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When I was shopping for lights before and when I add to my setup, I just look for something specifically with 5000 K color temperature. 5000 lumens is the minimum light intensity that seeds need to start and start growing, and more is better. It is additive, as well, so you can put two 3000 lumen lights on one shelf to get 6000 lumens. Get whatever is cheapest and most convenient for you to meet those minimum requirements.
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Mar 10, 2023 15:57
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Tomato seedlings are tough fuckers, if you pot up that one it should come right back.
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Apr 12, 2023 15:18
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Shifty Pony posted:I got a new house! It has a huge garden! Looks like garlic or maybe onions, but could also just be an ornamental allium. If that’s the case, it’ll shoot up a scape-like flower bud soon.
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Apr 15, 2023 16:27
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taiyoko posted:Something I've come across in some of my other googling about wicking containers is that they need to be completely dark inside if you want to avoid algae growing in the reservoir, so I'm probably gonna throw some spray paint on my buckets before I assemble and plant. I just made a worm bin out of three 5 gallon buckets, and I spray-painted them a terra cotta color so they’d be slightly less ugly. Yesterday my wife noticed and said it looks pretty sharp for being three buckets stacked on top of each other.
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May 6, 2023 14:07
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Arsenic Lupin posted:What kind of paint sticks to plastic containers? I just used rustoleum. It will probably chip and peel by the end of summer but if that’s the case I’ll rough it up with some sandpaper and try again next year.
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May 7, 2023 02:32
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On the flame weeders, a homesteader my wife and I follow uses one to kill weed top growth in their beds just before planting out. She says the idea is that you kill the growth on the weeds, giving your crop time to size up and then shade out/out-compete the weeds from growing back.
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May 29, 2023 14:40
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Hexigrammus posted:Tried overwintering pepper plants indoors again, digging them out before first frost, cutting back the roots and leaves, and potting them up. 2 out of 8 survived, so better than 0. It will be interesting to see if they're any further ahead than the starts I bought from the greenhouse. Just yesterday I finally got drip/bubbler irrigation set up for nearly our entire backyard. Had to get it done, because we’ll be out of town for six days, nearly all of which incidentally are forecast to be 10-15 degrees hotter than normal, up to like, 95*F. This is the third time I’ve tried to set it up, first time I’ve gotten it all on a timer with several zones. Going to save us dozens and dozens of hours spent watering by hand.
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Jun 1, 2023 13:06
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A couple of weeks ago, the scumbag who owns the house next door to mine evicted the family that lived there so he could sell the place. That sucks, but while the place is empty I’d like to go nuclear on some weeds between my privacy fence and the chain-link next door. What’s this glyphosate paint on a stump method I’ve been hearing about? I got some concentrate yesterday but want to be extremely careful applying it, because we otherwise have a very healthy and robust, nearly entirely organic garden.
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Jul 10, 2023 15:26
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MasterBuilder posted:Is it even trees that you are removing or just weeds? I’m fairly sure it’s buckthorn. There are also mulberries but I’m not loving with those. I’ll take my chances with tree law since they’re growing between my privacy fence and the immediately adjacent neighbor’s chain link.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:31
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Spikes32 posted:I may have planted my tomatoes too close together / let them split (2 maybe 3) times too many.... My wife loves to grow as many kinds of tomatoes as possible, so we plant at 15” spacing and prune extensively for airflow. The plants are probably slightly less vigorous overall but we still harvest dozens of pounds every year.
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Jul 13, 2023 13:16
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Had to pull a wilty cucumber. Hoping to get a decent harvest from the neighboring cucumber plant before it too succumbs. I was definitely overzealous and crowded my raised beds, but it was too exciting not to. In better news, the tomato I garroted about 5” from the ground has begun producing fruit. We have harvested 2 cucumbers from at least a dozen plants this year. All have succumbed to wilt immediately after first fruiting. It’s been an awful year for cucumbers, at least here in Indiana in zone 6.
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Jul 22, 2023 14:53
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I have a ferment going with anaheims and am inundated with jalapeños. I also crowded my peppers, and the bell peppers have both bells and jalapeños, while the jalapeños are growing some suspiciously anaheim-like fruit. The habs finally took to fruiting, and the lemon drops have finally flowered. Good times.
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Shifty Pony posted:Made a small 5x3 bed closer to the house so Mrs Pony could grow some herbs and such in a more convenient spot than the garden. You could probably get some cucumbers, pole/bush beans, herbs, radishes, and summercrisp lettuce varieties (check Johnny’s seeds) for harvest before fall. Otherwise would be a good spot for some fall/winter brassicas. Start a couple of kale plants and enjoy kale from your lil tree until Thanksgiving.
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Jul 24, 2023 14:24
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Slanderer posted:In my current garden, some of my tomato plants typically start dying in august (just yellowing throughout). Are there any good resources on determining the cause? Some of mine last way longer than others, but I can't tell if there's fungus, water issues, stalk borers or nutrient exhaustion. I plan my tomatoes way too close (at least until I get 8ft cages), but I specifically dugout 18 inches of soil below my raised bed before i filled it back in to help alleviate water issues and let the roots penetrate the soil (theres a ton of clay here, which not everything can manage well). If they’re just turning yellow throughout, might be blight, which is just in your soil and you’ll never be rid of. In some places, August is as long as tomatoes can go before succumbing to disease. If it’s just leaves near the bottom turning yellow and dying, it could be because they’re getting and staying wet. Pruning the lower stem very hard will help with this a lot. Anyway tomatoes are usually gonna die of something, it’s often blight, and as long as you’re happy with how long you harvested and what you got, it’s probably not worth worrying about.
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Aug 29, 2023 21:51
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People say wood mulch sequesters too much nitrogen while it decomposes in the soil. I find if you use it as a top layer for a year, it’s fine. Nitrogen is super easy to add to soil, anyway. It grows a fuckton of mycelium for me so I have a hard time thinking it’s a bad mulch.
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Sep 6, 2023 16:04
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They even freeze well whole, my wife does that then makes ferments once she’s accumulated enough over the course of the summer.
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Oct 28, 2023 16:55
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You need to give the plants more time to acclimate to each new spot they’re in. Moving plants can be a bit traumatic if they’re used to being near a certain vent where it stays drier, etc. also I don’t think a hygrometer is helping you here, if the soil still feels wet at the bottom more than a week after watering then you need better drainage, no matter what that little gauge says. Houseplants usually prefer to dry all the way out to the very bottoms before getting watered again, and yours are probably no different.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:22
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Shifty Pony posted:This is what my garden looks like right now: It would probably be enough in about 5 years.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:02
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Wild boar farms for some whacky and interesting tomato varietals. Botanical interests is probably the best large-scale seed company that doesn’t cater to commercial or market growers like Johnny’s IMO.
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Dec 19, 2023 17:39
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Worm castings tea might not be too stinky
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Feb 8, 2024 21:40
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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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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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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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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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TraderStav posted:I cut down a lot of trees last year and have a fantastic stripe of yard between our houses that I think would be perfect for a garden. I am drat near a complete beginner. Do you have a recommended resource for babbys first 5 gallon bucket garden so I can get going this year? A nice hand holder would be fantastic! Then grow (hah!) and learn from there for next year. FYI there’s a turbonerd on YouTube, MIGardener, who also runs a seed shop based out of Michigan. I find his personality incredibly grating, but he does have good, beginner-friendly advice and he would be local to you. If his bossy know-it-all schtick bugs you, there are tons of YouTube resources available. For lettuce, you don’t necessarily need a 5 gallon bucket. It’s a shallow-rooting plant so you can use something smaller and grow plenty of food in it still. It’s also going to want less sun/heat than the other crops you’re growing, so stick these somewhere that gets some shade or even better, dappled sunlight throughout the day. Lastly, have fun and recognize gardening is a long-term, year-on-year hobby. You won’t always immediately see results, but you can plan and try new things every year to find out what works for you.
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Mar 18, 2024 14:24
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TraderStav posted:Thanks! I'll dive into all these resources. I'm excited to get started and wholly expect the first year to be a disaster, anything above that will be a fantastic victory. The buckets are enticing to me so I can dial in what works for location in my yard/shade/etc. This looks like a north-facing view? If so, this looks like a great spot to set up. Up against the structure on the right will get shade until about noon, the rest will get what’s considered full sunlight for growing plants (IMO that’s 8+ hours of nearly uninterrupted direct sun exposure). You don’t really need to calculate the amount of time in the sun, just keep an eye out on the yard throughout the day and seasons. Expect some slight fluctuations as the earth does its orbital mechanics things.
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Mar 18, 2024 15:34
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alnilam posted:My neighbor gave us a CSA box she couldn't use and it has a bunch of these delicious greens in it Fun fact: Swiss chard IS beet shoots, just a different cultivar
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Mar 18, 2024 20:49
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I have seen Cherokee purple tomatoes at Lowe’s in years past, that’s an excellent one that’s pretty widely available.
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Apr 26, 2024 14:04
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GlyphGryph posted:Anyone have cucumber types they recommend? We like silver slicers for versatility between pickling and eating fresh. We’ve had really bad bacterial wilt the last couple of years though; as soon as the plants start setting flowers, wilt sets in and they die without producing any fruit. I think my wife got some bacterial-wilt resistant variety to try this year instead, though.
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Apr 28, 2024 15:27
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Chad Sexington posted:These look fantastic. I did a half-assed version of this with plastic bird netting draped over a wood frame. Really more to keep the birds away because a determined squirrel could still get in. Sluggo and/or sluggo plus is the only thing that works consistently for us. We’ve had really bad pillbugs this year, too, which is what the “plus” is for.
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May 6, 2024 20:03
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 15:39 |
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Viscous Soda posted:Probably a dumb question, but what can do to help over-watered seedlings recover? I massively over-watered my seedlings last month and even though the tray is back at normal-ish amounts of moisture, the seedlings are still staying only a inch or two tall. I assumed that once the soil de-sogged they'd start growing again, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Sorry, they’re probably dampened off and dead now. If you pull one, you’ll probably find that it has next to no roots attached to it any longer. Seedlings generally should not stay an inch or two long for a month. If they do, they’re probably in a really bad way.
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May 12, 2024 04:11
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