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Platystemon posted:Can seedless watermelons ever compare favorably? No. Seedless watermelons are always lacking something. Most of the fruits that are seedless are less good than their regular counterpart. My parents have been growing heirloom watermelon seeds for a few years now and they just knock your socks off with flavor. Commercial watermelons are all about that weight and not about that flavor and that's why seedless melons exist anyway. That and whiney people (and restaurants!) who can't manage to just spit out/cut out a watermelon seed.
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Aug 31, 2021 17:42
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What would childhood even be without spitting watermelon seeds at your little brother?
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Aug 31, 2021 17:57
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I think you’re right. You sacrifice that middly bit with the seeds where it’s kind of mushy to power up the core and the parts near the rind
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Sep 1, 2021 00:49
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Just picked up a 65-gallon two-stage compost tumbler for free on NextDoor. There's a million resources on composting out there, anyone have good ones I should look to? e: My lovely Home Depot deer fencing has held up all year and I've had no incursions, but I just owned myself by leaving the gate open last night. They helped themselves to my tomatoes and beets and then busted open the fence from the inside like the Koolaid Man.  I did a lovely job nailing it back to the posts and they are now probing it for weaknesses like the raptors in Jurassic Park. 
Chad Sexington fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Sep 1, 2021 |
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Sep 1, 2021 01:08
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Small progress today. Transplanted some hostas from the garden bed at the workshop and took the opportunity to dig out some of the soil to leave more of a gap between the soil and the siding. In their place, I planted some alpine currants. Ended up being about two plants short so I'll pick those up tomorrow. Long-term, I just want a simple box hedge there to create a wall at the end of the "front" lawn. The front of our house is perpendicular to the street, while the workshop is at the far end of the house and parallel with the road, so I'm hoping a box hedge will help frame in the front lawn. I want a clear delineation between the front of the house and the property beyond it. Right now it all blurs together and, to my eyes, looks uncared-for and overgrown.  Next year, I'll YouTube University my way into a skidsteer and then level the front lawn. It is very bumpy and uneven. I also planted some sour cherry trees on the dike that runs through the property. I'm hoping the dike helps with drainage and that the cherry trees help with the stability of the dike. Unfortunately, the end of summer is catching up with me and they are still surrounded by the trees I cut down to open up the garden, so no pictures of them just yet.
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Sep 2, 2021 04:59
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Something dug this hole under my basil. It did it yesterday, and I filled it back it, and then its there again today. Any ideas? No smells, oders, or signs of nesting. None of my vegetables are being eaten since I trapped five rats. Also, some bug is eating my basil and there's bug poop everywhere. Can find the bugs and sprays aren't helping.
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Sep 3, 2021 18:47
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Squirrels? I also get holes like that from moles, but they’re deeper.
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Sep 3, 2021 19:09
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Looks a bit like a squirrel. Also, take pictures of said bug poop. It's probably caterpillars.
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Sep 3, 2021 19:56
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Squirrels are always digging holes like that in my garden.
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Sep 3, 2021 21:48
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silicone thrills posted:Squirrels are always digging holes like that in my garden. They usually only do that in my garden when they think I've buried something exciting while weeding or planting something (they don't want it, but they'll dig it up to make sure) or mulching or...
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Sep 3, 2021 23:07
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It’s starting to be acorn season and the squirrels are digging holes like crazy.
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Sep 4, 2021 15:27
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mischief posted:Looks a bit like a squirrel.  I've been looking for a month or so. I haven't seen any caterpillars.
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Sep 4, 2021 18:33
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I remember someone ITT mentioning these parasitic wasps, but it was a whole nother thing to actually see it!
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Sep 5, 2021 00:47
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GreenBuckanneer posted:Could spiking some nutrients too close to the roots of the apple tree have done some damage to the apple tree? Probably not? A lot of apple trees are biennial bearers - heavy crop one year and light the next. Apparently you can minimize this with pruning and feeding, but I have no experience with that. Brown tips makes me wonder if there's water and/or nutrient competition with the maples. That heat dome we had last June hammered some trees that had marginal water supplies. The abnormally cool weather at the start of June might have done damage as well, especially going from that into record breaking high temperatures in the span of 3 days. We had two trees that are normally reliable fail to produce fruit this year - a 20th Century (Asian) pear and a Transparent apple. 12 apples on the Transparent and nothing on the Asian pear. Usually the Transparent is good for two or three laundry baskets in its off years. Very few flowers this spring and what blossoms there were didn't set fruit even though we have a couple of beehives 10 metres away. Other varieties in the orchard are producing normally, so maybe the weather was wrong when the flower buds on those two trees were at a critical phase?  I'm going to have to pay more attention to what flowers when in the future.So, maybe a combination of timing, competition, and weather? FogHelmut posted:
Sure looks like frass (caterpillar poop) from here. Are you checking at night with a flashlight?
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Sep 5, 2021 04:37
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Re: brown tips on trees were you in an area that had the brood X cicadas this year? All the trees around here are all looking super hosed up after the swarm came through. They lay their eggs in the young tree branches that then die and fall off onto the ground where they crawl into it and sleep for 17 years.
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Sep 5, 2021 16:55
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Chad Sexington posted:I remember someone ITT mentioning these parasitic wasps, but it was a whole nother thing to actually see it! nature is wonderful
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Sep 5, 2021 19:51
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Is there a separate houseplant thread? I got a delivery from a florist and I want to save the plants but having no luck, they appear to be dying a slow death. Got a Spathiphyllum, Kalanchoe, and two leafy plants of some kind. They’re all not doing great after I repotted them.
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Sep 5, 2021 21:07
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JUST MAKING CHILI posted:Is there a separate houseplant thread? I got a delivery from a florist and I want to save the plants but having no luck, they appear to be dying a slow death. Got a Spathiphyllum, Kalanchoe, and two leafy plants of some kind. They’re all not doing great after I repotted them. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3951612 Sure! I can't help, but you'll get great advice there and it might be useful to post them with some pictures.
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Sep 5, 2021 21:08
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JUST MAKING CHILI posted:Is there a separate houseplant thread? I got a delivery from a florist and I want to save the plants but having no luck, they appear to be dying a slow death. Got a Spathiphyllum, Kalanchoe, and two leafy plants of some kind. They’re all not doing great after I repotted them. Are you ph testing their water? Is the soil good poo poo? Some soils come with nutrients in them some don’t. A combination of repotting stress/bad water/not enough or too many nutrients/not enough or too much sun is usually the deal especially if they’re all suffering
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Sep 5, 2021 21:09
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Years ago I read about a lost north American crop called lamb's quarter, and tried a bit to figure out where I could forage for it but was unsuccessful. Today I was looking at a weed that has sprung up a the bucket full of runaway thyme that once housed a now-dead tomato plant, which I've been neglecting since the tomato died in June. And it looked familiar and I'm pretty sure it's loving lambs quarter. It's just a scrubby little thing but I just fed it a big meal of nitrogen and friends to try to get it going and I'm unreasonably excited about this stupid thing E: can anyone id these assholes, which are suddenly obliterating the leaves on some grape vines? And can I kill them with soapy neem oil? https://i.imgur.com/dzfKgmE.mp4 poverty goat fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 00:44
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Also, a month ago I harvested 6.5oz of legal weed from my first two weed plants after 75 days under one of those chinese LEDs, in fox farm ocean forest fed with just maxiblooM Follow your dreams
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Sep 7, 2021 01:13
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That's cool, poverty goat. The lambs quarter and the indoor grow.
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Sep 7, 2021 01:42
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poverty goat posted:E: can anyone id these assholes, which are suddenly obliterating the leaves on some grape vines? And can I kill them with soapy neem oil? You can kill most small bugs like that with neem oil or just dish soap mixed with water.
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Sep 8, 2021 01:08
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poverty goat posted:Years ago I read about a lost north American crop called lamb's quarter, and tried a bit to figure out where I could forage for it but was unsuccessful. Today I was looking at a weed that has sprung up a the bucket full of runaway thyme that once housed a now-dead tomato plant, which I've been neglecting since the tomato died in June. And it looked familiar and I'm pretty sure it's loving lambs quarter. Yes, that's lambs quarter. It's delicious. I snack on the little baby shoots in the spring.
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Sep 8, 2021 02:19
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Had a volunteer potato pop up in my garden that I let grow. Harvested just now and...nothing even resembling a potato at the roots. The plant had the green and blackish blue berries that look like every other potato plant I've seen. It wasn't in the right soil so I'm not surprised it didn't do well, but I kinda thought it might make a few tiny guys I could let dry out as starters next season. Or I just completely misidentified it.
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Sep 8, 2021 02:27
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Organic Lube User posted:Had a volunteer potato pop up in my garden that I let grow. Harvested just now and...nothing even resembling a potato at the roots. The plant had the green and blackish blue berries that look like every other potato plant I've seen. It wasn't in the right soil so I'm not surprised it didn't do well, but I kinda thought it might make a few tiny guys I could let dry out as starters next season. Or I just completely misidentified it.
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Sep 8, 2021 02:30
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SubG posted:What kind of wild nightshades are native to your area, and have you already looked them up to compare to your potato plant? Huh, looks like it might be a "wild wonderberry," which is a nightshade, but is supposedly edible. I'm not gonna try it though - into the compost! It had popped up near where I had some potatoes planted so I thought maybe a little starter rolled away while I was planting and managed to take root.
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Sep 8, 2021 04:13
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Organic Lube User posted:Huh, looks like it might be a "wild wonderberry," which is a nightshade, but is supposedly edible. I'm not gonna try it though - into the compost! It had popped up near where I had some potatoes planted so I thought maybe a little starter rolled away while I was planting and managed to take root. Yeah, there's not enough distance between "Deadly Nightshade", "Common Nightshade", and "Feral Wonderberry". I don't like Wonderberries enough to risk casual snacking. Might not have mattered much if it was a potato. I dug up a Warba (very early) plant today and there's a couple of handfuls of tubers about the size of a quarter and two slightly larger than a tennis ball. From the surface the plants seemed to be doing well. Not sure what happened to the tubers.
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Sep 8, 2021 04:59
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Without any pictures, I would probably guess it's solanum americanum, or American black nightshade. I get this stuff growing adjacent to my compost pile if I don't turn it often enough. You're doing the right thing by not eating them.
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Sep 8, 2021 05:15
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CommonShore posted:Yes, that's lambs quarter. It's delicious. I snack on the little baby shoots in the spring. I live in wetlands and I figured that if the birds brought it into my pots it must be growing nearby, so I had a good look around, but didn't find poo poo. I'd like to get some seeds from it and maybe give over a neglected raised bed to it next year. Pests always seem to be a problem down there, but maybe a local weed will thrive 
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Sep 8, 2021 15:37
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Anyone have tomato variety recommendations? As my current ones wind down, I'm already thinking about varieties for next year, specifically ones suited to the extremely hot and humid summers in NYC. This was my first year starting tomatoes from seed and I picked somewhat at random. I started them indoors in February and put three of each type out in late April, in seven gallon felt pots. Verdicts: Early Girls - B+. I am mostly very happy with these, and will grow again unless someone can recommend a better early tomato. First ripe tomatoes the first week of July, really good yield - three plants gave me just about as many as I could use myself, there was a period of over a month where I was able to harvest some every day. I also like the smallish size of these. My only quibble with these is that the flavor is only pretty good. Better than any grocery store tomato, but by the standards of home-grown/farmer's market tomatoes they were merely fine. Paul Robeson - D. I'm very disappointed with these. Great flavor, but the yield has been absolutely terrible - I want to say it was like 5-10 full-sized tomatoes per plant. I'm guessing this is because they're suited for cooler summers than we get here (this year we had multiple weeks of 90 degree days). They also split like absolute motherfuckers, to the point where it might be a dealbreaker even if the yield was good. Yellow Pears - A-. These were the surprise winner for me. I don't normally love cherry tomatoes, but I figured I'd add these for variety and they turned out to be total powerhouses. They started yielding the same week as the Early Girls did, in I think almost the same volume (next year I should actually weigh and track my harvests), and are sweeter than I usually think of cherry tomatoes being. I've been using them both raw and also halved and blistered in a hot pan, they're great that way. My only issue with these is that one of the three I planted out is weirdly stunted - never got taller than two feet, though otherwise healthy - and they all seemed more vulnerable to pests/diseases than the other varieties. I noticed damage to their leaves a couple of weeks before it spread to the other types. But now I know a lot more about how to control that. Next year I want to have 4 or 5 types. Definitely growing Yellow Pear again, and probably Early Girl, but I would love suggestions for the others. (A couple I've seen mentioned as being suited for humid subtropical and am intrigued by are San Marzano and Mortgage Lifter.) showbiz_liz fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 16:31
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I wasn't hugely successful with tomatoes this year. My early girl died early to what turned out to be a bacterial problem that had hollowed out the stem, and I kind of failed at pruning and training my better boy so the yield wasn't amazing, But every tomato I got off it was essentially the perfect vine ripe tomato imo. e: I've been feeding my outdoor container tomatoes and peppers w/ mega crop 2-part, a high grade hydroponic fertilizer, and not only are they really happy, every one of them seems to have shrugged off its inescapable fungal/bacterial problems within a few weeks, during the most humid part of the season poverty goat fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 16:56
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showbiz_liz posted:Anyone have tomato variety recommendations? As my current ones wind down, I'm already thinking about varieties for next year, specifically ones suited to the extremely hot and humid summers in NYC. We had a good year for tomatoes at the new house. Two hanging baskets, one in the ground, and six along with a tomatillo in a 6x3 bed, which was far too many. Sun Gold Hybrid - A+ - Lovely bites of sweet orange goodness. Incredibly prolific. I would snack on these any time I was in the garden, would pick bowls full for my wife and by late July there were so many we almost couldn't eat them all. Completely took over my tomato bed at one point. San Marzano Paste Tomato - A - Super prolific and the bedrock of all my tomato canning this summer. Gladiator Hybrid - B - Meaty sauce tomato, but not nearly as successful as the San Marzano. Stinkbugs love them for some reason. Rosella Purple - C+ - About as prolific as a dwarf variety can be. Few seeds but very watery so not great for cooking. Super prone to cracks on the shoulders... like ridiculously so. Medium-Rare Hybrid - B - Beautiful slicing tomatoes. HEAVY plant/fruit. The metal t-bar I used to stake this one is leaning at a 45-degree angle. Decent number of fruit, but kind of got lost in the larger bounty I had this year and they also had a bad tendency to split. Next year I'll likely do sun gold, gladiator, san marzano and something different for a slicing tomato. And just keep it to four plants, because I didn't keep up the pruning enough, so at this point it's stinkbug/hornworm city in that jungle.
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Sep 8, 2021 17:19
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I like my Amish Paste sauce tomatoes. I've been trying out something called Better Boy as a slicer and I've been happy with it so far.
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Sep 8, 2021 17:21
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showbiz_liz posted:Anyone have tomato variety recommendations? As my current ones wind down, I'm already thinking about varieties for next year, specifically ones suited to the extremely hot and humid summers in NYC. I've never enjoyed early tomatoes more than the late ones, but it's very nice to have fresh tomatoes early regardless. They've always been a little less on flavor and texture, but I think that's just part of the varieties. I'll reach instead for Mid-season varieties and wait the extra 10 days before getting tomatoes and it's much better flavor and texture. I don't know your climate well enough to be able to recommend but there's a good seed seller at tomatogrowers.com that has hundreds of varieties to sift through to find something you like. All the seeds I've gotten from them have been great and true to advertising. My favorites have been the Riesentraub (cherry/grape that have a shape like an oxheart, but small), Wes (an oxheart), and Beauty (beefsteak A+). I had issues with soil and weather this year, but those have been my favorites in the past. San Marzanos are good, but there are other paste tomatoes that may be better suited. Amish paste is good, and there are a bunch of Roma and San Marzanos out there that would probably do fine on your roof too. Honestly, the hardest part is picking what to keep and what to try next.
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Sep 8, 2021 17:26
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Does anyone have any experience with the more fungal resistant hybrids? I’m thinking of trying plum perfect and Iron Lady next year.
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Sep 8, 2021 19:34
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Sungolds are the best. Way better flavor than yellow pears in my experience.
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Sep 8, 2021 19:43
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So what are folks doing with their tomatoes? I grew Sweet Millions, Pineapple and San Marzano Gigante 3. Outside of some fresh eating, I've been pickling the grape tomatoes with garlic and herbs for use in salads and whatnot, and the San Marzanos will be canned for sauce. The Pineapples will in part be made into salsa and canned with my peppers, but I'm always looking for more ideas. These plants really put out a ton of fruit!
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Sep 8, 2021 20:01
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Same. We need to can more tomato paste this year so we planted a bunch of Romas and they're our go-to for Greek salads. The rest are Longkeepers/Mystery Keepers which be picked before the first frost to come inside and ripen on various windowsills over the winter. A bit more acidic than summer tomatoes but drat good fresh in the middle of winter. Tried a few random varieties from the garden centre just for shits and giggles but nothing stands out. I was hoping to find a plum tomato as good as Sweetelle but no luck so far. Oddly enough the best small fruit we have this year is from a volunteer near one of the composters. I think I will save some seeds from it. I like the idea of pickling plum tomatoes. Might try that with our drying tomato, Principe Borghese. They're an extremely productive cherry tomato, not as good as Sweet Million for fresh eating but fantastic for drying. We have several years worth of dried tomatoes now so even with just one plant it's good to have alternatives.
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Sep 9, 2021 05:49
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Hexigrammus posted:We need to can more tomato paste this year So I've been canning tomatoes for sauce my entire life. But never paste. What do you do/how do you do that/how does it work. I know I can google USDA guidelines and stuff, but I've read those a while back. How does this really work out for you? Because I'm super in on trying it.
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Sep 9, 2021 06:03
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