Avid container gardeners may have considered growing lettuce, herbs or tomatoes in containers, but not cucumbers, corn, snap peas and eggplants. These four vegetables make excellent container plants, provided that you follow a few tips and select your varieties carefully. Cucumber. Most bush varieties and smaller vining cucumber varieties do well in containers. Use well-drained […]

Contrary to popular myth, hot pepper plants make good companions for sweet pepper plants and vice versa. Companion Plants to Avoid: Avoid planting sweet peppers or hot peppers with any plant that adds nitrogen to the soil, such as beans, kohlrabi, fennel, cabbage, and broccoli. Good Companion Plants for Pepper: Try interplanting peppers with sunflowers, […]

Trunks of citrus trees suffer damage from two common culprits, one natural and one man-made: sunburn and garden tools. Learn how to protect your lemon trees from both sunburn and garden tools. Sunburn: Citrus trees are especially prone to sunburn, particularly in areas with hot, Mediterranean summers. Citrus bark and cambium are sensitive to sunburn, and sun […]

Sweet peppers are wonderful to eat fresh, roasted, fried and made into salsas and relishes. If you are thinking about growing sweet peppers in your garden, here are some tips for getting started. Sweet peppers can make attractive, colorful additions to your garden and are generally less vulnerable to pests and diseases than many other […]

When many gardeners in North America think sweet pepper, they think of the large, bell-type Emerald green sweet pepper with a slightly grassy flavor. Fortunately, all sweet peppers aren’t green: today’s gardeners have access to a wide array of sweet peppers, both bell and non-bell types, in a range of colors, sizes and shapes. Gardeners […]

With proper pruning and management, any variety of orange tree can be grown in a container, although trees may stay small and yields may be minimal unless trees are grown in very large pots. Use a soil mix of at least 30% sand, combined with soil and compost or well-rotted organic matter, in pots or […]

Planning a spring vegetable garden? Here is what to do now: Start seeds indoors and outdoors in warm, bright, protected areas; and transplant starts outdoors during warm and frost-free periods for cool-season vegetables and herbs that are frost tolerant and less prone to bolting. Irrigate new garden beds, wait 10 to 21 days prior to […]

Enthusiastic gardeners can easily become enthusiastic “mulchers,” placing copious amounts of high quality mulch close to and around every plant the gardens. While GardenZeus applauds the effort, we also recommend some caution. Orange trees can be over-mulched or mulched to close to the trunk and major roots. GardenZeus recommends bare soil only with no plantings […]

Watering lemon trees correctly is important for many reasons: proper development of healthy trees, limiting pests and diseases, increasing yields and maximizing flavor. Citrus require regular watering and sufficient soil moisture, especially early to midway through the fruiting cycle. Consistent irrigation is also critical for the first few years while citrus trees are establishing, to […]