Onions for your vegetable garden

Have you ever tried to grow onions in your vegetable garden. You can have a bumper crop of onions by following a few easy steps.

Onions can be started from seed inside, or you can purchase onion sets and plant when the weather warms. CLICK HERE for a zone by zone planting guide. For best results, they need full sun, should be kept moist, and benefit from a raised planting bed. For more information on raised planting beds, see the bottom of this post.

Onions are edible at any stage of their growth, and are ripe and ready for storage when 1/4 to 1/2 of the tops have fallen over and the bulbs have a papery skin. Let the onions cure in a warm, well ventilated area out of the weather for a week or so, then store them in a cool and dry place. Ideal temperature for storing is 32 degrees, but don't allow them to freeze.

For more detailed information on onions, CLICK HERE.

Raised Beds
A raised bed is useful for any vegetable that grows underground, such as potatoes, carrots, and radishes. A raised bed can be accomplished very easily by raking soil from either side of the row to form a raised area, leaving a trench on either side. It's best to add organic matter such as compost to the soil (ratio of 1/2 soil to 1/2 compost). The bed should be approximately 6 to 8 inches high, and a foot or so wide, depending on what you are planting. For example, for my onion plants, I made my raised bed 1 foot wide, and planted 3 rows of onions across the bed. The loosened soil of a raised bed makes it easier for the plants to grow, and will warm sooner, allowing an earlier planting time.

Wordless Wednesday

Cheap and easy plant labels

If you have as many plants in your flower, herb and vegetable gardens as I have, it's probably hard to remember what they all are and you've thought about labeling them. Professional labels can be quite pricey, so here's a cheap and easy label idea.

Plastic disposable knives and a permanent marker are an excellent way to mark your plants. Just write the plant information on the handle. Because they're plastic, they won't break down in the weather, and the serrated side of the knife is ideal for sticking your new labels in the ground.

Improving your garden soil

As you start planning your flower and vegetable gardens, it's a good idea to also think about improving your soil to get the most out of your gardening efforts. But what is the best thing to use to improve your soil, compost or peat moss?

Compost will improve your soil texture as well as add nutrients. Peat moss will improve your soil texture also, but it won't help with nutrients, and it is acidic which many garden soils don't need. Also, peat moss doesn't work well as a mulch, as it will take water from the soil, and form a crust that water cannot penetrate.

The best thing to do is add peat moss to your compost pile, to get the benefit from the compost's nutrients, and the peat moss's water-holding benefits.

Benefits of Colloidal Silver

Colloidal Silver is a powerful natural antibiotic/prophylactic that has been used for thousands of years to kill approximately 650 disease organisms with virtually no side affects. Even small amounts of colloidal silver can kill large quantities of diease organisms. Here is a quote from Science Digest from March 1978: "I know of no microbe that is not killed by silver in laboratory experiments in six minutes."

How it works:
Colloidal silver disables the enzyme that all one-celled bacteria, viruses and fungi need for oxygen metabolism. Colloidal silver actually suffocates harmful microorganisms on contact, but doesn't harm human enzymes or chemistry. It can be used as a remedy or as a preventative for infections, and was commonly used prior to antibiotics. It is measured in strength by PPMs (parts per million) with 3 to 20 PPMs being the average concentration needed for most ailments.

Here's just a few uses:
Allergies, arthritis, burns, candida, colds and flu, conjunctivitis, herpes, lyme disease, parasites, pneumonia, ringworm, shingles, staph and strep infections, stomach ulcers.

Any Adverse Reactions:
Researchers feel that you would have to take more than 100 times the average concentration of 20 PPMs to have a possible adverse reaction to your body. You may have seen media coverage about "the blue man" who supposedly had his skin turn blue from using colloidal silver. The fact is that this man tried to make his own colloidal silver at home. He thought he was making colloidal silver, but instead ended up with silver chloride. He made the solution more dangerous by adding salt to the mix, and applied the solution to his skin and used a tanning bed, which fixed the silver to his body.

Colloidal Silver has been used safely to kill germs for thousands of years, and is a very useful natural alternative to antibiotics.