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ThePopeOfFun posted:That’s handy. Going to write an angry letter about putting it on the box. Pretty sure it legally has to be on there in the US. It's like nutrition facts. Usually it's right on the front, but it might be on the back-it should say 'Guaranteed Analysis.' It has to list NPK, usually it will also list what the Nitrogen source is (urea vs. ammonium nitrate) and may also list any other micronutrients, but I don't think it has to.
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Jun 6, 2023 17:41
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Chad Sexington posted:guess peas are more sensitive Pole beans don't give a drat about much. Just keep them picked and you can grow a wall of ball eating bush just about every time on trellis/support. Chipmunks are funny to watch once or twice but they are incredibly destructive to plants. As you mentioned it can be particularly aggravating when you put in some nice perennials, bulbs or whatever, and then riiiiiiiight as they start to flower the first (or worse second, third, etc) year they just drop dead and brown almost overnight. We have coyotes all around us along with a pretty stout feral cat population that ebbs and flows through the years so thankfully squirrels, 'yotes, Chip and Dale, cats... they all kind of do their own fighting for us.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:58
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Shifty Pony posted:I can assure you they are not too cute to kill. The sad part is, there is a good amount of red tail hawks around my yard, yet these guys are keeping their populations high, it seems.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:20
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I'm buying a hunting slingshot for squirrels. We have these big, arrogant bastards called fox squirrels in the city. Their size will make them all the easier to hit. Just making sure, but this rosemary is dead, right? It's part of my housemate's "neglect" pile I'm about throw out.  Also, I went down the "do nothing" route and the true leaves spawned on the side of the sproutling instead of between the cotyledons. 
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Jun 6, 2023 21:40
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No way I could kill a squirrel. I have a hard enough time with hornworms. Distraction crops it is.
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Jun 6, 2023 23:32
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Exclusion is really the only way to go with squirrels because they love love love spoiling crops by taking a bite or two out of every single unripe fruit
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Jun 6, 2023 23:47
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Organic Lube User posted:No way I could kill a squirrel. I have a hard enough time with hornworms. Thing is killing them doesn't actually help anyway. At least not around here......more will come to replace them. It's all about mitigation.
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Jun 7, 2023 00:02
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We planted a multi grafted peach / plum / nectarine tree this winter. Which was very wet. Just the peach leaves have developed brown spots. Is there anything I can do besides reduce watering?  Unaffected plum leaves 
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Jun 7, 2023 03:07
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Spikes32 posted:We planted a multi grafted peach / plum / nectarine tree this winter. Which was very wet. Just the peach leaves have developed brown spots. Is there anything I can do besides reduce watering? You can spray for it (can't remember exactly what-some sort of copper based fungicide I imagine) but once you see it its already too late-you can't kill the existing black spots, only prevent it from spreading further. You also have to spray for it like every week or every time it rains. It's one of those things that crazy rose people with sickly, overbred hybrid tea roses will try to fight and everyone else just accepts as an unavoidable fact of life. My old fashioned roses get it on their new growth every spring, drop some of their leaves, grow new leaves and keep on truckin' like nothing happened. Pruning for better air circulation, mulching to prevent it from splashing up off the ground, removing fallen leaves, and watering from the base of the plant are really the only cultural things you can do. Even so, they are more 'hopeful mitigation' than a real solution but they are good practice anyway.
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Jun 7, 2023 03:28
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super lazy garden begins now with two sweet basil, a genovese basil, thai holy basil, cilantro, and a shishito pepper.
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Jun 7, 2023 03:31
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That Old Ganon posted:Just making sure, but this rosemary is dead, right? It's part of my housemate's "neglect" pile I'm about throw out. very dead As that label says, rosemary is evergreen so its probably been dead for a while if it looks like that. In my hot climate it stays green even with zero water for half the year. edit: in the ground that is, growing rosemary in a pot would probably need more water than that drk fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jun 7, 2023 |
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Jun 7, 2023 03:34
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Thanks we drip water the tree and it's fairly spread out in it's branches so we'll just hope it makes it to next year.
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Jun 7, 2023 03:36
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You should be able to find a cheap sulfur spray if you want to tip the scales in your favor. My mother in law fought it for ages on her pear trees and it helped her out a lot.
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Jun 7, 2023 03:54
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Pretty sure it legally has to be on there in the US. It's like nutrition facts. Usually it's right on the front, but it might be on the back-it should say 'Guaranteed Analysis.' It has to list NPK, usually it will also list what the Nitrogen source is (urea vs. ammonium nitrate) and may also list any other micronutrients, but I don't think it has to. None of the boxes in the store explained that the NPK ratio is in relation to a pound of the given fertilizer. Edit: what I mean is the instructions say “use a teaspoon per X amount of water.” But that doesn’t explain how to convert NPK to weight, or that the ratio refers to P2O5 and not actually P, etc. ThePopeOfFun fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jun 7, 2023 |
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Jun 7, 2023 04:13
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ThePopeOfFun posted:None of the boxes in the store explained that the NPK ratio is in relation to a pound of the given fertilizer. Isn’t it just a percentage? That’s what I’ve always assumed. If you have 100 g of triple 13, you get 13 grams of each, right? I think it’s pretty unit agnostic.
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Jun 7, 2023 04:29
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I dunno i just grabbed the box off the shelf and I’m pretty dumb! If it’s by weight why are we using teaspoons????
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Jun 7, 2023 04:37
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I thought the weight based fertilizer recommendations were for farming. Mostly the same for INCHES OF loving RAIN. What is this? As a home gardener in arizona. 1 the education system is so bad a I don't know what an inch is and 2 it doesn't rain here and it's certainly not an inch. Any who, yeah, I thought it was weight based per acre of crop for farmers.and some special fertilizer machine. I've just been using low grade liquid fertilizer and do it every other week because I'm in cloth pots. This is the best I can gather how to do it based on what I've read, seen.
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Jun 7, 2023 15:42
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sterster posted:I thought the weight based fertilizer recommendations were for farming. Mostly the same for INCHES OF loving RAIN. What is this? As a home gardener in arizona. 1 the education system is so bad a I don't know what an inch is and 2 it doesn't rain here and it's certainly not an inch. The fertilizer numbers are indeed a percentage by weight: https://www.ncagr.gov/cyber/kidswrld/plant/label.htm#:~:text=All%20fertilizer%20labels%20have%20three,)%20%2D%20potassium(K)). The numbers on the bag are percentages and have nothing to do with acres or pounds or machines or anything. You get fertilizer recommendations based on a soil test your county extension service does, those say ‘add 1000 pounds of nitrogen per acre.’ So you get a bag of 42-0-0 which is 42% nitrogen, so you need 2.38 pounds of that fertilizer to get one pound of nitrogen.Therefore you put down 2380# of that fertilizer per acre. Since your yard probably isn’t measured in acres, you can do some math and break it down to whatever is a useful scale for you-43,560 sq ft per acre, so 1000lb of nitrogen per acre turns into .02 pounds of nitrogen per square foot or .05 pounds of 42-0-0 fertilizer per square foot, or about half a pound per 100 sq ft, 5 pounds per thousand sq/ft.
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Jun 7, 2023 16:34
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ThePopeOfFun posted:% per lb "Percent per pound" isn't really a thing. % would be % for any unit. If something is 20% nitrogen, a pound of that fertilizer contains 0.2 lbs of nitrogen. A gram of that fertilizer would contain 0.2 grams of nitrogen. A metric fuckload of that fertilizer would contain 0.2 metric fuckloads of nitrogen. For a home garden, application rates per acre aren't necessarily as useful (even scaled down) as they are for a farm. On a farm, fertilizer would often be broadcast across the surface of a field, so the spaces between rows would see just as much fertilizer as the crops themselves. If you're directly applying fertilizer to each individual plant, you won't need as much fertilizer as if you're drenching your whole garden with it.
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Jun 7, 2023 17:22
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:An inch of rain is just that-a theoretical 1” deep layer of water. I do appreciate you going over this. Especially for the Fertilizer stuff. I guess my point is that. For home gardeners as you mentioned both in fertilizer and for watering we are not doing acres and in Az at least SHOULDN'T be using sprinklers. There has to be a better way to communicate these ideas. Ideally something in the metric system. For watering I do remember coming across those type of calculation and how I ultimately set up my drip emitter g/ph and run times. Things are so widely different for each garden at least for watering. I feel like you take the advice as a starting point and then adjust based on your needs. Idk how much this post actually contributed to the convo but... yeah...
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Jun 7, 2023 17:57
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sterster posted:I do appreciate you going over this. Especially for the Fertilizer stuff. I guess my point is that. For home gardeners as you mentioned both in fertilizer and for watering we are not doing acres and in Az at least SHOULDN'T be using sprinklers. There has to be a better way to communicate these ideas. Ideally something in the metric system. For watering I do remember coming across those type of calculation and how I ultimately set up my drip emitter g/ph and run times. The best gardening advice is always local, ask your local master gardeners, ask your local county extension agent, find books written for your local climate. As home gardeners we can pay attention to each individual plant in a way that a farmer can’t. They have to work on broad averages that are going to mostly work for every plant in a giant field that may have different conditions within that field. So yeah, pay attention to your plants and what it seems like they need, don’t just blindly apply X pounds of nitrogen per acre because the soil test said to-if your plants are happy and healthy they might not need it! E: a lot of those recommendations are about maximizing yields and profits, which again may not be necessary or desired in a home garden. You can grow all your vegetables with basically no input costs (fertilizer) but you probably won’t get as much production as you would if you really pushed them with regular water and feeding. But that might be fine! You might not want to spend any money on your garden on not want to use chemical fertilizers, and you don’t have to. Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jun 7, 2023 |
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Jun 7, 2023 18:06
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sterster posted:I do appreciate you going over this. Especially for the Fertilizer stuff. I guess my point is that. For home gardeners as you mentioned both in fertilizer and for watering we are not doing acres and in Az at least SHOULDN'T be using sprinklers. There has to be a better way to communicate these ideas. Ideally something in the metric system. For watering I do remember coming across those type of calculation and how I ultimately set up my drip emitter g/ph and run times. Your county ag extension has a master gardener program that addresses all of these things in specifics for the home gardener. So all of what you're asking about already exists. They undoubtedly have a master gardener's manual specifically for your state/area/climate that they use as instructional materials that you can read through and/or use like an encyclopedia to looks things up as-needed. I have the one for my state and it's invaluable.
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Jun 7, 2023 18:17
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I've got some junebearing strawberry last summer from Costco in the 2 gal pot it came in, and they aren't flowering and theyre looking sad. I couldn't remember what kind they were so I decided to seperate them since they were looking crowded. Well the label was buried in the soil and what was originally 3 plants last year had become one of the most rootbound messes I have ever seen. I seperated 34!!!!! crowns out of the pot  They're "bubbleberry"
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Jun 7, 2023 20:29
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sterster posted:I do appreciate you going over this. Especially for the Fertilizer stuff. I guess my point is that. For home gardeners as you mentioned both in fertilizer and for watering we are not doing acres and in Az at least SHOULDN'T be using sprinklers. There has to be a better way to communicate these ideas. Ideally something in the metric system. For watering I do remember coming across those type of calculation and how I ultimately set up my drip emitter g/ph and run times. Here ya go https://www.sensorsone.com/length-width-and-height-to-volume-calculator/ That should give you a gallon target for a given amount of space and a rain equivalent. I feel like a lot of this is mildly inconvenient but honestly part of it is that most people kind of develop an intuition instead of trying to become numbers perverts. I water an amount that feels right and if the plants look sad and droopy I water more and if they're yellowing instead I water less. Same with fertilizer, I follow the instructions on the bag and if things aren't growing as well I shift the strategy. Alucard fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jun 7, 2023 |
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Jun 7, 2023 23:40
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Alucard posted:Here ya go Sorry no we need to perfect the gardening algorithm
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Jun 8, 2023 00:06
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Sorry no we need to perfect the gardening algorithm 
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Jun 8, 2023 00:30
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Alucard posted:Here ya go So, I started gardening this year in very short time and there was no intuition. I've always been a number person and I'm okay with doing it that way. If someone else has figured out that running a .5 gallon/hr emitter for approximately 23.33 (repeating of course) min when humidity and wind are x and y to me that's a short cut. I used the Pythagoras theorem to order the right size shade cloth for crying out loud. Idk numbers make my life easier by taking away my opportunity to gently caress poo poo up. My cooking skills started so rigged and recipe strict. Now I've learned what does and doesn't really mater and have no problem winging poo poo. Give it time and I'll get there.
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Jun 8, 2023 06:51
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sterster posted:If someone else has figured out that running a .5 gallon/hr emitter for approximately 23.33 (repeating of course) min when humidity and wind are x and y to me that's a short cut. If you're trying to be scientific about how much water you need to offset evaporation you'll also need to know the temperature  .The reality is that there are too many variables for anybody to tell you exactly how much to water or to fertilize for optimal results on a home garden scale. In addition to climate, different soil types retain or shed water differently. A large adult plant uses more water than a little seedling. A squash plant needs a ton more water than a cactus. Different varieties of the "same" crop can have different watering needs. One corner of your garden might even have different watering needs from another due to differences in drainage. Containers dry out quicker than raised beds, which dry out quicker than in-ground gardens. Timing of watering makes a difference too. Watering in the morning is more effective than watering at the hottest part of the day. If you heavily water a tomato plant after a dry period, all the fruit can split. Blossom end rot is directly caused by a calcium deficiency, but the root cause is usually improper watering even when the soil has plenty of calcium. It's not just water, differences in your soil type and soil biology can affect nutrient uptake - even if the actual nutrient content is identical. Different crops need different nutrients at different stages of growth. The best anybody's gonna be able to do is give rough guidelines as a starting point, like "an inch or 2 of rain in a week is usually sufficient" or "corn is a heavy feeder, and you should fertilize at these particular stages". From there it's all about learning how to tell if your plants need more (or less) water by looking at things like drooping leaves, and learning to tell if your soil is moist enough by checking a couple inches below the surface. Same thing with fertilizer - you might start with a rough ballpark application rate, but if your leaves show signs of say a nitrogen deficiency, you'll still need to adjust from there.
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Jun 8, 2023 11:42
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Yeah plants don't really conform to numbers. But hell, even intuition born of gardening experience is kind of a joke. You gently caress up one specific way one year and the next year you compensate for it and gently caress things up in a new way. Or something does great and you try and roll it back exactly the same way and it's a huge failure the next year. Kind of like a microcosm of life, really.
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Jun 8, 2023 12:32
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I disagree - numbers can give a starting point to work from. I've taken the time this year to convert some various fertilizers I have to g/sqft, which has been pretty useful. I'm not applying exactly that amount, but it lets me have an idea of how much I need to put where. A little fun addition is that every single granular fertilizer I've checked for density has been 1g/ml, so that makes things easy. Turns out that going from pounds per acre to ml per square foot is close enough justmoving the decimal point. Watering, unfortunately, can't be a numbers thing. Add water til ground wet.
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Jun 8, 2023 13:54
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I just use organic fertilizer and compost. You can never have too much compost, and organic fertilizer is REALLY hard to over-do.
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Jun 8, 2023 23:18
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I've been using a tsp (5ml) of cal-mag and foxfarm liquid fertilizers into a gallon of water every week for my balcony self-wicking container peppers and they're doing incredibly well this year. Started them all from seed back in January shortly after I moved into this place because I've got a south side balcony.  The Cha-Cha is starting to produce a ton of peppers already with the tiger bloom stuff.  Also, that Earth box is incredible for patio gardening, it holds an entire 2 cu.ft. bag of soil and a 3 gal water reservoir. I put some mycorrhizae and fertilizer in the soil before sealing it with the plastic liner. I've only had to add water once since April.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:30
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Current garden battles as of this morning: * A fungus or downy mildew on my sunflowers * Squirrel or bird stealing ripe strawberries * Aphids coming hard for my first tomatoes * Bees not pollinating my squash
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Jun 9, 2023 14:32
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I found some ladybug larvae stalking my tomatoes  I will ask if they’d be willing to send a delegation your way. I have my first jalapeño and bell pepper coming in. Tomatoes are flowering. I moved my squash during the heat of the day which was stupid and it was very unhappy, but it remains alive. I think my soil is not sandy enough for them. Got a net around my strawbs pot, a cage over my herb seedlings pot and got some string trellis going for the beans. My leeks and carrots are looking not so happy. Lemon drops and anaheims look stressed, I think because they got a lot of water and yesterday was not very hot. The lemon drops I have in a pot that dries out fast look way healthier.
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Jun 9, 2023 14:55
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I found some ladybug larvae stalking my tomatoes How kind! I think I am winning the fight against the aphids because they are little bitches. The other problems are tougher. If one is to net up strawberries, is it bird netting? Not sure if it's squirrels/chipmunks or birds after my strawberries. I did just plop my wireless garden cam in that bed to see if I can catch anybody. Only consistent residents so far are robins.
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Jun 9, 2023 15:01
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I just threw some home depot “rodent netting” around the pot. It is hard to work with, plastic, and won’t be gentle if something gets caught so I’m being watchful. My fatger accidentally killed a bull snake with this stuff when I was a lid and I am loathe to repeat that. Alas, we have more squirrels than I have ever seen this year and they love digging the hell out of my pots!
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Jun 9, 2023 15:13
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my "to kill" list keeps expanding. I put up stout woven netting over the blackberries and one day later there's a squirrel trapped inside of it. It had chewed a hole in the netting to get at an empty 5 gallon bucket, probably because a similar bucket had sunflower seeds in it the other week. Additionally the fuckers are chowing down on the unripe fruit in the peach tree to the point that the peach bits under the tree are starting to look like mulch. I don't want to have to set traps but there doesn't seem to be much choice, at least to take out the most aggressively destructive members of the local rodent population.
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Jun 9, 2023 15:36
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Nail the first one to the fence by its tail as a warning.
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Jun 9, 2023 16:17
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I have a squirrel dog so my black berries are safe but he also digs holes obsessively so my yard is a dirt patch. Yesterday he pulled up a freshly transplanted zinnia… he’s lucky I love him. I pulled up most of my cucumbers today (zone 8b Georgia so they were already about done), they were starting to look sickly and I found they had Root Knot Nematode. I ordered some beneficial nematodes to apply this summer so maybe I can get a handle in the problem. Anyone have advice?
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Jun 9, 2023 17:03
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Garlic scapes!  One of almost 20 Voodoo Lilys. Eight or so have broken soil surface so far Three are outside in the garden already. Its gonna be fun to watch them grow, there are several varieties.  Everything else is moving kind of slowly.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:04
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