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GANDHITRON posted:I will never learn anything. I can't wait to repeat the exact same mistakes next year, whatever they were. This guy gardens. 2020 was my third year in my community garden and the best by my measure. The weather in the mid-Atlantic was great this year so I barely watered and still got a pretty decent crop of tomatoes and peppers. I think the one thing I learned this year was how to tell the difference between a Mexican bean beetle and a lady bug. Last year I had aphid trubs, so I bought a box of 1,000 lady bugs and they went flight of the valkyries on my plot. (And all my neighbors' plots... you definitely feel like you're doing something wrong when you unleash a cloud of insects in a shared area, but I digress.) This year my bush beans were getting decimated and I couldn't figure out why. It looked like there were some lady bug pupae on the bottom of leaves, they should have been taking care of poo poo. NOPE. Those were invasive beetles. It boggles my mind how much of organic pest control largely boils down to "try hitting poo poo with soapy water and if that fails just flick off the eggs or whatever."  Gardening is fun.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:01
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Annnnnd killing frost. I knew it was coming, but I'm still a little sad. It was a pretty good year. I think the highlights were the eggplant and Italian sweet peppers. The winter will be filled with spaghetti squash.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:14
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Chad Sexington posted:This guy gardens. 2020 was my third year in my community garden and the best by my measure. The weather in the mid-Atlantic was great this year so I barely watered and still got a pretty decent crop of tomatoes and peppers. I'm going to plant my zucchini directly into containers of Sevin dust next year, loving vine borers the little shits. Checked my plants nearly every day for them. When one would start doing poorly, I would check more closely and lo and behold, the little shits set up shop after tunneling through a little bit under the soil. gently caress (a few species of) bugs.
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Oct 5, 2020 17:01
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Platystemon posted:No, I mean, are nurseries that grow a stick, bud graft six varieties onto it, give them a year to form branches, then yank it out of the ground and ship it. Looks like it could be me that's not getting it! The one I bought which I'll pick up some time this month is ~6' tall and ~6' wide fully ready for fruit next year. I only bought the apple tree, and I can take photos of it when I get it. My partner wasn't super keen on waiting so this was our compromise, but she can't take all the blame as I was excited to get a fully formed and ready to go one too. I would like to know where to order the ones that you posted if you'd be so kind to share the website. I still need a pear tree with varieties and if I can order it now for next year I'd be keen on getting that order in.
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Oct 6, 2020 02:41
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I’m planning on lettuces and greens mostly. Bok choy, kale, mustard greens, beets, carrots, and chard. Maybe some broccoli and cauliflower but it might be too late to plant them? Ive never grown either before. I might try some onions too? I’d like to try a semi-permanent border of chives around part of it. Sorry, I've forgotten where you're located - was it northern or southern hemisphere? In our area (Northern hemisphere - Vancouver Island - Zone 8 Maritime) broccoli can be direct seeded March - mid September. As long as you can find the right varieties they can produce close to year round. Planting after September doesn't allow the plants to get big enough to cruise through the coldest parts of the winter. It's also too late for Purple sprouting broccoli but if you can find the right mix of varieties and time the sowing right in March - July (transplant by mid August) you can harvest late winter right through to November. Amazing stuff - I was going to rip out some Red Spear I planted last year that produced through the summer and had gone to flower, but the plants are full of our field bees now so I'm going to leave them. We start cauliflower indoors and transplant them out by late July or late September if they're overwintering varieties. Harvest for the overwintering types is usually starts in March. You might be able to sneak a few well-grown transplants in if your local garden centre has any. Galleon is our standard for overwintering. Our local garden centre has clued into the winter gardening thing and has racks of variety-appropriate chard, beets, kale, and other brassicas on sale. I couldn't resist 2 for 1 when I was in a couple of days ago. It might be too late for transplanted kale and chard to do anything before winter but whatever. If it works we'll be up to our ears in Bright Lights chard.
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Oct 6, 2020 06:08
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Earth posted:I would like to know where to order the ones that you posted if you'd be so kind to share the website. I still need a pear tree with varieties and if I can order it now for next year I'd be keen on getting that order in. Well the photo I posted is from the website of Pacific Groves, but that’s not to useful to anyone outside of the west coast of the United States. It’s a very regional industry. There are some places that ship bare root trees to the home, Stark Bros. is a big one, but I think the particular dimensions of espalier trees keep them from offering them. They can’t be squeezed into a tall, skinny package. It makes more sense to truck them to retailers. Most retail nurseries don’t have very useful websites, but if you call or e‐mail inquiring about their bare root order, they can tell you if espalier‐ready trees are on the list or can be added to it. If you pay attention to the tags on the trees, sometimes the wholesaler’s website is more useful. Rolling Ridge Nursery’s website shows a photo of an espalier apple. They’d potted it and marked it up, and it’s already been sold anyway, but it’s still good to know. The grower’s website tells us that’s the only multigraft tree they sell, so if that’s the kind you want, great, see if you can get it through them as a bare root tree next season, but otherwise look elsewhere. Monrovia’s says that the Garden Heights nursery in St. Louis ordered the espalier pear. Actually, Garden Heights’ website has their own inventory online, with an espalier apple listed. For next season, it doesn’t really matter if the nursery had the tree you want this year. What matters is that they have dealings with someone who sells the tree you want.
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Oct 6, 2020 07:54
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Hexigrammus posted:Sorry, I've forgotten where you're located - was it northern or southern hemisphere? Thanks for the info! I'm on the US gulf coast. One of my garden books for this area said now was a good time to put out broccoli transplants which made me hesitant to start from seed. I'll see if I can find some plants. We still have 6-8 weeks before frost, and don't usually get a really hard frost until mid-late December. I went to try and get some more seeds yesterday and was very frustrated the the seed display has been taken down to make room for Christmas decorations in October, lol.
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Oct 6, 2020 13:09
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In the next few weeks I'm going to add about six inches of soil to a 5 X 8 ft bordered garden. Is the 'garden soil' from a hardware store fine? I'm not going to be living here for much more than a year so can't do any long term soil improvement.
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Oct 7, 2020 17:42
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“Garden soil” is usually code for “part real topsoil, part wood scraps”. For topping up a garden for a year, it’s fine.
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Oct 7, 2020 17:58
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Spikes32 posted:In the next few weeks I'm going to add about six inches of soil to a 5 X 8 ft bordered garden. Is the 'garden soil' from a hardware store fine? I'm not going to be living here for much more than a year so can't do any long term soil improvement. It’s just fine, yes. You could probably go cheaper by getting a bulk crate of it, and most landscape supply places have a scale and will weigh it out by the cu yd for you. Depending on if you have big 50 gallon garbage pails and a truck or not. If you do, this is cheaper usually. If not, then the biggest bags of generic dirt is fine. You can adjust by adding amendments of compost/fertilizers for pretty cheap yourself. No need to spring for the fancy name brand stuff.
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Oct 7, 2020 17:59
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Spikes32 posted:In the next few weeks I'm going to add about six inches of soil to a 5 X 8 ft bordered garden. Is the 'garden soil' from a hardware store fine? I'm not going to be living here for much more than a year so can't do any long term soil improvement. Depends what the soil is like there now. If it's got a bunch of clay and tends to retain moisture, the cheap bagged stuff can make it worse. And if the soil needs nutrients, it won't offer much. I'd amend with manure and maybe top with a layer of leaves or mulch to spend the winter breaking down. But if the garden soil is all that's available, you're still probably fine.
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Oct 7, 2020 18:46
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I went to try and get some more seeds yesterday and was very frustrated the the seed display has been taken down to make room for Christmas decorations in October, lol. How useful. I thought my garden centre had taken theirs down completely too but they'd just moved it to an obscure corner where I had to stumble over it looking for BtK spray. It was worth it though - they had two onion varieties I couldn't get in the spring so I'm ready for January, 2021 now. Feels weird to be inventorying old seed and drawing up planting plans for 2021. I guess my brain is trying to deny 2020 ever existed.
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Oct 7, 2020 19:50
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Chad Sexington posted:Depends what the soil is like there now. If it's got a bunch of clay and tends to retain moisture, the cheap bagged stuff can make it worse. And if the soil needs nutrients, it won't offer much. I'd amend with manure and maybe top with a layer of leaves or mulch to spend the winter breaking down. I can easily get whatever Lowes generally sells. If manure is there I'll get that. No truck so can't get the real cheap stuff. I'm in zone 10a actually so plan to be gardening over the winter so the add stuff and wait 5 months won't work for me. The base soil is lots of clay. There's about a foot and half of mixed base soil plus generic garden soil bags in there right now. I'm trying to make it better before my next attempt.
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Oct 7, 2020 20:33
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So I've got a dogwood that was damaged last winter - broke one trunk, weakened another. Does anyone make a system of straps or anything that I could use to secure the weak trunk by tying it to the main, undamaged drunk? I'd hate to lose the tree to another ice storm or a heavy/wet snow storm. Everything I am finding online seems to be for straightening younger trees (tying them to stakes) and such. e: here's a photo. The red arrow indicates the trunk I'm worried about. I am thinking of just running straps (orange lines) between it and the central trunk. 
FreelanceSocialist fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Oct 8, 2020 |
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Oct 8, 2020 21:30
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On larger trees you just use wire rope. I don't see why smaller diameter wire rope wouldn't be an answer here.
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Oct 9, 2020 00:30
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I guess I will track down some wire rope and some tensioners. I'll have to look around the hardware store for some sort of sleeve or material to protect the trunk from the wire. I kept looking around for an application-specific product for this but wire is probably the easiest approach.
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Oct 9, 2020 00:41
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Dear gardening goons, I could really use your help. We have just begun a major garden renovation and the head gardener has submitted a list of suggested plants to me. We live in hardiness zone 8 in the Netherlands in an end terrace house so the garden area wraps around 3 sides of the house; north, east and south. Some areas of the garden will be purely decorative and some purely functional. There will also be two vegetable beds that I will plant next year. I am an immigrant here and my gardener speaks only a few words of English and my Dutch, while passable, is insufficient to express my wishes and tastes to him. For my decorative plants, I want a very gothic, Morticia-Addams inspired colour scheme, combined with freaky, odd looking plants, and that everything else should be edible or medicinal, preferably native and non-invasive. I like flowers with a bit of height and striking blooms, and things that I can eat. I've googled some of the plants on his list and I'm a bit concerned that our tastes clash. I am not a fan of 70-s style decorative swinger grasses or what I call "granny plants" - hydrangeas and the like. I think there are 34 plants on the list he has sent me and I have to google all of the names, assess if I like the plants and if not, find an alternative by the start of next week. I'm not asking you to research them all for me, of course but if you would cast your eyes over the list and see if you recognise any of them and you have strong feelings about them, it would help me out a great deal. 29 Carex morrowii 'Variegata' 17 Pachysandra terminalis 21 Agastache 'Blue Fortune 24 Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Little Bunny' 10 Geranium endressii 'Wargrave Pink' 15 Salvia nemorosa 'Mainacht' 13 Gaura lindheimeri 'Whirling Butterflies' 20 Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Speciosa' 9 Alchemilla mollis 13 Heuchera micrantha 'Palace Purple' 7 Campanula portenschlagiana 15 Phlox 'Europa' 9 Stachys byzantina 'Silver Carpet' 10 Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm' 13 Verbena bonariensis 5 Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus' 15 Geranium 'Gerwat' (ROZANNE) 13 Anemone xhybrida 'Honorine Jobert' 4 Miscanthus sinensis 'Ferner Osten' 5 Sedum 'Matrona' 5 Astrantia maior 2 Rosa 'Bantry Bay 4 Hydrangea arborescens 'Strong Annabelle' 1 Malus 'Evereste' (PERPETU) 2 Camellia 'Lady Campbell' 5 Perovskia atriplicifolia 'Little Spire' 1 Syringa vulgaris 'Charles Joly' 1 Hibiscus syriacus 'Oiseau Bleu' 3 Photinia *fraseri 'Little Red Robin' 2 Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' 3 Buddleja davidii 'Black Knight' 2 Rosa 'Climbing Schneewittchen'
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Oct 9, 2020 00:58
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FreelanceSocialist posted:I guess I will track down some wire rope and some tensioners. I'll have to look around the hardware store for some sort of sleeve or material to protect the trunk from the wire. I kept looking around for an application-specific product for this but wire is probably the easiest approach. I don't think there's any official manual. Just throw rope and wire at it until it's roughly approximating the shape you want.
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Oct 9, 2020 01:49
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FreelanceSocialist posted:I guess I will track down some wire rope and some tensioners. I'll have to look around the hardware store for some sort of sleeve or material to protect the trunk from the wire. I kept looking around for an application-specific product for this but wire is probably the easiest approach. There aren't any specific application things because they aren't needed. You also don't need a tensioner (turnbuckle) on something that small. Literally pick up the branch and pull the rope through the clamp. The "protectors" are literally pieces of garden hose. So wire rope (1/8"), a couple of appropriate wire rope clips/clamps and a piece of an old garden hose. Plus whatever size wrench you need for the wire rope clamp, likely 5/16". And some small bolt cutters to cut the wire rope. On larger trees you don't even loop them. You use an eye lag bolt on either side and cinch it together with rope and a turnbuckle.
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Oct 9, 2020 02:03
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FreelanceSocialist posted:So I've got a dogwood that was damaged last winter - broke one trunk, weakened another. Does anyone make a system of straps or anything that I could use to secure the weak trunk by tying it to the main, undamaged drunk? I'd hate to lose the tree to another ice storm or a heavy/wet snow storm. Everything I am finding online seems to be for straightening younger trees (tying them to stakes) and such. Sarah Bellum posted:Dear gardening goons, https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3543738
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Oct 9, 2020 03:01
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This past weekend, I took down my modest garden of 2 cayenne, 4 habanero, 4 jalapeno, 8 serrano plants. I'd say I packed all of that in a 8x8 or so garden but after how big the serranos grew and how well the habaneros did, it should've been a 10x10 or something garden. This was my second year of gardening - last year was my first and it went so, so terribly. This year I took a more intimate approach and moved the garden location to a better one and I've reaped some serious rewards (or at least so I think). I started taking pictures of my harvests a few weeks ago. Here's the images I saved - nothing too impressive IMO so I shoved them all into an album: https://imgur.com/a/AZD6b7W Note: That last picture was actually because my serrano plants started falling over due to some erosion from rain over time, so I velcro'd them up to the fence they were next to and I unfortunately broke one of my best serrano plants main branches. It was sad, but I made sure to pick all the serranos off of it. When I took down my garden, I took almost everything. Here's the images of the final harvest:   Overall I think I did really well this year for such a modest garden. From this year including the final harvest, I believe I have (all bags are in quart size) ~6 full habanero bags (5 all perfectly ripened orange, 1 green from final harvest), ~3 cayenne bags (2 red, 1 green), 10 serranos (mix of red/green - I like both), and like 3 or 4 jalapeno bags? They did really really well early on but got attacked by I assume aphids or something as their leaves got heavily chewed during the mid-season. They came back strong for the final harvest though! Next year I think I am going to do something like onions, broccoli, that sort of thing. I also want to set up a water drip system or something so I don't have to come out every day to water the plants. nakieon fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Oct 9, 2020 |
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Oct 9, 2020 07:15
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Sarah Bellum posted:I am an immigrant here and my gardener speaks only a few words of English and my Dutch, while passable, is insufficient to express my wishes and tastes to him. For my decorative plants, I want a very gothic, Morticia-Addams inspired colour scheme, combined with freaky, odd looking plants, and that everything else should be edible or medicinal, preferably native and non-invasive. I'll second the recommendation to check out the horticulture thread, but if what you really want is unusual plants you're probably going to have to devote a decent amount of time and attention to figuring out what unusual plants you want, finding them, etc. The list of plants you posted is pretty close to describing the stocking of the closest Home Depot, and the assembled collection isn't going to be unusual or particularly striking. My eyes sort of glaze over looking at the whole list. 29 of the most humdrum Carex imaginable would drive me insane. Based on what you're saying you may want to look into the many attractive varieties of rosemary/thyme/mint as an alternative to all of the Carex. There are lots of more interesting varieties of ornamental grasses that could replace stuff on the list—Andropogon gerardii 'Blackhawks' might fit your intended color scheme but I'm not exactly sure what a Morticia Addams inspired garden color scheme is since black isn't a color that shows up in living plants very often.
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Oct 10, 2020 02:11
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nakieon posted:This past weekend, I love seeing harvest pics, looks awesome! Good haul. What's your plan for them?
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Oct 10, 2020 02:17
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I love seeing harvest pics, looks awesome! Good haul. What's your plan for them? To answer that, I need to post my full harvest for the year. I recently took inventory earlier after everything got frozen good and nice:  A lot of my foods already include jalapeno/serrano/cayenne peppers by purely dicing them up and tossing them in to cook/saute/whatever, but I want to try something more here for the others and also for the cayenne. I want to dehydrate most of the ripened (red) cayenne peppers I have from earlier this year and maybe half of the ripened (orange) habaneros and use it as a on-demand seasoning by grilling them whenever I want them. I've already had the ground cayenne and habanero and it's quite heavenly on the right dish. I want to try hot sauces - I've never done this before but I have a bunch of guides and recommendations so I just need to buy the bottles and do it. I want to try something like a green cayenne and/or green habanero for a nice, fresh, crisp hot sauce that is also hot. I want to try mango habanero hot sauce. Ginger habanero hot sauce. Red serrano pepper hot sauce. I've got a lot to do!
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Oct 10, 2020 03:37
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Fermented hot sauce is really good. Just peppers + salt + water (+ optional garlic, ginger, etc) + time. Then you blend it up. Just make sure you're only using ripe peppers. I made a huge batch last year with assorted hot peppers, mostly unripe, and it was so disgusting and bitter I had to toss the whole thing  .
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Oct 10, 2020 16:40
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JoshGuitar posted:Fermented hot sauce is really good. Just peppers + salt + water (+ optional garlic, ginger, etc) + time. Then you blend it up. Just make sure you're only using ripe peppers. I made a huge batch last year with assorted hot peppers, mostly unripe, and it was so disgusting and bitter I had to toss the whole thing I have a bag vac-fermenting in my closet right now! Besides a small blowout during the first week, it has a lot of cherries in it so super active, everything has been going well. It smells heavenly when I vent it. modified this recipe for my Chocolate Scotch Bonnets. For vac fermenting you still youse 2-3% salt, but added dry instead of as a brine.  If you are on Facebook join the fermented hot pepper sauce group.
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Oct 10, 2020 16:58
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Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it over to the horticultural thread.Wallet posted:The list of plants you posted is pretty close to describing the stocking of the closest Home Depot, and the assembled collection isn't going to be unusual or particularly striking. That's what I thought. quote:I'm not exactly sure what a Morticia Addams inspired garden color scheme is since black isn't a color that shows up in living plants very often. Near-black shrubs and flowers and bright white flowers interspersed with tall spiky, striking deep reds and purples. I have done my own work on this too, and bought white tulips and dark purple queen of the night tulips to go in a bulb lasagne strip along the house which already has snowdrops, crocus, snake's head fritillary and dahlia nuit d'ete tubers and I also have an acer and a sambucus nigra black lace to go in there. I thought he would just be supplying some interim and background foliage for those and whatever else I want to add in future.
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Oct 10, 2020 16:58
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Had a really good haul of various veg from my garden this year, my first year growing anything (lockdown helped) , and my gardens first year of not being 95% paved (wheelchair bound previous owner). Definitely the surprise win was some red kuri squash. 3 plants gave me 14 in total, all in decent shape, and essentially no effort once they were planted out (other than adding a little more fertiliser when they started setting).  They were fine despite me being on holiday for 2 weeks during the UK’s heatwave this summer. I am now hooked, just bought a greenhouse.
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Oct 10, 2020 17:24
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Sarah Bellum posted:Near-black shrubs and flowers and bright white flowers interspersed with tall spiky, striking deep reds and purples. This sounds intriguing. If I ever broaden my definition of gardening beyond "stuff you can eat" I'll look at this a bit more closely.
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Oct 10, 2020 17:40
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wooger posted:Had a really good haul of various veg from my garden this year, my first year growing anything (lockdown helped) , and my gardens first year of not being 95% paved (wheelchair bound previous owner). I've never tried kuri squash but the internet says it tastes like cooked chestnuts?! Sounds amazing. The greenhouse action will blow your mind with the increased productivity. Everyone post more harvest pics please they're so fun and I can pretend everything didn't go to poo poo in my garden with the end of season smoke and rain
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Oct 10, 2020 17:42
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:Everyone post more harvest pics please they're so fun and I can pretend everything didn't go to poo poo in my garden with the end of season smoke and rain Peppers are winding down and I gave up on most of the remaining tomatoes ripening:  Which is ok because it turns out green tomato salsa verde is great:  
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Oct 10, 2020 18:48
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Sarah Bellum posted:Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it over to the horticultural thread. There’s a black leaf hibiscus that would fit your color scheme that I really liked. We found some black flower callalillies that were cool too, but green leaves.
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Oct 10, 2020 20:19
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I love green and expect that to be the base colour of the garden, with all the goth stuff standing out against it. Good news, I bought a tub of those black calla lilies earlier this year and saved the bulbs when they died back. I might squeeze them into the bulb lasagne or replant them in a planter. They were in a pot in my window in full beautiful bloom for months. This is a great plant for gifting.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:34
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I am hoping someone can help me figure out what the hell is eating my pole beans - specifically, chewing through the vines, often at the base of a leaf cluster. In the last week, my plants have been drat near 60% defoliated. I first noticed something was eating through the bean pod on one side to get to the beans. I saw a huge (5") grasshopper on a vine and figured that was it, but I thought I chased the little bastard and its two smaller friends off with a combination of hitting them with a stick and spraying them with a mixture of neem oil and sevin. I haven't seen them around anymore, but I also can't find any other pests on my plants, and I've been looking diligently. Google suggests a lot of potential pests, including several varieties of caterpillar/inchworm, but again, I can't find any and I have an army of lizards and ladybugs running around the plants. I guess it's possible some of the ladybugs are actually beetles, but every time I think I've found one, it appears to be a ladybug after all. If I didn't know any better, I'd think whatever is doing it is acting with malice. It just chews through vines and doesn't appear to eat the leaves. I wasn't worried about it at first, because I stupidly let the beans grow over one of my raised beds, and they were totally shading a couple of pepper plants, but now I'm worried I'm going to lose them altogether and they've only started really producing over the last 30 days. This is what the damage looks like. I know there are other problems - some aphids and some leaf miners, but I don't think the issues are connected. https://imgur.com/a/9U4wT9e Halp!
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Oct 11, 2020 16:53
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rojay posted:I am hoping someone can help me figure out what the hell is eating my pole beans - specifically, chewing through the vines, often at the base of a leaf cluster. In the last week, my plants have been drat near 60% defoliated. I first noticed something was eating through the bean pod on one side to get to the beans. I saw a huge (5") grasshopper on a vine and figured that was it, but I thought I chased the little bastard and its two smaller friends off with a combination of hitting them with a stick and spraying them with a mixture of neem oil and sevin. I haven't seen them around anymore, but I also can't find any other pests on my plants, and I've been looking diligently. I have those poo poo-rear end fake lady bug beetles and they don't do damage like that, they are mostly leaf munchers.
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Oct 12, 2020 16:48
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I've posted in the past about starting an indoor chile pepper garden in a basement, and it's working a little too well. I started too many seeds and am going to run out of space entirely by December. These are only a week apart.  I'll definitely need to be culling the crop, but I've learned some good things about size needs and growth patterns of a couple new varieties to me, and one of them (二荆条 erjingtiao) has 4 plants putting out a bunch of fruit that I'll be eating before I cut them down for the year (first picture). They grew fast and big enough where I'll be able to grow them in the garden and hopefully keep them running all summer next year. I'll probably get a row cover for the early season to get them to grow big early, and then have them for the year. I also have Korean Dark Green and Cayenne putting out fruit already. They'll probably be in the first round of cutting back to 'winter' them on the other side of the room. Also pictured: Chi-chien (a random variety that I picked up from semillas.de, its maybe a type of heaven facing, unsure though) and Aji Charapita flowers    The room itself has a forced air vent from the furnace in it, and is staying above 70F and from 60-70% humidity so far without any additional help. I may add a heating mat or two to keep the temp more constant in the bottom of the plants when we get further into winter, but I don't expect it to be all that cold in that room. I may add some extra reflective insulation above the lights, but maybe not. Definitely not the most productive use of space, but I really like growing hot peppers, so that's what I'm going to keep doing.
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Oct 13, 2020 19:45
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Jhet posted:The room itself has a forced air vent from the furnace in it, and is staying above 70F and from 60-70% humidity so far without any additional help. I may add a heating mat or two to keep the temp more constant in the bottom of the plants when we get further into winter, but I don't expect it to be all that cold in that room. I may add some extra reflective insulation above the lights, but maybe not. Oh my god, you could grow so much cool poo poo in that space and make it look stunning. I’m looking at grow tents for wintering some of my tropicals and I would loving love a space like that. I’m jealous. With bright light/constant heat/60+% humidity you could reflower orchids and poo poo there. Keep dwarf mango trees. Grow giant-rear end monstera and bushy, red, crotons/etc. Make ficuses look perfect and toss out aerials. Peppers are cool tho.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:37
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Haha, we had to divide our giant rear end monstera this year, it’ll get back to giant next year I’m sure. We have an excess of house plants upstairs, and I hope they get enough light this year, but it’s only an hour or so less in the middle of winter as where we were with them last year. The biggest plant we have is a coffee tree that takes up a ~50-ish gallon planter that gets moved via furniture trolley. We have a bunch of other more generic houseplants that my wife picked out that take up the rest of the window light from west and south. I’m also starting a handful of rosemary cuttings to fill a hole in the landscaping outside. They’ll fill the space great in a couple years and it’s essentially free. I’ll start more plants in trays here in the spring too. Need to get my timing down, but season is longer so even if I default to my timing from years past I’ll have plenty of time. I do admit that I’m surprised I’m getting much for flowering in this light setup. The plants are only getting between 300-400 Lux with those lights, so I wasn’t expecting much. If the super hots flower and set fruit then the space would work without upgrading the lights for tropical plants, but it’s not really my thing. Even with the space I was looking at getting one of those full height zippered grow spaces, but that would just really crowd the plants more than I’ll already be dealing with. I kind of want to do mushrooms, so maybe just a small one.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:08
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Oh, man, you have access to erjingtao seeds? Where'd you get them from?  I've been trying to find them dried or pickled for sichuan cooking, but it rarely seems to be sourced outside of China. I should've thought about looking for seeds, it'd be way more productive to grow those than the boring chocolate bell peppers I've been doing.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:39
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Jan posted:Oh, man, you have access to erjingtao seeds? Where'd you get them from? Ditto this- I have been using Japanese and Arbol chilis in my stir fries where some recipes specify this type of pepper, but as far as I can tell it just doesn’t exist Stateside. I actually just got another pot to grow a bell pepper plant in and would deffo grow some of these.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:50
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