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Zenzirouj posted:Does anybody have ideas for big heat-loving bushy plants that I could keep on a 2nd-floor balcony without too much trouble or cost? Even though it's late in the season to be getting around to dealing with it, I really need something to shield my herbs and houseplants and whatnot from the brutal Atlanta sun that bakes my east-facing balcony every morning. It's making my oregano bolt and even my mint isn't holding up very well, although I don't really have to worry so much about it since it'll come back from just about anything. Parsley doesn't seem to mind much, but it's also parsley so I don't really give a poo poo about it. Rosemary is, of course, perfectly fine with it. Cilantro got completely obliterated by aphids and ants before the heat could kill it. Basil is doing this weird thing where it's getting pale, splotchy, and sorta yellow, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong to it that doesn't involve the temperature. Might be too late to start them, but Sunchokes grow like mad and can tolerate heat. Okra seems to thrive in heat. Also amaranth: drought tolerant and you can eat both the greens and the seeds.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:10
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How about a dwarf fruit tree? Lots of citrus types to choose from that are supposed to work in pots on decks etc.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:17
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Zenzirouj posted:Does anybody have ideas for big heat-loving bushy plants that I could keep on a 2nd-floor balcony without too much trouble or cost? Even though it's late in the season to be getting around to dealing with it, I really need something to shield my herbs and houseplants and whatnot from the brutal Atlanta sun that bakes my east-facing balcony every morning. It's making my oregano bolt and even my mint isn't holding up very well, although I don't really have to worry so much about it since it'll come back from just about anything. Parsley doesn't seem to mind much, but it's also parsley so I don't really give a poo poo about it. Rosemary is, of course, perfectly fine with it. Cilantro got completely obliterated by aphids and ants before the heat could kill it. Basil is doing this weird thing where it's getting pale, splotchy, and sorta yellow, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong to it that doesn't involve the temperature. tomato plants all the way. find a big one already planted this late in the season, it'll probably cost you like $20. but they're great. I have a couple indeterminates on my atlanta patio balcony, and they protect all sorts of my other less sun loving plants. are you overwatering your basil? my oregano is bolting too, gently caress. :/
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Jul 4, 2013 07:11
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Sunchokes look interesting, though I'm not sure it would really work on my balcony or for what I'm after. A fruit tree might work and is something I've considered. Something like tomatoes would require a whole terrace kinda thing and I also don't like them very much. And I might be overwatering my basil; it's hard to say since I just give it water whenever it starts to wilt up, which is probably a problem of heat and not water. It doesn't need to be something that produces food, even. Just something that provides a lot of shade with a relatively low space footprint, so any trees or bushy type things that can tolerate being potted and roasted is what I'm looking for. Ideally it'd be something that could also survive a winter, though I'm not looking for some kind of miracle plant.
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Jul 7, 2013 09:44
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Zenzirouj posted:Something like tomatoes would require a whole terrace kinda thing and I also don't like them very much. 0_0;;
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Jul 7, 2013 10:37
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I have a plant sex question. So I picked up 3 8-ball zucchini plants having done exactly 0 research into how to make them fruit effectively, and the blossoms are falling off. I didn't check them previously but I am fairly certain these were all male flowers that were taking the dive. I know I'll need to hand-pollinate the female flowers when they show up, but I'm worried I'll run out of male flowers to pollinate with. (I think we actually do have bumblebees in the area but I'm not trusting those fat yellow-and-black fuckers to do this.) Can I save them to pollinate with, or will the little zucchini pollen-sperm go bad / not work if I save a few male blossoms in the fridge? ALSO: I have three summer squashes as well (which are much smaller and not flowering yet). Could they cross-pollinate in a pinch?
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Jul 7, 2013 16:51
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Nicol Bolas posted:I have a plant sex question. I did a little google-fu and found out that male zucchini flowers appear first to attract bees. From the site that I looked at (http://homeguides.sfgate.com/zucchini-flowers-but-not-produce-26167.html ), it seems as if more males are on the way. Bees also travel a good bit. If anyone in your vicinity has zucchinis, you should be ok.
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Jul 8, 2013 03:49
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luloo123 posted:I did a little google-fu and found out that male zucchini flowers appear first to attract bees. From the site that I looked at (http://homeguides.sfgate.com/zucchini-flowers-but-not-produce-26167.html ), it seems as if more males are on the way. Bees also travel a good bit. If anyone in your vicinity has zucchinis, you should be ok. That's the reason for my worry--I live in a super urban area with 0 yards so I don't even know if bees are around, much less other zucchini-havers. I have 3 plants of my own and I think someone else is growing some kind of squash in the same shared yard area so I shouldn't have a problem with pollinating by hand, but I fear running out of male plants to pollinate with. All of my male blossoms have peaced out and all I see right now are a bunch of probably-lady buds on the body of the plant and no dude-buds on their longer stems ready for action. I did some google-fu too but I'm just worried about not having any broflowers to rub against my ladyflowers. I am the worst wingman ever.
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Jul 8, 2013 04:00
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Nicol Bolas posted:That's the reason for my worry--I live in a super urban area with 0 yards so I don't even know if bees are around, much less other zucchini-havers. I have 3 plants of my own and I think someone else is growing some kind of squash in the same shared yard area so I shouldn't have a problem with pollinating by hand, but I fear running out of male plants to pollinate with. All of my male blossoms have peaced out and all I see right now are a bunch of probably-lady buds on the body of the plant and no dude-buds on their longer stems ready for action. I did some google-fu too but I'm just worried about not having any broflowers to rub against my ladyflowers. I am the worst wingman ever. You're always going to have more male blossoms than female. It's nature's shotgun approach to reproducing. If you're worried about pollinators in that environment then get some flowers to attract them, just about anything will work, and provide some water in a shallow dish. If there are any pollinators at all then your place will be very popular with them.
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Jul 8, 2013 04:32
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My home's previous owner apparently really liked mint: That's a 6x4' raised bed that's been left unmaintained for about 4 years. I'd been focusing on my container garden while the house was being painted; now that the painters are out of the way I'm realizing the severity of the mintfestation. Luckily this hasn't spread much to the lawn. I'm planning on making this the Summer Of Mojitos and then tearing it all out before first frost, after that I'd like to get in and kill off the rhizomes so I can use the raised bed for vegetable gardening next year. Is it going to be worth the effort to dig it all out or should I just hit everything with some herbicides and call it a day?
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Jul 8, 2013 15:39
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mindphlux posted:0_0;; I know, I'm a broken human being. There are only a few situations where I'll tolerate raw tomato and it's maybe possible for me to enjoy it, but it's rare. Tomato sauces or soup or bits of it in stew are all great, though. I just don't really feel like growing roma when I have a big ol farmer's market right nearby for the off chance I have any desire for tomatoes.
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Jul 9, 2013 15:38
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Morbid Florist posted:Question for the bucket growers: If I planted some bell peppers and some garden salsa peppers in buckets that (according to the internet) are too small, what's the likely outcome here? Just small plants with lower yields, or am I wasting my time entirely?  Time for an experiment! Yes, smaller plants and lower yields (going from the amount of budding flowers on each plant). These are all the same age and grown in virtually identical conditions. The one on the left is three plants in about 100cc of soil. Needs watering up to four times a day now! It sucks the soil bone dry in three to six hours, depending on temperature and direct sunshine. The second one from the left is an experiment with lack of proper drainage. I'm not sure what my conclusion is, apart from the fact that it is possible to grow a plant in a pot with no draining holes. I've made a white paper sleeve for the pot (not pictured) because I noticed the roots were getting cooked. The grey one is about a liter when filled to the brim. Most of my peppers are growing in pots like that. It's not ideal; it's a space saving measure. If I grow them in bigger pots, I have to keep them outside and the yield will be about the same due to the fact that we only have two to three months when nighttime temperature can be expected to generally be above 15°C. Which makes a huge difference, apparently. I put these pots on top of a smaller (e: closed) pot to recuperate drained nutrients. The one on the right is in about 3 liters of soil, which seems to be about the minimal adequate amount for a full sized plant. Pot size matters. But a tiny pot doesn't necessarily result in sickly and dying plants, with a bit of luck and a lot of attention. It has to be noted though that the smaller the pot, the more fickle the plant gets. It's extremely easy to underwater, overwater, under- or overfertilize a plant in a tiny pot. It's also susceptible to temperature shock, because there's no buffer of soil absorbing the differences. Having half full 10qt buckets should be no problem. At that point, there are going to be a shitload of factors and conditions that are going to matter a lot more than the size of the bucket. Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 16:19
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 Behold my bountiful harvest!!!
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Jul 15, 2013 12:18
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 The bell pepper plants have immature fruit And the habanero plants have flowers. Feelin pretty good...
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Jul 15, 2013 15:08
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all my tomato plants are covered with powdery mold. I've tried milk and garlic spraying them. no help. leaves are dying and falling off everywhere. fml.
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Jul 16, 2013 09:20
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You may be overwatering them. What time of day do you give them a drink?
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Jul 16, 2013 11:21
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Breath Ray posted:You may be overwatering them. What time of day do you give them a drink? every day or two, whenever the soil feels pretty dry. usually around 3pm, in the south, Atlanta. Could very well be overwatering, but I'm careful not to get any water on the leaves or anything. I did compost and resuse a lot of my soil this year - I'm thinking that might have been a contributing factor somehow...
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Jul 16, 2013 14:11
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mindphlux posted:every day or two, whenever the soil feels pretty dry. usually around 3pm, in the south, Atlanta. Could very well be overwatering, but I'm careful not to get any water on the leaves or anything. I did compost and resuse a lot of my soil this year - I'm thinking that might have been a contributing factor somehow... Powdery mildew is pretty epidemic here in the Pacific NW in late Summer and usually goes after the squash plants first. At this point you might be able to use chemical sprays to get it under control and save your crop. If you have a local extension office check and see if they offer a plant clinic. You can usually bring in some samples of your problem plants to get a diagnosis and they'll know a lot more about diseases and controls for your area.
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Jul 16, 2013 15:13
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mindphlux posted:all my tomato plants are covered with powdery mold. I've tried milk and garlic spraying them. no help. leaves are dying and falling off everywhere. fml. What type of milk did you use? It may be a now debunked old wives tale, but I heard only full fat milk works. Worked on my zucchini and squash last year with powdery mildew. Never needed it on tomatoes though, they were wiped out by the wilt virus instead (they may have got some powdery mildew/mold after the fact while it was dying, but the wilt virus was the cause of sickness anyway)
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Jul 16, 2013 16:49
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mindphlux posted:every day or two, whenever the soil feels pretty dry. usually around 3pm, in the south, Atlanta. Could very well be overwatering, but I'm careful not to get any water on the leaves or anything. I did compost and resuse a lot of my soil this year - I'm thinking that might have been a contributing factor somehow... Apparently it's best to water at dawn and dusk. Or the water cooks the roots or whatever.
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Jul 16, 2013 19:32
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Breath Ray posted:Apparently it's best to water at dawn and dusk. Or the water cooks the roots or whatever. For tomatoes, it's best to do it in the morning or afternoon. Tomatoes are so disease prone that watering in the evening can exacerbate things because their roots are sitting in wet mud all night.
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Jul 16, 2013 21:58
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I've been pouring water at extreme velocity over the leaves at 11am every day and my tomatoes seem fine, rampant even.
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Jul 17, 2013 00:45
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I watered last year with the same afternoonish frequency and everything did amazing. I think it's my dumb reuse of some soil. I bought sulphur to spray on my tomatoes but then got concerned about later eating them, so went with the milk thing instead. I used 2% and garlic puree. It seemed to work the first time I did it, but the last couple times it didn't do much, so I've given up. I'll harvest my 20 tomatoes or whatever and chalk it up to a learning experience I guess, like I do with so much of gardening :/
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Jul 17, 2013 09:34
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Interesting, never heard of the reuse of soil. My toms went into the (clayey) ground once they'd outgrown their pot so I don't even know if they roots have entered the local earth yet.
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Jul 17, 2013 10:17
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Diseases and pests can build up in soil over time if the same family of plants is in the same place. Depending on the family and the diseases prominent in your area it could be as little as two years of planting the same thing in the same place. That's why most gardening advice takes the blanket approach of demanding you never plant the same thing in the same place two years in a row. Some types of plants they even want you not to plant that type again for 3-5 years in the same place. You can get away with it for most stuff assuming you account for replacing the specific nutrients taken up with compost and fertilizer but if anything starts to do poorly then disease is the most likely cause. I've done tomatoes (and other solanums) in the same spot two years in a row and I'm going to plant a cover crop this Fall and do something else there next year. Breath Ray posted:Interesting, never heard of the reuse of soil. My toms went into the (clayey) ground once they'd outgrown their pot so I don't even know if they roots have entered the local earth yet. Tomato roots are quite good at breaking up soil. I'm sure they're all up in there already.
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Jul 17, 2013 15:52
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Going down to the East London City Farm in a bit to pick up some tips (and sunburn). What are the practicalities involved for rearing a goat in a back garden of about 30 sq metres?
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Jul 17, 2013 17:09
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Hi thread, Well my friend just bought a house and I am inheriting the gardening duties in exchange for some rent! I'll post some pictures soon, but I spent the day pruning apples and quince and black raspberries. One of the previous owners was a botany professor.. much of the garden has been neglected for 5 years if not longer.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:13
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Turkeybone posted:Hi thread, Are you down under? Summer isn't the right time to prune apple trees in the northern hemisphere, unless it's just removing truly dead wood or broken branches. I've been rehabbing a 50 tree orchard this year that was neglected for at least 10 years so I'd be curious see what your stuff looks like.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:27
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Upstate NY. It's three trees around a house my friend just bought. They're pushing 20 feet tall and her mother was ready to just remove them all, so this was really just removing dead wood and cutting branches that were growing horizontally across the driveway/ preventing access to one side of the house. They will need much love in the winter for sure, but today this was just to get a grip and keep them from just removing them all.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:42
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Is cilantro just a really fickle plant or something? The Shoprite I go to has those small $2 herb plants. I already have a mint and basil plant, and they're diesel. If my roommate or I forget to water one day, they're fine. This is the second cilantro plant that is gonna die on me now. Without the plastic package that propped it up, it gets all wilty and sad. Just an fyi, but this is an indoor sunporch, but it faces due east. More than enough sunlight for a lot of other plants.
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Jul 18, 2013 19:36
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 So here's one shot of the backyard, you can see a big pile of weeds already removed, and the hot mess of raspberries in the left foreground.  Here's behind the first shot, you can see another raised bed going along the fence.  More hot raspberry mess, and some unidentified big leaf plant.  This is like 6 feet tall, I have no idea what it is.  It's kinda cool that there are a few red raspberries here and there. I can't tell if some of these are just unripe, or it got too hot and they turned into raisins, or what.  This is the massive amount of extra wood I took out of the property (most of this was along the fence outside, not the apple trees. Quince is in the immediate foreground, in the back you see that bonsai-apple tree going on. Before I cut this, the tree completely blocked passage around the house.  A better look at the same apple tree.  Any idea as to what kind of apples? It's upstate NY so the first thought for me is like jona/mac/gold/whatev  Here is the apple tree in the front yard.. it is as tall as the house; you can see lots and lots of dead branches down low, I removed a bunch that were blocking passage/scraping cars in the driveway. Do I need to get up there with a ladder and cut this thing down to size?  The hot mess of quince continued, I'll have to youtube it up on how to take care of these.
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Jul 18, 2013 19:57
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THE MACHO MAN posted:Is cilantro just a really fickle plant or something? The Shoprite I go to has those small $2 herb plants. I already have a mint and basil plant, and they're diesel. If my roommate or I forget to water one day, they're fine. I've never had luck with growing cilantro indoors/in pots; they get very spindly like you describe. They seem to need lots of sun and lots of love, but despite being so prevalent in Mexican and latin cuisines, they prefer to grow in cooler temperatures. When it gets hot (actually, when the soil gets hot), the cilantro says "oh poo poo I'm gonna die" and bolts, meaning it starts producing flowers/coriander seeds and the leaves lose much flavor. At that point, you should pretty much just let it go and collect the seeds. TL;DR yes cilantro is more difficult to grow indoors/in pots.
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Jul 18, 2013 20:01
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I honestly have zero gardening experience, but I could go plant it out front and get the same amount of sunlight since my porch faces that way. If I did it with some kind of stick to prop it, would it be better?? I am in North Jersey... outside of this insane triple digit heatwave, it usually isn't that bad. I would just love to have a nice cilantro plant to use! I see a bunch of those little cheap herb plants for sale there. Are there any other common ones that do fine indoors? Again, due east, big rear end windows, so sunlight hasn't been an issue at all. That room gets insanely hot though.
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Jul 18, 2013 20:28
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Cilantro is a pretty big pain in general. I'm glad that I'm pretty neutral about eating it, because the few times I've tried to grow it have been lovely. If it's not getting too hot and bolting, it's not getting enough sun and has turned anemic. If it's not getting overwatered and droopy, it's dried out and mostly dead. And when you finally get it going healthy and strong, ants bring in aphids to obliterate it and you wind up killing the plant while trying to get rid of the aphid clusters and ant colony in the roots. You just can't win.
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Jul 18, 2013 20:46
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I'm growing basil, thyme, and mint indoors with only okay light and they do fine. The mint is a little spindly/viney, but the basil is awesome, even growing from a 2 liter mountain dew bottle.
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Jul 18, 2013 20:47
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Meh that sucks about cilantro. I am at least fairly near some stores, but having fresh stuff just in the other room rules. and yeah, I am doing the same stuff minus the thyme plant that died when I went away and my roomate forgot about it. But the plants sound exactly the same haha.
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Jul 18, 2013 20:53
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THE MACHO MAN posted:Meh that sucks about cilantro. I am at least fairly near some stores, but having fresh stuff just in the other room rules. Don't let my negativity infect you! If you love fresh cilantro, grow the hell outta that poo poo. Get a bunch of seeds and drop them all over the place. Get a million starts going inside and then toss em outside. Put them inside, outside, in pots, in loose soil, whatever!
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Jul 18, 2013 21:07
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Turkeybone posted:
It looks like it was originally pruned to be open center and would rather be a central leader. If there isn't a lot of other pruning to do in the Spring then some topwork to take out the stuff in the top/center would probably be a good idea. Based on the size it's probably a seedling root stock or one of the larger semi-dwarf types. The whole place looks like a fun but time-consuming project, and should be really nice when it's cleaned up. Zenzirouj posted:Don't let my negativity infect you! If you love fresh cilantro, grow the hell outta that poo poo. Get a bunch of seeds and drop them all over the place. Get a million starts going inside and then toss em outside. Put them inside, outside, in pots, in loose soil, whatever! Cilantro grows well like that here in the PNW. Scatter seeds on ground, cover with a little soil and mulch and you're done. If they grow up from seed in their permanent place then they will adapt better to the conditions like wind and be much sturdy vs starts grown in a nursery greenhouse. I'm not a huge fan of cilantro for cooking except in curries, but I love using coriander in just about everything. I'm going out to pick sweet cherries at my rehab orchard this weekend and I wouldn't be surprised to end up with 40+ pounds of them.
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Jul 18, 2013 22:24
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You guys ever make your own manure?
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Jul 19, 2013 01:42
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Turkeybone posted:I'm growing basil, thyme, and mint indoors with only okay light and they do fine. The mint is a little spindly/viney, but the basil is awesome, even growing from a 2 liter mountain dew bottle.
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Jul 19, 2013 01:48
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