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Holy poo poo, asparagus. Purple Passion popping up like crazy. These are four, gallon sized pots of two year old crowns that I planted a few months ago. I was pretty taken aback to see them today because there was nothing in that spot last week. 
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May 3, 2014 00:30
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| # ? May 31, 2024 01:36 |
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Got a lot of plants in the ground today. A ton of my seeds never germinated, so I bought a bunch of starts today to supplement. Greasy Grits beans, Lacinato Kale  Various purchased tomato starts, Crystal Apple cucumber, Japanese slicing cucumber, Thai Basil  Pasilla and Jalapeno peppers, Borage, Garlic, Butterfly bush  Amaranth, Yellow Crookneck squash, Atomic red Carrot  Mortgage lifter and Black Krim tomato, Genovese basil  Turnips, and more importantly: turnip greens
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May 3, 2014 01:55
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ixo posted:Crystal Apple cucumber, Please let me know how these turn out. I really wanted to grow them this year, but ran out of space.
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May 3, 2014 02:10
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Pardalis posted:Holy poo poo, asparagus. That's encouraging. I planted 5-6 huge crowns a few months ago and there's no sign of life yet.
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May 3, 2014 17:04
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Cpt.Wacky posted:That's encouraging. I planted 5-6 huge crowns a few months ago and there's no sign of life yet. I planted a bunch of crowns last year, and it took a LONG time for them to come up. I figured they just died in the drought, but they did eventually come around.
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May 3, 2014 17:23
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With regards to cilantro, how long after sowing the seeds should I wait before writing them off as failed and trying again? The seed packet said they should be sprouting within 10-20 days, but how far beyond that is reasonable?
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May 3, 2014 19:07
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No, if it's cilantro what you wanna do is salt the earth around the seeds and burn anything that comes up anyway.
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May 3, 2014 19:21
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I'm afraid I might be too much of a newbie to get why I wouldn't want the cilantro growing--it's in a windowbox, not a yard, if that affects things.
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May 3, 2014 20:45
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He's probably one of those defective people who hate the taste of cilantro. Go ahead and try some more seeds, but in my experience cilantro is a finicky bitch.
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May 3, 2014 20:51
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ixo posted:He's probably one of those defective people who hate the taste of cilantro. Go ahead and try some more seeds, but in my experience cilantro is a finicky bitch.
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May 3, 2014 21:29
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ixo posted:He's probably one of those defective people who hate the taste of cilantro. Go ahead and try some more seeds, but in my experience cilantro is a finicky bitch. Well, I'm not even at the 20 day mark...only at the 10, but with all the rain we had earlier this week I'm worried.
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May 3, 2014 21:44
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Trebuchet King posted:Well, I'm not even at the 20 day mark...only at the 10, but with all the rain we had earlier this week I'm worried. There are a ton of factors that determine the outcome but in most cases seed will sprout, that's what evolution designed it to do. If you're really curious try digging around to see if you can find any in the soil. They may have already sprouted but just not emerged from the soil yet.
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May 3, 2014 22:41
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Grand Fromage posted:The size isn't listed but I'm guessing several liters. I was definitely underwatering, everything's perked up since I gave them a good drenching. I have no idea what's in the soil since I can't read Japanese. Perlite is the little ball-y shaped white pellets you get in most store-bought potted plants, iirc. When I was a kid I thought perlite was little fertilizer pellets. Vermiculite is sort of long-grained (you can see the grain if you have some flakes of it,) so it sloughs off water more quickly than perlite (although vermiculite initially absorbs water into its sort of snowflakey structure, it also lets go of it much more readily,) which absorbs and retains it within its structure as it's porous, iirc. Vermiculite's useful on the surface of dirt surrounding plants which you want to protect from slugs and snails as it's really sharp and fucks them up good and they'll avoid it like crazy. I may be getting them backward but I seem to remember using "pearl" as a mnemonic to remember which is which, since perlite is often sort of pearl-shaped and white. Or I got that 100% backwards, but then just find/replace the two words with the other one! 
coyo7e fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 22:52
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The herbs seem to like it though, they all started growing noticeably once I transplanted them to the pots.
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SubG posted:Really? A few years back I had a couple flowerbeds growing peppers and cilantro, and damned if that cilantro didn't spread like a weed trying to choke everything else out. You let it bolt and seed? Yeah, then that will happen. I've found that things like cilantro, basil, etc can be chopped down to 1/3 of their original size when they start to bolt and it puts them back under control, even when it's hot out. They still produce, but get stunted enough to not try to flower/seed.
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May 3, 2014 23:41
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What are good rules for thumb regarding fertilizer application? I set up raised beds with a 50/50 mix of loam and compost. It came with the soil test results from the local extension school so we have good data on it. It's basically amended properly already, I added extra calcium (by way of pulverized eggshells) for tomatoes but otherwise that's about it. I'm in the Boston area so we've *just* started planting things and nothing is really grown up yet. What I want to know is, how do I know when to add more fertilizer / when should I and what are the best ways? The beds are covered in black wood mulch and are fed by soak hoses. Do I just fertilize on top of the mulch and water a little from the surface to dissolve it down or? No clue here.
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May 3, 2014 23:44
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Breaky posted:What are good rules for thumb regarding fertilizer application? Depends on what you are growing. A weekly application of some fish emulsion is always a good thing, and it sounds like you're in good shape with the soil to start with. Breaky posted:The beds are covered in black wood mulch Why? WHY? Scrape that fungus growing crap off and cover your soil with compost. Weed as appropriate. Refresh the compost as necessary and it will continue to feed the soil. Edit: Full disclosure - I still use wood mulch on established landscape beds. But not where I'm growing food and things that need lots of nutrients to not just look good but to actually produce.
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May 3, 2014 23:53
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Motronic posted:Depends on what you are growing. A weekly application of some fish emulsion is always a good thing, and it sounds like you're in good shape with the soil to start with. Oh? I had no idea!! I went with black wood mulch because I'm putting stuff in at the bare minimum temperatures for most of the crops, figured it was going to help with temperature. I didn't layer with compost, well, because it was already a compost heavy mix as is. Yeah the soil is initially very very good, made sure of that and I think that the fact it filled up with worms etc in less than 48h speaks well for it. So uh, for fish emulsion application, do you just dump a little on the soil around each plant then? How careful are you about it touching the plant itself for example? Just have no idea with that part. I am growing a lot of stuff, 4 different 4x8' beds. Got beets, carrots, broccoli, kale, collard greens, tomatoes, bell peppers, leeks, cauliflower, spinach and arugula so far. Once it gets warmer will be putting in cucumbers, zuchinni, acorn squash, yellow squash and eggplant.
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May 4, 2014 00:10
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Breaky posted:Oh? I had no idea!! I went with black wood mulch because I'm putting stuff in at the bare minimum temperatures for most of the crops, figured it was going to help with temperature. I didn't layer with compost, well, because it was already a compost heavy mix as is. It will help with that, but it's nasty stuff in general. Just use straight compost in the garden. You're fine for now.....but it gets worse and worse as you go along and then you have a bunch of wood chips that won't compost any time soon stuck in your soil. Breaky posted:So uh, for fish emulsion application, do you just dump a little on the soil around each plant then? How careful are you about it touching the plant itself for example? Just have no idea with that part. Just grab a bottle and follow the instructions. WARNING: IT STINKS. EVEN THE STUFF THAT SAYS IT DOESN'T. You just add a bit to your watering can and water as normal. So pick a day to not use the soaker hoses you have and water manually.
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May 4, 2014 00:32
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Thanks! Should be pretty easy to fix up, especially now while not much at all is grown up.
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May 4, 2014 00:35
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coyo7e posted:Vermiculite looks a bit like fool's gold but it's lighter and has a visible "grain" to it. I recall it being almost startlingly light when it's dry and in a good-sized bag. Cool, never knew about any of these. Perlite I know I've seen before. This soil doesn't have any of that in it, it's just dirt with some brown pellets that I think are a fertilizer. Things seem okay now, I watered enough that the soil is staying damp and everything's growing nicely, except the cilantro which is an rear end in a top hat.
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May 4, 2014 10:24
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Breaky posted:Oh? I had no idea!! I went with black wood mulch because I'm putting stuff in at the bare minimum temperatures for most of the crops, figured it was going to help with temperature. I didn't layer with compost, well, because it was already a compost heavy mix as is.  As was mentioned it'll end up full of fungus and stuff, I spent a while looking into it after hearing the YBYG guy harping about it a few times and yeah, wood mulch harbors all the stuff that, well, you don't want anywhere near your fence/house/garden beds. It's rotting wood, and it will cause other wood nearby to rot more quickly. Look up artillery fungus if you want to see what kind of poo poo it can do to your house if it's too near to your siding.  It's named "Artillery" because it can shoot spores a long distance, easily more than the height of most concrete foundations.It'll also take many many years to decay properly and doesn't contain many valuable nutrients compared to "green" mulch such as dead leaves (they were green once!) or cut grass (although lawns tend to have a ton of stuff sprayed onto them that you wouldn't necessarily want in your garden either, if they've been touched by landscapers or a dude with a jug of Crossbow within the last 3-5 years) which have a ton of the nutrients that your garden plants will pull out of the soil as they feed. Essentially, you should be trying to use non-woody plant materials for mulch, rather than the "stems" of plants, and welp, wood mulch is the stems of the plant (unless it's bark mulch, which I admit to not knowing a ton about although I've heard a couple sponsored experts claim that bark mulch has less wood-eating crap in it than regular wood mulch). And you'll get splinters! coyo7e fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 20:51
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Thanks for the cilantro feedback, y'all--I'm a chronic worrywart so this helps immensely.
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May 4, 2014 21:09
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So based on my lab results I added 9 pounds of lime to my garden a few days ago and watered it for an hour so it could sink into the soil. I rototilled the garden today and raked it smooth, and will put weed block down in a couple of days. I figure I will plant in two weeks or so, after I give the plants in the starter planters time to mature a bit, get used to being outside at times, and give the soil time to warm up more. Now off to take some Tylenol and drink a few beers, i'm drat sore.
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May 4, 2014 21:38
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Well after plugging YBYG I was listening to the most recent episode and the host mentioned a tool called the Weed Wrench, some sort of no-bend tool for grabbing and pulling obnoxious weeds. I googled it up and http://www.weedwrench.com/ I'm also not entirely surprised that he's from Southern Oregon, a couple hours from where I live. A ton of people down there are loons who think the public education system should be abolished.. Although to be fair, Grants Pass also has a good population of progressives, and the high per-capita Medical Marijuana card ratio in the state (possibly the nation).
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May 4, 2014 21:45
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I built a cloche for my chillies today, and I was wondering what kind of plastic sheeting would be appropriate to cover it. Will ordinary clear polythene sheeting be fine?
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May 5, 2014 00:06
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Dilettante. posted:I built a cloche for my chillies today, and I was wondering what kind of plastic sheeting would be appropriate to cover it. Will ordinary clear polythene sheeting be fine? Depends on how long you want it to last. 6 mil greenhouse/hoop house sheeting is pretty cheap and will stand up for years. Otherwise, throw whatever on there. It ought to last at least a season if it 3 or 4 mil.
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May 5, 2014 00:12
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Look at this garage. Shameful. It needs raspberries (and a new lawn because grubs killed the poo poo out my and my neighbors lawns last summer and this spring I nuked a ludicrous amount of crabgrass). But before raspberries can grow, they need love and support. So my wife and I built some amateurish trellises with their max width and depth formulated from the famously popular University of Maine treatise on such things.  No they don't look like the things in the guide, but the dimensions match, and the ground stakes are 3 ft below the soil in that bed.  ..yeah I know, they're not close to square...or a good idea structurally. I know. They seemed like a good idea to us at the time, is all I can say. Baby berries:  edit: no trellis wire up yet, there are eye hooks on the frames to wire it. edit2: While that bed looks like a crummy site, we've actually been cultivating that for a year and rototilling it. It's loose black soil about 14 inches deep with sand and then clay under it. We tested the soil and amended it with an 8-8-8 mix just a little, but it's weirdly nice. I think the previous owners had plans for it, but they just had poo poo-bush growing in it when we moved in a year ago. Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 00:45 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 00:13
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Big Beef City posted:raspberries Why are your rasberries seemingly planted in the only area in your photos not in direct sunlight? Couldn't you do the exact same thing on the south side of the garage and get a much better yield, or is something already there?
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May 5, 2014 00:59
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I could indeed. This side already had the cultivated bed, started by the previous owners. Simple as that. Other side is gravel and lawn.
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May 5, 2014 01:08
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Big Beef City posted:I could indeed. Ahh! So how many hrs per day of sunlight will the berries get? I have a ton of partial sun places around my house that I'm not sure whether I want to bother planting or not. If I could get a few different types of berries going I'd probably put forth the effort!
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May 5, 2014 01:14
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Raspberries/blackberries don't mind shade. You just don't get them to go gangbusters. Partial shade is fine. They're brambles. Weeds. To answer your question though, 2 hours mid summer, stretching on to 3-4'ish in fall, but with the caveats that it'd be 'long light' towards the evening. That said, I wish that my spot got more light, but this is kinda a 5 year experiment type thing I'm trying, in which I stare at these things for 5 years hoping for berries. Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 01:39 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 01:21
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brambles are pure evil. put a nice plant like a blueberry there instead.
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May 5, 2014 03:33
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Silly question, but are you sure you want to have vine or bushy plants right near your house like that? Isn't that going to do damage to your siding?
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May 5, 2014 12:38
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sithael posted:brambles are pure evil. put a nice plant like a blueberry there instead.
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May 5, 2014 14:15
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A neighbor tossed out a bunch of decent wood after a construction project, so I grabbed it for future use, and ended up also finding a few dozen feet of thin PVC tubing that is flexible and will be perfect for some quick and dirty row covers  .Also my fears of stunting are already coming true. My banana pepper has started fruiting already. It's gonna have to go, it will never really recover at this point 
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May 5, 2014 14:21
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Strange things happening in my garden: the squash are flowering but without any male flowers. Normally the male flowers open first but not this year. I guess I'm going to have to hope that some other squash are flowing nearby. Not like I'm going to be mourning two lost squash. Cucumbers are starting to get their vine-ing on and even have blossoms coming on. Also what do I do with all these cayenne peppers that are growing?! 
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May 5, 2014 14:44
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Shifty Pony posted:Also what do I do with all these cayenne peppers that are growing?! Can, dry, dry+smoke, etc. You'll have years worth. Grow a different kind next year. Repeat process. That's what I've been doing.
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May 5, 2014 15:16
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Fart Car '97 posted:Also my fears of stunting are already coming true. My banana pepper has started fruiting already. It's gonna have to go, it will never really recover at this point Can you pinch? I have some peppers that have started getting flowers too early (due to my leaving their light on way too long, I suspect) and I've been pinching them.  They are outside now, hardening off, and will be in the ground this week.
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May 5, 2014 15:36
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I could, but they've taken a real serious temperature beating in the last 2 weeks. I think I'm just going to cut my losses and spend the extra $12 on some new plants. It's not like I grew these from seed, so I have no attachment to them.
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May 5, 2014 15:41
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Motronic posted:Can, dry, dry+smoke, etc. You'll have years worth. Grow a different kind next year. Repeat process. Smoked. That is genius.
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May 5, 2014 18:33
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