We will go through some techniques to help with your plant growth and to keep your garden healthy.
PruningPruning means to remove dead or overgrown branches or stems. This technique helps to increase growth and fruitfulness. If leaves are yellowing, you can prune it off with your hands. If it is a whole stem then you can prune with scissors above a promising bud to prevent stubs.
Trimming
Trimming means to cut off parts of the plants, usually due to overgrowth. This technique maintains the size of the plants.
Staking
Staking plants is done for larger plants in order to stabilize them with an object such as a stick. You can purchase our support set here.
Trellising
Trellising guides the plant to grow in a direction you want if the plant is growing out of the garden. You want to trellis the plant toward the light in the middle. You can purchase our support set here.
Thinning
Thinning is a technique to remove a plant that is too close to another plant which helps prevent clashing or space competition. You will want to cut away the smaller/weaker plant in the same peat moss plug. To prevent the need to thin plants, follow the instructions on the seed pack on how many seeds should be planted per plug.
Pollination
Pollination is a technique for flowering plants. It takes around 4 weeks to see flowers. You will then start adding the Flores A and Flores B accordingly. Then start pollination. To pollinate, just use your fingers to gently tap and shake the flowers a few times so that the pollen goes into the stigma. Pollinating will only need to be done once per flower (though it doesn’t hurt to try a few more times) so this procedure only needs to be done once per week.
Other great ways to pollinate include adding a fan that blows over your plants moving the pollen naturally, using a paintbrush to rub the flowers, and simply knocking on the side of your garden to cause the whole unit to vibrate.
One plant that requires extra care when pollinating is cucumbers as they have two types of flowers: male and female. Using a small paint brush you will want to rub the inside of the male flower and then the female flower. This will move the male pollen to the female flower to create the fruit.