Best Potatoes to Plant Potatoes are one of the easiest things to plant in your garden as they do not need much uptake to produce, but fertilizing potatoes is the way to go if you want to take your yield to the next level, and that can get a little tricky. As the days in South Georgia are getting longer, it is getting into tater time, and Hoss Tools wants to help you navigate through growing and fertilizing your potatoes. Nothing beats going out and scratching you a potato to take inside and boil up for dinner. So how do you get your crop to that point? First, we need to talk about getting them ..read more

Differences in English and Field Peas Everyone has their preference on which pea they prefer; if you are a northerner, you may like the English ones better. If you are raised in the south, black-eyed peas may be your favorite, either way, there is a type for everyone. What is even better is when they are fresh out of your garden instead of from the grocery store. Here at Hoss Tools, we want everyone to be able to grow their food, and in this blog, we are going to talk about some different varieties of peas as well as what is the best way to grow them and store them. We hope this encourages you ..read more

Selecting the Sweet Corn Planting corn can be very intimidating to a beginner gardener, but with these few sweet corn tips, your garden will be popping up in rows in no time! Well, in no time, we mean at least 80 days. As always, the first step in planting anything is choosing which variety you want to work. There are many seeds out there, and Hoss Tools offers many different varieties that meet the wants of every sweet corn eater. Some of the top three here are the Silver Queen, Ambrosia, and this year even the Honey Select Sweet Corn. The Honey Select is a triple sweet variety ..read more

All about the Seed When growing watermelons there are many things to consider, so where do you start? There are many watermelon tips out there, so we need to start from the beginning, the seed. With almost all plants, there are two choices, Hybrid or Heirloom. An heirloom seed is one that has not been altered but past down many generations. Most Heirlooms originate from families in the 1800s including some of Hoss tools favorite watermelon varieties such as Charleston Gray  Georgia Rattlesnake Moon and Stars Sugar Baby Tender Sweet Orange The other option when choosing a seed is Hybrid ..read more

When Should I Start Digging my Potatoes? Irish Potatoes are one of the most maintenance-free crops, but the big question is, how do I know when my potatoes are ready? Digging potatoes is the hardest part about growing a potato plant. You will know it is the right time, though when the vines start dying back, and the weather is consistently warm and dry. If you dig your potatoes up and there is no disease set up on them and only one or two rodded potatoes, you know you tug them up at the correct time. Another thing to check for to determine if it was a good harvest is to see if they are all con ..read more

ProCut Sunflowers- Not just Easy on the Eyes! Squash, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, those are all things that come to our mind when someone says they are starting a garden, but where are the ProCut Sunflowers?? Sunflowers, especially the ProCut variety, are a beneficiary to any garden by attracting pollinators. Not only do they draw the pollinators, but they will also add beneficial insects, which will reduce the harmful pest pressure to the rest of the crops. ProCut sunflowers are the preferred sunflower variety for the cut flower industry. These sunflowers also make beautiful additions to any cut flo ..read more

What is the Best Warm-Season Cover Crop? Cover crops are a great way to improve the health and nutrients of your soil. Warm-season cover crops work explicitly great as a transition between spring and fall gardens. In South Georgia, that means we can plant warm-season cover crops anywhere from early spring until late fall. So how do you know which one to use? All cover crops offer a variety of benefits, including: Fixing atmospheric nitrogen and adding it to soils Building soils by adding organic matter known as “green manure.” Controlling erosion by reducing water runoff and nutrient leaching ..read more

How-To Scratch Potatoes Scratching is a southern term used in gardening, meaning digging up a few of your potatoes early. This blog is going to explain how-to scratch potatoes and help you enjoy your garden before that ten weeks maturity period is up. Potatoes have a long maturity period, and at times we can get a little impatient, and that’s what leads us to scratch our potatoes. You want to make sure not to scratch too early, or the potatoes you dig up will be duds. We all want to enjoy our garden grown groceries, but sometimes it is just too hard to wait!! If it is almost harvest time, thou ..read more

Tips to Help the Beginner Gardener Summer squash is the first thing to pop up in your spring garden with an only 55-60 day maturity rate; these few tips will help take your summer squash to the next level. With all plants, you have to find the seed that is right for you, at Hoss Tools we enjoy using the hybrid varieties as they boost in production. Hybrid means that the seeds get cross-pollinated, not that they are a GMO. You also have to decide if you want to plant a crookneck or straight neck squash. There are always choices in gardening, and when you get ready to plant, you are faced with t ..read more

All About Tomato Growing Almost everybody’s favorite thing to do in the vegetable garden is tomato growing, but did you know tomatoes are a fruit! Tomatoes come from the ovary of a flowering plant, making it a seed-bearing fruit. Others like this that we usually classify as vegetables are eggplants and peppers. Tomatoes are a favorite item in the garden because of their excellent taste; they are delicious. Like many crops, there are two different types of tomato seeds, heirlooms, and hybrids. Heirlooms are original seeds that have not been altered in any way. They are passed down from generati ..read more