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Solid Poopsnake posted:On this page, there's some talk of sowing wildflowers around your crops - what purpose does this serve? I've noticed some of the boxes around the garden also have flowers mixed in with food - I assumed the people planting just wanted flowers. I guess I'm wrong! Companion planting is kind of unproven, however, planting flowers at the same time as vegetables is really easy and looks nice so why not. I've often planted marigolds (from seed) next to my tomato plants. It's supposed to reduce pests. You can also plant basil near tomatoes, because those two flavors are often found together in Italian food, and the plants have the same basic growing requirements. If your tastes are more Tex-Mex you can do peppers near tomatoes for the same reasons. Sometimes this called a "salsa garden". Most herbs are easier to grow than vegetables. Oregano, sage, and rosemary are basically weeds, so if you cook with those you should plant some. They're perennials so they'll live more or less forever unless you dig them up. Honestly, if you cook at all you should plant those three. I started cooking with a lot more fresh herbs once they were right outside. I highly recommend planting flowers in general, especially zinnias and marigolds. Both easy to grow from seed - I just get a packet of each when I buy my vegetable starts. They start blooming before most vegetables are ready. Nasturtium is another fun flower to grow; it's edible so you can make fancy salads with it.
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Dec 16, 2018 02:04
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Companion planting is mostly witchcraft. No actual effectiveness, as far as I know. Won't hurt anything, but no use twisting yourself into knots trying to figure out how to plant all the "right" stuff next to each other. Flowers, especially local wildflowers, are good because they attract pollinators. Local wildflowers are good because they attract your local native pollinators (there are a bunch of types of bees, not just honeybees, and the next most important kind of pollinators are beetles, I believe.) PlAnt greens. They're super easy to grow, can grow in shade, need like 6" of soil, and are one of the spendier things to buy at the grocery store, and there are a million types you never see at the store.
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Dec 16, 2018 14:07
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I'm an amateur gardener as well and I'm a lot better at cooking than gardening, but that's why I want to plant things I can use. I'll have a lot of dum-dum newbie questions despite doing due diligence through searching Youtube or just cursory Google searches. Right now I bought a mint and thyme plant from a nursery. I know people have said mint is basically like a weed too and to keep it in its own planter/pot. I've since bought what I think are gallon (clay) pots for each plant and put ~2 inches of smallish rocks at the bottom to help drainage and filled the rest with potting soil and moved each plant into their respective pot and loosened up its roots gently. Added a little water to all this new soil. I live in the geographical middle of California and they said my zone is 9b. My real question is: I know both mint and thyme are said to be hardy even in the cold, but is there any benefit to them if I bring them in at night and put them out the next day? I know it's unnecessary work, but is there any detriment to this? Would this make the plant weak if it didn't face the cold conditions of winter?
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Dec 17, 2018 05:08
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Willsun posted:My real question is: I know both mint and thyme are said to be hardy even in the cold, but is there any benefit to them if I bring them in at night and put them out the next day? I know it's unnecessary work, but is there any detriment to this? Would this make the plant weak if it didn't face the cold conditions of winter? No. You don't have any cause for worry. I live where there's only sometimes actual winter in 5a, and it doesn't kill mint or thyme. Or oregano, sage, and probably not winter savory. I can still use the thyme, sage, and oregano and we've had snow for a few weeks already. Leave them outside and let them grow because your winter is not worth worry about. You will have to water them a lot because they're in pots and keep track of them in the summer when it probably gets dry. They'll need plenty of water then. While they've been recently transplanted, make sure you water them in plenty. They'll need it for the root growth. You may think you're drowning them, but you can't really unless there's not drainage out the bottom of the pot.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:25
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Mint cannot be killed, cannot be stopped, and has no mercy.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:34
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How long does root growth last then after being transplanted? I do an alright job keeping up with watering in the summer since everything dies real quick without it but I'm afraid of overwatering in the winter. A video seemed to suggest going on the drier side with thyme so that's where I'm doubting myself.
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Dec 17, 2018 07:48
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Willsun posted:How long does root growth last then after being transplanted? I do an alright job keeping up with watering in the summer since everything dies real quick without it but I'm afraid of overwatering in the winter. A video seemed to suggest going on the drier side with thyme so that's where I'm doubting myself. If you leave thyme sit in a pool of water it might get cranky. I have mine near my rain spout though and I have problems where I have to cut it back twice a summer. So long as you put it in a pot with decent drainage, you're going to have trouble overwatering it. You said you put stones in the bottom which is fine, but unless it doesn't have a hole you're going to be fine. The extra water will just go out through the drain. E: Both thyme and mint will spread out, so the mint will continue to grow all the time. The thyme will be slower in actual winter, but you're not going to need to worry until it starts being below freezing. I've been under freezing or near since Halloween and it's still slowly growing. Jhet fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Dec 17, 2018 |
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Dec 17, 2018 18:42
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Grand Fromage posted:Mint cannot be killed, cannot be stopped, and has no mercy. If only I had a use for the mint that got away from me and now dominates a section of my yard. It grows so thick in the outflow of my pond it actually blocks it. What could I do with a wheelbarrow full of mint leaves?!
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Dec 17, 2018 18:57
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:If only I had a use for the mint that got away from me and now dominates a section of my yard. It grows so thick in the outflow of my pond it actually blocks it. That's a lot of mint julep. Or you could dry a bunch of leaves for adding to tea or using in baking.
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Dec 17, 2018 19:00
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mint bonfire
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Dec 17, 2018 19:05
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Get you some bulk green tea and blend & brew your own Moroccan mint.
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Dec 17, 2018 19:22
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:Get you some bulk green tea and blend & brew your own Moroccan mint. Mint tea is good. Just the mint leaves makes a fine one too.
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Dec 17, 2018 20:34
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Jhet posted:If you leave thyme sit in a pool of water it might get cranky. I have mine near my rain spout though and I have problems where I have to cut it back twice a summer. So long as you put it in a pot with decent drainage, you're going to have trouble overwatering it. You said you put stones in the bottom which is fine, but unless it doesn't have a hole you're going to be fine. The extra water will just go out through the drain. Yeah the pots have a hole underneath, in which I put like a flat-ish rock just above it to try to keep soil in, obviously not covering the entire hole. Should I keep both of these plants solo as in no cuttings to add to the pot in the future? I don't even know if it's possible with these two but I'm assuming too much would crowd the pot.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:21
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When I've done herbs in pots I had a lot of success with putting each in its own pot, reasonably large ones. The pot will have a drainage hole, add one if it's weird and doesn't. At the bottom add a layer of clean gravel, then the potting soil on top. Stick your herb seedling in. Water freely, the hole and gravel will keep it well drained. That's it, really, herbs tend to grow like mad. I had a bunch of pots with that setup on a south facing balcony and did nothing else.
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Dec 17, 2018 22:20
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I’ll do herbs with similar watering/light requirements in a single big pot, but usually not more than 2 per pot. I’ve found that once you put three in a single container one inevitably dies off as the other two take over, but that doesn’t seem to happen as often with two. Right now I have thyme and oregano in one pot, cilantro and parsley in another, lemon thyme and culinary rosemary in another, and then mini genovese basil, Thai basil and marjoram all in their own pots. I don’t even know why I do parsley and cilantro in containers, I’ve never had good luck with them indoors in the winter, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop trying. Maybe I finally need to break down and buy a grow lamp.
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Dec 17, 2018 22:28
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Cilantro sucks because it doesn't keep growing like other herbs, you have to harvest and replant. I grew it once and it wasn't worth the trouble.
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Dec 17, 2018 23:54
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Grand Fromage posted:Cilantro sucks because it doesn't keep growing like other herbs, you have to harvest and replant. I grew it once and it wasn't worth the trouble. Same here, and it's so cheap to buy fresh that I save garden space for more interesting and/or valuable things. Your time in the garden is much better spent doing practically anything other than trying to keep cilantro from bolting, which it will, no matter what.
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Dec 18, 2018 00:06
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I’ve got Jalapeño and Habanero chilies, ginger and lemongrass growing on my balcony at the moment. Basil is going great on my kitchen windowsill but the basil seedlings outside got mostly eaten by caterpillars. They’re just about hanging on. My rosemary is looking sorry for itself, it’s alive but it’s shed a lot of leaves so it looks patchy and threadbare. I’m not the worlds best gardener, but I seem pretty good with rhizomes, ginger and canna lilies are by biggest successes!
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Dec 18, 2018 00:07
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Grand Fromage posted:Cilantro sucks because it doesn't keep growing like other herbs, you have to harvest and replant. I grew it once and it wasn't worth the trouble. Helith posted:I’ve got Jalapeño and Habanero chilies, ginger and lemongrass growing on my balcony at the moment. Basil is going great on my kitchen windowsill but the basil seedlings outside got mostly eaten by caterpillars. They’re just about hanging on. My rosemary is looking sorry for itself, it’s alive but it’s shed a lot of leaves so it looks patchy and threadbare.   Some of them reproduce themselves kind of oddly-new plants will form in the old flower spike, and you can just pull them off and plant them. I'm not sure if it is just seeds that germinate in there or if it is some sort of vegetative reproduction, but it's kind of cool.   .
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Dec 18, 2018 00:26
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:Same here, and it's so cheap to buy fresh that I save garden space for more interesting and/or valuable things. Your time in the garden is much better spent doing practically anything other than trying to keep cilantro from bolting, which it will, no matter what. Cilantro is definitely not worth the time if you're anywhere where the sun comes up. Ever. Find a decent local ethnic grocery and buy it for like $0.60 a handful. Just rinse it really well, it's usually grown in a really small gravel substrate that will ruin a good meal.
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Dec 18, 2018 00:36
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Those look cool. Mine is edible ginger planted from some I bought from the supermarket! Leave it your pantry (or anywhere dark and cool) and wait for it to sprout white shoots. You can break it up into chunks as long as each chunk has a shoot then plant it. I didn’t harvest any last year as it was recommended to leave it until the second year, so I was really pleased to see new shoots appear this spring and I can’t wait to harvest some come autumn. I’m in Australia btw. The chillies are an experiment as we only get morning sun, but there are chillies growing and the plants look really happy. I think the balcony traps enough heat for them even though the sun goes by lunch time. Jalapenos  Habaneros just starting to flower and bud 
Helith fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 00:40
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Yeah, the cilantro I grew outside last summer bolted pretty quick but it was delicious while it lasted. I have plenty of outdoor space, so I didn’t mind sacrificing some of it for a finicky plant. My parsley did amazingly well, it’s somehow still chugging along with temperatures in the high 20s at night. Maybe I’ll toss this pot, the two of them are certainly doing terribly indoors at the moment.
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Dec 18, 2018 01:43
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Mine always bolts but then it reseeds itself and I just have cilantro of various ages growing all the time and in random places. My chives and basil tend to do the same. Speaking of invasive, garlic chives will take over whatever pot/box you put them in and I don't think they're nearly as delicious as real chives. Garlic chives aren't that terrible and they're easy to pull out of wherever they landed. I have a fence full of them and they're great. I can pull them all summer long to use, then I can use the scapes when they're going to flower and I pickle some of them as well. I find that they're pretty awesome chopped up in a lot of things. There's not much else that would be happy to grow in the 3" between the fence and the concrete path that I dream of digging out. Meanwhile, I have to constantly pull regular chives out of everywhere and I do my damnedest to make sure they don't flower and seed. I use the crap out of both of them though and I'd probably find some space for green onions if they were as good at coming back as the garlic chives. I put garlic into one of my raised beds though, so that will be nice to have in about 8-9 months. I've also randomly had to pull an oregano plant out of the middle of my yard now two years running. I must keep missing some.
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Dec 18, 2018 06:16
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Man, I'm having no luck with this tomato plant, I'm doing something pretty wrong. I thought I was under-watering it, so I've increased watering it to about every day/second day. I had also been adding some fish tank water to it once a week when doing a partial tank water change (mostly to save water but also as fertiliser). Looking it up on the web there was the suggestion that the burnt looking leaves may indicate over fertilising, so I've stopped doing that. These changes don't seem to have made much of a difference. It is in full sun, temperatures here seem to typically run from 20-30C. Any advice?  
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Dec 20, 2018 00:28
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That dirt is dry and it's most likely over fertilized as a result. It shouldn't be pulling away from the pot on the edges like that and you really don't have to feed a 'mater that small very much. Moosh a finger down in the dirt and see if it's got any moisture. Edit: Looks like the potting soil has fertilizer in it, to clarify. Fish water would make any plant happy no matter what. mischief fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Dec 20, 2018 |
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Dec 20, 2018 00:44
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mischief posted:Edit: Looks like the potting soil has fertilizer in it, to clarify. Could be a little deceptive, I added some pothos to one of my fish tanks and had poured the excess dirt from the pot the pothos came with (which contained those little green balls and things) into the tomato pot. It should be a little thin layer. Which is not to say that the original dirt didn't contain fertiliser, I have no idea. Thanks for the advise, I checked out the pot and it didn't seem too dry. I was away the last couple of days and my housemates didn't water it yesterday but we did (I think) get a bit of rain. I've given it a water now. You don't think that fishtank water will be doing any harm? I'd prefer to keep using it if only to save on water e Had some small eucalyptus trees in the back yard that didn't seem to like the fish water either, which is why I stopped. Most of the rest of the plants seem to like it Ruptured Yakety Sax fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Dec 20, 2018 |
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Dec 20, 2018 01:10
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So some friends and I planted short n sweet carrots on 10/25 in Tempe AZ. We planted seeds about 5-6 inches apart in four rows in a raised volunteer box at a community garden that we'd turned over and sifted prior. They were watered every day or every other day for the duration, with tropical sun. There was nothing but stringy, needle-thin roots when I dug them up yesterday despite some promising greens. Kale, spinach, and radishes did fantastic in the same box on the same planting day. We planted the 2-3 seeds per first-knuckle deep spot. Can someone tell me where we hosed up, please?
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Dec 31, 2018 00:29
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I think you just harvested them too soon. Radishes make a nice root in a month, but in my experience growing carrots in a warm climate, they take a lot longer than you think to develop a big root and are highly variable year to year depending on weather. I used to plant mine here on the Gulf Coast late September through October and harvest nice carrots (sometimes) in February. If the weather was reasonably dry, I'd have nice carrots, but too much rain would make the tops of the roots green and the carrots wouldn't be very sweet. Luckily, carrot tops are pretty delicious anyway, as are radish tops. This is untested theory with regards to carrots, but it seems like fewer, deeper waterings would promote deeper/longer root growth as the roots have to go down deep for water vs. always having plenty of water right at the surface? One or two deep soakings a week vs daily sprinklings-less evaporation that way too. Carrots are actually biennial. They grow greens quickly, and then need time to spend the next few months storing all their energy in that big root so they can grow flowers next year and make babies and die-we want to eat them right after they've built up that big fat root right at the end of their first growing season.
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Dec 31, 2018 01:30
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We usually mulch and over winter carrots here in NC. If you just planted them in October there's no way they would have already made a big tasty carrot. I hate growing them, personally, so my humble answer is that you hosed up planting them to begin with. I hate growing those things. Anything else in the ground... radishes, beets, etc... I can grow some good stuff. Carrots are just a loving pain comparatively and you really can't do much with the greens when it screws up.
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Dec 31, 2018 01:38
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I interplant radishes with carrots. Plant both at the same time, mixed in with each other. each carrot and radish seed 3" apart, but the carrots only 1.5" apart from the radishes and vice versa. Harvest the radishes when they're ready, that frees up space for the carrots which take way longer to mature.
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Dec 31, 2018 04:11
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Crakkerjakk posted:I interplant radishes with carrots. Plant both at the same time, mixed in with each other. each carrot and radish seed 3" apart, but the carrots only 1.5" apart from the radishes and vice versa. Harvest the radishes when they're ready, that frees up space for the carrots which take way longer to mature. That's a good idea with the radishes, I'll probably steal that this year. I mostly just ignore my carrots when it comes to watering. If they get anything it's because my aim was off when I was watering whatever ended up next to them. I had big 6-7" long carrots this year, but they took 4-5 months before they were ready for eating like that.
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Dec 31, 2018 15:56
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Thanks for the info, everyone. We're all very new and went by the time given on the packet, which was apparently bullshit. Live and learn!
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Dec 31, 2018 19:39
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seconding the "carrots are stupid hard to grow at home" crowd. I've had luck with many other types of ground veg but carrots have never worked out for me. Also, they're second only to potatoes in cheapness, so there's not even much benefit to growing them yourself. If you want to grow a giant weird looking vegetable, I recommend onion sets. It's super fun to yoink a baseball-sized bulb out of the ground.
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Dec 31, 2018 21:52
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Yeah, I only grow weird (eg cool colors) carrots. And potatoes. Red carrots, purple potatoes, etc. Parsnips generally more than carrots, since they're hard to find at most stores. I have a back bed that has all my alums that I just mostly ignore, but generally onions, carrots, and potatoes are the big stuff that is easy to get for cheap at the store and kind of hard to grow (or at least require more space), so I just generally don't grow much of them.
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Jan 1, 2019 02:28
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Carrots are definitely cheap, but the ones from the store don't taste anything like the ones I pull out of the garden. I don't do a lot of carrots, but if I have a strip that isn't going to care about being crowded/full of carrot greens toward the end of the season I'll throw whatever in. I used some for some pickles and they didn't taste different than grocery store carrots, but fresh and raw I've not had any that come close except from a farmer's market. Thing about gardening is that no plant conforms perfectly and it's definitely a learning process. I had the worst time learning how to get tomatoes to produce for me. Took three years of trying. Two years for my hops before I figured out what they need in the spot they are and this year I hope to actually get to use them.
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Jan 1, 2019 16:38
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There are only a couple of varieties of carrots I can buy nearby but yeah weird and colorful varieties I can grow whatever I want, and it's fun for the kids.
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Jan 1, 2019 17:27
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And when/if you do actually succeed in growing good carrots, it is incredibly satisfying to pull big fat 8” long carrots out of the ground. Makes you really feel like you’ve grown something special.
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Jan 1, 2019 17:46
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I tried a garden in my very small backyard this summer. It was almost successful, except squirrels ate my corn, and then the squash rotted on the vine because I overwatered for the whole season. So this year, I plan to put up a small (like 4' x 8') greenhouse, and do the square foot gardening method. Has anybody tried square foot gardening before?
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Jan 1, 2019 23:05
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Oyak posted:I tried a garden in my very small backyard this summer. It was almost successful, except squirrels ate my corn, and then the squash rotted on the vine because I overwatered for the whole season. Yup. Works pretty great. Kinda of expensive to get set up if you follow his recommendations for building soil. But generally intensive planting is a great idea for smaller backyard gardens. Just make sure to compost so you have a source of cheap fertilizer to renew the nutrients in the soil.
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Jan 2, 2019 01:05
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Crakkerjakk posted:Just make sure to compost so you have a source of cheap fertilizer to renew the nutrients in the soil. Yeah that's exactly what I'm worried about, esp. after the heartbreak of this past year's garden. I may take the lazy way out and just buy fertilizer instead.
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Jan 2, 2019 03:10
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