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The only rooster I have ever known was named "Mr. Potpie" and it was not without reason
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Mar 1, 2024 15:38
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goatse guy posted:This looks like heaven. Watershed Councils also do this. Our local one will even provide free native plants to anyone one has water on their property. I've been planting about 30 trees in the back quarter acre of my property....
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Mar 1, 2024 16:27
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For those who wish to dream even bigger than a trunk load of mulch, there is a service called Chip Drop where you can get an entire truckload of mulch for free. The only caveat is that you get an entire truckload of mulch. For most of the summer last year I had a pile twice the size of my Honda Civic sitting in my driveway. It took forever to spread it out over my yard. This year I opted to have a palette of bagged mulch delivered. I underestimated how much mulch is on a palette because the dang thing is taller than me. Pinus Porcus posted:Watershed Councils also do this. Our local one will even provide free native plants to anyone one has water on their property. I've been planting about 30 trees in the back quarter acre of my property.... Great tip! Some of my local watershed district offers grants to homeowners for projects that improve water quality. mischief posted:Is this how I end up with chickens finally? Fresh eggs and free compost! I've got four hens. They're really a lovely addition to a garden.
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Mar 1, 2024 17:35
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goatse guy posted:For those who wish to dream even bigger than a trunk load of mulch, there is a service called Chip Drop where you can get an entire truckload of mulch for free. It was my understanding this was wood chips, like, right off the back of the chipper truck. So not something most people in most regions would find suitable as mulch.
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Mar 1, 2024 17:39
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Motronic posted:It was my understanding this was wood chips, like, right off the back of the chipper truck. So not something most people in most regions would find suitable as mulch. It is exactly that, and apparently can be pretty mixed quality with leaves and such mixed in. Probably not many leaves right now of course.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:02
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Shifty Pony posted:It is exactly that, and apparently can be pretty mixed quality with leaves and such mixed in. Probably not many leaves right now of course. Yeah, that stuff needs to be composted (really hot - gonna need a lot of green) for a season at least before I'd consider it suitable as mulch. Hope you have a tractor with a loader or similar to turn a pile that size every few weeks.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:13
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Motronic posted:Yeah, that stuff needs to be composted (really hot - gonna need a lot of green) for a season at least before I'd consider it suitable as mulch. Hope you have a tractor with a loader or similar to turn a pile that size every few weeks. The drops around me are very much just chips and leaves. It doesn't matter what tree they were trimming or cutting down, that's what you get that day. Definitely not nice mulch, but if you just need to cover something with smaller wood chips every year or two it's a good and free way to get the goods. They chip it up pretty small here, but I wouldn't use it as mulch cover in a vegetable garden. Works fine if you just need stuff for a pathway or under shrubs or something.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:18
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We've used ChipDrop a few times and it is always very, very freshly chipped wood. You can specify on the site a few criteria but for the most part you're going to get 10-20 yards of fresh tree violence. I've been building really weird soil for a while now and even with their stuff being really green it breaks down pretty well with a little time and effort. Having 20 yards of tree bits in your driveway without powered equipment is only for the foolhardy or brave though, it is a pretty amazing amount of poo poo to move.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:00
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Dream big Greetings, fellow "It's my car and I'll do what I want to." It's called a Honda Fit for a reason.  Actual reason I'm here: I grew from seed for the first time last year, with a seedling rack immediately inside of a sliding glass door. Everything bent towards the window, and my cats destroyed a lot of plants. This year, I'm using grow lights, so that the light is overhead, and I'm not blocking the cats' window. (And I have a piece of greenhouse plastic wrapped around the thing, so that they can't get inside. Probably. Maybe.) I'm also adverse to letting cheap electronics run unattended. Do I actually achieve anything by letting the lights run from, say, 5 - 11 pm each evening, or is this going to backfire when I move things outside?
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Mar 2, 2024 00:12
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You want to leave the grow lights on during the day, not just the evening. If you had enough sunlight from the sliding door window, they would not have grown leggy. You'd be surprised at how little direct sunlight comes in through most windows, unless you have the perfect orientation and nothing obstructing it... I just leave the grow light on from 7:00 til 20:00, basically.
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Mar 2, 2024 08:12
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Yeah this. Even if you have the perfect window placement it can still be cloudy as gently caress all Spring and give you leggy seedlings. In the PNW it's basically impossible to start seeds without a grow light.
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Mar 2, 2024 10:10
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yeah this is also why you see people placing grow lights like 3' above seedlings, super close. an actual outdoor full-sun day is a lot of light and even with grow lights things on the edges of the lights or too far away may end up getting less than you think, one of those inverse-square relationships where intensity falls off extremely rapidly
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Mar 2, 2024 14:58
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If you’re going to cheat nature and artificially supply light, there’s no reason not to go whole-hog and run your grow lights for 16 hours per day, at least before germination and long enough for true leaves to emerge. Then go down to 12-14 hours per day. You can use any old shop light, so long as the color is 5000k or higher and you can supply at least 4000 lumens per shelf (more is better though).
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Mar 2, 2024 15:22
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Lawnie posted:If you’re going to cheat nature and artificially supply light, there’s no reason not to go whole-hog and run your grow lights for 16 hours per day, at least before germination and long enough for true leaves to emerge. Then go down to 12-14 hours per day. You can use any old shop light, so long as the color is 5000k or higher and you can supply at least 4000 lumens per shelf (more is better though). I use 4-bulb shop lights from my local building supply salvage centre with regular LED tubes, hooked to a block heater timer. Does a fine job.
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Mar 2, 2024 15:31
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CommonShore posted:I use 4-bulb shop lights from my local building supply salvage centre with regular LED tubes, hooked to a block heater timer. Does a fine job. Yep, and if you enclose the space reasonably well you might not even need any heating elements for germination, either. I’ve never had any problems getting peppers to germinate in a closet with LED shop lights.
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Mar 2, 2024 15:38
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I have found a $20-$30 light meter to be a worthwhile investment. I have also found that LED grow lights (I use 2 of the $20 LED grow lights from Harbor Freight) can burn the cotyledons of seedlings, peppers in particular (the milkweed did not like it either). Raising the lights to about 7-8" above the seedlings helped a lot and nothing died, but the whole thing set me back a week or two.
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Mar 2, 2024 21:07
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the Photone app can use your phone's front camera to measure light intensity, though i believe ppfd measurements and other features cost money seedlings like some light but not a lot, 600-ish ppfd has been pretty good for me
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Mar 2, 2024 21:41
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I underestimated how prolific gladiolus are. They were a favorite of a family member that passed away, so we tossed a row of about 40 corms in a flower bed two years ago. We didn’t really tend to them. They caught the edge of the garden sprinklers’ range and we didn’t have to actively water. Didn’t even fertilize. They grew great. I went to move one of them today to plant something else in its place and  There were scores more of the smaller bulbs all mixed in the soil too. I apparently have 40 bundles of a million gladiolus corms in my garden. This is why local greenhouses say they are too cheap and unprofitable to sell. Still taken aback here
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Mar 3, 2024 00:21
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My garden currently looks like this:  We've had stupid amounts of rain and essentially zero snow this winter so the soil is very saturated. Should I do anything to rein in the growth? I probably shouldn't be planting anything frost sensitive until mid-April, although I might risk some easily covered/replaced stuff.
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Mar 3, 2024 13:08
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Is that henbit? I know what I’d do with it. 
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Mar 3, 2024 14:02
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Yeah henbit and clover. I kind of want to just trim it down a bit with the string trimmer and keep it as a green ground cover but I don't know if that would interfere with the growth of garden plants.
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Mar 3, 2024 14:38
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Looks like some chickweed in there too.
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Mar 5, 2024 16:14
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Anyone have any advice on caring for ferns? I expect they'll be coming up again soon and I have no idea if I should be weeding, clearing, leaving stuff, whatever. I've never had a ton of ferns in the garden before like this new house does and they were gorgeous last year, I want to make sure they look that way again.
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Mar 7, 2024 19:11
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   Well. Time to nervously watch the long-term forecast every day for a month.
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Mar 7, 2024 22:09
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My neighbors cut down a shitton of trees the other year in their yard making part of our side yard now get enough sun to garden. We did a test last year with growing some vegetables in pots in the area and they did fine so now we want to build some raised beds. I've done plenty of in-ground gardening before, but we want it to look a little nicer and be easier to maintain / keep our cairn terrier out of it. Any suggestions on brands or approaches? Is https://vegogarden.com/collections/garden-beds a waste of money/. Their system looks nice.
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Mar 10, 2024 16:35
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Alterian posted:My neighbors cut down a shitton of trees the other year in their yard making part of our side yard now get enough sun to garden. We did a test last year with growing some vegetables in pots in the area and they did fine so now we want to build some raised beds. I've done plenty of in-ground gardening before, but we want it to look a little nicer and be easier to maintain / keep our cairn terrier out of it. Any suggestions on brands or approaches? Is https://vegogarden.com/collections/garden-beds a waste of money/. Their system looks nice. I got the Birdies version of that and I like it. I needed 30" or so tall beds and those looked like the best option. As to which brand is best, I can't say! Maybe someone else here has used that brand.
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Mar 10, 2024 16:52
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 Speaking of my raised bed, I put out my cool weather seeds today. I planted chard (Ruby Red and Giant Fordhook), beets (Touchstone Gold and Early Wonder), and carrots (Danvers 126). I tried to lay them all out like the square foot gardening book says, but the carrot seeds blew in the wind so they'll just come up wherever this year. Thinking I want to get that mint into a wider planter; maybe one of those planter carts with wheels I see on Amazon for $50-125. It seems to want more space to sprawl, and I want to be able to cart it indoors when it gets too cold. Otherwise, it overwintered pretty well with only a few trips to the garage (7a/b). I also have some carrots that sprouted mid-winter:  And some dill of an unknown variety just sprouted. I planted both dwarf and Dukat last year, so this is one of those or the offspring of them. I'll plant more dill in a few weeks; I thought it was early so we'll see if these guys survive: 
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Mar 10, 2024 20:34
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My tomato and pepper seedlings aren't progressing. Planted Feb 14, all germinated within 2-3 days but have completely stopped. Soil is homemade peat/vermiculite/perlite which I suspect is the culprit. My buddy who has the same seeds has some that are 2-3 inches tall using miracle gro seed mix  [IK Edit: fixed your img link] Somebody fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 01:08
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NomNomNom posted:My tomato and pepper seedlings aren't progressing. Planted Feb 14, all germinated within 2-3 days but have completely stopped. some of those look like they're in rough shape if they've been like that for multiple weeks, but others that have their seed leaves open and green look just fine. i used the same size starting pots this year and observed a significant lag in visible growth, then all the sudden after a couple weeks of nothing they'd take off and start rapidly putting on true leaves. my assumption was that it's because 4 inch or whatever deep is a lot of space for root growth and it's spending a lot of resources on that for a while
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Mar 14, 2024 01:21
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I think the claim is that the vast increase in anthocyanins means more health benefits. I thought it was pretty nailed down that anthocyanins had (minor) health benefits? In any case, there was a feeding study was done with cancer prone mice feeding them normal mouse chow, mouse chow with tomatoes and mouse chow with the same variety of tomatoes after they'd been engineered for anthocyanin production. The purple tomato mice lived noticeably longer. That being said, their sample size was rather small.
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Mar 14, 2024 02:44
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NomNomNom posted:My tomato and pepper seedlings aren't progressing. Planted Feb 14, all germinated within 2-3 days but have completely stopped. Have you potted up yet? If not, definitely the time to do that. My wife says that peppers especially tend to stunt if you don’t pot them up as soon as their first true leaves emerge. I would also recommend just buying a quality potting mix to use for up-potting; I’ve tried for years to make my own mix and it never works as well as good stuff bought in a bag. If you don’t add any nutrition, peat, vermiculite, and perlite won’t have the necessary nutrients for plants to grow beyond germinating (and seeds have everything they need for that already, except for light, water, and heat). Getting that nutrition right is, I think, the hard part and what I’ve struggled to get correct when mixing my own. I’ve given up on that, at least for seed starting. Where I live in the Midwest USA, I buy fox farm Light Warrior for seed starting and usually get Pro Mix for potting up and other non-seed starting container growing media.
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Mar 14, 2024 15:35
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Those don't even have true leaves yet though. Can't pot up until they do. Planted mine a week after you OP and I just potted up a bunch in the last few days. Try adding some diluted fertilizer.
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Mar 14, 2024 17:25
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Oh, nom nom nom’s image link didn’t show up on mobile for some reason. Just pasted the link into a browser and had a look. Those seedlings look like they would like to have the light source much closer to them. Remember that light power diminishes on an inverse square ratio with distance, and seedlings will get very leggy if the light is too far.
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Mar 14, 2024 17:51
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Lawnie posted:Oh, nom nom nom’s image link didn’t show up on mobile for some reason. Just pasted the link into a browser and had a look. Those seedlings look like they would like to have the light source much closer to them. Remember that light power diminishes on an inverse square ratio with distance, and seedlings will get very leggy if the light is too far. Yeah I think this is the problem. Move the light down to like 3-4" above the seedlings. Pointing a little desk fan at them a few hours a day can help strengthen them up too, but be sure to keep up with watering.
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Mar 14, 2024 18:23
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Seeds at that point are still eating themselves, they don't need food. Better/closer light, make sure the dirt isn't staying soaked, maybe a little fan action like Kaiser said. It's odd to see them pop and then stall like that but if I had to gamble I'd bet light or water. Edit: I mean, it wouldn't hurt to give them a snack if they are mysteriously stalled. Not like it will make it worse. mischief fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 19:05
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mischief posted:Seeds at that point are still eating themselves, they don't need food. Better/closer light, make sure the dirt isn't staying soaked, maybe a little fan action like Kaiser said. It's odd to see them pop and then stall like that but if I had to gamble I'd bet light or water. Temperature is also key for peppers. They will stall if they don't feel warm enough. 70+ is important for them. Once you find the right balance of light, water, and temp they will take off and need potting-up into actual soil.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:36
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I may have put off ordering some of my seeds for too long, whoops. Now I've got a bunch of dogbane and milkweed seeds that I need to chill before for a month before I put them in the ground, apparently, that I was planning on planting in the next couple weeks. At least the new indoor grass is growing quite well already, but everything else I think I messed up one way or another. This is my first year of gardening and it's definitely going to be a learning experience, and I think part of that is recognizing that I probably need to write a notebook for everything I'm growing and what I've done and tried, and include a calendar for what needs to be done with each kind of seed when. The mushroom patch doesn't seem to be doing particularly well either.... the mycelia is spread around, but nearly as thick as it should be, I'm hoping it kicks into gear as it warms up before something else gets in and outcompetes it. In hindsight, I really did put them in the wrong place, too much sun and should have gone with the other option by the shed. Ah well, maybe next time. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 19:41
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GlyphGryph, why are you growing grass indoors?
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Mar 14, 2024 19:46
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Chad Sexington posted:Try adding some diluted fertilizer. Mine stalled out pretty hard for a while due to me having my lights too low and burning the leaves. I assume that they ran out of stored seed energy by the time they recovered from the stress. My mix (peat and vermiculite), like yours, had basically zero nutrients. Diluted fertilizer got them going again. Now that they have been potted up and put outdoors, even the little stunted ones that I had given up on are starting to gain some momentum.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:54
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trilobite terror posted:GlyphGryph, why are you growing grass indoors? In the desperate hope that the cats will prioritize eating that over the other plants they keep gnawing apart.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:03
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