Gardening Techniques and Tools

Well, it's bitter cold here in Northwest Indiana, but regardless, our minds are turned toward our vegetable garden. We've chosen all the various foods we will be growing and are waiting for the seeds to arrive. No doubt, I'll be cutting things a bit close this year due the fact that I haven't even begun my indoor seed starting yet. However, since the seeds haven't arrived I have little choice, but to wait.

In the meantime I've been scanning the Internet for various garden sites to glean as much information as possible in order to have the most productive garden. We've been gardening for several years, but we still feel somewhat like novices. There is so much to learn about gardening. So much so, that I think we'll be learning about it as long as we're alive.

As every gardener knows, having a vegetable garden is hard work and can be taxing on the body. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but if I'm experiencing a lot of pain while gardening, it does little to motivate me to get out there and work it.

With the exception of one summer, we have always planted bush beans. The year I tried pole beans I wasn't very successful because the method I chose to support the beans was not great. As a result, I gave up and went back to what worked-- bush beans. With each passing year, we have been growing more produce to be stored up for the winter months. This means, more work and more bending. More bending means more pain in my lower back. Ouch!

Near the end of December I jumped on-line to search for a better way to support pole beans as I wanted to try and grow them again for this summer. That's when I found Donald. To use the phrase spoken often by The Pioneer Woman, "lawsee mercy!" Donald has posted lots of instructional gardening videos. For me, his site is a gold mine. I've learned so much by watching his videos and I'm definitely going to try his technique for growing pole beans this summer. Check out these:

Be sure and watch how he supports his tomatoes too. In my opinion, it's brilliant. Just where was he when we were first starting out, anyway? :)

Today I visited the Growing Wisdom website. While there I saw this wonderful tool called the Hatfield Transplanter. Heard of it? It would certainly come in handy and save my back to boot. When I showed it to my husband he got pretty excited about it. He told me to find out how much it costs so we could get one. Well, as wonderful as it is, it's not in our budget right now so I'm putting it on our wish list for future purchases. I thought I share the video on how it's used. Prepare to be amazed.