Vegetable growing

Planting onions from small bulbs or "sets" is not the best way to grow large onions for storage.  Plants grown from sets often begin blooming in mid-summer and stubbornly refuse to stop. Once that happens, onion bulbs don't increase much in size. 



As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, take note of the foods on your table. Many of our classic Thanksgiving dishes rely heavily on New World crops native to central, south and north America. Read on for a little Thanksgiving culinary history.

It’s so disappointing to reach mid-summer, having nurtured a vegetable for several months, only to find disease problems starting to appear!

The first step toward control should always be disease identification. Gardeners can submit pictures of plant problems to Nebraska Extension experts through our Digital Diagnostic Network, http://digitaldiagnostics.unl.edu/.  An expert panel of Extension professionals will promptly review and respond to your question.

What could be healthier than home-grown fruits & vegetables? Unfortunately, following heavy rain and flooding of the vegetable garden, your home-grown produce may not be so healthy for you. Flood waters many be contaminated by any combination of sewage, river or creek water, farm run-off or industrial pollutants. Bacteria, parasites, viruses and chemical contaminants are the biggest concerns to food safety.

In the vegetable garden, an even supply of water throughout the growing season is directly related to the garden's quality and yield of vegetables harvested.  Generally, vegetable demand for water is high during 1) the first few weeks of growth following germination, 2) right after transplanting, and 3) during flowering and fruit development.

However, with each vegetable crop there are particular developmental stages when having a good supply of water is critical.

Browsing garden catalogs and planning the coming year's garden is a pleasant way to spend a winter day, despite the danger of setting off a massive case of spring fever! But choosing from the abundance of vegetable varieties in even a few catalogs can quickly become a challenge.

Beginning gardeners, especially, may have difficulty picking varieties to plant because they don't have the benefit of gardening experience and a list of favorites.

Many gardeners think vegetables can only be planted in spring, but they can also be planted in fall with either of two goals in mind:

Blossom end rot (BER) is a common problem of tomatoes, but is also found on peppers, eggplant, squash and watermelon. It appears as flat, dry, sunken, brown tissue on the blossom end of the fruit, opposite the stem end. The rot is first seen as a small, water-soaked spot on the base of half-developed fruits and continues to enlarge as the fruit matures. The size of the rotted area varies, but can cover 30 to 50% of the fruit.

Home gardeners are itching to get outside and will soon be buying bedding plants – both annual flowers and vegetables - from local garden centers and greenhouses. Selecting strong, healthy plants, along with proper care and planting, will help insure a successful start to the gardening season.

Broccoli hails from the Mediterranean region and has been enjoyed there since Roman times. Other European regions eventually caught on and broccoli was popularized in France as “Italian Asparagus” in about 1650. The English adopted it about 70 years later.

We have been broccoli fans across the US since the 1920s when ice-packed broccoli heads rode the rails from California to the eastern US. In 2011, the United States produced more than 2 billion pounds with a value of over $750 million on more than 130,000 acres.

Is this the year you want to plant a home vegetable garden? If so, it's time to get your plan together for this summer's garden.

Home vegetable gardening is a popular hobby for a number of reasons. Some people garden for exercise and some for the enjoyment of harvesting flavorful produce that can be eaten fresh from the garden or preserved for use during winter. Others garden so they can grow a wider variety of vegetables than are available at their local grocery store. Finally, concerns about food safety are the motivation for others.

Aside from this year’s four national flower winners, All-America Selections (AAS) has chosen three vegetable award winners – two national winners and one heartland regional winner. National awards are given to plants with consistently great performance across the United States. Regional winners showed outstanding performance within a specific section of the county.