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It's 72 today. The forecast says the high over the remainder of the 10 day forecast is 52. I haven't even started hardening things off. My summer plants will be inside until about the beginning of May. I put them out earlier last summer and they were stunted by the weather. Maybe if I had a row cover. My spring garden is good-ish, but the slugs are getting my greens again.
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Apr 7, 2022 23:06
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Chad Sexington posted:Anyone else watching the weather like a hawk rn? Here in D.C., looks like we've got one last cold snap this weekend then we're in the clear. I'm off next Wednesday, which should be the bullseye for planting. I'm down in Richmond and also hoping next week/weekend. Managed to get my seedlings outside yesterday while the sun was shining and wind wasn't whipping up too bad. 
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Apr 7, 2022 23:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSIEdfV6MrM Made a video of my California garden. Peppers, tomatoes, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, garlic. The leaf miners got my chard early this year so they look raggedy, I need to trim all the dead leaves off.
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Apr 10, 2022 02:51
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My mom got a package of some lily bulbs she didn't order from Publisher's Clearing House. Not sure why they sent her some, but as she wasn't expecting them and hadn't planned for them, she decided to let me have them. I don't expect anything quality from them and if they don't work out, then no big deal, but at the very least it means I've officially started gardening. And oof, it's painful. I am a very fat man so I have back problems and my back was hurting after just planting those six bulbs. I have been working out regularly for a few months so it's not like I'm completely sedentary, but these things take time. Hopefully the worst of it is over, though. I know I have to do weeding and pruning and stuff but at least for the moment the garden is relatively fresh and all I gotta do is water for a while. So a little bit of a damper on the excitement because you can only be so excited when you're hurting, but I'm still looking forward to this and maybe it'll get better? I hope so, anyway!
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Apr 10, 2022 22:23
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Twelve by Pies posted:my back was hurting after just planting those six bulbs. If you're just leaning over/hovering to do this that's gonna happen. Go get yourself a kneeling pad. It's a game changer for gardening. I have a little bench with a kneeling pad in the top of it so you can sit on it or use the pad on the ground. I don't see anything like what I've got (it's just a plastic thing) but the new "everyone makes one/rebrands one" thing on amazon appear to be this: https://www.amazon.com/Myuilor-Fold...9626493&sr=8-53 I don't care what kind of shape you're in - stuff like this helps everyone when gardening. It gets to be a real strain to be working on the ground.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:37
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I'm in pretty good shape but I still keep a foam pad around to kneel on when planting or weeding in our thick clay. If nothing else it keeps my jeans from getting as muddy. I also wear thick fabric/rubber gloves which is primarily to help with the spiny weeds we get here (thistle, gorse) but also makes it easier for me to rest one hand on the ground and make a sort of tripod while I'm digging with the other hand. If I'm working on a raised bed or similar where the soil is nice and loose, I'll instead kneel and/or rest my hand on a flat wood board to keep from compressing the soil too much. I think a big part of gardening is trial and error and that includes finding equipment that works best in your situation. If anything it may also get easier over time as the soil in the area you're using gets broken up and the bulbs get established.
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Apr 10, 2022 23:51
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Twelve by Pies posted:My mom got a package of some lily bulbs she didn't order from Publisher's Clearing House. Not sure why they sent her some, but as she wasn't expecting them and hadn't planned for them, she decided to let me have them. I don't expect anything quality from them and if they don't work out, then no big deal, but at the very least it means I've officially started gardening. And oof, it's painful. my solution to all of this is to plant them in a pot or raised bed
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Apr 11, 2022 00:00
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I love this (slightly more expensive) kneeler I got from Lee Valley Tools. The Amazon one has a lot of complaints about its breaking. It's important to me that the Lee Valley one folds flat: these things take a lot of space. One of the things I depend on (bad knees) is using it upside-down and using the handles to lift myself up by the arms. Other than that, yeah, pots are a fabulous way to start gardening. Much less lifting and digging. Digging never-gardened soil is very hard work; if you aren't in shape and want to garden in the ground, hire somebody with a rototiller to make you a bed. A bed that's been properly prepared is much easier to plant in. If you ask on Nextdoor or Taskrabbit you should be able to find somebody with a tiller who wants extra cash. Also, I was pulling @#$@#$ Himalayan blackberry this morning, the stem broke, and I fell flat on my rear end down a slope in the garden. And the little bastard broke off at ground level, too. I'm off to shop for a weeder the kind my parents had, the one that has a long straight stem with a V on the bottom. No taproot can stand against it. Has anybody used a flamethrower for weeding? We have a gravel parking area, and I'd like to get rid of last year's weeds before fire season.
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Apr 11, 2022 02:11
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As fun as my weed torch is, a solid glyphosphate mix with a pre-emergent and a backpack sprayer will yield much better long term results. The weed torch fuckin' rules though.
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Apr 11, 2022 02:17
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I recently got a gardena weeder stick thing where its got tines on one end that you stab into the ground around the plant root and then twist the handlebars on the other end to twist it up and pull it out. I think multiple manufacturers sell these. Pretty much acts like a dirt blender around the area that you stabbed. Its good if you've got a lot of weeds since you can stay standing while using it. One catch is that you have to guess where the tap root is or else it'll just blend some dirt adjacent to the weed. I've also used the V thing and it works okay if you don't mind working on your knees. The one I have is fiskars-brand and it's a single continuous piece of metal. Similarly need to have good aim on the tap root in the V, but gets better with practice on a given plant type.  For bigger stuff like gorse seedlings I got an extractigator with bigfoot accessory. It's very sturdy and kinda heavy to carry around but it's amazing for plants that are within its size range (big enough that the plant doesn't just snap off at the trunk, small enough that the plant isn't too established to pull) and it lets me keep my hands well away from the gorse needles. I think there are competitors as well but extractigator already had a reasonably priced distributor in NZ. 
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Apr 11, 2022 02:59
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I bought a Chinese kneeler from Amazon for my mom for her birthday. She did not appreciate this sticker the manufacturer put on the box:
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Apr 11, 2022 03:11
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mischief posted:As fun as my weed torch is, a solid glyphosphate mix with a pre-emergent and a backpack sprayer will yield much better long term results. I don't want cancer though
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Apr 11, 2022 03:39
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no skateboarding EVER! posted:I bought a Chinese kneeler from Amazon for my mom for her birthday. She did not appreciate this sticker the manufacturer put on the box: I think it’s rad that your mom still gets down like that
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Apr 11, 2022 03:44
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mischief posted:As fun as my weed torch is, a solid glyphosphate mix with a pre-emergent and a backpack sprayer will yield much better long term results.
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Apr 11, 2022 05:33
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Sadly, I'm in a watershed leading directly to the beach (like, 10 feet from a state park) so glyphosphate is not in the picture. Believe me, I have a lot of stuff that deserves Round-Up, but not in this coastal location. Follow the label instructions. Or choose something like Vaslan which is labeled for even aquatic use. While I do encourage caution in using herbicides and pesticides, a lot of people are just way, way overboard. Like our "I don't want cancer" person. You know how you get cancer from glyphosate? You spend 12 hours a day for several weeks spraying several thousand gallons of it in an open station tractor with no safety gear. Year after year after year. Lots of people used to do this. Some still do. They're lovely farmers or unfortunate wage slaves working for lovely bosses. Not somebody buying a gallon of premix from home depot to spot treat their yard/paths.
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Apr 11, 2022 15:27
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Motronic posted:Follow the label instructions. Or choose something like Vaslan which is labeled for even aquatic use. Great, so you just get a tiny bit of cancer instead.  Something has been shown to be a carcinogen, but you're like, just smoke a cigarette or two a day, its not like your using a whole pack!
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Apr 11, 2022 16:03
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Great, so you just get a tiny bit of cancer instead. If you want to remain ignorant nobody's going to stop you. If you want to be consistent with your logic and apply it to all things in your daily life you're going to need to severely change how you live and what is around you.
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Apr 11, 2022 16:10
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Great, so you just get a tiny bit of cancer instead. so that's why you avoid all sunlight?
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Apr 11, 2022 16:18
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Something like invasive blackberries would just laugh in the face of an organic solution like herbicidal vinegar. So yeah, you either need to nuke them chemically or really get in there and dig that poo poo out. Maybe buy a goat and enclose it right where the shoots come up? e: Somewhat relatedly I planted blueberries last month and they aren't doing so great. I had to move them after the initial planting when I realized my initial site didn't get enough sunlight because of a neighbor's fence. So all the work I did to try and get the pH acidic there was somewhat negated. I still used a blueberry potting mix in the holes I dug and supplemented with elemental sulfur. But they're just kind of... there. Two of them look much the same as they did when I first got them and the third had browning leaves. Hopefully they perk up with the weather turning this week. Chad Sexington fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 16:25
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So there's sort of two different aspects here: - aquatic life: for example a glyphosate 360 label here has specific licensing requirements around waterways so I wouldn't mess with it in those areas: "This product must be under the control of an Approved Handler when it is applied directly onto or into water, and the water has the potential to leave the place containing the application area" - human health: AFAICT glyphosate specifically has been studied about as much as artificial sweeteners at this point and I personally think it's a manageable risk to use it sparingly and to refrain from chugging it. I just have a little hand spray bottle (and impermeable gloves) for direct application to gorse stumps, rather than using a sprayer. But this is mainly to reduce the chance of spray hitting the wrong plant since it's frequently gusty here. I've been pairing the spray bottle with forestry loppers to avoid getting my hands up in the gorse when cutting it, but I've found that this requires three hands. I want to find something like a swabber accessory that I could attach to a lopper handle so that I could cut and swab with the same tool.
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Apr 11, 2022 16:32
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You could probably do cut-and-paint glyphosate applications every day of your life and not get cancer from it. It's a completely different scenario from broadly spraying it over an entire plot. I've done the latter, with blue dye so that we could see its coverage, and it coated everything. I've also done the former with dye, and it didn't even get on my clothes.
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Apr 11, 2022 16:52
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Progressive JPEG posted:So there's sort of two different aspects here: You can also apply your chemicals to disposable foam paint brushes to "paint" weeds with whatever you're using. This is a great way to hit grass growing in between other plants.
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Apr 11, 2022 16:53
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I'd previously tried using a foam brush but found that I needed four hands across the loppers, brush, and cup holding more glyphosate - with also needing to not spill the cup whenever I put it on the ground to make a cut. The hand sprayer has been an improvement on that, though maybe there's a different method for using the brush that I should have tried
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Apr 11, 2022 17:02
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gently caress Himalayan blackberry. There's a thicket on the edge of the property I rent that normally needs to be cut back like 5 times a year in order for it to not take over. I've actually been having some success with putting layers of cardboard and free wood chips over the areas I want to stop it from immediately popping back up in. I'm trying to get salal and less annoying weeds to establish on top. Definitely have fallen on my rear end pulling it up before, and the birds need to stop dispersing seeds in other areas of the yard.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:02
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Motronic posted:Or choose something like Vaslan which is labeled for even aquatic use.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:34
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I'll also chime in about the value of reevaluating what you consider weeds to be. Obviously there are some terrible invasives that will take over your home and murder your family if you let them. But other stuff like dandelions, wild brassicas, lambs ear, sheep sorrel, etc are really not all that aggressive and can offer benefits to pollinators, soil health, and your dinner plate. Do a little research on what you have growing in your garden and you might decide to leave some around. Grass monocultures aren't of much value to anyone, besides your HOA I guess...
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Apr 11, 2022 17:48
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High of 70 in Metro Detroit today so the plants (onions, tomatoes, and peppers mostly) get a full day outside. Probably gonna frost over the weekend and average last frost date is the end of April so I'm likely gonna have to transplant some of these guys again before they go into the ground. I'm always impressed with the native plants managing our cycle of like 4 false springs and a dozen freeze-thaw cycles every year.
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Apr 11, 2022 17:59
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sexy tiger boobs posted:Do a little research on what you have growing in your garden and you might decide to leave some around. Grass monocultures aren't of much value to anyone, besides your HOA I guess...
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Apr 11, 2022 18:52
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I live on the California coast, and my weeds are mostly imported grasses. There is no HOA, and I have no lawn. Word, wasn't replying to you specifically. That's great that you know what you're tackling. Just see tons of folks in my area of Oregon that run for herbicides at the drop of a hat. Especially concerned with untrained folks using them during flowering season where it can really have a big cumulative affect on native pollinators.
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Apr 11, 2022 18:59
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I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you. You didn't say anything incorrect, and I agree with you that the herbicide-enforced monoculture lawn is bad, especially when you add grub poisons that take out not only Japanese beetles (booooooo) but fireflies and other insects that have an underground-grub stage. On the other hand...  This is the majority of the cultivable space on my .09 acre lot, most of which is covered by the house and the driveway. I spent a chunk of yesterday lopping the rockroses (that's the brush) and, aside from the native horsetails, which are a fair cop, the rest is introduced weeds. Furthermore, the whole shebang is on top of the septic tank leach field, so it's vital to plant very shallow rooted plants, and tilling would be very unwise. I'm going for creeping thyme and maybe a wee bit of tenderly-watered Corsican mint. Everything else will be in pots, and some sort of trellis to
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Apr 11, 2022 19:12
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Arsenic Lupin posted:when you add grub poisons that take out not only Japanese beetles (booooooo) but fireflies and other insects that have an underground-grub stage. So here's the thing: japanese beetles have a different lifecycle than fireflies and a lot of other native insects. The very same pesticides that kill all of these things can be applied properly and at the correct times (which means measuring and monitoring soil temperature) and kill only the japanese beetle grubs. Responsible gardeners/landscapers/foresters who use pesticides spend a lot of time learning about this type of "integrated pest management". I'm one of those people. And it gets really tiring to deal with a certain subset of "organic" gardener type people who are falling into the trap of the marketing job that has been done in this segment and lack of knowledge. I've seen super eco-warrior type groups that were going to convert a bunch of turfgrass to a wildflower meadow (yay!) spend a year an a half waiting to do to because they didn't want to use glyphosate to burn down the turfgrass where it would have been safe, economical and effective to do so. What did the do instead? They rolled out 3/4 acre of black plastic, which they had to keep patching, to solarize the soil. And then threw away all of that plastic. And then had a ton of invasive weed seed germinate when they turned over the soil. And planted the seed mix anyway. And it looks like poo poo.
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Apr 11, 2022 19:44
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you. You didn't say anything incorrect, and I agree with you that the herbicide-enforced monoculture lawn is bad, especially when you add grub poisons that take out not only Japanese beetles (booooooo) but fireflies and other insects that have an underground-grub stage. Creeping thyme will be great in there, and you can get great ones that are decent to walk on if you need to get through it. Get a flowering one and you'll have more pollinators than you can shake a stick at. Bonus for the free smells all year round because it's going to grow most of the year. You can even leave the horsetails around your planters, they won't bother anything, but getting the rest of that out of there? Ugh, I feel that in my back and knees just looking at the photo. I spend as much time getting rid of non-native invasive plants than I do gardening most years, but I may have a handle on the ivy (I say this, but it's still coming back).
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Apr 11, 2022 19:49
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Heh. Way ahead of you. This is only this spring's purchases; the commoner stuff I'll be buying locally. From the top left: a variegated creeper I forget; herba-barona; pulegiodes 'Foxley' (doesn't show in the image, but variegated white, pink, and green). Bottom left: a non-variegated citriodorus (lemon), and argentaeus 'Hi-Ho Silver', which is supposed to have an excellent flavor.  If you like rare herbs, I heartily heartily recommend https://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/. Carefully packed, plants arrive in excellent health. I'm in California, where they are; with the vagaries of the post office nowadays I can't swear to how they'll hold up after cross-country shipping.  The motto on the slate marker is from Edward Eager's The Time Garden, a children's fantasy book about a garden that does indeed have all the thyme and time in the world.  My husband makes a magnificent spring braise of pork chops, braised with thyme and garnished, just as it comes to the table, with chopped thyme blossoms. Motronic, I apologize. I'm not a doctrinaire organic gardener, and in particular I will use pesticides and herbicides without a flutter. I've spent too much time surrounded by "lawn services" that come in and fumigate regularly. It's like gardening: there are services that pay attention to what they're doing and how they do it, and then there are the mow-blow-and-HomeDepot folks.
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Apr 11, 2022 22:45
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Heh. Way ahead of you. This is only this spring's purchases; the commoner stuff I'll be buying locally. From the top left: a variegated creeper I forget; herba-barona; pulegiodes 'Foxley' (doesn't show in the image, but variegated white, pink, and green). Bottom left: a non-variegated citriodorus (lemon), and argentaeus 'Hi-Ho Silver', which is supposed to have an excellent flavor. I'm not quite there yet on my landscape rehab. I need to up my groundcover game. I'm still working on native anchor plantings and friday was the opening day of the members only plant sale at the local wildflower preserve:  But other things have side tracked me which can be found in the landscaping thread.
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Apr 11, 2022 23:45
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Arsenic Lupin posted:If you like rare herbs, I heartily heartily recommend https://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/. Carefully packed, plants arrive in excellent health. I'm in California, where they are; with the vagaries of the post office nowadays I can't swear to how they'll hold up after cross-country shipping. I thought I had gone a little overboard with eight or nine taxa of non-eating thyme but apparently I've been slacking. I've found (somewhat to my surprise) pseudolanuginosus to be one of the most consistent spreaders—praecox as well. Serpyllum dies back a lot harder for me (including cv. Elfin, though it's cute enough to grow anyway). In my experience Mentha requienii (corsican mint) is a whole lot finickier and harder to grow than the creeping thymes tend to be, and I'd be worried about it not competing well with all of the shtuff you have invading there (if not the thyme entirely overtaking it).
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Apr 12, 2022 00:06
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SubG posted:Anyone know of a source for Lippia graveolens seedlings/seeds? It's one of several plants commonly called "Mexican oregano". I can find a couple places online but none that I've ever used before. I was looking through the list on the herb/flower grower just posted and remembered you asking this. https://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/lipgraveolens.htm They do seem to have it. I'm bookmarking it myself. I'm not doing ground covers yet because I don't have everything else moved, but this will be great for next year.
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Apr 12, 2022 00:35
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Carefully packed, plants arrive in excellent health. I'm in California, where they are; with the vagaries of the post office nowadays I can't swear to how they'll hold up after cross-country shipping. Being in California, I'd recommend you check out https://www.calscape.org/. It lets you search for native plants so there will be less water/upkeep needed. Plus the more natives you plant, the more it attracts our native birds and pollinators. You can enter your zip code, or just search the front page categories like "groundcover" "shade" "butterfly hosts"
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Apr 12, 2022 01:57
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Being in California, I'd recommend you check out https://www.calscape.org/. It lets you search for native plants so there will be less water/upkeep needed. Plus the more natives you plant, the more it attracts Wallet posted:I thought I had gone a little overboard with eight or nine taxa of non-eating thyme but apparently I've been slacking. I've found (somewhat to my surprise) pseudolanuginosus to be one of the most consistent spreaders—praecox as well. Serpyllum dies back a lot harder for me (including cv. Elfin, though it's cute enough to grow anyway). quote:In my experience Mentha requienii (corsican mint) is a whole lot finickier and harder to grow than the creeping thymes tend to be, and I'd be worried about it not competing well with all of the shtuff you have invading there (if not the thyme entirely overtaking it). Hey, Motronics, don't tantalize us! Post (the names of) your treasures from the sale! Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 12, 2022 |
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Apr 12, 2022 02:43
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Great, so you just get a tiny bit of cancer instead. Not everything is a chronic poison. Dumbest possible example of this: heat. Hot drinks cause throat cancer, but there’s a threshold under which they cause no tissue damage and there is no cancer risk.
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Apr 12, 2022 03:25
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Heh. Way ahead of you. This is only this spring's purchases; the commoner stuff I'll be buying locally. From the top left: a variegated creeper I forget; herba-barona; pulegiodes 'Foxley' (doesn't show in the image, but variegated white, pink, and green). Bottom left: a non-variegated citriodorus (lemon), and argentaeus 'Hi-Ho Silver', which is supposed to have an excellent flavor. No Clinopodium douglasii? Also I'd highly recommend Richter's Herbs for a Canadian equivalent supplier of rare herbs. I've ordered from them twice and had plants arrive just fine from Ontario to BC.
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Apr 12, 2022 05:48
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