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I've excised a couple dozen already from my yard. They're going nuts this year here too. I'm just happy that most of the plants I've planted are growing. I should have greens ready to eat in a couple weeks at most, and the peas and beans are starting to go nuts. Tomatoes were unhappy to be kept inside too long, but they've mostly taken hold and are hanging in there. All the rest of my peppers are going outside tomorrow. Great time of year.
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May 22, 2019 19:49
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:That's just a trimmed blueberry bush from a big box store Yeah I know. I’m just saying that their big box store has cheaper plants with more foliage than my big box stores or retail nurseries.
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May 22, 2019 22:05
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I FINALLY got my garden ready for planting (minus some weeding, but I'll do that and lay some mulch this weekend).    A brief history of my ugly, DIY, crooked garden. I built the two raised beds about five years ago. I have no carpentry skill and was winging it but it turned out pretty well. I did a bad job building supports for it though so after a couple of years it was falling and coming apart. Last year I tore up what was left of it and built new beds with more support and screws instead of nails, but I stupidly tried to drop them into the existing dirt mounds and the result is they're all uneven and lopsided. Once the surrounding grass grew out it wasn't too obvious unless you look close though. I just added the middle part (which is all kinds of uneven) and the cross patterns (which are surprisingly pretty uniform and even). The 4 big trestles used to be 2 folding/standing ones that have started to fall apart so I decided to separate them and line them up like that with an old paving stone in the center so I can grow tomatoes cleaner than usual and have easy access to prune and pick them. The fence was a necessary and effective means to stop deer and such tearing my garden apart every year, but I'm worried it will make getting at the far squares difficult. I might expand the fence or I might just leave the center squares empty so I can step and kneel in them like with the paving stone on the other bed. It ain't pretty but its more or less how I pictured it in my head and I'm have big hopes for this season. Unfortunately I planted way too later this year and decided to just skip buying new seeds and just buy big box plants. I'll probably do that this weekend/next week depending on weather. Memorial Day is generally the earliest I get stuff in the ground that lives most years. I do have some seedlings from old seed packets and fresh peppers that look solid but don't look ready to plant. Maybe the peppers or tall tomatoes will be by next week. Not sure, but I'm trying to be conservative with them since I always end up killing my seedlings when hardening/planting.  
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May 23, 2019 00:01
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When you put those tomatoes out make sure to bury the stems deep. They're quite leggy but that will turn to root if it's in the dirt. I like the garden personally. Looks sturdy.
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May 23, 2019 00:12
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Its decently sturdy. Its just all mismatched pieces and uneven angles. The patchwork result of years of trial and error. But you can't really see that with the fence up unless you're in it and looking. So who cares, right?
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May 23, 2019 00:20
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Y’all ever see a variegated pepper before? https://m.imgur.com/gallery/6b1Vn1r
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May 23, 2019 00:21
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 I was going to include this image earlier when I posted about haskap but I couldn’t find it then. It shows the structure of the honey berry. They are double‐skinned, with two berrylets† inside a pod†. † Not technical terms
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May 23, 2019 08:49
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Platystemon posted:
It's like someone asked Georgia O'Keeffe to paint a blueberry bush
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May 23, 2019 12:22
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Hubis posted:It's like someone asked Georgia O'Keeffe to paint a blueberry bush Ah, the famed clitberry bush.
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May 23, 2019 13:49
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Y’all ever see a variegated pepper before? Wild!
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May 23, 2019 17:32
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what's the procedure for planting potatoes in a 10 gallon grow bag? half a potato per bag?
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May 24, 2019 00:18
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I think my bok choi and rapini are already bolting. Bleh. Maybe I need shade cloth.
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May 24, 2019 00:26
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indigi posted:what's the procedure for planting potatoes in a 10 gallon grow bag? half a potato per bag? Just a chunk with an eye or two. I've done potatoes in the ground but never in a bag. Is a 10 gallon grow bag big enough? I was just looking at smart pots on Amazon for next year.
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May 24, 2019 00:41
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bengy81 posted:Just a chunk with an eye or two. I've done potatoes in the ground but never in a bag. Is a 10 gallon grow bag big enough? I was just looking at smart pots on Amazon for next year. Most of the bags on Amazon are 7 gallon, but the best reviewed ones were 10s. There were a couple 20s but it didn't seem necessary. Any tips? Most of the stuff I've looked at said they prefer sandy, loose soil, so I was gonna mix in some cactus/succulent soil with the regular stuff
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May 24, 2019 00:54
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Hubis posted:It's like someone asked Georgia O'Keeffe to paint a blueberry bush  It’s an equal‐opportunity plant.
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May 24, 2019 05:14
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Our community garden plot that we inherited had a poorly tended but densely packed winter crop of chard that bolted. Lots of stems and tiny leaves. I used that, some onion that was next to the chard and the herb garden to throw together the first veggie stock of the season. Then with the bed newly cleared we went ahead and sowed carrots.
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May 24, 2019 06:15
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Got kind of a vague question. We planted our garden (various vegetable saplings from a local nursery) almost two months ago, in a grid with space of 1-2 feet around each plant. We have various types of peppers, tomatoes, squash, okra, basil, and broccoli. (And a raspberry bush in the corner that we really should probably move because it's getting massive and we planted it before we worked out the rest of the garden space.) Everything's coming along quite nicely, but now I'm seeing a lot of what I'm pretty sure are extra squash plants scattered around. (The possibilities based on what we planted last year: summer squash, zucchini, cucumber.) I'm not sure how they got there. These kinds of plants don't usually spring up again every year, right? So it's probably seeds from the previous year's plants? We did a pretty thorough job scraping up all the weeds and generally disturbing the heck out of the soil to prepare for this year, definitely not expecting to have anything sprout up except what we bought. What's more, I actually think there might be volunteer tomato plants too, though they might just be weeds, they're still a little too small to tell. Generally, I'd say this is a pretty good problem to have. But still, it might be a problem nonetheless. I'm not sure if these extra guys are gonna suck up all the nutrients from the other plants. But I'm also inclined to just kinda let it happen. We lose a bunch of stuff to pests anyway since we haven't been able to invest much in deterrents, so I feel like nature owes us. Of course, if those are extra tomato plants, I don't know if I'll be able to cage them properly. I'll probably just stick a stake nearby and hope for the best.
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May 24, 2019 17:34
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I say let it happen. Free living mulch to lower the amount of weeds and you'll have to water less.
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May 24, 2019 17:48
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After almost two weeks, I got a couple sweet pepper sprouts:
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May 24, 2019 18:50
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Sir Lemming posted:So it's probably seeds from the previous year's plants? Yep. Usually it's from a fruit that dropped off behind the plant and isn't picked up until it's half rotten and spilling seeds. Another source is compost. Both squash and tomato seeds will survive overwinter composting and happily sprout the next spring when you spread that compost on a new bed. This was how we kind of got inundated in volunteer pumpkins last year. We are now careful to bake squash scrapings before they go into the compost. Whether you want to keep volunteers on not might depend on what their parents were and how much space you have to play with. If you have more than one variety of squash they can fertilize each other and the results might be a little weird. Our pumpkins two years ago were Small Sugar. God knows what they crossed with but the resulting volunteer fruit last year were considerably larger than the parents although still good. If the parent tomatoes were F1 hybrids the chances are good that the resulting fruit will be underwhelming. After a couple of years of disappointment we weed any volunteer tomatoes that show up now. OTOH there's always the chance something interesting might crop up.
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May 24, 2019 21:20
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Don't know if anyone's interested but it's been a couple of weeks since I dosed all my pots with vine-weevil-specific nematodes. I dug through a couple of the strawberry pots today and there's not a single visible living weevil nymph. Plenty of dead ones and everything looks so much healthier, I'm calling it a success.
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May 24, 2019 21:34
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Friday's edition of "what's up with these plants??" One of my arugula leaves.  And one rapini leaf. I removed both of these but what is likely going on with these? But in good news, first harvest day! 
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May 24, 2019 22:29
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Hexigrammus posted:Yep. Usually it's from a fruit that dropped off behind the plant and isn't picked up until it's half rotten and spilling seeds. Cool, I'm probably going to try to keep them and just see what happens. Although we do plenty of composting, it's probably not that, as I would think most of the tomato & squash seeds got eaten. But there were definitely plenty in the garden that fell off and rotted for one reason or another. I like the idea of them giving less space to weeds -- there are certainly plenty of those.
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May 24, 2019 22:55
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Grand Fromage posted:
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May 24, 2019 23:04
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is there a composting thread somewhere? I couldn't find it with a few forum searches
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May 24, 2019 23:04
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Idk what those are but they are adorable. Those are mikado baby turnips. That's about the biggest they get. Also some rapini, arugula, komatsuna, and pak choi under there. Not much of each but I think I'll do a garlic stir fry of all those greens mixed, looks like they should cook about the same.
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May 24, 2019 23:50
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Grand Fromage posted:Friday's edition of "what's up with these plants??" What's the temperature been like? Some of my arugula did that and we've had a few days in the mid 80s and it's starting to bolt so I just assumed it was the plant euthanizing itself as it went to seed. But it seems local to specific leaves, so maybe a fungal thing?
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May 25, 2019 03:05
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It's started to get fairly hot over the last week. It's cloudy and rainy a lot, I barely ever need to water anything since it's typically raining three or four days a week. Since it's specific leaves I assume they're sick somehow, tried to remove them without letting them touch anything else.
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May 25, 2019 03:12
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I have 5 pepper plants that are standing up to the summer heat pretty well. I started them from seed earlier this year. Two of the five plants, however, are not producing peppers at all. One is very large and healthy, and was consistently putting out flowers for a while, but no fruits. The other one that's not producing is planted in the same balcony trough as one that is producing, so the two are in nearly identical in every way. Any tips on how I can get those two plants to produce peppers, and how to get more peppers out of the other plants?
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May 30, 2019 06:24
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Gstu posted:I have 5 pepper plants that are standing up to the summer heat pretty well. I started them from seed earlier this year. Two of the five plants, however, are not producing peppers at all. One is very large and healthy, and was consistently putting out flowers for a while, but no fruits. The other one that's not producing is planted in the same balcony trough as one that is producing, so the two are in nearly identical in every way.
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May 30, 2019 08:46
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I believe they are some variation of C. Annum. I started them from seed from the grocery store, and the peppers are originally from Thailand and often called a red thai chili.
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May 30, 2019 11:14
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Gstu posted:I believe they are some variation of C. Annum. I started them from seed from the grocery store, and the peppers are originally from Thailand and often called a red thai chili. You mention the summer heat. If it's very hot---if it's getting and staying over 90 F/32 C for most of the day---that could be it. The pollen of capsaicin peppers, like most nightshades, loses viability when it's very hot, and that can lead to blossom drop. If your plants are flowering a lot but not setting fruit that could be it. If your plants are flowering and it looks like they might be setting fruit and then the flower and surrounding tissue turns brown or black then that might be blossom end rot. That usually indicates that you need to add some calcium to the soil. If your plants are green and vigorous but just aren't flowering, then they might need more phosphorus and potassium. Adding a little fertilizer that's low on nitrogen and high in P & K will help if that's the problem. Or it might be something else entirely. I've grown peppers every year for a lot of years, and most of the time they're pretty well-behaved once you manage to get them past the seedling stage (and it's a total crapshoot until then). But every once in awhile I'll get a bunch of peppers that just won't fuckin' produce for love or money and I can't figure out why.
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May 30, 2019 23:57
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Well, it's probably heat then. I'll see about getting a bit more calcium into the soil anyways, but we'll have temperatures above 100 for the next few months. I guess the goal is now to just keep them alive until October or so when it cools down, and hopefully have a whole bunch of peppers October-May. Thanks!
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May 31, 2019 08:08
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I abandoned my noble organic gardening plans due to apocalyptic bug damage. It finally stopped raining for an entire 24 hours, so I was able to apply some insecticide yesterday. Today there were dead caterpillars fuckin' everywhere.  And stay out. My ghost pepper has started producing fruit, too.
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Jun 2, 2019 03:10
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Got a good load of compost in the new truck. 1.68 tons for $37. It's a shame how expensive these loving things are but when it's good it seems worth it. I'm about a month and a half behind planting thanks to work being out of control but all my stuff under the lights is doing really well. My pepper plants have their own garage frog now. He has done a pretty good job keeping bugs down and I hope he handles the relocation okay.
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Jun 2, 2019 03:58
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We had one day at 80 amidst all the rain and half of my pak choi is already starting to bolt. Which is okay I guess, and the slugs were really getting to it from the rain anyway. It'll come out soon anyway for the hot weather greens (Umaina) to get planted. Far more of the peppers that I used seeds to start both started and survived. Except from the old seeds and crapshoot seeds that didn't start, it was over 95% germination this year. Everything except my herbs are in the garden now and starting to grow great. The tomatoes have enjoyed the warmer weather a lot this week. It is wonderful already having food to eat from the garden. The small daikon (getting reseeded) and Komatsuna are also ready for eating, and anything that gets a 5 year old to just grab veggies and devour them is great. It helps that they taste great and not just kind of boring.
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Jun 2, 2019 04:53
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Anyone ITT do cold weather gardening? I've been thinking about such as cold frames for growing lettuce or whatever through at least part of the winter here in the Twin Cities.
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Jun 3, 2019 04:13
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I went away for a week and expected my in-laws to forget to water everything and come back to dead plants. Nope, everything's gone mental, except the whitecurrants which I'm fairly sure the birds are eating. Don't care, they're cute.
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Jun 3, 2019 10:52
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Put together a raised bed this weekend: This gets pretty much full sun from mid morning through late afternoon. Regular Basil, Purple Basil, Cinnamon Basil 2x Sweet peppers, Jalapenos, cayyennes, habaneros, and 2x chrry/grape tomatos. Not in this box/in single planters: Cilantro, rosemary, fig, and a cantaloupe. Debating: Raspberry/blackberries to grow along the fence. FWIW I'm Zone 7b.
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Jun 3, 2019 14:27
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cakesmith handyman posted:I went away for a week and expected my in-laws to forget to water everything Twas a similar story that had me purchasing my drip irrigation system complete with battery powered timer. A few pages back someone wrote everything you'd ever need to know about it. EDIT: I asked about it here and there's some discussion below until Hexigrammus knocks it for 6. Rooted Vegetable fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 14:51
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