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Good news! A family of cute ladybugs moved in and ate most of the aphids I had left (after squirting them off my parsley with a hard jet of water.) I didn't have to spend money on the little devils either. Also, I think my father and I got a little carried away with container gardening. I present to you: a planter-box so large that I don't know if I'd consider it "container gardening" anymore. Excuse the terrible camera and the fact that I felt the need to supplement my seedlings with the nursery's seedlings. 
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Apr 12, 2010 03:07
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Marchegiana posted:I grew corn one year, just a little bit, to see what would happen. I had 16 stalks planted in a 4' by 4' block, and got 1-2 ears per stalk. However, I also got hit hard by corn earworms, and ended up throwing away nearly two thirds of the ears because the damage was so extensive. So now I just buy corn from the farmers market, and use that space for growing something that the bugs don't eat the hell out of. Isn't corn really rough on the dirt too? I have yet to read anything that would compel me to try it in my limited real estate.
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Apr 12, 2010 03:27
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mischief posted:Isn't corn really rough on the dirt too? I have yet to read anything that would compel me to try it in my limited real estate. Corn is a very heavy nitrogen feeder, on a small scale in the home garden it can be overcome by either interplanting or rotating corn with a legume that's been inoculated with rhizobium, which will help fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. I didn't have any issues with it depleting my soil on such a small scale, it was all the other problems it had that made me decide not to plant it again.
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Apr 12, 2010 04:20
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Slugs!! drat them! Wiped out a whole row of my pepper seedlings, half of my cilantro and a dent in my tomatoes. Moved all the seedlings back inside (still in egg cartons) but the little buggers have taken to hiding. I've set out a sugar and yeast bait and have been flicking on the lights and ambushing them. Beware the slugs When it comes to transplanting time I'm going to try rings of diatomaceous earth (cheaply sold as cat litter) around the plants. Slugs and the like can't crawl over it; it's too sharp and draws their moisture out
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Apr 12, 2010 06:41
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moana posted:WTF, we've got strawberries! It's been like two weeks since I've planted these, the buggers are growing up fast. Most varieties say that, for a plant that is going to be around for several years, you need to pluck off the flowers in the first year to ensure proper root growth. If you don't just be aware they may not make it through the winter.
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Apr 12, 2010 13:43
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Alterian posted:We're going to try growing corn this year for the first time. My mom was warning me that its hard to grow corn. Any tips? We're just growing it in our backyard. Its not like we're trying to grow a whole field of it. Did your mom mean you needed to grow a lot so that they're fertilized well as in "pollinated"? That's true. They are finicky at pollinating. The mistake backyard gardeners make is planting them far apart like in the rows in corn fields. That works in huge corn fields, but not so well when you have 10 plants. It's better to plant them as a clump, closer to together, and more of a cube, than say 2 long rows spaced too far apart. It's also a good idea to hand pollinate. On a dry day, you can shake the stalks to release clouds of pollen. To be even better at it, watch the corn carefully for when the silk starts to protrude from the corn. Apply pollen from the tassel to the silk, maybe once a day for the first 3 days you notice the silk having come out of the ears. The silk is receptive to pollination for about the first week or so after it develops.
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Apr 12, 2010 15:34
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Marchegiana posted:I grew corn one year, just a little bit, to see what would happen. I had 16 stalks planted in a 4' by 4' block, and got 1-2 ears per stalk. However, I also got hit hard by corn earworms, and ended up throwing away nearly two thirds of the ears because the damage was so extensive. So now I just buy corn from the farmers market, and use that space for growing something that the bugs don't eat the hell out of. We're growing it partially as a blocker so we don't have to see the neighbors as much too 
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Apr 12, 2010 15:45
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Anubis posted:Most varieties say that, for a plant that is going to be around for several years, you need to pluck off the flowers in the first year to ensure proper root growth. If you don't just be aware they may not make it through the winter.
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Apr 12, 2010 16:44
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If you have a good number, I'd take good care of them and only take off the flowers until may. I'm not sure on your climate specifics and I'm no expert, I just grow them and want berries the first year of planting. Ultimately you can't kill them, I'm sure you understand that the longer you keep it from fruiting the quicker you'll get to a nice bushy plant that converts a lot of sunlight to berries. It will be more productive next year regardless.
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Apr 12, 2010 16:57
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Alterian posted:We're going to try growing corn this year for the first time. My mom was warning me that its hard to grow corn. Any tips? We're just growing it in our backyard. Its not like we're trying to grow a whole field of it. That's the hard part: corn isn't insect-pollinated, it's wind-pollinated. That's why you need to have a plot of around 10x10 feet for the wind to knock them up naturally. However, you can help nature along in this case. Once the male heads on top start making pollen, you can cut the male mops off the top of your few best plants and go around and shake them onto the female mops.
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Apr 12, 2010 17:46
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This thread is so wonderful. I was bitten by the gardening bug this year and was tickled to read through the pages here, only realizing after a bit that I was a year behind. I loved watching everyone's gardens emerge, bloom, fruit, and then settle in for the colder months.  I have a patio that gets about 6.5 hours of good sunlight each day, so I'm trying out a few different things. (I'm in zone 8b-9a I think.) Four tomato varieties, four herbs, three fruiting items, and flowers to attract butterflies. Everything is in pots, so I'm trying to be very attentive to watering. So far, it's going well. Tomatoes: Brandywine (Not sure how well these will grow in a pot, but we'll see!) Mr. Stripey (orange variety) Champion VFNT (a basic red) Yellow Pear (probably a cherry variety) Herbs: Sweet Basil Foxely Thyme Oregano (in it's own pot) Pineapple mint (in it's own pot) Flowers and shrub: Bluebonnet "Butterfly mix" Pineapple Verbena (This is the only plant so far that doesn't seem to have grown much, but it doesn't look unhealthy at all.) Fruiting Plants: Meyer Lemon Tree Blackberry bushes I'd really like to add cilantro to the mix, and if one of my pots is unsuccessful with the seeds I planted, I'll put some in there. I don't eat the stuff all the time, but I keep running into recipes that require a small amount, and the grocery stores around here always sell huge bundles that I can never use up and always end up wasting. Also, after reading this thread, the zucchini stories cracked me up. Therefore, I bought a zucchini plant :P I planted it in a very small pot thinking/hoping that it can't get too big if I don't give it much space. Still, in the course of a week, it's already doubled in size. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPxpdRic198 Pictures, because I loved seeing everyone's gardens! Tomatoes, basil, thyme, verbena, bluebonnet, sprout box on a day out, blackberry bushes. .jpg) Lemon Tree  Oregano, mint, baby zucchini!  (I really want to get those pots off the ground, so my next purchase will be a little shelf for them.)
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Apr 12, 2010 17:58
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Tomatoes You put tomatoes in clay pots? You will need to water those things every drat day.
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Apr 12, 2010 18:13
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The other thing about corn is if you plant more than one kind, or if the neighbors plant some, it can cross in weird ways. If you plant more than one kind, it should be separated either in time (different maturities) or space. Cross pollination is not a big deal with virtually anything else unless you save seed, however with corn, you are eating the seed so it does matter. Got a compost question. I’m composting my leaves and some of the neighbors leaves from last fall. I threw them in 2 big wire hoops 4 feet tall and about 5 feet in diameter. They heated up nicely and settled down in volume by more than half. They froze solid over the winter and got rained and snowed on, etc. A couple weeks ago I mixed the interior and exterior of the piles together and they started cooking again, nice and hot in the interior, settled some more. It’s probably not quite half done decomposing. The problem I’m having is we got more than 15 inches of rain over a three week period and it is completely soaking wet; it keeps trying to go anaerobic on me, and turning over is a sloppy slimy job. Would it make more sense to use it now, perhaps incorporating it in the top 6 to 8 inches of soil? I won’t be planting the majority of the garden for more than a month but right now the soil is still cool so decomposition will happen very slowly if I use it now, and perhaps it will bind up the nitrogen in the soil as it tries to decompose?
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Apr 12, 2010 18:15
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So, two weeks later, my zucchini finally sprouted, after planting some more in different pots. Bad things happened to the herb seeds that I had planted, so I'm replanting those. The seeds I had ordered earlier still haven't arrived, so I reordered stuff from another company and it arrived over the weekend. Since it is mostly herbs, I hope this doesn't affect the yield too much. I was under the impression that zucchini wasn't a good potted plant. I was going to put one in the garden, but I'd love to pot the rest if I could. I have no room otherwise. Will they still produce?
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Apr 12, 2010 19:10
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kid sinister posted:You put tomatoes in clay pots? You will need to water those things every drat day. I do water them every day, and find it pretty enjoyable Besides, it's not like it takes a long time. Less than five minutes for the whole garden. Someone else mentioned the same thing to me, which is why I have been pretty diligent about watching them for heat problems or dryness. So far they seem to be doing well.
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Apr 12, 2010 19:30
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So last year I bought 6 everbearing strawberry crowns, and just let the do whatever they wanted making runners and filling in the bed I gave them. Now this year, I have this:   I also had a surprising find the other day, it turns out that unidentifiable knob on my Franklinia alatamaha was actually a seed capsule. Apparently the seed capsules on the Franklinia take 12-18 months to fully mature. (For those of you unfamiliar with this tree, it's a very pretty tree in the Theaceae family, which is currently extinct in the wild. All the Franklinia left in the world are direct descendants from a single specimen at a garden in Boston.) So opening the seed capsule I got this:  It's just over 40 seeds, which I'm going to try to sprout and see what happens. Franklinia is supposed to be ridiculously hard to cultivate (possibly why it's now extinct) so I don't have high hopes, but I'm going to try anyway.
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Apr 12, 2010 19:31
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I decided to try my hand at growing some windowsill herbs this year: They seem to be coming up ok, but I'm worried I might have sown too many seeds per container. I'm a fairly inexperienced gardener, so I just sort of sprinkled a handful of seeds into each one and covered them with soil. Do I need to thin some of these out? If so, what's the best way? Can I just trim down the weakest ones with scissors? How many should I leave in each pot?
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Apr 13, 2010 08:05
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a handful of dust posted:I decided to try my hand at growing some windowsill herbs this year: You need to thin them today, at least the chives and the middle ones. It also looks like they are getting leggy. On the one on the left, I would thin out only the two clumps for now, more later on. The middle I would cut all but perhaps 10, favoring the ones that might be a bit shorter and stockier, then when they are rubbing shoulders, thin them down to 3 to 5, and then 1 or 2. The chives you can get your scissors to cut the tops back to a couple inches and thin those to 10 or so, more later. Are there any lamps or other lighting sources you could direct their way?
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Apr 13, 2010 13:47
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CFL bulbs will help as they are the right wavelength.
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Apr 13, 2010 16:38
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Welp. I was too slow to put up my netting and my two zucchini plants got eaten. I'm assuming birds...nothing else was touched, no slug/snail trails. I originally germinated a whopping 14 plants, gave away all but two. Ha. They germinated so fast I might just do a few more inside. For defense I'm putting up netting (been waiting for my husband to hammer in something to tie it to but maybe I'll jury rig it as he's out of town) and I have diatomaceous earth I haven't put out yet. Do you guys have any other recommendations? Come to think of it, I've been waiting to sow a few green beans because it got cloudy and rainy again in the Bay Area, but I could put up the trellis for the beans and use it to hold up the net.
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Apr 13, 2010 18:26
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A tater in my tater box. A compost in my compost pile. 
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Apr 14, 2010 00:23
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I need to redo my compost pile, it's just kind of sitting there without really breaking anything down in the year I've had it out. It's on the long list of "poo poo to get done in the yard" this year, after expanding and planting the garden. Got a lot of tilling done tonight, will update with some pictures once I've washed all the dirt off me.
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Apr 14, 2010 01:30
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We just harvested our first batch of spinach which I made into a salad. If i did my math correctly, it cost me $200 to make my boxes and since this guy(http://news.uk.msn.com/photos/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=150364842&page=4profit) charges more than 600 british bucks for a salad, I figure my garden just netted me a $400 profit! Even though it was quite delicious, after all the non-garden stuff it took to make the salad, the effort was kind of dissappointing.
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Apr 14, 2010 01:48
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Speaking of potatoes, anyone try their hand at a potato tower?
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Apr 14, 2010 02:14
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Crosspost from GWS gardening post to get the non crossover crowd: Any Arizona gardeners here? I want to run a feasibility test before I go spend a bunch of time putting this together. My back yard is on the north side of the house. I'm planning on putting together an 8'x8' raised garden in four equal plots of 4'x4'. I want to do this right, and since I'm pretty bad at remembering remembering to feed/water things that don't make noises at you when they're hungry/thirsty, and I live in Tucson, I want to do a drip irrigation system. I figure I'll get water over to the area, then use the permeable hose type drip setup so I can easily reposition hoses. Placement will be maybe a foot or two away from the south edge of the house, so as not to get any excess water right up on the house or under the foundation. I'm guessing I can practically get two-three decent rows in per quadrant. The "top" quadrants referred to below will get less sun than the bottom quadrants, and should be a smidge cooler. I'll keep track of it next time I'm home all day, but my guess is probably 5 hours of direct sunlight per day in this location. Top left quadrant (when standing facing south), I'm thinking alliums - leeks, garlic, maybe shallots, along with some root veggies like carrots, maybe some parsnip. Top right quadrant, herbs. Maybe a pot of mint here (sounds like it goes nuts?), then basil, dill, and flat leaf parsley. Bottom left quadrant, tomatoes. Heirloom, maybe? Unless they're a hell of a lot harder than romas or cherries, I'd like to do heirloom of some variety. Bottom right, salad greens (endive, escarole, romaine lettuce, arugala), and kale. I'm worried about the lettuce, I saw something about it getting bitter when it gets hot, which, well, it will. How does this sound? Am I crowding things too much, should I rethink my positioning of the garden itself, do all of the plants sound reasonable? Is my drip system likely going to be overkill, and I should just suck it up and work watering into my mornings or something?
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Apr 14, 2010 23:18
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moana posted:I plucked off all of the flowers/strawberries that were on it to start off. Do you mean I have to not have any strawberries at all this year? That is sad. I'm in San Diego, so maybe they will last the winter anyway? At least pluck them off for the first 4-6 weeks. So, I got my strawberry crowns today. Managed to get about 25 in the ground but I still have 75 left to go... I'm going to need more space for all these things.
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Apr 16, 2010 04:34
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Anubis posted:At least pluck them off for the first 4-6 weeks. drat, that's a load of strawberries. How much did 100 run you?
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Apr 16, 2010 05:34
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Peaceful Valley sells crowns by the pound, like $7. I got ~40 crowns in my 1 lbs.
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Apr 16, 2010 14:28
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Have any of you guys tried water bottle spikes, like these: They fit most soda/water bottles and are great if you go on trips or can't set up a dedicated drip system...but I'm just not sure how many I would need to do the containers I have. I'm assuming set it up just like a drip system, but since these go a few inches into the soil I wasn't sure if there's a different way to set them up?
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Apr 16, 2010 16:28
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Started tilling the new part of the garden yesterday. Need to get done and get these guys planted! Homework is slowing me down big time this year. Tomatoes  Three different habaneros and different herbs. Started the basil too soon and it is really leggy.  Thai Burapa and Bhut Jolokia  
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Apr 16, 2010 17:06
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Veila posted:Well I should have worked on a net sooner but I figured it will be ok. But alas something dug up and drug around my strawberrys the other night... they are not doing so good. I picked them up and did my best to replant them but I don't think they will survive. Thankfully everything else is ok.
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Apr 16, 2010 19:25
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I started a couple of square foot gardening boxes this year. One for sunflowers, one that was supposed to be strawberries and is now some hybrid of strawberries, herbs, and flowers and a third full of veggies. I now have the following problems: 1) Something is eating a couple of my sunflower plants like it's an open salad bar (one poor little plant may not make it). When I first saw the bites, I sprayed them with insecticidal soap (made of plants, so it says on the bottle). Is there anything else I can do? It's really only affecting maybe 3 plants out of 16. 2) Someone's rat bastard cat picked the mint square of my veggie garden (yes, I know, mint's not a veg) to dig in and take a nice stinky dump in it. This wouldn't have been so "traumatic" if the mint wasn't started from tiny-rear end seeds that have now infested the near squares around it. Mint lettuce? Sure why not. To deter the bigger critters, I hung mesh bags of mothballs around the boxes. Mothballs kept cats out of my front patch of dirt before, so I assumed a bag full (where they can't eat it) would ward off the furry little bastards as well. I don't want to kill the animals, I just want them away from my boxes. What can I do to deter them? If it matters, I'm in Austin, TX. I do have some wire mesh labeled as bird mesh, but if I make a cage around the boxes, then how will I harvest? It's probably simple but I'm too dense right now to see it, I guess.
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Apr 16, 2010 21:32
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topenga posted:If it matters, I'm in Austin, TX. I do have some wire mesh labeled as bird mesh, but if I make a cage around the boxes, then how will I harvest? It's probably simple but I'm too dense right now to see it, I guess. They sell bird mesh in Home Depot that's made of some sort of acrylic rather than metal. You can suspend it by tying twine between some stakes. For the nibbles, if it's aphids you can release some ladybugs. I'm in a whole different ecosystem so I don't know what's getting your stuff, but it's a place to start. I used to rent a place that had strawberry plants in the backyard. We never hit upon a solution for keeping squirrels out. The squirrels were fat and happy in that yard.
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Apr 16, 2010 22:31
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hepscat posted:For the nibbles, if it's aphids you can release some ladybugs. I'm in a whole different ecosystem so I don't know what's getting your stuff, but it's a place to start. Companion plant stuff that will attract lady bugs and/or soldier bugs. I put marigolds and nasturtium at the ends of my beds.
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Apr 17, 2010 03:06
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I like turtles posted:Crosspost from GWS gardening post to get the non crossover crowd: This is going to be your best friend. Check out this link: http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/index.html I gardened in Sierra Vista for a few years, it was awesome! The monsoons make great tomato harvesting. Good luck!
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Apr 17, 2010 06:16
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Awesome, looks good, thank you. Ultimately have seeds in for bib lettuce, carrots and spinach. Have plants in for the following Zucchini x6 Beefsteak tomato x3 Strawberries x2 Dill Basil Mint (in its own pot) Sweet onion
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Apr 17, 2010 07:24
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hepscat posted:They sell bird mesh in Home Depot that's made of some sort of acrylic rather than metal. You can suspend it by tying twine between some stakes. For the nibbles, if it's aphids you can release some ladybugs. I'm in a whole different ecosystem so I don't know what's getting your stuff, but it's a place to start. drat squirrels. I believe that's why I got the metal mesh instead of the acrylic. I was worried that the squirrels would just bite through the acrylic stuff. Hrm. I did plant some marigolds but they haven't sprouted yet. Seeds were obviously the wrong way to go here. Booger.
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Apr 17, 2010 19:41
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FYI squirrels can bite through metal mesh if they're determined enough.
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Apr 17, 2010 22:03
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A pellet gun with field pellets will make quick work of squirrels. At the last apartment I rented, we had a big squirrel problem - hell, we had one in our bedroom and one in our living room. By the time I moved out of there, I had over 20 confirmed kills. 
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Apr 17, 2010 22:30
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Jesus, that's some sassy squirrels. I've never lived anywhere they would actually be bold enough to go in a structure. Okay, I only planted 2 zucchini and they both got eaten before I put up my mesh, and I lost all the cucumbers I'd germinated, so I went to OSH for some starter plants. I came home with green beans, crook-neck squash, and zucchini. But they sure make it tempting to skip germinating when all their plants are 6" or bigger already. All the peppers and tomatoes I germinated are doing fantastic, though. My transplanted carrots are still looking good.
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Apr 17, 2010 23:33
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