Gardening Help Near Me
Step away from the garden and no one gets hurt! Are you experiencing the pain of gardening in Minnesota? MEG’s Edible Landscapes is here to help you garden with an easier method. In true Gen. X fashion, we like to work smarter not harder using MEG’s Edible Grow bags.
Contents
- Help
- What Are Grow Bags?
- Service Through Reducing Time
- More Example Of Saving Time In A Garden
- Time Saving Equipment
- Education
Help
Meg’s Edible Landscapes is here to help you with your gardening needs. We should put a qualifier on this statement. We’re here to help you with your “edible” gardening needs. We work exclusively with edible plants, and we do this by providing products, service and education. We started off MEG’s with edible grow bags as a quick and easy way to help our customers have a successful growing experience. As time marches on, you’ll see more clever and innovative products coming to market to assist you with your food growing journey.
What Are Grow Bags?
Grow bags are semi-permeable fabric bags which are sewn and typically feature handles to easily carry around the patio, porch, deck, etc. Grow bags are great for the Minnesota climate. They offer an effective way of growing food without the hassles of traditional gardening. Grow bags come in different dimensions and configurations to meet different needs. For example, carrots do well in wider 10 gallon bags where as peppers excel in 5 gallon grow bags. There are also different shapes of grow bags. Grow bags can be square, rectangular, cylindrical or round. We use mostly round bags here at MEG’s because they resemble most traditional round containers.
Service Through Reducing Time
Some growers may enjoy pulling weeds, but we don’t! That’s one of the ways MEG’s is here to serve you by reducing the time required to tend an edible garden. Anyone who has ever tried growing an edible garden before will probably tell you one of the biggest pains is keeping up on weeding. If left to it’s own devices, a food plot will quickly get choked out by competing weeds. Many of the weeds in Minnesota are extremely aggressive too such as quack grass! If you haven’t experienced quack grass yet, you’re extremely fortunate.
More Examples Of Saving Time In A Garden
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again that time is the number one killer of ambition when it comes to edible gardening. We don’t have hours to devote to tending weeds and we know you probably don’t either. If you’re like us, you value your time, because you’d probably like to have a life outside of pulling weeds every weekend. Maybe you like to golf or spend time on a lake. Can you really do those things and enjoy them if you know your garden is being devoured by weeds?
So what is the solution? Well, we like to automate processes as much as possible, and we think you’d be better off using some of this automation to your advantage. Automated watering, no weeding, and clever use of gardening devices and rigging help achieve this goal when used.
Time Saving Equipment
We like to use floating row covers as one example because they have multiple benefits. They play multiple roles in the garden depending on what time of the season by providing frost protection, sun protection and insect protection. Automatic watering devices and systems save time because they allow you to go on vacation without worrying if your plant will make it through the weekend. This is big problem because water is a critical component to all living life including your basil plants for example. A couple of examples of automated watering devices are:
- Use an automated timer which will apply water at predetermined times
- Place a bucket or pan of water under your potted plant and allow the bag to sit in water to be wicked up from below the roots
- Place a bottle of water next to your plant with a wick (could be a string or strip of cloth). Water will travel down the wick to your plants due to gravitational pull.
- Hire the kid next door to water the plants. It’s a great way to ensure your garden survives while you’re on vacation and gives your neighbor some extra income
Row covers save time by protecting your plants from both frost and intensive light/ heat as well as keeping insects off your plants. Replanting due to insect damage is no fun! Additionally, certain kinds of rigging can help with saving time while growing. We like to use hemp twine and bamboo for support structures. Since this is used on plants like vining tomatoes, watermelon and cucumbers, we strategically tie these plants up to allow for easier pruning, training and harvesting. There’s another reason too. It allows better air flow through the plant.
Education
Have you read any gardening information online or watched any YouTube videos on gardening only to be more confused at the end? There’s a lot of information swirling around online, and it’s not all the best advice for gardeners. This is especially true for Minnesota food growers since we have a whole different ballgame to play with the weather and the climate. Something as simple as “adding agricultural lime” to your soil could have devastating effects to your garden because a crucial soil test wasn’t performed. Critical variables like this is what MEG’s had in mind when marketing our edible grow bags.
We want to be a valuable resource for you as you continue to grow by providing high quality relevant information for the Minnesota growing market. You can find growing information in our knowledge database. As time continues to march on, our knowledge base will to continue to grow to serve you and your needs. We stand by the science-based research coming out of our land-grant universities who provide top notch research through the extension services.