FoxFarm Blog

Watch Your Water

Now that it’s officially fall, it’s time to cut way back on your watering schedule.  If you use an automatic irrigation system, make some adjustments to account for fewer hours of daylight, cooler temperatures, and rainfall. 

And if you’re watering by hand, just scrape away mulch and dig down a little to check the moisture level around the root zone.  Wind and cooler temps can dry out plants, but chances are the soil’s a little more damp than it was a few months ago.

This is a good time to think about mulching around established plants to conserve water and support a healthy root system all winter long.  A mulch will also suppress weeds and will keep a light frost from damaging fragile roots.

A well-composted mixture of grass clippings, dried leaves, and other yard trimmings makes a great mulch for fall, but to give it an extra boost, try our Happy Frog Soil Conditioner, which will do everything you need a mulch to do and add 19 species of beneficial microbes to your soil.  These microbes help feed plants at the root zone and keep them strong over the winter months.

At the Garden Center

One of the best parts about working at FoxFarm is getting to work with some amazing retailers.  We’ll try to share as many of them as we can with you, but remember that if you’re looking for a store in your area that carries our products, you can always try our store locator. 

Today the spotlight’s on Common Ground Organic Garden Supply and Education Center in Palo Alto, CA. Founded by organic farming guru John Jeavons, the focus at Common Grounds is not just on plants and fertilizer, but also on knowledge. They’ve host monthly ‘Growing Circles’ where like-minded gardeners can meet and share their know-how, they publish a newsletter, and they host classes and events.  Whether you want to grow enough food in your backyard to feed your family or just make a wreath for the holidays, Common Ground will have a class for you.  Check it out.

Prize-winning pumpkins!

One of our customers sent in these photos of the giant pumpkins they're growing for competition.  As an experiment, each pumpkin got a different fertilizer, and the winner so far is--you guessed it!--FoxFarm. So far, the winner is estimated to weigh a whopping 125 pounds.

Although we gotta say, it's not easy to pull off a test like this in the pumpkin patch.  Why?  Because FoxFarm's organic composts and fertilizers are teeming with beneficial microbes that will colonize the soil and benefit your whole vegetable garden.  You can try to pamper just one pumpkin and feed something else to the other vines, but we're willing to bet that if you're using any FoxFarm at all ,the whole garden's going to be a winner.

Bulbs, Bulbs, and More Bulbs!

There’s nothing more cheerful than bright tulips and daffodils in early spring, and the time to plant them is now.  If you do nothing else in your garden this fall, we hope you’ll pop a few bulbs in the ground.  Next March, you’ll be glad you did.  Our secrets for success:

• Buy early—the best bulbs ship early in the season and sell out fast.
• Size does matter!  Look for larger bulbs with no soft spots or mold.  Also, try to find bulbs that have not sprouted yet.
• Follow planting instructions for each kind of bulb, but in general, choose sunny spots, rich soil, and plant bulbs 2-3 times as deep as the bulb is tall.
• Bulbs have unique nutritional needs and really do need a particular fertilizer blend to do well.  Our Peace of Mind Bulb Food is perfectly formulated give bulbs what they need.
• For holiday gifts, start a few daffodils or hyacinths in a vase  with nothing but pebbles and water at the bottom.  Tulips and freesia can also be potted up as holiday gifts, but they’ll need a rich potting soil like Ocean Forest.  Remember that after you’ve potted up a bulb for indoor bloom, you’ll need to keep it in a cool, dark spot until the first shoots emerge.

Fall is the New Spring

Gardeners are waking up to the fact that fall isn’t a time to shut down the garden—it’s a time to rev it up.  In all but the coldest climates, fall offers warm, sunny days, cool nights, and an opportunity to really extend the garden season.  Here’s what we’re thinking about as we get into fall:

· Start over with annuals.  Cool-season annuals like Icelandic poppies and calendula can fill in empty spots in the garden and bloom right into winter.

· Eat your veggies.  A quick crop of cool-season lettuce, radishes, and baby carrots will give you something to show off at Thanksgiving.  Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli also do well in winter and even taste better with a little light frost.

· Don’t forget to feed.  By fall, soil can be depleted, and most plants could use an extra boost to get them through winter.  For new plantings of annuals and vegetables, start with Peace of Mind Starter or Happy Frog Jump Start.  For established plantings, choose the formula that’s made just for your plants—Acid Loving, Fruit & Flower, or Rose Food, to name a few.

Halloween: 30 Days and Counting

If you’re a vegetable gardener, you’ve probably made room in your garden for a couple pumpkin vines.  They’re the ultimate Halloween decoration, and they’re also a nutritional powerhouse, packed with beta carotene.  To keep your winter squash vines going strong until harvest time, don’t forget:

• Gently place newspaper or straw under each squash to prevent rot.
• Regular irrigation is critical during ripening, but avoid overhead watering, which can spread disease.  Instead, use a soaker hose or drip irrigation for deep, intermittent waterings.
• Feed monthly with Peace of Mind Tomato Vegetable. Just scratch it in around each vine according to package directions and water well.
• If you’re going for giant, prize-winning squash, pick your winners now and pinch off smaller fruit.  That lets the vine put all its energy into the ones that are left.