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So excited I found this thread! Started a seed tray about 3 weeks ago with mixed results. I definitely overwatered, to the point that I have some seeds that wilted and white fungus spots. Despite that I get a good start for some peppers and tomatoes. This is the first year I bought a fluorescent light bulb frame that I can raise and lower and a warming mat. I'm in Minnesota and we still have some snow on the ground so it'll be a bit before I can start transplanting outside. Also in a flurry of anticipation setup a 80 gallon rain barrel right next to my garden, looking forward to not having to drag a hose across the yard to water things. Any tips on how to mitigate that white fungus in seed trays? I figure transplant what I have to bigger seed pods, clean the old tray and just start over again.
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Apr 18, 2019 14:24
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Just put in a rain barrel and was pretty pleased with myself getting all of this free glorious water! Now I wont feel as bad trying to get my dirt patch yard covered with clover/grass mix and watering in the summer. Only problem is low pressure out of the barrel. Am I better off installing some sort of pump, or should I just put some cinder blocks underneath to raise it a bit and let gravity do the work?
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Apr 22, 2019 13:41
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I bought some asparagus roots from the store and planted them as soon as the I thought the soil was warm enough last weekend. They looked super dry out of the box though, almost like straw. Is that normal? Im worried that I'll dutifully water and care for that spot for 2 years to end up with nothing and then will have to try again.
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Apr 23, 2019 14:36
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't see how I'm going to maintain a garden with squirrels around. They're absolutely obliterating it daily. I guess I'm going to have to move all my trellis plants to their own planters and hope for the best so I can completely cage in my main planters with chicken wire. I've had mixed luck with brushing my dog, saving the hair, and sprinkling it around the plants. Seems to work OK but not great. My plan this year is to do that and cage the tomatoes and greens. My neighbor sprayed coyote piss all over theirs, which worked, but also smelt like an overripe cat litter box and stunk up their whole yard so...
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Apr 23, 2019 15:27
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I know my local animal humane society has a feral cat program you can sign up for if you do want to go that route. I think they spade/neuter them and you provide food shelter for them. But yeah expect bird populations to drop nearby as well.
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Apr 23, 2019 15:45
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I'm in the process of transplanting some of my seedlings, cherokee purple tomatoes, fish peppers, chocolate peppers, and fatalli peppers. Moved them to bigger containers that will hopefully last until its warm enough to transplant outside. With my new setup I got about %50 success with the tomatoes and peppers. It was my first time using coconut bricks as a starting medium, I definitely over watered killing some plants and causing white fungus to grow on some flats that I ended up tossing. Here is my setup:  One main light, a supplemental LED light I just kind of hung up there for extra goodness and a heat mat with a thermostat underneath. In that same first flat I also started some grandma Hadleys lettuce that I moved:  Its doing well. Temps are staying above 34 F here so far so I think I will try and move them outside soon. I also had some brussel sprouts, broccoli, and lemon mint I started alongside everything else. I think I need to split them off into a different setup since they dont like the heat as much as the peppers and they need more water. BaseballPCHiker fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Apr 25, 2019 |
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Apr 25, 2019 16:47
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Thanks for sharing that. I'll be switching seed suppliers in the future. I've had good luck with Seed Savers out of Decorah Iowa. Speaking of I ordered a bunch of seeds from them earlier in the year. Does anyone have any experience with their Chocolate Bell Peppers or Cherokee Purple tomatoes? I really need to invest in more lights for next years seed starters. That way I can do a tray of warm veggies like peppers and tomatoes and then a cool one for greens and broccoli. Make that three light setups so I can also do a flower tray.
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Apr 29, 2019 14:57
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 What the hell did I do to my poor chocolate pepper plant? I recently transported them from a 6 cell seed pack to this larger cardboard type pot to let it grow more before moving outside eventually. It was healthy as could be and then about a day after moving it it looked wilted and dry so I watered it, now it looks like this. I feel like I am overwatering my seeds but keep going between under and over watering. I've been bottom watering, leaving water in for about 30 minutes and then draining the excess. Is that just to much for pepper plants? They share the same tray with tomatoes and some other plants. Should I invest in another tray and light and keep them separate? Not sure how much it matters but this plant was sitting on a warming pad set to 70 F.
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May 2, 2019 15:02
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Jhet posted:That looks dehydrated. Take it off the warming mat and give it a lot of water. I water from the bottom too, but I very much make sure it's wet when it's still on the heat mat. It dries it out fast. Just give them a bunch of water right away and watch most of them just rebound (unless it's been a while in which case you may need to start new ones). I swear I'm always either over watering or not watering enough. Thanks for the advice, ill try and revive these guys or start again. The cardboard type pots must dry out a lot faster than the plastic 6 cell trays.
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May 2, 2019 15:25
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Grand Fromage posted:I clearly don't get how to harden off seedlings, been taking them out for gradually increasing exposure for a week and a half then planted the strongest looking ones. Most of them have either died or do not look good, leaves are not uniformly green so I assume they're yellowing. I have duplicates of everything still indoors and planted some seeds outside just in case but the things I started outside all look way happier and healthier. How are you hardening them off? One thing I've seen that I am about to try for myself the first time this year is to take a clear plastic rubbermaid, put your plants on the lid, the lid on the ground, and the container over them as sort of a mini greenhouse. I've heard people have good results with this, and when I say people I mean that Rusted Gardner guy that I've gotten 1/2 of my advice from as a newbie.
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May 3, 2019 00:26
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Captain Mediocre posted:I'm taking up vegetable growing as a complete beginner for the first time this year. I'm renting so I don't really want to dig up the garden lawn, thus everything is being grown in pots. We had some warm weather early this year (southern England) so I sowed into trays directly outside and had lots of very successful germinations. I've now transplanted everything into bigger pots, it all seems happy and I'm feeling good about it. If you're going to be mostly container gardening, you could buy some tomato cages and pretty easily wrap chicken wire or mesh netting over them to protect them from pests. If they sit high enough up in the pot you shouldnt have to worry about slugs to much I would think.
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May 3, 2019 15:08
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 What in the heck fire is wrong with my soil?!? 2nd year garden, urban area in a long neglected plot. Only thing growing before I tilled it up last year was grape vines and ferns. I have a compost bin thats in year 2 as well. Time to get the good bottom stuff raked into the soil I guess. Do I need to worry about the super high phosphorus and calcium? Or any of the micro nutrients they list? Figured I'd start with my compost pile then buy some compost to rake in as needed.
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May 7, 2019 22:45
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I figured out my soil issue based on my SoilSavvy results. I've been slowly mixing in blood meal which is 13-0-0 into my soil and watering. Hopefully the weeks lead time I'm giving my garden bed is enough time for the nitrogen to work itself in. I'm really wanting to move my tomato and pepper transplants out into the garden. Night time lows are in the 50s which I think is warm enough, especially if I cover them at night. But we're supposed to get a week straight of rain, roughly 2 inches over the course of the week with a couple of days of 15 MPH winds. Is that to much for tomatoes and peppers right out of the gate?
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May 13, 2019 19:22
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Duzzy Funlop posted:Now that I've sent basically all of my younger plants to college and kept only the large ones, I'm not so much worried about the health of my plants, but I'm still annoyed with the loving flies possibly returning. Any of y'all have any experience with that particular pest and could recommend a non-chemical remedy? I've watered my plants with Neem-oil solutions, and the sticky yellow pads take care of the hatched flies, but I can't seem to be able to entirely rid myself of these dumb little fuckers. First off incredible work! To answer your question the only suggestion I have would maybe only help moving forward. I take all of my potting soil that I use for seed starts or long term potted plants and throw it in a 5 gallon bucket with boiling water. I boil all of that soil wearing gloves, working quickly, and mixing it all up. I've had really good luck with this in the past. Basically every plant I use this method with leaves me gnat/fly free.
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May 19, 2019 03:27
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Elder Postsman posted:Anyone ITT do cold weather gardening? I've been thinking about such as cold frames for growing lettuce or whatever through at least part of the winter here in the Twin Cities. I've been prepping for some cold weather gardening but cant really speak from experience. Basically just got a few cloches to keep my window open a bit longer and planned on some late plantings of cold weather crops starting in August, things like kale, spinach, etc.
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Jun 4, 2019 16:28
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Dukket posted:Any suggestions for a reputable seed site/catalog that would include some variety of Brussels Sprouts? Not Baker Creek I like seed savers exchange. Ive ordered some sprouts from there that I started from seed that are doing well so far in my garden.
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Jun 10, 2019 18:23
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 What the hell is eating my plants? Every. single. thing. in my garden looks like this right now. Peppers, tomatoes, even the rhubarb and hops plant shows signs of the same thing. Is it aphids or something? I should say that since I sprayed everything down with insecticide soap it hasnt appeared to get worse. Question on zucchini too, is it to late to replant a few zucchinis? Im in zone 4a, my couple that survived the initial squirrel salvo got ate alive by whatever the above bug thing was and I thought I'd try to plant some more from seed. BaseballPCHiker fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 13:17
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Hexigrammus posted:My guess would be something with rasping mouthparts that scrapes off the upper layer of leaf cells to feed on the juices. The rasped area goes necrotic leaving holes in the leaves. If these were fruit trees I'd be looking for pear slugs (sawfly larva). Since it's not, thrips or mites maybe? They leave similar damage and are so small they're difficult to see. Marchegiana posted:To me it looks just like what flea beetles do to my veggies in the spring. Neem oil works for them. Thanks for the advice. I had some insecticide soap laying around and have sprayed down everything with that first. Going to see if that keeps things from getting worse before going out and buying some neem oil. Also if anyone is in the Twin Cities area and wants some rhubarb hit me up. Its about to take over a large chunk of my garden.
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Jun 12, 2019 13:41
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mischief posted:Weird. I've had two really successful and big gardens, been doing this for almost a decade. I got to that point once last year. It just quit being fun. I think its easy to plan huge garden plots thinking that the future version of you will always have as much enthusiasm as you do when you first start out which isnt always the case. Never hurts to take a step back, scale back, and focus on what you really enjoy. For me next year I'm going to try and do way less weeding by making raised beds so I can focus more on my plants and less on taming my weedy garden plot.
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Jun 17, 2019 15:28
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CancerCakes posted:Can I use my grass cuttings to mulch my veg containers (squashes and Brussel sprouts)? What about tomatoes? Lawn had a combined feed and weed killer on it about 2 months ago. I want to retain more moisture now that the rain seems to have stopped for the summer. By no means an expert but I dont know that grass clippings would be thick enough to help with much moisture retention or as a splashback barrier. See if your county/city offers free mulch. Mine does at the nearby yard waste center, and while its not as uniform as purchased mulch its free and works well enough for me. Otherwise you could try just newspaper and throw the grass clippings in your compost pile so they dont go to waste.
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Jul 2, 2019 20:15
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Just placed my seed order at Seed Savers and Burpee! Moving all of the peppers over to containers to free up room in the garden. Rotating tomatoes (Cherokee Purples) over to a new spot. Still have a foot of snow in my garden bed and about a 4 foot pile of leafs that I wasnt able to bag up before winter. How messed up will the garden bed be with all of those leaves? My plan is to bag them up ASAP, then spread out compost from my bin and use the garden claw to loosen and stir up the soil, then leave it sit for a while. It'd be probably May until I can actually plant anything outside.
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Feb 26, 2020 21:04
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Hexigrammus posted:Assuming they're not black walnut leaves the soil should actually be healthier under those leaves than if left as bare soil over winter. Not black walnut leaves, mostly just burr oak and some ash and maple mixed in. The reason I planned on bagging them is just the sheer volume of them. The pile is like 4 feet high and about 7 feet by 5 feet, its huge. We have a small compost bin and in the fall I'd mulch some to throw in there but it was to many leaves for the single bin. I was told, and now this seems to be incorrect, that leaving the leaves directly on the soil like that would compact the soil and blanket everything causing stuff to die off. If thats not true great! But there are still a ton of leaves. My plot is maybe 15 by 8 feet. I could rake the leaves all out onto my plot and mow over them once the snow is gone. Then try and rake them into the soil but I'd think it'd be to deep. The first like 6 inches of "soil" would be mostly chopped up leaves instead of dirt.
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Feb 27, 2020 14:23
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Jhet posted:I keep bags of leaves for adding to my compost during the winter and spring when I don’t have other brown matter to add to the green matter. It does help it turn faster, so maybe that could be useful for you too? Thanks for the tips. Maybe I should look into getting a bigger compost bin. The one we have now is about 30ish gallons I'd guess, the size of a small garbage bin. We dont normally compost over winter as its to small to keep things insulated and our food scraps just freeze and dont break down until spring. Living in Minnesota means its like that until March/April or so. But if I had a bigger bin I could potentially use more food scraps and leaves.
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Feb 27, 2020 15:00
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Dukket posted:Thanks again for the rhubarb byw. I planted it kinda close to a tree stump that we decided to have ground out in late fall. I'm hoping it survived. Assuming it does, there will be pie. No problem I hope it does well for you! We ended up with a bunch even after splitting it, made a ton of rhubarb tea and cookies/pie.
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Feb 27, 2020 17:17
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Thanks for the recommendations on the One Yard Revolution youtube channel. Really learned a lot watching some of their videos. It was the final push I needed to deciding to do some raised bed gardens this year. Once the snow clears I'll get to work making some. Is the book that gets talked about here all the time called Square Foot Gardening? I want to try and maximize our vegetable garden this year and need to learn as much as I can. I'm hoping the raised beds help up with yields this year.
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Mar 2, 2020 15:22
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Bought that SFG book. I like the idea, seems interesting. The most important thing I got out of the book is that I need to build raised garden beds this spring.
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Mar 4, 2020 22:04
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I dont really have a good place to point you but I would say one thing you should do is get a soil test done. I did with my garden right away and found out that I was really low on nitrogen and the place I used gave me a recommendation on fertilizers to amend my soil. One other quick thing you can do is plant micro or white clover in your existing grass. It should grow pretty quick and its beneficial to bees. I'm going to try tilling up an area of my yard this spring once the ground thaws to plant some native prairie grass and wildflowers. Will be interesting to see if it can take root quickly.
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Mar 10, 2020 15:05
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Once again I appear to be overwatering a bit with my seed starters. I'm bottom watering and usually water just enough that there is no water left behind in the tray. But I am getting what appears to be a very small amount of surface white mold on the soil. Is that a huge concern or can I just dig it into the dirt or ignore it and have my plants still be fine? Took about a week for my pepper seeds to sprout, tomatoes are a good bit ahead of them. Unfortunately jalapenos have not come up at all yet. Might give them another couple of days before I try again with more seeds.
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Mar 26, 2020 13:52
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CancerCakes posted:My seedlings are looking very spindly - has anyone got a recommendation for some led grow lights I can use for a few weeks just to boost up my toms and peppers? I bought this a few years ago and have been mostly pleased with it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018WIOBXS The first bulb I had only lasted a year but the LED I bought to replace the lights has worked fine a couple of years now. I like this setup because when the seeds are brand new I can lower the light to be right on top of the plants to keep them from getting spindly. I have it setup to your average christmas light timer thats also plugged into a small desk fan that runs on low. The fan helps strengthen the plants in my opinion and they seem to harden up a bit quicker when I transition them to the outdoors too. Plus with that above stand my plant heating mat for peppers and tomatoes fits perfectly.
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Mar 31, 2020 13:34
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Solkanar512 posted:I bought something like this but it was $30, not $40. It’s doubled the size of my indoor plants and really handy to have around in general. Ooooh that light looks like it'd be perfect for some succulents I have! What temp do you keep the mat set to? I've set mine to 70F and its rigged to a thermostat so its not always on and overheating.
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Mar 31, 2020 14:22
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Heres a picture of my setup, like I said it works great for my limited needs. I may in the future try and expand the operation a bit and get another stand so that I can do two seed flats at once. The only thing that hasnt sprouted yet are my jalapeno seeds. May just give up and start again with those. The Cherokee purple tomatoes are amazing! If you have room in your garden give them a shot.
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Mar 31, 2020 14:52
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Filled roughly 20 55 gallon bags full of leaves and the garden leaf pile is now only about 2 feet deep instead of 4. Purchased this thing from Costco: https://www.costco.com/new-england-arbors-keyhole-4'-x-4'-composting-garden-bed.product.100234466.html Plan is to ditch that middle "keyhole" part and just mix in compost I already have in bin and try out the Square Foot Gardening method this year. The instructions with the box say to not fill the whole thing with soil which I was surprised to read. They recommend 4 inches of cardboard then alternating 4 inches of brown bits and green bits, then just the top foot or so to be soil. I will probably ignore that, lay down cardboard and landscape fabric on bottom, then mix in some chopped up leaves, then compost then a whole lot of soil.
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Apr 6, 2020 13:27
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I had a fish pepper plant in a good size pot that I moved inside during the winter. That thing lived for like 3 years and fruited multiple times before it finally died. All of my seedlings are doing great. The heirloom tomatoes are all about 6 inches tall and sturdy at this point, the pepper plants are shorter but doing well. Except for my jalapeno seeds which I still havent gotten going after trying a new batch even. I may give up on them and just buy some transplants in May if I cant get any sprouts going. Also for people doing seed trays learn from my mistakes! I had one corner of my seed tray that the plants always seemed to wilt in. I figured I had a hot spot in my heating mat or something that was cooking the peppers. Well it turned out that actually that one corner gets hit pretty good by the sun during the day as its exposed to a Southern facing window. Now that I know that I've just been rotating the plants out of that corner. Basically I'm toughening them up and getting them acclimated to being outdoors when I can finally put them out there!
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Apr 15, 2020 13:58
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Speaking of basil. I planted 2 African Purple Basil plants in big flower pots last year as an ornamental and they were great. Huge plant with vibrant purple flowers that bees LOVED. Highly recommended if you can find it.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:44
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:Did you plant those specifically for the bees? Ive never thought of doing that with basil. Generally you dont let basil flower but the bees did like the plants that I did let go. My mason bee houses are killing it this year which makes me happy! We didnt initially. We just liked how they looked and picked some up at a plant sale. Will definitely be growing again this year. There would be upwards of 20-30 bees constantly floating around the plants. It was awesome.
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Apr 16, 2020 20:25
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I've got a 4x4x2 foot raised bed I just put in and its amazing how much soil it needs. I laid down fabric cloth, a few inches of cardboard, a bunch of compost layers, a bunch of "brown stuff" layers like leaves and then added soil on top. Built a trellis for tomatoes and climbing plants on the north end of it so it doesnt cast a shadow over the other plants. It snowed last week in the twin cities so I still dont have anything out in it yet, might move onions out there from the seed tray this weekend and also plant some lettuce. Excited to give a modified square foot garden a shot this summer.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:05
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Anyone have any recommendations on good/cheap ways to shade some plants? I planted a bunch of lettuce/greens in my container bed but it probably gets to much sun for those plants. Was thinking I just put some cardboard to block the sun on the southern side of container garden but that it may be to much shade. Then thought about trying to just get some old burlap or something and use that instead.
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May 5, 2020 20:54
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Looks arent important at all. I think I do have a roll of window screen laying around my garage somewhere. I'll give that a try. Of course the summer sunny weather we did have is now about to be a week straight of cold and clouds with a chance of frost on Saturday haha. Also just some wisdom I learned the hard way, please fellow gardeners dont make this mistake! This year instead of using those regular seed trays with the little individual pods that fit 24 to a tray I reused larger plastic pots that you'd get from buying plants at a store, approximately 4 inches across. I planted my seeds in there thinking I could give the plants more time and let them get bigger before transplanting. It was working wonderfully, they were all really healthy tall sturdy plants. Then one day I was in a hurry out the door and thought, oh I'll just bottom water like I use to do with the seed trays instead of watering each individual plant. Well the larger pots soaked up a TON of water and I had drowned my plants. All of my tomato and pepper plants had curled up droopy leaves. Its only now about 3 weeks later that they've fully recovered and only about 1/2 ended up surviving. So please dont over water larger pots by bottom watering!
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May 6, 2020 13:56
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DrBouvenstein posted:Anyone have ideas what might be happening to my tomatoes? I would say stay the course. Only suggestion I have is to wait a bit longer before hardening them. I usually wait until they have a second set of true leaves.
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May 7, 2020 19:14
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:44 |
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Definitely wait for the soil to dry out some. Are you using seed trays? What do you have planted and are they on a warming mat or just facing a sunny window? I think I'd bottom water about every 10ish days for my peppers and tomatoes when using the little 6 cell packages in a tray.
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May 7, 2020 20:46
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