches long)

Cucumber: Mammoth Zeppelin Cucumber (16 pounds)

Gourd: Giant Long Gourd (120 Inches)

Onion: Kelsae Sweet Giant Onion (One held the world record at over 15 lbs.)

Pepper: Super Heavyweight Hybrid Pepper (½ pound each)

Pumpkin: Atlantic Giant Pumpkin (400 to over 1000 pounds) or

Squash: Show King Giant Green Squash (400+ pounds)

Sunflower: Grey Stripe Giant Sunflower (2 foot heads)

Tomato: Old Colossus Heirloom Tomato (2+ pounds)

Watermelon: Carolina Cross (Giant) Watermelon (200 pounds)

If you’ve had success growing a giant vegetable or flower, let us know what it was.

Give Them a Healthy Start

Beef up the soil your plants will be growing in before you even plant. Spread some manure or compost the fall prior planting. If you’re serious about competing, you should have a complete soil test done and replenish any nutrients and micro-nutrients that might be lacking.

Giant vegetables tend to grow in quick spurts, so they need lots of food. Slow acting organic fertilizers added at planting time will ensure that the food is there when the plant needs it. It will also make for a healthier soil and less pest problems.

And know what type of fertilizer your plant needs. If you’re growing the plant for the fruit, like pumpkins and tomatoes, you’ll want a fertilizer that’s high in potassium and phosphorous, the last two numbers on the package. If you’re growing a leafy vegetable, like cabbage, you’ll want a higher nitrogen number.

Water

Giant vegetables won’t be as tolerant of sporadic watering as the common garden vegetable would be - and even the common vegetable is touchy about not getting its one-inch per week. You have to provide regular deep waterings or your fruits will either languish or split. I recommend using drip irrigation on a timer that compensates for rain, so there are no slip-ups. Because as much as your plants need regular water, they don’t want to sit in wet soil.

Thin to Just the Best Fruits

The more fruits on your plants, the smaller they will be. If they have to compete for nutrients, they’re never going to be giants. So prune or pinch out all but about three of the largest, healthiest looking fruits. Later in the season, you might want to thin down to just one, but keep a couple of extras at the beginning for insurance.

Don’t worry about too much foliage. The foliage is what will be feeding the fruits and helping them grow larger.

Keep Close Watch for Problems

Pests, diseases and cultural problems can move in quickly and ruin an entire crop, especially when there are only a handful of fruits to begin with. Check your plants daily and correct any problems immediately. Try and remove problems by hand, since using chemicals can disrupt the plant too. Hopefully since you’ve given your plants every advantage, problems will be few.

Now comes the hard part. You have to be patient. Look but don’t touch. Too much fussing with your plants is as bad as too little. Let them do what they do and just enjoy watching them grow.

If you find yourself addicted to growing giant vegetables, talk with the competitors at your local county fair. Some will be coy, but many are very open and generous with their knowledge. They’ll know who has the best seed and will be happy to discuss technique with you. There may even be a regional Giant Vegetable Growers organization in your area.

For a humorous, but very informative peek into growing giant pumpkins, I recommend the book Backyard Giants - The Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever, by Susan Warren. Ms. Warren follows competitors through an entire growing season and gives us plenty of tips along the way.

Source: gardening.about.com

6 vegetables to grow inside your apartment and how

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Let’s face it, not all of us have a lawn we can turn into food. Sometimes we just have to make do with what we can. Did you know that you can grow many different vegetables indoors? There are certain varieties that tend to flourish on windowsills or conservatories. So next time you may feel a bit defeated because you live in an apartment and cannot grow your own food, fret not, for there is a virtual cornucopia waiting to be grown right in your living room!

Even if you have a yard, the benefit to growing vegetables indoors is that some varieties can be cultivated year round. Also if you live in a cooler climate, there is no need to construct a greenhouse because you basically already live in one.

Tomatoes: There are plenty of varieties of tomato that can be grown indoors. Some do very well in hanging baskets. Varieties to plant in your indoor garden are, ‘Hundreds and Thousands,’ ‘Tumbler,’ ‘Maskotka,’ and ‘Garden Pearl.’ All of these varieties do very well in hanging baskets and can easily be hung in front of a window.

Radishes: While some root vegetables need too much depth to feasibly grow indoors, round radishes do not. They will work in most any container. Repurposed milk cartons do well for just a few seeds, just make sure to wash the container thoroughly prior to planting. Varieties that tend to do well inside are the fast-growing ones such as ‘Early Scarlet Globe,’ ‘Cherry Belle,’ and ‘Pink Beauty.’

Potatoes: Potatoes are especially easy to grow indoors. You can spout roots from any potato, but be sure to choose one with a lot of eyes. Place a few toothpicks in the potato to hold it up at the top of a container filled with water. Then place the container on the windowsill making sure the eyes are covered in water. It should sprout in about a week. You’ll want to choose a pot that is at least 12 inches deep. Place some pea gravel at the bottom of the pot for drainage and then fill the pot up about 1/3 of the way with soil. Place the potatoes root side down about 6 inches apart. As the plant grows you’ll need to add more soil. When the potato vine reaches the top of the pot, train them to go toward the window. Water them deeply. When small tubers begin to form on the vines your indoor harvest is ready for picking!

Mushrooms: You can grow a myriad of mushroom species indoors. In fact you can buy organic mushroom kits, with mycelium already spawned, online, and simply place them on your windowsill and water daily. But for the mushroom enthusiast, you need to start with a good sterile spawning medium and some spores. Organic rye seed works best for spawning shrooms, just make sure you are in a sterile environment to inject the grow bags with the spores. Place in a dark closest and make sure to maintain proper moisture. When the white mycelium starts to grow, usually around 2-4 weeks, you are ready to transfer to compost and grow your mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms do particularly well indoors and are a delightful treat.

Beans: Dwarf French Beans or one of the many other types of running beans are great for indoors. You can plant the beans in a relatively small pot on the windowsill or just below. When the beans sprout make sure you have fashioned a small trellis for them to climb into the window frame. The beauty of growing beans indoors is that not only will you get food, but the vines running up the window are aesthetically pleasing too!

Salad Greens: There are many different salad greens and leaf lettuce varieties that are great for indoors. Your indoor micro-green garden will also provide a beautiful sight. An important step to take is making sure that your pot has holes in it at the bottom for drainage, as greens are particularly susceptible to root rot. Make sure to keep the soil moist to the touch too. When the plants start to appear pinch off the new sprouts to keep the large healthy shoots growing. When they are tender enough, you can pick your salad right from the plant, one leaf at a time.

Source: Matt Agorist,  RealFarmacy.com 

These 5 Foods May Cause Health Problems Similar to Wheat

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While eliminating wheat from your diet is an excellent and necessary step for improving health, it may not be alone sufficient, especially in those with serious health challenges.

According to a series of articles on the website Green Med Info, there are other foods in the Western diet that have properties similar to wheat, because they contain “chitin binding lectins”, which are similar to wheat lectin (WGA).

Chitins are long polymers of n-acetyl-glucosamine, the primary binding target of wheat lectin. Wheat lectin and chitin-binding lectin are therefore functionally identical. Chitin-binding lectin containing foods include:

Potato
Tomato
Barley
Rye
Rice

Additionally, sprouted grains, which are typically considered to be healthful fare can also be problematic for a couple of different reasons. Not only do sprouted whole wheat contain the highest amounts of wheat lectin, SPROUTED GRAINS ALSO CONTAIN BENZOXAZINOIDS (BAS)—a surprisingly toxic component!

Even a modest reduction in consumption of these types of carbohydrate-rich foods may promote loss of deep belly fat. This could help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease, as excess visceral fat (intra-abdominal fat) raises the risk of these diseases.

According to Eurekalert:
“… [S]ubjects who consumed [a] moderately carb-restricted diet had 11 percent less deep abdominal fat than those who ate the standard diet … [S]ubjects on both diets lost weight. However, the moderately carb-restricted diet promoted a 4 percent greater loss of total bod
Non-Wheat Grains May Be Just as Bad as Wheat…

If you have celiac disease (gluten intolerance), it’s absolutely imperative to avoid all kinds of gluten—primarily wheat. But did you know that other non-wheat grains, and even some vegetables, such as tomato, may be problematic as well? Yes, there are a number of other foods with very similar properties to wheat! The following foods contain “chitin binding lectins”, which are similar to wheat lectin (WGA):

POTATO
TOMATO
Barley
Rye
RICE

“Chitins” are long polymers of n-acetyl-glucosamine, the primary binding target of wheat lectin. Wheat lectin and “chitin-binding lectin” are therefore functionally identical. This is probably news to most people, and could be an important tidbit for anyone struggling with celiac disease, or any other gastrointestinal issues.

Be Careful if You Have Insulin Resistance

About 85 percent of the people in the population have insulin resistance, and eating any grains, even healthy organic unprocessed ones can be a problem. How do you know if you have insulin resistance?
There are two ways.

You can measure your fasting insulin level. It should be under 3. It is relatively inexpensive and I believe most people should have it done The higher it is, the worse your insulin resistance. If you want to forgo the hassle of a blood test then you can use clinical conditions as a gauge. If you have any of the following four conditions you most likely have insulin resistance

Overweight
Diabetes
High blood pressure
High cholesterol

I have explained this information for many years, but now we have new scientific research documenting that grains have other problems that are appear to be unrelated to insulin resistance, and I will review them below.

Sprouted Grains—Perhaps Not as Healthful as You’ve Been Told

The sprouts of grains such as wheat, maize, and rye are increasingly being consumed as health foods, and are also used for the production of dietary supplements. However, sprouted wheat actually contains the highest amounts of wheat lectin (WGA)—which is responsible for many of wheat’s ill health effects! And that’s not all. These sprouts (wheat, maize and rye) also contain benzoxazinoids (BAs). Benzoxazinoids are part of the plants’ defense system against pests, and are actually toxic components…

A STUDY FROM 2007, PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL CANCER LETTERS, investigated the mutagenic activities of the two most abundant BA’s in these sprouted grains. Both types of BA were found be mutagens, meaning capable of altering genetic material, and both were also found to be aneugenic, meaning they affect cell division and lead to aneuploidy, an incorrect number of chromosomes.

“This is an interesting observation as it is assumed that aneuploidy is a key event in cancer induction and at present no other aneugenic plant-derived substances of dietary relevance are known,” THE AUTHORS WROTE.

Now, I think it may be risky to claim that sprouted grains are outright toxic when ingested. That’s probably not exactly the case. There may be mitigating factors involved, as there often are when you’re dealing with a whole food.

Bread Consumption and Cancer 

That said, bread (grain) consumption in general has been shown to increase your risk of cancer… For example, AN ITALIAN STUDY PUBLISHED IN 2007 found “a significant direct trend in risk” between bread consumption and renal cell carcinoma. Compared to those with the lowest consumption, those with the highest bread consumption nearly doubled their risk of this type of kidney cancer.

Pasta and rice consumption increased the risk by almost 30 percent.
Although that study didn’t specify the disease mechanism at play, it’s a well-known fact that excessive grain consumption leads to insulin resistance—sooner or later—and that insulin resistance is the primary underlying factor of most chronic disease, including cancer. My feeling is that you start to dramatically increase your risk for cancer once your fasting blood sugar rises above 100. The higher your blood sugar level, the higher your risk of cancer. As for your insulin; your fasting insulin level should, ideally, be below 3, as mentioned earlier.

Aside from cancer, all those daily bowls of cereal and sandwiches also amount to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A STUDY PUBLISHED JUST LAST YEAR found that women who eat a lot of foods high in blood sugar-spiking carbohydrates, such as white bread and rice, double their risk of heart disease.

This is because, when you eat more carbohydrates than your body can use, the excess energy is converted to unhealthy fats by your liver which push YOUR CHOLESTEROL RATIOS in the wrong direction. This process occurs to help your body maintain blood sugar control in the short-term, however it will likely increase triglyceride concentrations, which in turn increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. It’s unfortunate that so many physicians are still clueless about insulin’s influence on cancer and heart disease, but that doesn’t mean you have to be!

read more here: MERCOLA.COM

Source: Raw For Beauty