Hexigrammus posted:

Tomato varieties need to be open pollinated and you need to control which plants pollinate each other unless you're only growing one variety. I learned this the hard way trying to propagate my favourate grape tomato from Costco. I did successfully grow offspring but they were uninspiring, to say the least. You're not going to get what you expect if you start with an F1 hybrid parent, if it works at all.

Hexigrammus posted:

Unless someone is mis-using the term "heirloom" they should be open pollinated and work fine. My understanding is that cross-pollination in tomatoes is more of a concern when they're grown together in the same or adjacent beds, not so much on the other side of the house. I would definitely go for it. If there is cross-pollination and you don't like the results you can always get out the paint brush and paper bags next year.

The most common advice for collecting seeds is to put some of the core into a glass of water and let it ferment for three days, strain out and wash the seeds, then spread them out to dry. Being lazy, I've just smeared tomato guts on a paper towel and scraped the seeds off when dry. There's probably good reasons for going the ferment route, but this worked fine for me.

CommonShore posted:

ok next question -

I'm in Southern Manitoba, so a shorter growing season with hottish dryish summers and long cool autumns. Gonna do garlic for the first time, beginning with a fall planting, working from cloves.

1) Any suggestions for when I should plant?
2) My yard has a pretty wide range of shade/sun, wet/dry, including an Oak tree hanging over one edge of the garden. Where should I go with my garlic?
3) Any suggestions for getting/choosing the garlic that will go into the dirt? I've heard that planting bland grocery store cloves will produce garlic of "gently caress you" intensity, which is what I want. Would there be any benefit for buying higher quality cloves, or should I just get a bag of whatever and put them in dirt?
4) Any companion planting thoughts? I'm already starting to think through next spring's garden which is going to contain zuchini, beans, peas, carrots, radishes, beets, chard, tomatoes, and probably some kale. I have a big rhubarb patch, too.

Hexigrammus posted:

I'm a typical West Coast chauvanist so my reaction to overwintering anything in Manitoba is . Neither informed nor helpful I'm sure.

Out here the Doukhobors and old world hippies have developed a lot of really tasty varieties of garlic that do well under local conditions. These varieties don't appear in the corporate garden centres but they do show up in the mom and pop operations. The local Buckerfields is a really good source. I don't know if Buckerfields is a Manitoba thing, if not I'm pretty certain you have even better farm stores back there. Local garden clubs and farmer's markets could point you to suppliers too.

A 4' x 5' raised bed produces a year's worth of garlic for my wife and I. We're the type who start by frying up some garlic and onions, then deciding what to make for dinner. There's enough space to experiment with at least a half dozen different types of garlic. Now we know that we like mild Elephant garlic in salads, Duganski for a dish that needs a fiery bite, and Gabriola Gourmet happy hippy garlic for everything else. Gabriola Gourmet is a bit fussy though and needs more nitrogen in the soil to do well.

But I'm rambling: imo, yes, locally bred varieties are worth it. If you like a commercial variety though go ahead and plant it, they don't take up a lot of space so you can afford to experiment. Be careful though. Judging by some of my friends' obsessions growing garlic can be a bit of a rabbit hole.

Hubis posted:

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

Anyone have any good resources on drip irrigation/other irrigation options? I know sprinklers are mostly bad and I don't want to try and water this whole garden with one. Lee Valley has some kits and stuff, as does Gemplers etc. but I'm not exactly sure what I really need.

I've got stuff sort of in mounded rows, but not all if it is really in rows (random hills of squash and eggplants scattered about), so I think running individual emitters at each plant is going to be better than an emitter hose/soaker hose running down a row?

Solkanar512 posted:

So quick question about stuff like pumpkins and melons. Obviously I plant them in normal soil like anything else, but it is a problem that the vines spill into the lawn? I don’t give a poo poo about the lawn, it dies out in the summer anyway and I wasn’t sure if the vines and eventual fruit needed to be over soil.

I guess what I’m asking here is if these plants have a central root system and vine out, or if new root systems are created by the vine and are needed to support fruit/vegetable production. It would be really cool if I could just use all that extra space without digging a massive new bed.

Platystemon posted:

True yam or sweet potato?


White LEDs are the way to go for grow lamps now, even more than in 2018.

The white light means it’s more likely that problems with plants will be noticed early, and with the cost/efficiency being as good as it is now, it just makes sense unless you have a compelling need to push a plant toward vegetative growth or flowering.

Any white LEDs will work. The reason to use a “grow lamp” LED versus a bulb in a socket or a desk lamp is that grow lamps are bright and efficient and they’re less likely to fail after two years.

Samsung’s LM401B and LM561C diodes are the ultimate and penultimate right now in efficiency. Products that use them will let you know.

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I can't remember who recommended the spanish trellis, but that's what I did and it was super simple-thanks for the recommendation! Seems like it should work well. I probably should have been brave and chopped all these back to 1 main leader, but couldn't bring myself to do it, so we'll see how 2 leaders works on some of them.


I used pretty rough sisal and I'm worried it's gonna be to rough on my dainty tomatoes, but I'm sure they'll toughen up

Jhet posted:

What peppers? But yes if you want them to grow bushy.


I just use t5 LEDs from the hardware store. I just need something that skews to the blue end of the spectrum for starting the seedlings off, not something that will support them through fruiting. They put off about 400-500 ish lux where I need them, so it's enough for starting the plants. I'm going to see if I can get some aji charapita started late, but I don't hold hope for getting fruit until next year on them. Then hopefully next summer I can be the guy who has too many pepper plants in his yard again.

Jhet posted:

If you're moving them outside, then don't overthink the lighting too much. Just make sure there's a full spectrum light above them so they get a bunch and are growing taller and not getting leggy. If they start getting leggy, lower the light.

Platystemon posted:

I did some grafts this year that are of particular interest to me.

I took scions from the last two trees of an abandoned apple orchard.

These trees are over a century old and the forest has grown up around them for most of that time, slowly starving the trees of sunlight. One was lost in the last ten years, a couple more in the ten before that. There were once dozens.

Time is running out for these last two. Each spring, fewer and fewer leaves return.

I don’t know what variety they are. There is some tiny chance that one or both is a variety previously believed to be lost. There are thousands of such varieties, extant only on paper and in memory. More likely, they are an heirloom variety still grown on a small scale today. A local who had had fruit from the trees years before could tell me that they were not cider apples or any variety common today but could not recall their taste more specifically than “quite good”.



Out of four scions taken from one tree, one graft took.

The other was four for four.

I dare not unwrap the parafilm on that precious branch, but if I did, the healed union would look something like this:

net work error posted:

Can I regrow bok choy from the bottoms of ones I get in the store like green onions? I tried leaving it in some water but it just turned to mush.

net work error posted:

Did you let it sit in water to let the base grow some?

Serf posted:

crossposting from c-spam, but this is my setup for the year


that's most of the garden. i have another area alongside the patio where i planted watermelons, eggplants, squash and cucumbers that i raised from seeds. this bed here contains squash, zucchini, bell and jalepeno peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and cucumbers. i've been fertilizing with cow manure, horse manure and miracle grow every 2 weeks. water once a day for about 2 hours with the sprinkler

been getting some good results


got a whole mess of squash coming in. last i counted there were 16 of the little bastards on the way


jalepenos on the way


for some reason the smallest bell pepper plant is the one with the biggest pepper so far, but we have about 6 on the way that i've found


zukes are always a pain in the rear end to spot, but so far i've found 4. looking forward to these


the tomatoes are just starting to flower, hopefully we'll see some action soon. tomatoes always take forever to show up around here tho, so i'm not worried


got our first potato flower not long ago. the potatoes plants have grown at an insane pace. two months ago they were still totally underground


baby cucumbers are coming in. i've always liked to guide the vines and help them grow. we installed that hog panel about two weeks ago when the cucumber plants were about five inches tall. they have exploded since then, its amazing

BaseballPCHiker posted:

Learned a lot this year in seed starting. My plan this year was to abandon the small 6 cell seed trays and go to bigger roughly quart size pots to get a few plants bigger and healthier.

Well it was a good plan but I started WAY to early for my zone. I know now that I need to start no sooner than April 1st.

The problem wasnt that I was overwatering plants I dont think, though I definitely did at least once. The problem is that my plants had outgrown the pots by a significant margin.

Planted them outside yesterday and the poor things were totally root bound. Lesson learned for next year.

Shine posted:

We'd like to try the compost thing, as we toss a lot of trash/scraps/cardboard shipping boxes that seem like they'd be good compost fodder.

For small scale, it sounds like worms are a common option, since a small compost bin/tumbler may not have enough bulk to really get going. On the other hand, we live in Vegas, so we have warm-to-really-hot temperatures for most of the year, so I'm wondering if that would:

1: Murder the worms all summer.
2: Help a 37 gallon'ish tumbler work alright, especially during the 7 months that our daily highs are over 80 (with 5 of those over 90).

Thoughts? We don't need a ton of compost, as we're talking about enough to add to 20'ish grow bags/pots for a perpetual indoor growing season.


Also, potato flowers are really pretty