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One suggestion I've heard for keeping deer out is stringing a fence made of a single line of high-test fishing wire at about shoulder-high for a deer. The deer can't see it, which means when they inevitably run into it it freaks them the hell out and they spook and run off. I haven't been able to test it out since I actually don't have deer where I live, but it sounds plausible because deer are dumb as hell.
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Feb 4, 2012 03:47
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Hanging CD's, mylar tape, or anything else highly reflective from a tree, post, what have you, scares them away as well. Just make sure it can blow around in the wind.
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Feb 4, 2012 05:07
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Has anyone worked with compost tumblers? They advertise magic in 14 days, which I'm a bit hesitant to believe. How long does it take? If I compost manure in there, is it okay to use when it's "done" or should it still sit for a year? (what is the point of it sitting for a year?) I'd really like to get one because I'm sick of paying to throw out perfectly usable yard waste and I'm too cheap to pay for dirt every year.
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Feb 4, 2012 07:08
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TheFuglyStik posted:Hanging CD's, mylar tape, or anything else highly reflective from a tree, post, what have you, scares them away as well. Just make sure it can blow around in the wind. That only works during the daytime.
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Feb 4, 2012 17:52
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Z. Beeblebrox posted:Has anyone worked with compost tumblers? They advertise magic in 14 days, which I'm a bit hesitant to believe. How long does it take? If I compost manure in there, is it okay to use when it's "done" or should it still sit for a year? (what is the point of it sitting for a year?) I'd really like to get one because I'm sick of paying to throw out perfectly usable yard waste and I'm too cheap to pay for dirt every year. Compost tumblers work but they are usually over-priced, poor quality, and still require you to go out and "tumble" the compost every day. Turning the compost every day is what makes them work faster. You can do the same thing with any compost setup, like having two bins next to each other and transferring the compost back and forth every day. It's just a lot more work when you have to shovel it all. Composted manure needs to rest to reduce the risk of pathogens getting into your food: http://gardening.wsu.edu/stewardship/compost/manure/manure2.htm
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Feb 4, 2012 18:56
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Plus_Infinity posted:Thanks for the help! I have a bunch of gardening books and have been planning on doing square foot gardening and companion planting, but that's where I started to go crazy with 2308320 grids and what should go next to what and I kept erasing and re-drawing stuff!
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Feb 4, 2012 22:34
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Planning my first garden. I'm going to have a raised bed 6x9' running along the fence. Going to try for tomatoes, snap peas, edamame, carrots, onions, bell, habanero, and and jalapeno peppers along with the herbs valerian and echinacea. Flowers include marigolds, cosmos, nasturtium, bee balm and any other full sun flowers. It's been a warm winter so I'm looking at assembling everything towards the end of February. Also will be digging up the end of the backyard and going crazy with sunflowers and roses. I'm wondering if I bit off more than I can chew... My grid plan. Sun rises on the left and sets on the right. 
cheese eats mouse fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 01:09
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I was happy to have a nice sunny Saturday to get my garden started for the year. I added some blood meal, composted chicken manure, plus some organic fertilizer as well as peat moss to my 8' x 4' bed. I will let the next few months of winter mellow things and turn the top 10 inches in late April before planting my starts. I think I will need to check my PH then as I have added a lot of organic material over the last few years. Does anyone have advice on doing this accurately and cheaply? ChuckHead fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 01:35
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This is my initial garden plan for the year. I'm pretty much doubling the size (the red bordered beds are new). Some of the numbers that growveg puts in for square foot gardening are not what I'm actually going to do (like all that corn and lima beans), but otherwise it's usually fairly accurate. Let me know if I made any horrible mistakes. The sun rises to the right side of the map and sets to the left. The bottom of the map is south-facing.
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Feb 5, 2012 01:36
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A flying piece of posted:This is my initial garden plan for the year. I'm pretty much doubling the size (the red bordered beds are new). Some of the numbers that growveg puts in for square foot gardening are not what I'm actually going to do (like all that corn and lima beans), but otherwise it's usually fairly accurate. Let me know if I made any horrible mistakes. The sun rises to the right side of the map and sets to the left. The bottom of the map is south-facing.
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Feb 5, 2012 01:48
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cheese eats mouse posted:My grid plan. Sun rises on the left and sets on the right.
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Feb 5, 2012 04:03
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A flying piece of posted:growveg
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Feb 5, 2012 04:11
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There's been some questions about composting lately. Maybe one of these days I'll make a mega post, but for now, let me say: 1. Compost tumblers are a waste of money. 2. It's all about the temperature! You want to try to get to "thermophilic composting" at least for a short time. Get yourself one of these and monitor your compost temperature. This will help you determine when to add water, high nitrogen waste, brown waste, and turn it. Ideally, your compost will be in the 130-160(f) range for at least a short while but most of us won't get there. Some of us will be in the 100-130 range. 80-100 is where most small compost piles will fall. For the small composters out there who don't want to bother with all this, I'd suggest getting some red wiggler worms and let them do the work for you (vermicompost). Socratic Moron fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 04:49
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Socratic Moron posted:Does growveg handle crop rotation and companion planting? By that I mean do they make recommendations? I haven't seen any crop rotation type stuff, if you mean what is good for the soil. It does, however, handle succession planting. The info for each plant has a 'companion' section, but it isn't very in depth. Edit: I'm also pretty sure you can try it for free. A flying piece of fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 05:01
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cowofwar posted:I'd replace the raspberry bush with two cross pollinating blueberry bushes and then replace the entire strawberry bed with raspberry bushes. Grow strawberries in a large pot or tower instead. Unfortunately the raspberry bush is already in that spot from last year. A large pot won't give me as much room as that 6x2 bed and I'm not sure what you mean by a tower. Something with multiple levels? One of those things you hang from a post?
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Feb 5, 2012 05:02
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cheese eats mouse posted:I'm wondering if I bit off more than I can chew... Keep in mind the farthest most people can reach into a garden is about 2.5 feet, and most people are more comfortable with less, say 1.5 feet. You also really want to avoid stepping on the bed itself because it compacts the soil. This is why a lot of gardens, raised or not, end up being 3 or 4 ft by whatever length is available.
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Feb 5, 2012 05:04
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A flying piece of posted:Unfortunately the raspberry bush is already in that spot from last year. I love strawberries but your garden is better used for something that can't be more easily grown with better results in a planter. If you insist on planting them in the ground expect to lose most of your berries and waste your time reading about ways to protect them. Raspberries and blueberries are better garden berries as the berries are held off the ground and they are much lower maintenance. They also need the space and depth of a garden unlike strawberries which do not. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 05:23
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cowofwar posted:Words No, those are all good points. I assume building something like this on that space would be more worthwhile, then: http://www.chesapeakecrafts.com/STRAWBERRY_TOWER.php
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Feb 5, 2012 05:34
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Compost tumblers work but they are usually over-priced, poor quality, and still require you to go out and "tumble" the compost every day. Turning the compost every day is what makes them work faster. You can do the same thing with any compost setup, like having two bins next to each other and transferring the compost back and forth every day. It's just a lot more work when you have to shovel it all. Socratic Moron posted:There's been some questions about composting lately. Maybe one of these days I'll make a mega post, but for now, let me say: Thanks for the info! I actually bought a book today that talks a lot about this. Glad to know I can do what the tumblers do for much cheaper... Also, a mega post would be fantastic and probably very beneficial given the number of gardening goons here.
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Feb 5, 2012 07:39
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Even a slightly non-mega post about composting would be really cool. I feel like I understand the basic concepts of composting, but having someone in the know explain it further would be very helpful.
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Feb 5, 2012 08:56
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Keep in mind the farthest most people can reach into a garden is about 2.5 feet, and most people are more comfortable with less, say 1.5 feet. You also really want to avoid stepping on the bed itself because it compacts the soil. This is why a lot of gardens, raised or not, end up being 3 or 4 ft by whatever length is available. Mine is 40' x 40' and is just planted with walking space between things. I'm a rookie at this, but it's worked for the past few years. The guy that tills my garden up for me does the same thing on his plots. He has a place in town where he sells his stuff as it becomes available. A guy I work with also does this, but spreads grass clippings between the rows. He says it cuts back on the weeds.
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Feb 5, 2012 14:42
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It's burgin' time! 
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Going to be plus 5 today!!!!!! Aahhhh I want spring to be here so I can garden already!!!!!
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Feb 5, 2012 17:29
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Toriori posted:Going to be plus 5 today!!!!!! Aahhhh I want spring to be here so I can garden already!!!!!
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Feb 5, 2012 17:39
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Socratic Moron posted:2. It's all about the temperature! You want to try to get to "thermophilic composting" at least for a short time. That's true, ESPECIALLY for manure composting.
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Feb 5, 2012 19:43
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I seeded the planter box on my desk on Wednesday with greens, and I've got sprouts already reaching up 2-3" already. Never had that happen so quickly with potting soil, so I'm absolutely sold on that whole Mel's mix recipe so far after this little experiment. And the narcissus on the side of the road are already pushing up here in KY. That usually doesn't happen until the end of the month. Going ahead and getting my beds made and started with onions is really tempting right now, but I'm holding off since the frost date is still quite a bit away.
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Feb 5, 2012 20:42
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Costello Jello posted:That's true, ESPECIALLY for manure composting. The whole point of temperature is to nuke the bad bacteria, correct? If that's the case, why do you still need to let it "cure" for awhile afterwards or is it safe to use if it got to the high enough temperature for the correct amount of time?
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Feb 5, 2012 21:07
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This year I'm attempting to fill up the garden from Poundland/world etc or with free cuttings. Poundland has a bunch of nice 8-in-1 seed packs with some varieties of beans and such I haven't even seen in single packs anywhere. The daffodils are all about a foot tall now, so I've started a bunch of things on the windowsill. So far there's spring onions from the off-cut bottoms from supermarket ones (did you know you could do this? I'm still astounded it worked). A celery off-cut that hasn't started sprouting yet, cilantro and red cabbage that have just sprouted, tomatoes and cayennes that haven't yet, and cuttings from last years geraniums that survived the very warm winter. And a button mushroom kit I found at Poundland also, because what the hell. This will hopefully be the veggie garden with a dirty mockup:   The only real cash layout will be some black pinstripe petunias because they're gorgeous. Has anyone ordered from J. Parkers before? MolierePumpsMyNads fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Feb 5, 2012 |
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Feb 5, 2012 21:24
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Z. Beeblebrox posted:The whole point of temperature is to nuke the bad bacteria, correct? If that's the case, why do you still need to let it "cure" for awhile afterwards or is it safe to use if it got to the high enough temperature for the correct amount of time? You need to let it cure for a long time so that the bacteria has the time to break down more of the manure into compounds that the plants can actually use. When the manure if fresh, a lot of the nitrogen will be tied up in ammonia, which the plants can't directly use, and also can be pretty toxic to plants in high doses. You need bacteria to convert most of that into nitrates, which is the nitrogen compound the plants will take up. Having it at a high temperature does help kill off the unwanted bacteria and parasites, but it's not an immediate process. The temperature the compost will heat up to isn't high enough to kill off bacteria directly and immediately, such as by lysing the cells. Instead, the unwanted bacteria dies off very slowly mostly because their enzymes don't operate optimally at such high temperatures, so they will grow very slowly or not at all at these higher temperatures, and over time die off.
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Feb 5, 2012 23:29
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I heart bacon posted:Mine is 40' x 40' and is just planted with walking space between things. I'm a rookie at this, but it's worked for the past few years. The guy that tills my garden up for me does the same thing on his plots. He has a place in town where he sells his stuff as it becomes available. 40x40 is 1600 sq ft, that's huge compared to most home gardeners working with 4x8 raised beds or a handful of beds around 100 sq ft each. More traditional row planting with wider spacing would tolerate walking on the soil better than intensive planting. Just using boards or stepstones will do a lot to distribute your weight compared stepping right on the soil. Mulching is a great thing to do. It keeps moisture in and reduces weeds. Too much grass can end up matting and causing some problems with airflow though. I tend to use wood chips, and there's even a local guy here that does nothing to his soil except add more wood chips every year. He doesn't even water stuff, and it works. It's crazy.
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Feb 5, 2012 23:59
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I have only my front porch and pots to garden with due to my dog claiming the backyard. Does anyone have good advice for gardening in containers? I've only grown flowers so far, but I'd love to grow to grow edible stuff someday. 
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Feb 6, 2012 01:24
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Socratic Moron posted:Now (or very soon depending on where you live) would probably be a good time to start various plants inside so you can transplant them when it get warm enough outside for a jump start on the season. The snow will likely be here till late April  are there plants that would suit best starting this early?
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Feb 6, 2012 03:39
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Toriori posted:The snow will likely be here till late April
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Feb 6, 2012 05:07
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Artichokes start pretty early too. I started mine yesterday.EagerSleeper posted:I have only my front porch and pots to garden with due to my dog claiming the backyard. Does anyone have good advice for gardening in containers? I've only grown flowers so far, but I'd love to grow to grow edible stuff someday. GWS has a thread aimed more at container gardening, but it's not as active. Any herb, lettuce, carrots and potatoes in a deep enough pot, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, etc. Just about anything is possible given a big enough container. I'd get a book specifically for container gardening, but I can't recommend any myself. Also, why not fence off a small area in the back for a garden?
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Feb 6, 2012 06:24
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Life on the balcony is a really good blog about container gardening, and there's a post about veg growing for beginners. I've had good luck with herbs, hot peppers, cherry toms, and potatoes in containers. If you do the soil and watering right, you can grow nearly anything.
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Feb 6, 2012 13:47
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Are there any vegetables that do better in containers? I have an unheated greenhouse I could use to grow some stuff but I'm not sure if it's better to grow tomatoes and hot peppers in there in containers or grow them in the ground outside.
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Feb 6, 2012 15:23
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Plus_Infinity posted:Are there any vegetables that do better in containers? Things that have smaller and shallower root systems would do better. On the other hand a lot of things do better in containers simply because they start out with better quality soil than the would have in the ground. Growing in the greenhouse instead of outside depends on your climate. Is it generally considered too cool during the season to get a good crop of tomatoes where you live? Then tomatoes and peppers would probably do well in the greenhouse. Basil likes warmer temperatures too. Grapes might be worth a try.
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Feb 6, 2012 17:36
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Cpt.Wacky posted:Things that have smaller and shallower root systems would do better. On the other hand a lot of things do better in containers simply because they start out with better quality soil than the would have in the ground. I'm in PA near Philadelphia. It gets hot in the summer, it's just not a super-long summer like it is in the south. I haven't ever tried to grow anything here, so I really have no idea how well things will do!
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Feb 6, 2012 17:54
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Starts are cheap, seeds even cheaper. Grow some in the greenhouse and some outside to find out which is better. If you have any heat at all during Summer then you should be fine. Up in the pacific NW we grow earlier varieties of tomatoes outside without too much trouble and we're lucky to have more than 1-2 weeks of daytime temps above 75.
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Feb 6, 2012 18:08
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cowofwar posted:I'd replace the raspberry bush with two cross pollinating blueberry bushes and then replace the entire strawberry bed with raspberry bushes. Grow strawberries in a large pot or tower instead. Strawberries don't produce well for the first year anyway (pick off the blooms).
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Feb 6, 2012 19:03
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Cpt.Wacky posted:40x40 is 1600 sq ft, that's huge compared to most home gardeners working with 4x8 raised beds or a handful of beds around 100 sq ft each. Good point... I'm surrounded by farms and just seem to think about gardens as being around that size. I'll just blame it on moving to a small town.
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Feb 7, 2012 01:03
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