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Comb Your Beard posted:Is it weird to throw kitchen scraps directly in your garden? This is sort of a guerrilla garden patch next to my apartment, so a compost bin isn't the most feasible. Also the garden is not particularly neat or precisely laid out anyway, but the soil is actually pretty nice. So far it's mostly been leftover Swiss Chard stems slightly ripped up, couple banana peels, some watermelon rind, used coffee grounds. The plan is to break and churn things up in the fall and maybe once again in the winter, give it time to rot. I'd try to find a compost solution. You don't want things rotting in the garden because the rotting process feeds microbes that eat up nitrogen, creating a nutrient deficiency in the soil. It's better to add organic material that has already gone through the rotting process because while the end product is good for plants, the process that gets you there isn't.
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Jul 13, 2014 12:00
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| # ? May 30, 2024 17:06 |
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Re: kitchen scraps in the garden. Don't do it. Belloq has hit the nail on the head, with regards to the nitrogen leeching. Besides, for the nutrients to be readily available to the plants, the microbes need to do their work first. And naked food scraps attract animals and bugs. Also, on a more superficial level, it really looks like poo poo all over the garden. Thanks for the garden love folks.  We have a much larger yard than we had at our previous house, and I have tried my best to utilize it. And I see no point in grass, so have no issues tearing it all up. I love looking at everyone's plants! Checking out other people's yards and gardens is seriously one of my favorite things; such a good way to see new things, or get an idea. (I just saw a pic of a double rose of sharon flower in the plant thread that I Must Have Right Now.) I am especially jealous of all the cukes here. No one eats them in my house but me, so we don't grow them.  I don't even have extended family to share them with if I did grow them; no one likes them. What is wrong with all their taste buds?! I could live on cucumber salad all summer!  Now, a question. This year, we had so many volunteer potatoes spring up from scraps or little potatoes or whatever that were left in the ground from last year that I had a thought: Could I plant saved potatoes from this first harvest in the ground ~Halloween-ish (after I harvest the second crop) so they're already in there for the spring? Instead of storing them all winter and planting them in March, like I have been. Has anyone done this? I'm in MO. I don't mean for them to grow during the winter and make some magical spring crop; just for them to already be in the ground for when the winter starts to break. I saved a bunch of the littlest ones as seed for next spring (about shooter marble size), and they're hanging out in a paper sack in the fridge right now. It just occurred to me maybe I could plant them this fall, say when I plant the garlic and tulips, and not have to deal with them in the fridge all winter. Also, powdery mildew can really just kiss my rear end. My peony hedge continues to look like poo poo, and I'm about to (very prematurely) clip them all down for the year. It laughed at the Bionide copper spray. And the chipmunks. gently caress chipmunks. I really hate hurting animals, and I think I could kill one with my bare hands at this point.
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Jul 13, 2014 22:09
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My wife and I are almost completely moved into our new home. The sad part is that while the backyard is nearly twice as large as our last one, the size of garden-able space is maybe half of what we had. The previous tenant did not have much interest in gardening, so part of the area is overgrown with grasses, morning glory, and many other weeds. I have cleared out about an 8x8 area where I'd like to plant some vegetable that I can harvest in the fall. If my research is right, I am in Hardiness Zone 9b (Sacramento Valley, CA). I know for sure I'll be able to harvest in October, and most likely into early November. Daytime highs range from the low 90's to low 100's. Overnight is consistently in the 60's/70's. So anything you kids can recommend that I might still be able to plant? Bush Beans, Butternut Squash, Pumpkins, etc? I already have 4 sweet pepper plants in a pot.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:20
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I don't always agree with its recommendations, but give Sprout Robot a try. Tells you when to plant what based on a provided zip code.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:29
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jvick posted:My wife and I are almost completely moved into our new home. The sad part is that while the backyard is nearly twice as large as our last one, the size of garden-able space is maybe half of what we had. The previous tenant did not have much interest in gardening, so part of the area is overgrown with grasses, morning glory, and many other weeds. I have cleared out about an 8x8 area where I'd like to plant some vegetable that I can harvest in the fall. If my research is right, I am in Hardiness Zone 9b (Sacramento Valley, CA). I know for sure I'll be able to harvest in October, and most likely into early November. Daytime highs range from the low 90's to low 100's. Overnight is consistently in the 60's/70's. Most people think in terms of Spring planting: when is it going to be warm enough to plant X? For Fall/Winter gardening you approach it from the other direction: will plant X have enough time to mature before it gets too cold? Our winters here get under 40 so the garden makes a great refrigerator. Get your stuff in the ground so it matures before it's too cold and then leave it in the ground for harvest throughout the winter and even into spring. Judging by wikipedia's climate chart for your area you should have at least 3 months of good growing temperatures for most stuff. If the seed packet says 90 days or less then you should be good to plant it. Hardier stuff should have an even longer window.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:48
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jvick posted:My wife and I are almost completely moved into our new home. The sad part is that while the backyard is nearly twice as large as our last one, the size of garden-able space is maybe half of what we had. The previous tenant did not have much interest in gardening, so part of the area is overgrown with grasses, morning glory, and many other weeds. I have cleared out about an 8x8 area where I'd like to plant some vegetable that I can harvest in the fall. If my research is right, I am in Hardiness Zone 9b (Sacramento Valley, CA). I know for sure I'll be able to harvest in October, and most likely into early November. Daytime highs range from the low 90's to low 100's. Overnight is consistently in the 60's/70's. I've had the best luck poking around the internet for planting guides published by local ag extensions and universities. Here is one for your area: https://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/hr/wellness/_docs/planting_guide.pdf
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Jul 15, 2014 17:18
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 Bush and pole beans along with zucchini starting to come in.  Also collard greens
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Jul 16, 2014 00:56
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It's going to hit sub 50 degrees tonight here in Wisconsin. I hear anything like that is basically an old school 'Darth Vader "NOOOOooo"' for tomatoes. How sad should I be? Additionally, two days ago I was talking about kohlrabi to people at work and got two takers for some extras. Since I'd been talking it up, I brought in 4 extra and one pre-peeled and thinly sliced on a plate with a salt shaker near by for anyone interested to try it out. Not one person out of the other ten people on my team of all Wisconsinites even knew what it was, and had never seen it before. Half of the people who tried it came back for more, so at least I feel it was ok. Please tell me they're crazy and not me. It's at every farmer's market around here in stacks, and even at the larger grocery stores even during the off-season. I was raised within 40 miles of here and my family always had some in their garden, even if in ones and twos. These people who also grew up around here were like hitting up wikipedia and poo poo over this. edit: to be fair, I harvest them baseball sized because they get weird inside when larger, so maybe they expected gigantic horse sized things. I dunno. Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 01:01
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Big Beef City posted:It's going to hit sub 50 degrees tonight here in Wisconsin. Maybe toss up some big garbage bags over the plants for the night?
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Jul 16, 2014 01:31
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Big Beef City posted:Please tell me they're crazy and not me. It's at every farmer's market around here in stacks, and even at the larger grocery stores even during the off-season. You're not crazy nor are they. It's just not a popular thing (yet, I think). Unless you're a total foodie and/or into gardening and going to farmer's markets you're just not going to know what it is. I planted a who row this year and I think I've given away as much as I've eaten so far. This is one of the fun things you can do as a gardener. I've gotten equally as positive results as you have.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:09
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Motronic posted:You're not crazy nor are they. This is dumb. I'm a 'total foodie' because I grew up in Manitowoc WI and my Polish/Irish grandparents grew this stuff constantly because 'it wasn't another cabbage'? and now it's hipster poo poo? Go away. e: more the sentiment than the poster above. Either is acceptable. Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 02:51
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It is almost as if different cultural and geographical amalgamations produce a wide variety of different vegetables perceived as normal.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:03
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Totally TWISTED posted:It is almost as if different cultural and geographical amalgamations produce a wide variety of different vegetables perceived as normal. yep.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:05
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Totally TWISTED posted:It is almost as if different cultural and geographical amalgamations produce a wide variety of different vegetables perceived as normal. Seriously. I'm talking from a perspective that sounds exactly like Big Beef City. Sorry I don't live in every area of the country simultaneously to call bullshit on posts like his.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:07
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drat I wish there was a way to reduce the mosquito population that didn't involve a ton of spraying or risk to my fruits. We are at that glorious time where every 2 days we are picking a pound or more of blackberries and I'm being eaten alive when I do it.
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Jul 16, 2014 13:05
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Slap on some DEET.
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Jul 16, 2014 13:10
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Anubis posted:drat I wish there was a way to reduce the mosquito population that didn't involve a ton of spraying or risk to my fruits. We are at that glorious time where every 2 days we are picking a pound or more of blackberries and I'm being eaten alive when I do it. solution: move to Seattle where mosquitoes don't exist and blackberries are free if you walk a block in any direction (except downtown) 
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Jul 16, 2014 17:54
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The county I live in breeds mosquito-eating fish and gives them away for free to residents, so if you have water on your property you can just dump some fish in. Maybe look into whether or not similar programs exist where you live? When I lived on the edge of town near some farmland they would just leave buckets of fish on my front step without even asking.
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Jul 17, 2014 07:20
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Hey, Veggie/Herb thread. Although not technically a garden question, I'm sure it fits here better than any other thread: I've got some wild grape vines growing on a fence along my apartment's backyard. Several of the leaves have these weird "nodules" on them:  They get those, and then a few days latter the leaves/vines with them on it die. I'm less concerned about the grapes themselves, since whatever, I'm not putting time, money, or energy into them. If they give me grapes, great, if not, oh well. But the fence they grow on is right behind my garden, so I'm worried whatever it is might infect my plants (bush beans, tomatoes, cukes, carrots, and lettuce.) I noticed what looked like whatever it is starting on a tomato leaf. I might have been wrong, but I just cut the whole stem that "bumpy" leaf was on off from the plant and threw it in the trash, and noticed no bumps since. Any ideas?
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Jul 17, 2014 17:01
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That's grape phylloxera, it's from a small insect related to aphids. The nymphs live inside those weird bumps you see (they're called galls) where they can feed on the plant undisturbed. Most of the wild American grapes can shrug off any phylloxera damage without much effect, it's only the European grapes (Vitis vinifera) that have issues with phylloxera. The insects should only go after the grapes, so they're not much danger to your other plants. You can always remove and destroy any leaves you find with galls on them if you want to curb their population some.
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Jul 17, 2014 17:24
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Thank you for the timely and helpful response!
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Jul 17, 2014 18:17
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Welp, looks like I'm going to have some zucchini this year. The weather here in Olympia has been amazing, and it's really showing.
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Jul 18, 2014 01:52
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Most people think in terms of Spring planting: when is it going to be warm enough to plant X? For Fall/Winter gardening you approach it from the other direction: will plant X have enough time to mature before it gets too cold? Our winters here get under 40 so the garden makes a great refrigerator. Get your stuff in the ground so it matures before it's too cold and then leave it in the ground for harvest throughout the winter and even into spring. Shifty Pony posted:I've had the best luck poking around the internet for planting guides published by local ag extensions and universities. Thank you both for the help! It's funny, I use the UC Extension quite a bit for the farm, but had no idea they had anything like that!
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Jul 18, 2014 15:39
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Big and juicy well....
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Jul 18, 2014 17:51
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I have a very basic question. If I grow varieties of squash near each other that can cross-pollinate, I know that can affect seeds I try to save for next year. But will the cross-pollination have any effect on the properties of the fruit that the plants produce this year? I'm not really worried about saving seeds, but I would like to grow lots of different winter squash.
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Jul 18, 2014 17:56
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Peristalsis posted:I have a very basic question. If I grow varieties of squash near each other that can cross-pollinate, I know that can affect seeds I try to save for next year. But will the cross-pollination have any effect on the properties of the fruit that the plants produce this year? I'm not really worried about saving seeds, but I would like to grow lots of different winter squash. Nope. The fruits are produced according to the plant's genes. Since the seeds are the "child" of the plant, that's the only part that will have combined DNA from the plant and whatever it was fertilized with. At least that's my layperson's understanding of it.
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Jul 18, 2014 18:46
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There are also 3 different groups of squash and they won't cross-pollinate each other so you could grow one of each and still save seeds from all of them, assuming they're all open-pollinated and not hybrid varieties.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:08
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Hummingbirds posted:Nope. The fruits are produced according to the plant's genes. Since the seeds are the "child" of the plant, that's the only part that will have combined DNA from the plant and whatever it was fertilized with. At least that's my layperson's understanding of it. Without knowing more, my guess would be it is something that varies with the structure/kind of fruit (that is, a pome versus pericarp or whatever) but that's just a guess.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:50
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I had some seeds from spicy tiny bell pepper-looking peppers, yellow and red, which I guess must have been hybrids or something. From the red ones:  From the yellow ones:  Any chance someone can attach a name for a variety to either one? I'm not familiar with spicy peppers in general.
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Jul 18, 2014 23:22
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 itshappening.gif
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Jul 18, 2014 23:25
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Breaky posted:
  
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Jul 18, 2014 23:31
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cheese eats mouse posted:Big and juicy well.... The veggie version of truck balls.
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Jul 19, 2014 03:03
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*truck nutz I'm embarrassed that I know that term.
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Jul 19, 2014 03:09
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A squirrel went to town on one of our tomato plants, breaking off a stalk that had ten tomatoes on it and eating three others. Thirteen tomatoes down in one day. You mother fuuuuccckkkeerrr Well not totally down, as we were able to salvage 7 to ripen off the vine, but theyre much smaller than they could have been otherwise.
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Jul 19, 2014 19:21
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I've gotten in the habit of putting down just a light sprinkling of blood meal around my tomatoes to keep the squirrels off. They usually stay away from anywhere that smells of blood, probably because they think (rightly so, in my case if I catch the fuckers) that they could be the next target. Seems to work for rabbits too, it stopped those assholes from eating my just-sprouted green beans. You just have to re-apply it every time it rains or you water.
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Jul 19, 2014 22:34
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Marchegiana posted:I've gotten in the habit of putting down just a light sprinkling of blood meal around my tomatoes to keep the squirrels off. They usually stay away from anywhere that smells of blood, probably because they think (rightly so, in my case if I catch the fuckers) that they could be the next target. Seems to work for rabbits too, it stopped those assholes from eating my just-sprouted green beans. You just have to re-apply it every time it rains or you water. Ooohh good idea. Will pick some up tomorrow!
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Jul 20, 2014 17:15
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There's a ton of construction going on around my house and it's disturbing all the ant hills. It took less than 24 hours for them to build a huge megaplex in my raised herb garden. I sprayed them with a dilution of dish soap and water because it's all I had on hand at the time and I wanted to get rid of them asap because they kept biting. Of course the next day the plant where they were living is burnt to a crisp and the ants are gone from the raised beds, having moved to the tomato bucket. I really don't want to put any actual poison in my yard because of kids and pets so I spent all day today like a Caddyshack freak with some hippie fire ant repellant oil and diatomaceous earth mix that I hosed the ant areas down with. My questions: what else can I be doing to get these ants to go away, and just how much diatomaceous earth is too much? I have my doubts about the ant repellant because the main ingredient is rosemary oil and the original loving hive was inside the rosemary plant, so they clearly don't hate rosemary that much. Sorry if this has been discussed a million times, I tried to go back a few pages but didn't see anything.
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Jul 21, 2014 02:57
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da411onCLassy posted:My questions: what else can I be doing to get these ants to go away, and just how much diatomaceous earth is too much? DE is the right idea, and there is never too much. It's inert and won't hurt anything. I put mine an in old sock and tap it to distribute well. If I were in you situation I'd been ringing my garden with a coat that looked almost like a light snowfall. And if I could identify any ant hills I'd be doing the same to them. It will take a few days to make a difference, but boy does it work.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:10
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Its starting, I've been eating about 2 roma plus a handful of cherry tomatoes each day, for the past few days. Today picked 6.1 pounds of roma tomatoes to be given to my in-laws. Garden is in high gear.
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Jul 21, 2014 04:04
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| # ? May 30, 2024 17:06 |
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da411onCLassy posted:There's a ton of construction going on around my house and it's disturbing all the ant hills. It took less than 24 hours for them to build a huge megaplex in my raised herb garden. I sprayed them with a dilution of dish soap and water because it's all I had on hand at the time and I wanted to get rid of them asap because they kept biting. Of course the next day the plant where they were living is burnt to a crisp and the ants are gone from the raised beds, having moved to the tomato bucket. I really don't want to put any actual poison in my yard because of kids and pets so I spent all day today like a Caddyshack freak with some hippie fire ant repellant oil and diatomaceous earth mix that I hosed the ant areas down with. I've had good luck with crushed red pepper flakes for ridding our driveways and patios of ants. Maybe try that.
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Jul 21, 2014 05:00
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