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Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply

Want your blueberry bush to be strong and fruitful? Prune it according to these guidelines. The best time to prune your blueberry is in late winter, before it sets blossoms.

Delicious, exceptionally nutritious, high in bioflavonoids. Gardeners in warmer climates can enjoy growing blueberries and fruiting (any two varieties will do, regardless of ripening time) by choosing one of the Southern Highbush varieties. These require fewer chill hours than the Northern Highbush which require over 1000 hours. Consider climate suitability, ripening season and fruit size when selecting varieties and include at least two different varieties for cross-pollination.

Blueberry bushes are the surprise addition to your edible landscape Edible landscaping is the hot garden topic. What does that mean for you? Anything from cranking up the design in your kitchen garden, to tearing out your front lawn and replacing it with great-looking edible plants.

Blueberries

Since ancient Rome, the pigment “green earth” or “Verona green” was an important mineral for a painter’s palette. Nowadays, this mineral is better known as greensand and is a great choice for improving your soil organically.

Soft rock phosphate, also called CalPhos or colloidal phosphate, is a great source of potassium and calcium for your plants. Our CalPhos comes from phosphate rock mined in Florida, which was formed millions of years ago from the mineralized remains of marine creatures. Soft Rock Phosphate should not be confused with Hard Rock Phosphate. Although both products contain calcium and phosphorus, the nutrients in soft rock phosphate are more readily available for your plants to use.

As your garden grows year after year, the minerals that are native to your soil are used up and need to be replenished. Rock dusts are a natural, easy to use soil amendment for this! Using rock dust in your garden is a great way to add trace minerals and micronutrients to your soil. Rock dust is also sometimes called rock flour, rock minerals, rock powder, stone dust, soil remineralizer, and mineral fines. It can be made of any kind of mined rock that is ground to a powder.

Fertilizers

Gladiolus flowers are a great addition to the yard for cut flowers or to add spikes of color to your landscape. They grow as perennials in zones 7 and above or in zones 6 and below they can be be grown as annuals or the corms can be lifted in fall and replanted the following spring (it may take 2-3 years to produce blooms again).

Begonias are a wonderful plant to put in a shady part of your yard or deck. Some varieties look great in a hanging pot with flowers cascading over the edge. Grown as perennials in zones 9 & 10 and in zone 8 and lower, they make nice annuals.

Cannas are a tropical looking plant with pretty foliage and bright colored flowers. They add a nice splash of color in the yard. They are grown from rhizomes and if you are in USDA zones 7 and above they will survive the winter without lifting. However if you live in zones 6 and lower and want to grow cannas, you will need to lift them in the fall after the foliage has been knocked back by frost.

Flowers

Question: I just planted a few fruit trees. When is the best time of year to prune them? Answer: The time of year that you decide to prune your trees will depend on your reasons for pruning and environmental considerations.

Summer’s here, and each long hot day brings your fruit trees closer to harvest. However, from bugs to sunshine, there are many summertime risks to a tree’s health. With some extra care now, many potential problems can be minimized or prevented altogether.

Here at Peaceful Valley we love to help people find and grow fruit trees! Our in-house videos and articles bring you research-based information about fruit and nut trees -- from choosing, planting, pruning, pest and disease control, and how to use and preserve the fruit harvest. Here's a guide to all of our of fruit and nut tree educational resources we have available for you, listed by topic:

Fruit Trees

You wouldn't pour a can of motor oil on your garden, would you? Of course not. You wouldn't even dribble motor oil on your garden, but that is what happens if you treat your metal garden tools with oil as part of your regular cleaning and storing process.

Sharpening your pruning tools makes yard work easier for you and keeps your trees, shrubs and plants healthy.

The wheel hoe is a superb and versatile garden tool. There's no motor to fuss with, just a willing garden helper that rolls along tilling the soil, digging an even furrow, or cutting off those nasty weeds.

Gardening Tools

Creamy aioli, hearty spaghetti aglio e olio, spicy chimichurri - all around the world garlic is a key ingredient to a delicious meal. In all corners of the globe, too, garlic farmers have developed their own varieties with unique flavors and colors. Why not grow your own Spanish Roja garlic (perfect for Sopa de Ajo (Spanish Garlic Soup) side by side with Siberian garlic (and make authentic Russian Piroshki with Vmochanka)? There are two main types of garlic to choose from: hardneck and softneck.

Ah, that fresh, pungent homegrown garlic flavor! It’s so much better when it comes from your own garden. Garlic can be stored as whole heads for a few months to a year, depending on the storage conditions and the variety – softnecks store longer than hardnecks – but all your garlic can be preserved for longer storage by freezing or dehydrating. Here’s how to make your garlic last, so you can enjoy it year round!

Growing garlic in your own garden lets you play with flavors you cannot find at stores. We carry more organic seed garlic than any other garden company, at the best prices, so plunge in and get garlicky.

Garlic

Even though it's still cold outside, February is a great time to get your garden started.

Winter is here to stay and for some it is a welcome break to working outdoors. Some may want to just stay indoors next to a warm fire and sip some cocoa! But don't stay indoors too long because there is still a lot of things you should be doing out in the garden and orchard during the winter.

Monthly Checklists

Ask a handful of people what 'organic' means and you will receive an array of answers. Definitions and practices of organic agriculture will differ depending upon whether you are talking to a farmer, gardener or organic certifier. The basis of organic agriculture is to farm/garden in rhythm with nature's laws in a sustainable manner that provides a healthy eco system for all beings involved.

Did you see Tricia in our video on selecting seeds? She's standing in front of a wall of seed packets. All great seeds. But which are the best for your garden? You can't just choose the most appealing package because, frankly, all our custom designed seed packets are stunning.

Organic

The small fry of the animal world can inflict big damage on your garden. The gophers drill down, and birds can go anywhere, anytime.

Some neighbors are easier to deal with than others. Do your neighbors hop the fence and pick your fruits and vegetables? If your neighbors have four feet and fur coats, they might. Deer, for instance. What's a gardener to do? Robert Frost's poem says, "Good fences make good neighbors". That's a start.

With Integrated Pest Management or IPM, pest control does not mean waiting until June and then grabbing the most toxic spray around to wipe out the summer pests in your garden. You'd probably wipe out the honeybees, ladybugs, and all the other beneficial insects too. IPM is a system of pest control. Learn how you can use some easy preventive methods to keep diseases and pests at the lowest levels, with the least toxic methods.

Pest Control

Water bath canning is a great way to preserve all of the tomatoes your garden has been producing. Prepare yourself for canning day by selecting the best varieties and recipes for your year-round tomato needs.

If you have a large garden or orchard, or if you buy extra farm fresh food in season to enjoy all year long, you know that storing all those delicious fruits and veggies can be time and space consuming.

Recipes & Homesteading

Have you ever bought potted plants or veggie starts, and wondered what those tiny lumps of white are that look like bits of Styrofoam? That’s perlite, a non-toxic, lightweight soil additive that improves the soil structure to help keep plants healthy and happy. Perlite is a mined volcanic rock product, made from a type of volcanic glass that has been superheated until it expands and turns white.

Have you ever noticed how some potting mixes sparkle in the sun? That’s because they contain vermiculite, a soil amendment that helps with water retention, aeration and nutrient exchange. Vermiculite is a phyllosilicate mineral that is mined from rocks formed 1.5 to 3 billion years ago. Crude untreated vermiculite is used in a variety of industrial materials. The garden variety of is called “exfoliated” vermiculite, which has been treated with extreme heat and pressure to force it to expand.

Rice hulls are one of the most sustainable soil amendments available for improving drainage, water holding capacity and aeration. Unlike perlite and other rock products, it does not require mining; unlike peat moss it does not require land disruption to produce it. Like coco coir, it’s a byproduct of agriculture that would otherwise be considered waste. And, our rice hulls are certified organic!

Soil Amendments

Raised beds with drip irrigation are the easiest way to grow your own vegetables.

A labor-saving device that fertilizes plants automatically. It sounds like a gardener's dream come true, doesn't it? Say hello to fertilizer injectors and mixers -- they will do your fertilizing for you. What's fertigation? Fertilizer + Irrigation = Fertigation. Whether you water by hand, use a sprinkler system, or a drip irrigation system, you can give fertilized water to your plants. Tricia walks you through the different devices for fertigation in our video.

There are lots of good reasons to use drip irrigation! Drip irrigation can lower your water bill, protect our water resources, and even increase your crop yield by applying deep water. If you bury the irrigation lines you'll thwart annual weeds too, which do not thrive in areas without ground-level water (near where they germinate).

Watering & Irrigation

You know the old saying, "A weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place." Many plants growing in the wrong places in your garden? Finding out the names and habits of those interlopers will help you decide how to attack.

Organic weed control does not just mean getting on your hands and knees to pull weeds. We've got a whole slew of techniques to get rid of the weeds in your garden (without the R word). Take a look at the variety of ways Tricia prevents and tackles weeds in our new video on weed control (and see which one she says is the most fun to use).

Weed Control