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Started fertilizing my peppers and tomatoes more. Everything is exploding and flowering. Lots of spider friends, too. BT has kept the worms away. Spotted a big rear end earwig on my sweet pepper plant. Might try the newspaper trick, we’ll see. Gardening rules.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:55
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Started fertilizing my peppers and tomatoes more. Everything is exploding and flowering. Lots of spider friends, too. BT has kept the worms away. Spotted a big rear end earwig on my sweet pepper plant. Might try the newspaper trick, we’ll see. Hell yeah, gardening does rule. My peppers are going nuts right now, check out this Bangalore Whippets Tail that just keeps getting longer: 
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Jun 20, 2023 19:29
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Tell me, what's it like to have temperatures over 60F for more than two weeks? My peppers are doing jack, but at least it got hot enough for my mustard greens to bolt.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:32
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Probably not going to grow shelling peas next year. They did add some color to my elote yesterday so all's well that ends well.
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Jun 20, 2023 19:38
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Gardening is awesome. Just finished growing my first ever garlic crop. Planted middle of last October and harvested yesterday. I got the seed garlic from a local homesteader for $1/bulb. Turned these 5 bulbs:  Into: 
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Jun 20, 2023 19:46
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Aragosta posted:Gardening is awesome. Just finished growing my first ever garlic crop. Planted middle of last October and harvested yesterday. I got the seed garlic from a local homesteader for $1/bulb. Nice crop! Garlic scapes are awesome in soups, and in general any place you might consider leeks.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:01
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Garlic scapes are great, but I'm not seeing any scapes in there. Looks like it's mostly just garlic greens. You can eat them too, but they're not as intense and sweet as the scapes. But they're still pretty garlicky. You really want to use them before they start to wilt, though. Garlic greens (and allium greens in general) are good for continuous harvest during the growing season. If you're only taking a couple at a time from any given plant it won't really affect it.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:27
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Yeah, these are a soft neck variety, so no scapes. I believe they are Silver Rose. Once cured they are supposed to have a 12 month shelf life. So hopefully no more buying garlic again.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:36
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Aragosta posted:Yeah, these are a soft neck variety, so no scapes. I believe they are Silver Rose. Once cured they are supposed to have a 12 month shelf life. So hopefully no more buying garlic again.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:54
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Arsenic Lupin posted:In Zone 6, planting at midsummer, and wanting some fun easy plants: Do you want food or flowers or both? This late in the season I would buy from your local garden store/nursery, or Home Depot if that's all you've got. Assuming you want flowers: marigolds are pretty close to un-killable in my experience, but the only colors are in the red-orange-white range. Petunias are pretty tough, too, and cover the pink-to-blue-to-purple range. If you want to do food, I would recommend putting in seeds of carrots and radishes, which are extremely satisfying: you put visible (key!) seeds in the ground, very soon you have sprouts, and in ~~30 days you have edible roots. Come early fall, put in some kale seeds and you'll be eating greens up to Thanksgiving or so. I think I'd quite like to do some carrots, that's not a bad idea. A nice mix of a couple herbs and some carrots seems like a good, solid place to start for this year. I'm not really interested in flowers or other decorative plants at all, except maybe Harakeke because they are full of delicious candy. There is one place where I'll likely be limited to decorative stuff, though... anyone have any suggestions on good stuff to grow over a leech field that won't hinder the functioning of the field? This doesn't need to be a "this year" thing, though.
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Jun 20, 2023 21:58
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Carrots and other root crops can help your soil unless you're in a clay area and then it gets real Robocop windshield scene real quick. Sad little derpy produce. I have tried using even the "drill" radish variants and clay doesn't care. For a leach field clover loves the chaos. You don't want anything that will set real roots. Main thing to keep up with if you're new to septic is to listen. Even to a new ear if you can call it "gurgling" call someone. It can get stupid expensive.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:16
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mischief posted:Carrots and other root crops can help your soil unless you're in a clay area and then it gets real Robocop windshield scene real quick. Sad little derpy produce. You can end up with biblically accurate carrots:  
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Jun 21, 2023 00:24
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GlyphGryph posted:I think I'd quite like to do some carrots, that's not a bad idea. A nice mix of a couple herbs and some carrots seems like a good, solid place to start for this year. I'm not really interested in flowers or other decorative plants at all, except maybe Harakeke because they are full of delicious candy. quote:There is one place where I'll likely be limited to decorative stuff, though... anyone have any suggestions on good stuff to grow over a leech field that won't hinder the functioning of the field? This doesn't need to be a "this year" thing, though.
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Jun 21, 2023 00:33
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So a robin just flew on down onto our bed of carrots, hung out for a bit then poo poo everywhere around it and promptly fell over dead. Should we still eat the carrots in a few weeks? Or uh... maybe just use them for baking?
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Jun 21, 2023 00:55
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Ne Cede Malis posted:So a robin just flew on down onto our bed of carrots, hung out for a bit then poo poo everywhere around it and promptly fell over dead. Should we still eat the carrots in a few weeks? Or uh... maybe just use them for baking? lmao talk about an omen
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Jun 21, 2023 01:02
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Ne Cede Malis posted:So a robin just flew on down onto our bed of carrots, hung out for a bit then poo poo everywhere around it and promptly fell over dead. Should we still eat the carrots in a few weeks? Or uh... maybe just use them for baking? Dry 'em up and rip a big fat bowl out of it.
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Jun 21, 2023 01:52
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Happy to report I have a bunch of volunteer bitter melon vines that are doing well: Got these two guys that came up among the lettuce and a couple others that are in another bed with the cukes and long beans. They have to have grown from seed that's been in the soil almost two years. Last year we only had a couple of bitter melon vines that grew at all and none produced any fruit, so I had thought that my weird accidental hybrid cultivar had died out. Pretty happy to see that they're still around. And I think this reinforces my belief that bitter melons really seem to benefit (in terms of plant vigor) from working ripe fruit into the soil and then letting it take care of itself (instead of collecting and cleaning the seeds and then sowing them by hand later).
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Jun 21, 2023 22:40
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I've got a lot of those this year. I always miss some bitter melons on the vine until they're bright orange, at which point I just drop them in the soil.
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Jun 22, 2023 14:28
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Dr_0ctag0n posted:Hell yeah, gardening does rule. My peppers are going nuts right now, check out this Bangalore Whippets Tail that just keeps getting longer: That's really nice!
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Jun 22, 2023 19:11
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SubG posted:Happy to report I have a bunch of volunteer bitter melon vines that are doing well: That's cool, I haven't had any success with bitter melon seeds at this point. Maybe I'll check out the produce section at the local Asian market. When we expanded our garden 10 years ago I had to dig out and move a small female kiwi vine that was never very vigorous. The area it was in was cleared, rototilled, beds put in and mulched, and the paths mulched with landscape fabric and wood chips. Over two years later a kiwi shoot poked out on the edge of the bed where apparently I'd missed a piece. I've removed shoots several times since then and there's another one curling around this year. I might dig it up to replace the original that I moved - deer and puppies can be a bad combination. Pity the drat things never flower.
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Jun 22, 2023 21:16
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Hexigrammus posted:That's cool, I haven't had any success with bitter melon seeds at this point. Maybe I'll check out the produce section at the local Asian market. Starting from loose seed, best luck I've had is direct sowing at like a 2" seed depth. Some people report low germination rates/difficulty germinating seed, but I've never had any trouble with any of the common methods (paper towel trick, peat pods, seed trays). But I've never gotten as vigorous a vine out of a transplant as I have from a direct-sown plant. Dunno if I'm just mis-timing the transplanting or some other screw-up like that. And like I said, once I have a vine that's producing I just intentionally let a few fruits get over-ripe late in the season, let them drop seed themselves and/or trim off the fruit and just leave them on the surface. At the end of the season, I pull up the remaining plants and go over everything with a mattock, usually covering the soil with the remains of the pulled-up plants and/or lawn clippings (to discourage weeds during the off-season). In most years this will produce way too many bitter melon "volunteers" the following year. They're easy to identify and pull up. So I usually just pick a couple whose position I like (they're trailing vines so they're easy to train if they're remotely close to someplace I'm already planning on putting a trellis) and pull up the rest. And the thing is that the culls you get this way look way better than any seedlings I've produced by intentional seed tray/whatever germination. Like the radicle (the initial seed root) and seedling stem are a lot beefier. I don't know the exact factor/combination of factors that triggers the extra robustness. I've tried a couple variations in saving the seed. When the fruits ripen, they eventually burst:  When they first open up, the interior of the fruit is all bright red goo, which is what you see on the seeds there. Most of the goo falls off, but the seeds end up lacquered in the stuff. Bitter melon seeds that you get out of a seed catalogue always have the red stuff washed off, but I had the idea that maybe it was acting like fertilizer for the seedlings. So I tried saving some seed without cleaning it. That didn't seem to make any difference. I also tried saving entire fruit and drying them out, with the idea that I'd plant the entire thing as a unit the following Spring. But it turns out that leaving a burst bitter melon out on a drying rack attracts a shitload of flies. So I ended up tossing my attempts along those lines. So...still dunno exactly why my primitive planting ritual works, but it seems to be pretty consistent.
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Jun 22, 2023 21:59
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Hexigrammus posted:That's cool, I haven't had any success with bitter melon seeds at this point. Maybe I'll check out the produce section at the local Asian market.
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Jun 22, 2023 23:12
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That carrot has a fine booty.
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Jun 23, 2023 06:43
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My grandma's tiger Lilies seem to have turned red. They were orange last year. Doing some googling this doesn't seem like a pH thing. Anyone know what does cause them to change color?
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Jun 23, 2023 14:56
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Forgive me for checking -- you did buy both a male and a female plant, right? Because a female alone should be flowering, and I have no idea why yours isn't, but will never fruit without a male. A valid question - yes, we did. Neither plant has flowered in all the time we've had them. The male is insanely vigorous otherwise. We gave up a couple of years ago and bought a Jenny cultivar. They're supposed to be self-fertile. We'll see - maybe this year?
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Jun 23, 2023 15:59
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Okay, none of the labels I put in last fall are readable now. In my life, I've tried: * pencil-on-zinc labels (faded) * stylus-on-copper labels (oxidize, unreadable) * pencil-on-popsicle-stick (good for one season) * Sharpie-on-plastic-markers (faded within 6 months) * Labeler-on-plastic-markers (faded within 3 months). Anybody got a favorite long-term solution for labeling plants? I don't care if it's carrots or annuals, but I would very much like to have permanent labels on the roses, peonies, and rare bulbs.
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Jun 24, 2023 03:45
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Know anyone who does laser etching or engraving? Maybe one of those trophy places can engrave a little plaque. That would be your best bet for permanent marking. I've had decent luck with an oil-based paint pen on a rough plastic surface, but it probably isn't going to last more than 2 years.
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Jun 24, 2023 03:50
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Okay, none of the labels I put in last fall are readable now. In my life, I've tried: The Staedtler garden pens work fantastic and are well worth the price. Clear on plastic labels three years later. The plastic will fall apart before that ink fades.
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Jun 24, 2023 03:54
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Simply chisel the labels into small chunks of granite
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Jun 24, 2023 03:59
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Squirrel-bone effigies for each crop. Locally-sourced squirrel bones, ofc.
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Jun 24, 2023 04:10
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RFID stickers, linked to a Google doc
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Jun 24, 2023 04:39
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What about paint?
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Jun 24, 2023 05:44
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I use a p-touch with laminated tape. Put them on sturdy stainless steel plant marker plates. I really like them so far.
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Jun 24, 2023 06:34
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Okay, none of the labels I put in last fall are readable now. In my life, I've tried: These aluminum labels. There's another brand called Impress-o-tag which is similar. Basically a sheet of very spongy paperboard between two layers of thick aluminum foil. Write directly on it with a ballpoint pen and the foil ends up with the writing on it:  They are used in forestry to label trees and plants. They will last decades if the plant doesn't lose whatever limb it is attached to or grow to the point that it starts to absorb the label. They are extremely satisfying to write on too.
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Jun 24, 2023 11:53
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Okay, none of the labels I put in last fall are readable now. In my life, I've tried: I use extra-fine Decocolor paint pens (after Plant Delights recommended them), specifically in white (which seems to be less prone to fading). I've switched from plastic to zinc labels from here this year and I'm pretty happy with them.
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Jun 24, 2023 12:16
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Ordering a bunch of METRC tags to track my plants... Those aluminum tags actually seem the best solution, though. Organic Lube User fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jun 24, 2023 |
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Jun 24, 2023 13:09
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60s style embossing label maker labels would work if the glue on them wasn't substandard.
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Jun 24, 2023 13:50
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Okay, none of the labels I put in last fall are readable now. In my life, I've tried: I just took a paperclip and scotch tape and wrote on a tiny piece of paper then sandwiched it together like a little laminated flag and somehow it's survived several storms and direct sun without fading or coming apart because the tape is sealed all the way around the paper. I only did it as a temporary thing with the seedlings and ended up putting them outside. I'm sure a real laminator or maybe vacuum sealed business card sized labels would be more pro and look nicer.
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Jun 24, 2023 14:18
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Does anyone know if these speckles are caused by disease or pests? I've been searching online and haven't come across pics of anything like it for common problems. It's only on one of my plants but it's in the same planter as 3 others and I don't know if I should rip it up to prevent disease spread. That plant had pretty bad edema when it was a seedling but that was like 3-4 months ago and these are all leaves that grew outdoors.
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Jun 24, 2023 14:37
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Shifty Pony posted:These aluminum labels. Yeah these are by far the best.
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Jun 24, 2023 18:38
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