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Lady Demelza posted:My plans at the moment are to use the raised bed for the Three Sisters: sweetcorn, runner beans and butternut squash. There are a couple of rhubarb plants already established that I'll keep. The greenhouse would be for containers of onions, potatoes, salad leaves, tomatoes and potentially aubergine (eggplant). Is this too ambitious? Seeds and bulbs were half-price so I picked up a few packets of things I like and decided to worry about the details later. There are only two of us so the yields don't have to be enormous to keep us going. The growing season is almost over for non-greenhouse things, assuming you're in the Northern hemisphere. If in the Southern hemisphere, it's about time to start preparing the soil. Preparing the soil could just mean levelling off but if you're concerned about soil quality I would add compost. You want your soil to be crumbly, dark, and moist when you plant so add as much compost as you need to get to that point. 2" over the entire bed area is a good starting point. If you know specific problems with the soil there are other additives you can add, but compost is nearly universally good, as it contributes nutrients and helps hold onto water. Preparing your soil can happen at any point prior to planting, so you can get started on that even if it is going to soon be autumn where you live. Look up your city / region on a planting calendar to determine when to plant your various seeds and bulbs. Each of them will have their own planting date although most will be very similar (aubergine, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, and squash all like the soil to be quite warm). The onions and salad greens can tolerate cooler temperatures generally. I'm not certain how the greenhouse will affect this. Obviously it will warm things up considerably but if it's winter you will have much less daylight for your plants to use. I would try to find a greenhouse specific advice if you move on that.
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Aug 13, 2018 23:21
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It might be worthwhile to get the greenhouse even if it's too late to grow much just so you can see what the temp and humidity are like in there over winter, as there can be a bit of a learning curve there in managing those variables and seeing what might grow best with the conditions you have.
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Aug 14, 2018 14:33
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And gardening is always a learning experience. You're gonna kill some stuff the first season. Learn from that and do better next season. Green house + beds etc might be a little much for a new gardener. You might just want to do one, and use the time between now and spring to do more reading and make plans. Plus that gives you time to save up for a green house. I would definitely plant greens right away though. Chard and kale (and to a lesser extent some spinach) is pretty cold Hardy, and will grow right through some milder winters (even being fine with light snow.). AND greens are some of the more overpriced stuff at the store, so you can save a fair amount of money (and have a wider variety of more fresh salads). And now is when you want to be planting wildflowers for next year and stuff like garlic and onions, I believe. So, greens, alums, and then prep the soil in your raised bed (age some compost/manure on it, maybe lasagna mulch). Plan what you'll put in there come spring, do research on greenhouses and save for one, then come spring plant your three sisters and maybe some tomatoes and Chile's in pots, start accumulating supplies for the green house in the fall once you have a better idea what you're doing. For me, the thing I find to be a lifesaver is an automatic watering system. I'm terribly absent-minded and will forget to water stuff for a week when work gets busy. And I tend to overwater if I do it by hand. Plus once one is set up you can go on vacation without killing all your plants or getting someone to come by to water them. Crakkerjakk fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 15:17
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Since you're pretty space limited you might want to look into square foot gardening. It's a bit spendy to set up with their recommended soil composition, so I'd mostly ignore that bit. But they're big on intensive (close together) planting, and that would probably be good for getting maximum foods out of your smaller space. Oh, and you will need to start fertilizing after a season or two. I would start composting if at all possible now, and you'll have some nice compost/fertilizer ready for next spring's garden that you can add to your soil. There are expensive setups you can get, but I just have some pallets with chicken wire on the inside covered with a tarp.
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Aug 14, 2018 15:23
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Greens are one of the best things you can grow. They're so expensive and have such a short shelf life. It's great to have on hand whenever you need them.
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Aug 14, 2018 15:24
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Lady Demelza posted:... There's some good advice upstream. Again though, it would help to know the zone and roughly where you are. If you're in the right zone winter gardening (especially with a greenhouse) is a definite possibility. You might want to take a look at the One Yard Revolution YouTube channel. He's in Zone 5 and faces a lot of the same challenges you describe - suburban back lot, poor native soil, and shade you can't deal with just by grabbing your chain saw. This spring we tried a small bed of Three Sisters and planted our melons and squash using the Square Foot Gardening spacing. This was a mistake. We have no paths now. Next year the melons go on trellises like OYR Patrick suggests.  What looks likes like a path on the left past the Peaches and Cream corn is a bed of winter brassicas transplanted out last week and mulched. Moving right we have a Delicada and Pattypan squash arm wrestling for control of what used to be the path. I think there's still a bunch of Black Turtle beans between them and the Bodacious corn. Next, there should be a path where the spaghetti squash is (and another line of Black Turtles). This squash has ambitions; it has taken over the path, passed through the fence and is now going after "the lawn" (a.k.a., flat area over the septic field that is green when it rains and gets mowed sometimes.) Oddly enough the deer aren't eating it. I should probably check under the leaves for bones. What I'm trying to say here is that corn and squash are big, vigorous plants if you give them what they need. They're a bit daunting when they start producing. If you think zuccini are bad for drowning you in squash, try a pattypan plant. I've had to start eating them for breakfast: Slice horizontally, slice off stem area and scoop out seeds to form a bowl. Microwave for 2-3 minutes. Microwave a couple of strips of bacon for 2 minutes. Fill pattypan with a mixture of chopped bacon, homemade relish and/or homemade salsa verde. Top with with grated cheddar and/or parmesan. Return to microwave for 2 minutes. Enjoy the sensation of grossing your family out by being a barbarian who eats this sort of thing for breakfast.
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Aug 14, 2018 20:27
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Greens are one of the best things you can grow. They're so expensive and have such a short shelf life. It's great to have on hand whenever you need them. Oh, yeah. If you have a pot and can either grow cabbage or kale, grow kale because you can harvest continually from the same plant. Lots of other examples along the same lines - it's a much more effective use of space to grow things you can harvest continually (beans, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, celery, herbs, etc etc) instead of things you harvest once (carrots, cabbage, potatoes, etc). Obviously you can and should grow whatever you want but as far as an effective use of space and time over the course of the season this is what I'd recommend.
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Aug 14, 2018 21:04
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Mozi posted:Oh, yeah. If you have a pot and can either grow cabbage or kale, grow kale because you can harvest continually from the same plant. Lots of other examples along the same lines - it's a much more effective use of space to grow things you can harvest continually (beans, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, celery, herbs, etc etc) instead of things you harvest once (carrots, cabbage, potatoes, etc). Obviously you can and should grow whatever you want but as far as an effective use of space and time over the course of the season this is what I'd recommend. kale is also really efficient because as long as it produces even a single leaf, you'll have more than you'll ever want!
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Aug 14, 2018 21:07
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 The crinkly leaf varieties are also tough for bugs/caterpillars/slugs to eat which leaves more for you to enjoy!
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Aug 14, 2018 21:45
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Mozi posted:
Also if you just rub the leaves in some oil and let them sit for 15 min the waxy coating dissolves and they're super tender.
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Aug 14, 2018 22:05
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Mozi posted:
bugs and caterpillars and slugs have higher standards in vegetables than you do
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Aug 14, 2018 22:14
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Tiny white flies are eating my cucumber plant as fast as it can grow new leaves. I am spraying it with neem but it only seems to annoy the flies
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Aug 14, 2018 22:17
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Thank you so much everyone for your advice! I think I'm in zone 7 (UK). It's getting towards the end of season now. I'll experiment with some onions and chard but really I want to make sure everything is ready to go next year. There's so much to learn and buy and prepare. I'll definitely check out the Youtube channel and square foot gardening. A friend has donated a slightly sad, yellow strawberry plant to the cause, so the first gardening challenge will be to see if it can be nursed back to health. Composting is on the to-do list, and I'm keeping a look out for a cheap second-hand compost bin. I'm not keen on having a bare heap, as apparently there have been problems with vermin in the past. And if I grow so much as a single kale leaf, expect to see hundreds of photos of it, because I will love it like a firstborn child.
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Aug 14, 2018 23:41
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In that case, you might want to keep an eye on Charles Dowding's YouTube channel. He's in the U.K. as well and regularly talks about timing and local growing conditions. I like his no-dig method. I switched to it several years ago when I changed from overhead watering to drip irrigation. With permanent beds I can leave the drip tubes undisturbed under the mulch and not have to re-build every spring. Given that: 1) My plants aren't complaining, and 2) I'm inherently lazy, I think I'll keep using this method.
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Aug 15, 2018 00:25
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Lady Demelza posted:Composting is on the to-do list, and I'm keeping a look out for a cheap second-hand compost bin. I'm not keen on having a bare heap, as apparently there have been problems with vermin in the past. A circular wire fence compost bin is probably the cheapest option out there after a found wood bin (in which case you need to be worried about whether the wood was pressure treated or oiled), and can be constructed easily in less than an hour. Vermin shouldn’t be much of an issue as long as you don’t put animal byproducts in it.
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Aug 15, 2018 01:48
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Hexigrammus posted:In that case, you might want to keep an eye on Charles Dowding's YouTube channel. He's in the U.K. as well and regularly talks about timing and local growing conditions. No dig + drip irrigation + mulch is the way, the truth, and the light. For real. Just gotta be careful not to step on the soil anywhere you're gonna plant and compact it too much. Which is fine for narrow beds that you can access from both sides, which are easier to maintain anyways. It's what I do in high desert 7b, only about 25 cm of rain a year.
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Aug 15, 2018 02:23
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kedo posted:A circular wire fence compost bin is probably the cheapest option out there after a found wood bin (in which case you need to be worried about whether the wood was pressure treated or oiled), and can be constructed easily in less than an hour. Vermin shouldn’t be much of an issue as long as you don’t put animal byproducts in it. I have one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Geobin-SYNCHKG043886-Compost-Bin-GEOBIN/dp/B0085O6NXQ/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1534343264&sr=8-15&keywords=compost+bin Costs more than wire, but $30 is still cheap.
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Aug 15, 2018 15:29
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I have one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Geobin-SYNCHKG043886-Compost-Bin-GEOBIN/dp/B0085O6NXQ/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1534343264&sr=8-15&keywords=compost+bin If you're worried about rodents and vermin, do not go with plastic and make the same mistake I did. I bought heavy duty plastic bin and they lasted about a year before the rats chewed large enough holes to dig inside. Go with wire and a frame. Maybe a frame that lets you open the front partially to turn it. Or not, that's high (low) tech.
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Aug 15, 2018 15:53
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Lady Demelza posted:Green-fingered goons, help me please. Gardening on the cheap is easy because people are constantly throwing stuff out or giving it away: seeds, mulch, compost, building materials, etc. you name it. One of the best ways to save money is to stop buying your plants, learn to grow your annuals from seed, and propagate your perennials (double bonus if your perennials are also food). Find out which neighbors are saving seeds, go to seed swaps, gardening talks/discussion, and farmer's markets for cheap and possibly free seeds. You've got fall and winter to figure out how to grow from seed indoors; try some herbs you'll be able to enjoy before the light fades: basil, chives, mint, oregano, cilantro (you might call it coriander), something like that, then take them indoors when the weather gets too cold. Get free pots from garden centers; they typically allow people to bring them in for recycling, so they often have them just lying around for the taking. I would seriously consider building a pallet compost bin of at least one cubic meter simply to close the loop on throwing away valuable stuff. Mainly this is food scraps, leaf litter, old soil, last season's plants, etc. that turn into valuable soil. Even better if you have 2 "bays": one to add new materials to, the other to hold a full pile until it's finished composting. Soil would easily be my biggest expense if I had to buy it. I have a little over 11 sq. meters of garden, and I easily lose a cubic meter (probably more like a meter and a half) of soil to garden biomass every year let alone the soil I need for flowerbeds, filling low spots in the yard, pots/planters, new beds, etc. Don't let a lack of funds burst your greenhouse bubble. Keep an eye out for people throwing away old single-pane windows and build a greenhouse from them! Gardening seems to be one of those hobbies that really rewards ingenuity. Make sure you know where the sun and shade will be coming from before you do any site prep for the greenhouse. You don't want it to be baking inside in the summer, nor do you want it to be in the long shadows of surrounding trees in the early/late season; don't put it in the windiest spots on the property; don't put it in frost pockets; plan for water removal/drainage.
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Aug 15, 2018 17:27
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on the seed topic, MIGardener has a $0.50 seed packet sale right now. Seed properly stored lasts at least a few years so if you want to get a head start on next season, this is a great time to do that.
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Aug 15, 2018 17:30
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I might be a weirdo but I legitimately enjoy worm composting. I have regular compost piles in addition, but my worm bins are where the magic really happens. I've had to work through some issues in getting to this point though so I thought it might be helpful to somebody if I wrote them down. The most critical component (in my opinion) isn't food, but moisture control. Specifically, if the bin gets too wet, it will die and you will see a mass worm exodus, which is not great. It's always better to err on the side of adding fewer moist things to the bin than to just put whatever in and hope for the best. Similarly, it's better to underfeed than overfeed. I still have a lot of mites in my bin because of previous moisture issues but they've reached an equilibrium of sorts with the worms. Also they're impossible to get rid of. While you can just add food directly to the bin, it's much more efficient to freeze or blend it first - or, like me, do both. I have a small rubber compost thing that fits in my freezer door; when that's full, I blend it all up. I add pinches of rock dust and oyster shell just for extra fortification and mix in a handful of this coco/kelp/manure mix I have, mainly to absorb more of the moisture. Let that sit out for a few hours to come to room temp and add to the bin, covering with shredded cardboard. It's important to put the bin in a location that has pretty stable temperatures all year round. I initially put mine in my basement because it was cool in the summer, but come winter when my boiler was going it wasn't an appropriate location, leading to mass worm exodus. Should be between 70-80 degrees with no quick changes or direct sunlight. It's also important to age the castings. Depending on your specific bin design, the castings may not actually be finished by the time you have to harvest them. I move mine to a second bin from the first, stirring it all up to avoid compaction and then letting it continue to be worked over in the second bin until I need it. I use the Worm Factory 360 for the first bin (easy to remove finished castings) and one of those canvas bag systems for the second (better evaporation, so no worries about moisture.) The only nasty bits are that you will always have some exploratory worms that escape, which family members may not love, and you'll have to have a fruit fly trap going so it'll smell like apple cider vinegar. The bin itself shouldn't have any smell. When all is said and done it takes months to get the complete system going, but once you're seeing the results of your homemade castings there's no going back. And who doesn't like to pamper their worms?
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Aug 15, 2018 20:10
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Have you guys seen black soldier fly composting? There's a small sect of people who are like "Yo why no meat?!" and use black soldier fly larva to compost literally anything that rots.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12t3Qi8Ipmo
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Aug 15, 2018 20:47
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Yeah, apparently that's effective if you need to compost a lot of meat for some reason. Otherwise... I'll stick with my worms, I think. I have an existing meat composter system called 'dog'. I read some people use those as improvised chicken feeders, hanging the fly composter in the air in the coop so some larvae fall down. But it ended up spreading disease. Mozi fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 15, 2018 |
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Aug 15, 2018 20:49
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I have one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Geobin-SYNCHKG043886-Compost-Bin-GEOBIN/dp/B0085O6NXQ/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1534343264&sr=8-15&keywords=compost+bin I've got one of these and it's worked pretty great. I've learned though that when it's not more than like half full, rabbits can easily hop on the side and get inside to have their own sweet babby making pad... they didn't figure that the babies would then need to get out, though.
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Aug 15, 2018 21:15
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GrAviTy84 posted:Have you guys seen black soldier fly composting? There's a small sect of people who are like "Yo why no meat?!" and use black soldier fly larva to compost literally anything that rots. People literally compost people poops so I'm not really surprised by anything these days. I've got about 8 trailer loads of pallets at work right now and keep meaning to bring some home to start composting again but I've literally never had success doing so. We're an extremely minimalist family and generate almost no trash but we do produce a fair amount of compostable stuff. I had a wire ring compost setup at the old house but it inevitably just turned into clay. I guess it is going to take more time and effort and ehhhhhhhhhh....
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Aug 15, 2018 22:40
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Behold the majesty of my entire crop of Sichuan peppercorns this season: Speaking of stunted, what do Lao green eggplants want that Italian heirloom and Japanese eggplants don't need? Every time I put in any of the latter they grow and produce like crazy---like right now I've got two Japanese eggplants that have been producing about a pound a week between them and never a problem---and whenever I try to grow any of those little green Lao or Thai eggplants they don't grow or produce for poo poo. Right now I've got several Lao greens that germinated and put out their seed leaves and then just stalled there for literally months---as in they sprouted back in March and they're still alive but haven't gotten past the seed leaf stage. I've had similar problems with several other Lao/Thai eggplants from multiple seed sources, but never with any other kind of eggplant. What am I missing? Anyway, here's a random weird tomato I tried this season. They're what Baker Creek calls an atomic grape tomato. On the vine and not yet ripe:  These are a little more stripey than the ones produced by the other plants, which are mostly purple with a little green. But their pics didn't come out as well so gently caress 'em. Here's some ripened off the vine, the purple deepening to almost black and the green becoming dark red well before they start getting soft:  And finally cut open, showing how the interior remains green even when almost over-ripe:  Barely ripe they have a very strong tomato flavour like you expect out of a dark cherry tomato, with a sweet, almost melon-like note. As they get more ripe they get sweeter but the flesh still stays fairly firm. Like really noticeably firmer than most cherry tomatoes (I've also got a couple black cherry vines going and when they get over-ripe they're hard to pick without having them split in your hand). All of the plants I have are producing tomatoes in clusters of three or four, which is less than most cherry tomatoes. Fruit set seems to be pretty good. Way less productive than most cherry tomatoes, but that seems to be the way the plants grow rather than these plants being stunted, failing to set fruit, or whatever. Anyway, they were the dumb gimmick seeds I planted this season and they seem to have had pretty good germination rates (I think I got 5/6 starting pots producing seedlings, of which I planted three) and all of they have been producing, if less vigorously than most cherry tomatoes.
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Aug 16, 2018 00:10
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For a second I thought you'd accidentally posted a picture of eggplants.
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Aug 16, 2018 00:15
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mischief posted:I had a wire ring compost setup at the old house but it inevitably just turned into clay. I guess it is going to take more time and effort and ehhhhhhhhhh.... I’m really curious how you turned compost into clay... Maybe this is a dumb question, but were you adding clay soil to it?
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Aug 16, 2018 00:32
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Fitzy Fitz posted:For a second I thought you'd accidentally posted a picture of eggplants.
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Aug 16, 2018 00:39
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SubG posted:Behold the majesty of my entire crop of Sichuan peppercorns this season:  Hey I grew those, too! I get a pretty intense tomato flavor, slight smokiness. Flesh is quite thick which is the only downside but the flavor is amazing. I did have a helluvatime trying to figure out when one was ripe but just went by touch when they had a slight give.
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Aug 16, 2018 01:14
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GrAviTy84 posted:
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Aug 16, 2018 01:41
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SubG posted:Behold the majesty of my entire crop of Sichuan peppercorns this season:  Also an update my (mostly) unpruned tomatoes. It's hard to capture the scale but the bushes are towering over me at this point. I'm still managing to keep it all supported without too much effort and they have survived pretty serious downpours and wind. Now that the heat has become a bit less oppressive they have also started flowering and fruiting again. I grew those Dark Galaxy tomatoes this year which look pretty but have been very unproductive for me compared to the other two varieties. A shame because the few fruit I have gotten are delicious.   And recently my birds eye chilies are going crazy. This is after harvesting a handful of them and now it is starting to flower again. 
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Aug 16, 2018 02:32
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guri posted:Nice! The peppercorns are also excellent eaten fresh/green. Here is my little tree that I bought last spring. Still a ways to go for peppercorns but I am still using the leaves a lot. My plant is just a little bit larger than yours, and this is the first season it has produced any peppercorns. It spent a couple months looking like a thorny stick stuck in the ground, but has started putting out a shitload of new growth this season. Haven't really used any of the leaves for anything yet because I was just happy to see it putting out foliage.
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Aug 16, 2018 02:47
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Well, things have taken a turn for the worse: In about a week, all my sweet basil and thai basil got what I suspect is basil downy mildew. It could all have been infected for a bit, but there was enough rainy weather for entire plants to become covered in spores overnight. It seems like there wasn't much I could do (in terms of food safe fungicides), so most of my plants went right into a garbage bag. I left a couple, but heavily pruned them to leave only stems that weren't visibly infected (they'll probably have to go in the trash too, though). But somehow the rooted cuttings that I've been growing indoors seem to be okay so far, so maybe I can try transplanting some into pots far from my previous basil plants. My indoor parsley and roses were lost to spider mites, RIP Something has ruined my thyme (and to a lesser extent, my oregano). I suspect that it might be related to the weather, plus the fact that they aren't getting much direct sunlight anymore. Any idea what this is?  My cucumbers are...weird. Here are the 5 i picked today. I have no idea what this is about lol 
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Aug 16, 2018 04:12
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Slanderer posted:My cucumbers are...weird. Here are the 5 i picked today. I have no idea what this is about lol There are other causes, but if your cucumber plants look otherwise healthy, that would be my guess.
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Aug 16, 2018 05:23
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SubG posted:The weird ones look like the result of under/poor pollination. Usually happens to early cukes (when there are few flowers), when it gets super hot (which affects the viability of the pollen), not enough pollinators, or something like that. Thanks! Googling for poor pollination brought up other pictures like this, so that checks out. It hasn't been too hot recently, but it has been humid and rainy, so that could have done it. Since one vine is doing real well, I assume it isn't a fertilizer issue, but I guess I should check to make sure that I'm not missing anything essential for cukes.
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Aug 16, 2018 06:44
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For those of you who foolishly grow cucumbers with very few people around to offload your green dildoveggies, a great summer snack is sliced cucumber with a pinch of salt on it. Great for losing weight too! It fills you up without actually consuming a lot of calories! Also there is nothing more refreshing than cucumber salad! I am currently experimenting with cucumber noodles too. A word from what I have experienced growing squashes is that bigger != better. The bigger they grow the more the plant focuses on seed production which makes the veggie nigh inedible because of how bitter it is. This might be species specfic though. I havent grown enough varities to apply it across the board. Also the squashes become bitter if they bake in the sun too long. You can cool them off by spritzing (I have had some success with that)
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Aug 16, 2018 12:50
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My kids love cucumber sandwiches, too. A classic summer snack. I usually do a little mayo on one slice of bread and a little ranch on the other, sliced cucumbers in the middle with a pinch of seasoned salt. They really like taking them to the pool in a cold cooler for hot day snacks.
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Aug 16, 2018 13:03
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I've been making pints of cucumber kimchi
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Aug 16, 2018 13:29
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None of you are making pickles? What is this world coming to?! I have roughly three gallons of delicious fermented pickles canned and sitting in my basement from the bumper cucumber crop earlier in the summer (before cucumber beetles destroyed my plants).
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Aug 16, 2018 14:01
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