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Neon Noodle posted:I've had huge tomato yields with 5-gallon buckets, specifically the double-bucket design where the lower bucket has a water reservoir and a "wick" to the upper bucket, with PVC pipe sticking out the top to refill every few days: https://www.popsci.com/build-diy-road-ready-garden/ This rules. I'll probably try this out before committing to doing any big construction in my yard. I don't have any big immediate growing aspirations aside from tomatoes, maybe some chiles or peppers. Blackberries are like a childhood memory ideal now that I have my own place but I may be aiming too high as a novice
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Apr 27, 2023 00:41
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I had vincas last year for my summer-long bloom needs and they were super low effort but i want to spice them up with some other complementary flower this year. Any favorites that like the same kind of conditions, have easy care, and bloom as much as vincas love to?
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Apr 27, 2023 00:47
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Zodack posted:This rules. I'll probably try this out before committing to doing any big construction in my yard. I don't have any big immediate growing aspirations aside from tomatoes, maybe some chiles or peppers. Blackberries are like a childhood memory ideal now that I have my own place but I may be aiming too high as a novice Blackberries will gleefully form an unmanageable thicket wherever they get a toehold. Grow the berries, they are good.
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Apr 27, 2023 00:51
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thunderdome winner
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Get some thornless blackberry variety, it's super annoying otherwise.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:38
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Just don't do that if you live somewhere where they're incredibly invasive. Or maybe it's too late to care about that.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:43
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I can heartily recommend Nourse Farms as a source for all kinds of berries. The strawberries and elderberries I ordered from them were extremely healthy, and the strawberries bloomed and fruited their first year. (Mara des Bois strawberries rock, by the way.)
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Apr 27, 2023 02:12
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Just don't do that if you live somewhere where they're incredibly invasive. Or maybe it's too late to care about that.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:34
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I am putting together my new 3-foot deep raised beds and filling them using compost from my village compost site. Sure, it's got some garbage and the occasional piece of glass but it's free! Right now I've got 2 that are filled with nothing but compost. I'm a little worried about drainage though. In previous raised beds I used a combination of bagged soils and I think I remember some of the soils explicitly marked as for raised beds having some amount of vermiculite in it. Should I be worried about drainage with pure compost? I do have a bunch of coconut coir that could probably stretch to amend the first several inches of the 4 raised beds.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:17
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captkirk posted:I am putting together my new 3-foot deep raised beds and filling them using compost from my village compost site. Sure, it's got some garbage and the occasional piece of glass but it's free!
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Apr 27, 2023 16:14
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Btw, what are the raised boxes sitting on? Water will drain better if it has somewhere to go.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:24
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captkirk posted:I am putting together my new 3-foot deep raised beds and filling them using compost from my village compost site. Sure, it's got some garbage and the occasional piece of glass but it's free! My raised beds are 1.5 feet deep of pure compost, and any excess water just spills out the bottom edges of the bed. The compost drains no problems. I use my city compost too, and I would just say the first year the quality isn't that great, it isn't decomposed enough. The second year, after worms and other bugs go through it, the soil is wonderful. Speaking of raised beds, anyone building new beds, and if you even think you might have ANY gophers in the area, even if they don't come into your yard, spend the time to put 1/2 or 1/4 inch hardware cloth at the bottom of the bed. I have a dog who digs after and kills gophers, my raised beds are surrounded by highly compacted paver patio, and 4 foot retaining walls. I thought, no way could a gopher dig under the walls and get in. Welp they did, ate all my kale, cabbage, and made a mess. Now I guess I will have to dig out the beds, and re-do them. Frustrating!
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Apr 27, 2023 17:54
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Btw, what are the raised boxes sitting on? Water will drain better if it has somewhere to go. Just grass that will be dead soon.
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Apr 27, 2023 18:06
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captkirk posted:Just grass that will be dead soon. Awesome. I was afraid it was concrete. See above about hardware cloth!
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Apr 27, 2023 19:30
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Request for diagnosis: I started a bunch of winged beans indoors: heat mat, grow lamp. Got a bunch of healthy-looking plants, grew them until they were getting root-bound in quart pots. Vigorous-looking, lots of root development. Did some minimal hardening off (temperatures inside and outside are almost the same at the moment, so I didn't harden them off for more than a couple days), then transplanted. Almost immediately after transplantation they all started looking dicey. It almost looks like damping off, except a) the plants are more mature than I'd expect for damping off, and b) it doesn't progress like damping off. There's narrowing of the stem, but they never get super thin like with damping off, and there's no breakdown/sponginess of the affected area. The place they seem to be getting affected most frequently is along the stem, but not right at the soil level...an inch or so higher on most of them. On a couple it's much higher, like six or eight inches from the soil level. It also kinda looks like brown stem, but with brown stem it's usually blotchy, whereas this is in nice, even patches. Like one to two cm of narrowing and browning of the stem. And it doesn't appear to spread to the leaves or anything...it's just on the stems. After the damage to the stem appears, the plants start looking weak and the leaves start wilting slightly later, but that looks like "normal" wilting, not like it's part of the same infection. The browning and narrowing also doesn't spread a lot...it stays localised in the part of the stem it first appears in. I assume it's something fungal in the soil, just sorta curious what. The winged beans are in a raised bed smack between long beans and bitter melons that don't appear to be affected by whatever it is. So I have no idea if this is some particular form of disease that winged beans are particularly prone to. Never seen anything exactly like it before.
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Apr 28, 2023 03:38
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Awesome. I was afraid it was concrete. See above about hardware cloth! I have some raised beds over concrete, but I put down a poo poo-ton of river pebbles in the bottom and they drain a little too well. The only problem is that I didn't use treated wood for the 2x2 posts I used for the supports, so the only thing holding the dirt in at some of the corners is the landscape fabric I stapled under the whole thing to prevent dirt from leaching out in heavy rain. I also used screws to fasten the untreated fence boards to the posts. If I build them again, I'll use some L brackets for better support, but I'll probably just go back to using cinder blocks when I'm finally forced to take the rotting beds out.
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Apr 28, 2023 15:05
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Got my soil tests back! I think I'll do this every 2-3 years, and it's nice to have some actual real information. There was no red flag, though my nitrogen is pretty low especailly compared to my carbon/organic content. My agronomist buddy who I bought it from was like "meh could add a little copper sulfate if you want" but he sent me off with just a general mix. It turns out that buying a 100 lb bag of fertilizer from a farm supply store via an agronomist is an order of magnitude cheaper than getting it at a regular garden centre.
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Apr 28, 2023 16:28
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CommonShore posted:It turns out that buying a 100 lb bag of fertilizer from a farm supply store via an agronomist is an order of magnitude cheaper than getting it at a regular garden centre. Big box to farm supply store is kind of like the jump from Williams Sonoma to a restaurant supply store. It'll be less convenient and you'll have to have your own way to move stuff more often than not but the prices are shockingly different and I feel like quality is also improved. We had a neighbor put in some raised beds that spent a ton of money on bagged garden soil. I could have picked up two tons or so for the same price. That's also a really cool resource to have a dirt doc locally, all my testing has to be sent off.
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Apr 28, 2023 17:56
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mischief posted:Big box to farm supply store is kind of like the jump from Williams Sonoma to a restaurant supply store. It'll be less convenient and you'll have to have your own way to move stuff more often than not but the prices are shockingly different and I feel like quality is also improved. We had a neighbor put in some raised beds that spent a ton of money on bagged garden soil. I could have picked up two tons or so for the same price. That's also a really cool resource to have a dirt doc locally, all my testing has to be sent off. well it was sent off, but the turnaround was like 2 days. My buddy is an agronomist by training but he's the soil expert sales rep for the supply company
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Apr 28, 2023 21:07
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Maybe a question for another thread, but anyone have some recommended sensors etc for a greenhouse? Got a small greenhouse with my new place which i havent realyutilized fully, but I want to use it to extend my season, grow peppers etc. Was thinking something for heat/humidity, turning on a mister/fan etc. Even better if it has decent home assistant compatibility I eventually want to run something similar to automate watering my raised beds but 1 step at a time. I bought my place for it's gently caress off huge yard, and want to make it as productive as I can for as little work as possible w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Apr 29, 2023 |
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Apr 29, 2023 01:11
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w00tmonger posted:Maybe a question for another thread, but anyone have some recommended sensors etc for a greenhouse? The only sensor I run is a thermostat to turn on my fans of the gh gets too warm. I just bought some random thing from Amazon
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Apr 29, 2023 03:22
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 I'm growing a bunch of stuff, mainly flowers, but I also decided to go a bit wild and try my hand at some tomatoes, bell peppers and lettuce. Things are going great, I've got these seedlings next to a window, I hope that's enough light? I live in the Middle East so we have crazy strong sunlight but I don't know if the window filters most of the usefulness out. They're at an east-facing window. I wanted to ask about eventually transplanting these seedlings. How big should I wait for them to get before I transplant? How do I transplant healthy seedlings when they're crammed super tightly together? I attempted this with a previous batch and the roots just tore, some survived, a lot died. Is there a proper way to transplant seedlings once they've grown big enough to avoid root damage? From left to right, each column is: Arugula Marigold Forget Me Not Sweet Pea (flower) Gazania Watercress Krim Tomato Lettuce Bell Pepper Random Flowers I'm not too fussed about the flowers, whether I transplant them or not. I'm mainly concerned about the edible stuff. Those I want to safely transplant when the time is ready.
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Apr 29, 2023 08:17
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Generally transplanting from the small seed cells can safely be done once there's a nice set of true leaves formed (not the seed leaf cotyledons). You can try to do it earlier for some plants w big seeds like cucumber or melon but they don't like it. You gotta be gentle if you overseeded the small cells but you can pop the soil plug out and sorta lightly jiggle it around in your hands until the soil falls off without damaging the roots too badly. Then seperate out some of the strongest ones and pot them up individually. Also water them in after you transplant them to remoisten the roots and help reduce voids in the soil. For nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, etc) when transplanting you can bury them up to the leaves and the stems will grow more roots out and give you a deeper root system. This is good and also helps you benefit from leggy starts. Dont let the leaves actually touch the ground though because the soil touching leaf is how a lot of garden diseases take hold. Good luck 
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Apr 29, 2023 09:27
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I wanted to over winter my pepper plants to maybe get an earlier fruiting season, but refused to do it by trimming away all the leaves. It looked like they were going to pull it off for a while, until the atmospheric rivers started to dump water and reduce temperatures. They ended up dropping all their leaves and haven't really bounced back since. We did not have actual frost, though we did get lows of 3-5C for a while. Should I give up on them and plant the replacements I started from seed just in case?
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Apr 29, 2023 17:07
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 Doves have moved in under my garden and they are like nuzzling in a rainstorm and cooing and im like "nooo they are too cute i'll never want to disturb them and my plants will die"
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Apr 29, 2023 19:14
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Jan posted:I wanted to over winter my pepper plants to maybe get an earlier fruiting season, but refused to do it by trimming away all the leaves. It looked like they were going to pull it off for a while, until the atmospheric rivers started to dump water and reduce temperatures. They ended up dropping all their leaves and haven't really bounced back since. We did not have actual frost, though we did get lows of 3-5C for a while. If it's hot enough out for peppers to grow normally, and they aren't putting out new growth they're probably dead. You can test it by trimming it back starting from the outside and the plant will show you if it's dead or not by being either hollow or green inside. Lows of 3-5C aren't great if the plants get water logged soil as well. When you winter them you want to control how much water gets into them as even near freezing temps will be enough to damage the plant if there's too much water in the soil drowning the plant. Nothing wrong with using the new plants and it's better than being frustrated that the old plant just doesn't seem to want to grow very well all year too.
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Apr 29, 2023 19:17
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I am planting some bare root shrubs ( elderberry, serviceberry, etc) tomorrow and realized I need some sort of way to protect them from deer and rabbits. They're a lot more fragile than I had in my mind. I'm thinking of just driving a 3 ft wooden stake in the ground maybe 6in away and then having a cylinder of 1/4" wire stapled to the stake (so 12in in diameter around shrub). Does that make sense or is there something better (I don't want to spend a lot)? Also, at what point can you decide a shrub or small sapling is safe to leave unfenced? Edit: crap, meant to post in landscaping thread, but I'll leave this here since gardeners might have creative ideas too.
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Apr 29, 2023 19:21
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I just bought some pepper plants, in the hopes that my apartment balcony gets enough sun for them to grow well. Previously, I've grown Thai Bird's Eye chilis in pots on the deck of the house I lived in. The plan for these is decent sized pots on the balcony. The peppers in question are: 1x Tabasco 1x Shishito 1x Thai Hot Super (apparently like a Bird's Eye, but bigger?) Any tips for balcony growing?
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Apr 29, 2023 19:27
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A friend of mine made a habit of buying cheap wall mirrors at junk stores, then putting them on his garden fence behind plants that needed a lot of sun. You might consider leaning a mirror up against the back wall of your balcony, of practical.
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Apr 30, 2023 05:15
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Just a little update since a month ago, I now keep the res at 75 degrees with a heater, spent a good 2 weeks pruning anything that looked infected and used azamax and some copper spray to get rid of any pests and remaining infections. I also (grudgingly) started using hydroguard again to take care of any unwanted boogeymen in the water. Things are going a little too well now:   I have 3-4 weeks until I feel comfortable planting outside or setting up the outside ebb and flow. The nights here are down in the low 40s still and the soil temp an inch down maybe hits 55 on a full sunny day. I do have the capability of putting plastic over the garden bed to make sort of a hoop house, and some landscaping cloth to hopefully help heat the soil up a bit. Would that maybe buy me a couple weeks to plant early? I figure if that could work I can take a week to harden these tomatoes off and start getting things in after next weekend before they completely crowd each other out in the table.
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Apr 30, 2023 18:07
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It just sun hailed here in Kentucky. The almanac says last frost was April 20 but colloquial wisdom always says Derby/Mother's Day weekend and it's almost always right. I'm glad my child intolerant little babies are still inside
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Apr 30, 2023 20:10
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Yeah I always shoot for the last week of May to plant stuff out, but I also always just started my seeds that were going to be planted in dirt in cups of dirt. I started these a few weeks late actually, and was worried that they would be too small come planting time. I didn't anticipate just how much more quickly they would take off in the flood table. Now I have the opposite problem of them being ready to go almost a month early, and the smaller ones are getting crowded out. Another month with them growing like this would cause all kinds of other issues I think. It's definitely not the worst problem to have lol, but I'd really like to have a full summer of veggies this time since things got so hosed up last year.
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Apr 30, 2023 22:35
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So, I'm a heckin' plant newbie, but kind of got into the idea via Youtube recommending me some videos on making self-watering planters. I'm in Northwest Georgia, so it gets hot in the summer, but I have a sunny south-facing deck I was wanting to try out some plants on. The kind of planter I was wanting to make uses two nested five-gallon buckets (the bottom one becomes the water reservoir) screwed together such that there's some extra space left for the reservoir to actually hold water. Obviously I need a drain hole so that rain doesn't drown anything I plant, but are zinnias suitable for this type of planting? They're supposed to be easy to grow from seed, and good in full sun, but will the self-watering wicking system keep the soil too moist for them? I ask because I bought a cheap little "self watering" pot thing that seems to be poorly suited for the lavender seeds it came with, as even with south-facing window, the seedling seems to be getting really leggy and I've had one die from I think being too wet and mold getting in the soil (I basically dumped out the reservoir to try to dry things off a little for this second seedling). And of course after I bought and started trying that kit, is when I found out that lavender is not particularly easy for growing from seed, and especially indoors in the kit it was included with.
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May 1, 2023 06:48
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Yeah lavender is a pain and pretty picky about soil moisture IME. I’ve had best luck with it in a pot with gravel as mulch so maybe help keep the humidity down-I don’t think a self watering thing would be a great fit for it. Zinnias would probably do fine. They do well in heat and are super easy to grow from seed, just scratch them into the soil or scatter seeds and cover with 1/4” or maybe a little less of dirt and water lightly every day or two-just keep the soil moist. I’m not sure about the self watering part. I’ve always grown mine outside in the dirt and we get plenty of rain here, but I also have really well drained soil, so idk if they would like the wet feet of a self watering pot or not. Try it!
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May 1, 2023 16:46
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Lavender is pretty fickle in general from when we've messed with it. Geranium, Zinnia, Gladiolus are all pretty dang bomb proof in a container. Pansy is pretty hard to kill as well but in GA you'd want to fall/winter them. You can try Lantana too, they're like crack for butterflies.
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May 1, 2023 16:57
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I got some seeds, but they say 10" spacing? I can seriously only fit 1 plant in the whole container?
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May 1, 2023 20:11
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taiyoko posted:I got some seeds, but they say 10" spacing? I can seriously only fit 1 plant in the whole container? Put more in there now and when they come up, move them into new containers to make room
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May 1, 2023 21:12
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Taiyoko, I assume you saw the two-bucket planter posted upthread? Also, tell us which seed it is, and we'll tell you if it doesn't mind being crowded. Most perennial (thyme, rosemary, sage, lavender) herbs are native to the Mediterranean, where the soil is poor and rains are rare during the summer. That means that they want well-drained soil and no fertilizer. Wickéd pots are a bad idea, sitting in a saucer of water is a bad idea. If you can, avoid potting soils that are pre-fertilized (MiracleGro) or contain water-holding granules. As Kaiser Schnitzel said, putting a bit of gravel in is a good idea. Perennial plants grow back every year, assuming no disaster; annual plants are planted once, enjoyed until frost/they die, and come back only if they reseed themselves. Basil is an annual herb, summer savory is an annual herb, winter savory is a perennial herb. The plant label should tell you which it is. Mint and its friends are perennial plants that love water.
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May 1, 2023 22:02
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Do not grow mint in a 5 gallon bucket unless you are a mint elemental. You could grow it in a big gulp cup and get plenty
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May 1, 2023 22:08
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Taiyoko, I assume you saw the two-bucket planter posted upthread? Also, tell us which seed it is, and we'll tell you if it doesn't mind being crowded. Yeah! That was the design I was gonna go with! I picked up these zinnia seeds, with the idea of 1-2 of each in the planter, to get a little height variation and some slightly different color looks, but if I can only plant 1 plant in the entire planter, then I might have to think about which one I wanna use for this year.  I'm trying to not go overboard with buying a bunch of stuff only for my ADHD to let me forget about it and then it all be a waste of money. I was all "One plant this year, and if I can keep it alive and make it a long-term thing, then I can think about maybe trying some cherry tomatoes or an heirloom tomato for Dad next year, and maybe some other edibles." Also the ADHD thing is why I wanted to go for the wicking planter like that, so that in the Georgia heat, if the brain goes derp on checking on the plants for a day Edit: I bought the seeds, I haven't pulled the trigger on the planter supplies 'cause I was gonna wait for sage garden goon advice. Double edit: I don't know if my memory is wrong or it really is actually a bit colder here this year compared to same time previous years, but like, our high today was about 70, is that still gonna be warm enough for direct sow outdoors, or should I start indoors and do like potting up and hardening off and such before going full outside with them? taiyoko fucked around with this message at 00:27 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 00:22
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| # ? May 29, 2024 23:54 |
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My tulips all died so i could pull the bulbs out for drying and use the space to properly plant all the stuff i had been cramming into the other bed  Did the trim with purple petunia vines so it grows out of the planter instead of filling it up. A white vinca in between each. Garden center guy said 8" of room should be ok in partial sun but i can always take something out if its going badly. Put the basil and parsely in pots to save room in the bed. One bed has 3 strawberries and 3 perrenial kitchen herbs and the other has 6 trial cherry tomatoes to see if i get enough light or not. Tried to give them all 12" of room. Anything that doesnt thrive is getting replaced for the chicory seedlings im bringing up indoors. This roof/hole garden was a ton of fun to build and plan and execute so now i'm gonna sit back and watch what happens and actually learn wtf i'm trying to do and what the space is capable of for future seasons so i eventually figure out how to have something that thrives and doesnt make me feel like a plant murderer.
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May 2, 2023 01:46
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