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HeatherChandler posted:Although, my mother in law has a massive bromeliad that I think she has had for 10 years or something ridiculous, I wonder if she is just letting it reproduce within the pot it is in, the pot is like 3 feet high and 4 ft across. Is that even possible? You sure can. I've got one of the smaller bromeliads right now that started out as a clump of 3 when I planted it in an 8" pot that is now a clump of 12. Again, most don't use their roots for nourishment, so pot size has no real bearing on how big the clump can get. I've already had to cut off several pups that were growing out over the edge of the pot and move them to the other side where there was room. Your mother-in-law's would almost have to be a lineage of pups. Remember the "grow, flower, pups, die" cycle? That entire life cycle lasts about 18-36 months, only to be repeated by the pups. From what I've read, bromeliad seeds don't germinate so well, or have very short times of viability. Fun fact: pineapple plants are bromeliads. The pineapple is actually the flower of the plant:  Click here for the full 1280x849 image. They're one of the few bromeliads that use their roots to draw nutrients. They're also unique in that they have yet another propagation method that other bromeliads don't: you can plant the crown from the fruit.
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Apr 1, 2009 01:39
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awapplesauce posted:an evil little poo poo squirrel You could trap it... What you do with it from there is up to you. Keep in mind that squirrels are territorial, and unless you release it in like the next state, it WILL come back. HeatherChandler posted:You used a rototiller...right? That's a big patch even for a rototiller. My guess would be a regular tiller, probably one that mounts to a 3-point hitch on a tractor.
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Apr 1, 2009 01:43
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I used a rear tine rototiller I borrowed from a family member. You haven't seen the whole area yet...I'll get a picture tomorrow. I spent all day today getting another load of mulch and spreading it on the pathways and intersections. Looks like I'll need at least another trailer load. I do plan on melons, and have two varieties started already. Also I'm seriously contemplating trying to raise one of those gently caress off huge pumpkins, but to do it seriously takes a 30 foot in diameter circle per plant, serious attention paid to pruning, fruit selection, stem to vine angle (seriously) and of course super specific fertilizer schedules. Maybe I'll just grow some normals. By the way, my property ends pretty close to that mulch pile, the pile might even be over the line. Just kill the squirrel. Theres millions of them and they will gently caress your garden up if they take a mind to do it.
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Apr 1, 2009 02:25
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kid sinister posted:That's a big patch even for a rototiller. My guess would be a regular tiller, probably one that mounts to a 3-point hitch on a tractor. I just had this horrible mental image of some poor guy out there 10 hours a day for a week tilling by hand, all in the name of fresh air and excercise. People do strange things. Oh, and thanks for the random plant knowledge  . I know at some point I knew that, but lost it.
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Apr 1, 2009 02:25
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Man. I think I'm taking tomorrow off. Not a whole lot left I can now anyway. Other than mulch. I have a bromeliad I bought a couple weeks ago. The bloom is up, but hasn't folded out. But the leaves are starting to curl under on the tips. Doesn't look good. Any ideas on that? Looks like I'll have to do more tilling if I want to set out winter squash, watermelon, okra, pink eye purple hull peas and cucumbers. And I do. gently caress. Mulching and some more mulching followed by a side dish of mulching. Also put in a whole bed of kohlrobi and a bed of radishes that I'll probably just give away as I don't really like radishes, except for a few slices in a salad or wilted lettuce.    Zucchini, The Beginning 
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Apr 1, 2009 23:51
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ChaoticSeven posted:Zucchini, The Beginning 4 days from now this picture will be wall to wall vegetable.
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Apr 1, 2009 23:56
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ChaoticSeven posted:I have a bromeliad I bought a couple weeks ago. The bloom is up, but hasn't folded out. But the leaves are starting to curl under on the tips. Doesn't look good. Any ideas on that? Some bromeliads do curl at the tips and it's perfectly normal. When the leaf sides curl up and inwards, that means that that bromeliad needs water. You're remembering to water in its central "cup", right? Also, the time for bromeliads from bud to bloom can last anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks and the flower structure will last another 2 to 6 weeks after blooming. In other words, don't get antsy in the pants.
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Apr 2, 2009 01:42
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I haven't been watering it in the cup because when I bought another brom from a nursery the old lady said "Now some people will tell you to water these in the cup, but that'll just rot your plant." So I've been doing it the normal way...These leaves are definitely not supposed to curl under, it's curling in a "I'm a dying plant" way.
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Apr 2, 2009 01:50
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If you only water the roots of most bromeliads, then the only way they'll get water is from that water evaporating into the air. Only a few bromeliads can get by on just humidity as their water source. Bromeliads only rot in the cup if you water it too much, so much that it always has standing water in the cup, which can eventually go bad. There's two ways to prevent this: 1. when the water stinks and rot has set in, turn the whole plant upside down to empty it (guess what happens to the dirt when you do this) 2. don't water it so drat much that it always has water standing in the cup Bromeliads are tough and can take a few days without any water. Try it!
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Apr 2, 2009 02:06
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At what point do I need to start pruning tomato plants? Last year I neglected to prune at all and I got a couple of wild, leafy plants with hardly any fruit. I planted 3 new plants this year, and so far they are about a foot tall and are starting to grow outwards quite a bit too. I dont want it to get out of control again and miss out on good tomatoes.
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Apr 2, 2009 22:52
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jerkstore77 posted:At what point do I need to start pruning tomato plants? Up here in New England, I am jealous that you already have foot tall plants. But if you hardly got a crop last year, other things were going on. Had you never pruned your plants, you would have gotten a big crop. True, a crop that would have rotted where the fruits touched the ground, a crop hard to pick, a crop that would have sprawled everywhere, but there would have been a crop none the less. The fact that you hardly got a crop tells me that you either over fertilized, overwatered, or perhaps both combined with a foggy bay area summer. That said, when you prune a tomato plant, you are not hacking away at them so much as pinching away the suckers. The suckers are the branches that grow from the joints between the leaf and the stem. You should pinch all the little suckers since they won't do anything anyway, but leave a few, especially where you have a big one and its more like the stem split in two. As to how many branches you keep depends on how you train them. If you are staking them, you might only want a couple. If they are in big cages, you could get away with 3 or 5 eventual branches.
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Apr 3, 2009 01:13
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Is there a support group I can join for people who can't seem to stop buying plants in the spring? I just came back from the store with 3 Roma tomato plants (although those were planned) and 2 more blackberry plants. Someone help me, this needs to stop! I'm going to build more tomato cages now, too.
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Apr 3, 2009 18:38
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Anubis posted:Is there a support group I can join for people who can't seem to stop buying plants in the spring? I just came back from the store with 3 Roma tomato plants (although those were planned) and 2 more blackberry plants. Someone help me, this needs to stop! Blackberries ACK! My allotment was absolutely covered in them, I can't tell you how many bloody (literally) cuts I had on my arms, legs, cheeks from trying to tame them back a bit. I was a walking 'faces of meth' picture. They sprawl uncontrollably. They used them along the fence as natural trespasser control. I would have really loved having them to harvest except the park next to my flat had them everywhere anyway, I would just pick those (Park management told me that they didn't use any pesticides on that area). Did I mention I hate blackberry brambles? Oh, and if I actually went to the nursery I would end up with a bazillion plants and no money to live on. The worst for me are flowers though. My annual borders are always a horrible mishmash because I want one of everything. I've restricted myself to starting everything from seed and only buying soil/potting mix/compost at Walmart to avoid temptation, since their plant selection isn't as good. Tomato pruning...I am an obsessive pruner. It is something I see debated a lot. From what I've read, pruning sideshoots results in lower yield, but bigger fruit. I had learned otherwise, so it is all news to me. If you are going to train on a single stake, pruning really is the only way to keep them manageable. http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx <--good description of how to prune. In a cage you don't need to prune at all. I'm trying to figure out a happy medium, I really like mine neat and tidy but I would love a higher yield as well. I was thinking of building a narrow tripod teepee around each plant, and training one or two vines up each cane, pruning those as normal. I don't know if that would work, or if my description even makes sense. I figure as long as they are off the ground it doesn't really matter how it is accomplished.
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Apr 3, 2009 21:04
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Anubis posted:Is there a support group I can join for people who can't seem to stop buying plants in the spring? I just came back from the store with 3 Roma tomato plants (although those were planned) and 2 more blackberry plants. Someone help me, this needs to stop! If you find it let me know. I'd never owned a plant two or three weeks ago...  I got rained out yesterday.  Looks like most of the tomatoes I put out last week are going to bite it from those cold nights and too much rain. Better Boys and the Super Boys fared the worst, the Arkansas Travelers still look nice and green even though they were smaller and more tender looking plants when I got the 9 packs. I also sunburned my tomato seedlings, won't know how bad until a few more days I suspect. Also working on tomato cages... ChaoticSeven fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Apr 3, 2009 |
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Apr 3, 2009 21:27
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HeatherChandler posted:Blackberries ACK! My allotment was absolutely covered in them, I can't tell you how many bloody (literally) cuts I had on my arms, legs, cheeks from trying to tame them back a bit. I was a walking 'faces of meth' picture. They sprawl uncontrollably. They used them along the fence as natural trespasser control. I would have really loved having them to harvest except the park next to my flat had them everywhere anyway, I would just pick those (Park management told me that they didn't use any pesticides on that area). You know, they've developed thornless blackberry cultivars... Anubis posted:Is there a support group I can join for people who can't seem to stop buying plants in the spring? There sure is. With Gardeners for the Betterment of Kid Sinister, you simply send all your money to me. Since you will have no money then, you will not be able to buy plants! kid sinister fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Apr 3, 2009 |
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Apr 3, 2009 22:55
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kid sinister posted:You know, they've developed thornless blackberry cultivars... And they taste divine! Ours somehow cross-pollinated with some regular ole blackberry bushes, so now we have both thornless with huge berries AND the regular blackberry bushes with mutant thorns and large, delicious berries. The thorns are HUGE, but they are worth braving. We get all we could ever want from the outer edges anyway.
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Apr 4, 2009 03:58
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How silly of the predecessor to plant the thorned ones in the middle of everything. He also left broken whiskey bottles all over, maybe there is a connection. Sorry, I wasn't meaning to say 'don't grow blackberries' just 'gently caress my experience dealing with them, listen to me whine like a big baby please'.
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Apr 4, 2009 06:59
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HeatherChandler posted:How silly of the predecessor to plant the thorned ones in the middle of everything. He also left broken whiskey bottles all over, maybe there is a connection. Oh that's fine, blackberry bushes aren't super high maintenance but if you neglect them... God help you. I'd still put my previous home owners as bigger assholes then then yours, though. They planted and cultivated ivy in the chain link fence and then allowed poison ivy to take over. I lost 2 years of gardening to that crap since I couldn't go within 20' of it unless I was covered head to toe. Eventually, after I got married, my wife removed it by hand, since she has never had a reaction to it. Not to mention that the ivy was bending/destroying the fence. A neighbor planting ivy should be grounds for justifiable homicide, I know I'd never convict. Anubis fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Apr 4, 2009 |
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Apr 4, 2009 09:19
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I don't understand why people buy ivy. Our garden looks like some kind of crazy Indiana Jones set with all the vines growing all over the place. At least English ivy isn't poisonous to the touch, but it did give my mum 36 stitches in her right thigh (she was pulling it off the house and put her foot through a hidden skylight). Our brambles don't really make any fruit. All their energy goes in inch long thorn production.
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Apr 4, 2009 11:24
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Haha, well, the space we had was an allotment so it was specifically for gardening, most people have enough repect to leave things in a state that the new renter can work the land. To be fair, we were only charged for half because of the state it was in. We did had ridiculous ivy growing on our flat building though. Someone planted it to climb up the shrub that divided our entrance from the one next door, because that makes total sense. In addition to constantly sprawling all over the sidewalk and front to the point you can't get out the door, it had climbed up the facade and was destroying the paint, cue argument with the management company and the owner. We only owned the inside, they wouldn't let us paint unless we paid THEM an inflated price to do it, so we just left it looking derelict. gently caress ivy, it could have at least had the courtesy to grow thick enough to completely cover the paint, not just take chunks off. If I knew where the owner lived I'd break in and plant some brambles in her garden. That'd show her. Speaking of climbing plants, are there any other than climbing hydrangeas that can climb up brick without trellises and without damaging it? That was my original plan to cover this kind of dated looking brick house, but older plants are too expensive, and they take so long to establish. The other option was that invisible netting and clematis, but I don't know how to attach it to brick without tools (not handy). I know this is the veg thread, but thought maybe one of you gardening whizzes might have a clue.
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Apr 4, 2009 20:41
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Any climbers that stick to brick will do some damage, usually to the mortar. There are 2 natives to the US that I know would adhere to brick, but I'm hesitant to recommend them because they grow like weeds. They are the Trumpet Vine and the Virginia Creeper. Again I recommend you steer clear of these two. Some people will even get rashes from handling one or both of those. Some cultivars of creeping Euonymus a.k.a. Wintercreeper will successfully climb brick. There are even some pretty variegated cultivars too. One trick to hiding a support for climbers on a brick wall is to drill holes in the mortar with a masonry bit in a grid pattern with holes about 1-2 feet apart and 4-6 high from one another. You should be able to use the mortar pattern on the wall to figure out straight horizontal and vertical lines. Put masonry anchors in those holes and screw in eye bolts with the eyes going vertical. Once that is all done, thread a solid steel wire up each column of holes, bending it back and wrapping the end around the straight section. That will give climbers with tendrils and twirling leaves something to hold onto!
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Apr 4, 2009 22:45
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When my mom first moved out to the country, we discovered a good portion of our wooded land was covered in a combination of Kudzu and poison ivy. Not a good combination. It took YEARS to clear every last bit of kudzu out and I'm still not sure we did it.
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Apr 5, 2009 03:33
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kid sinister posted:Any climbers that stick to brick will do some damage, usually to the mortar. There are 2 natives to the US that I know would adhere to brick, but I'm hesitant to recommend them because they grow like weeds. They are the Trumpet Vine and the Virginia Creeper. Again I recommend you steer clear of these two. Some people will even get rashes from handling one or both of those. Some cultivars of creeping Euonymus a.k.a. Wintercreeper will successfully climb brick. There are even some pretty variegated cultivars too. I knew that climbers did cause some damage (and that Virginia Creeper was evil), but I read that of all of them, the hydrangea do the least, and most of it is cosmetic. Is that wrong? I guess there isn't a no drill way to do make supports--I assume those brick clip things wouldn't support the weight of a perennial climber. I'm going to have to make some handy friends out here, I am sort of a dizzy cow. Last thing I put together was an Ikea bookshelf that fell over. So how about this weather? We are on a tornado watch tonight, and snow through Wednesday. Salad germinated like crazy quicker than I expected so I went ahead and drug it in. All my tomatoes and peppers have been potted up and zucchini and cukes germinating--and snow?. Just doesn't feel right!
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Apr 6, 2009 01:51
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Someone on here better show me how to puck and gut a wood pigeon, because boy am I sick to death of them eating my seedlings! Man cannot live on garlic alone, people! All my peas, leeks, sunflowers, pumpkins and courgettes have had to be restarted indoors. I don't have any proper compost because I can't drive and my mum is procrastinating, so I'm using our terrible compost full of sticks and eggshells and half rotted granny panties. GRAAAAGGHGHGGAAAAGGHH!!! *goon rage*
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Apr 6, 2009 12:28
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madlilnerd posted:Someone on here better show me how to puck and gut a wood pigeon, because boy am I sick to death of them eating my seedlings! Man cannot live on garlic alone, people! All my peas, leeks, sunflowers, pumpkins and courgettes have had to be restarted indoors. I don't have any proper compost because I can't drive and my mum is procrastinating, so I'm using our terrible compost full of sticks and eggshells and half rotted granny panties. GRAAAAGGHGHGGAAAAGGHH!!! *goon rage* Try some dead CD-Rs hanging down with fishing line. Sometimes that will keep birds away, put the two tops together when you do it so both sides reflect well and hope for the best. Edit: Really my fool-proof method of bird control is a young spaniel dog. Go down to your local shelter and pick one up then fence off your garden. They tend not to be great jumpers so nothing elaborate is needed as long as they have other space to run in. I guard my garden from trampling with just 3 strings of low gauge wire strung between some posts. It's great though, if there is a bird in the yard, he's after it like a fat kid chasing the ice cream truck. When it's nice out I have been able to throw down grass seed and still keep my yard completely bird free. This is clearly the most effective method of bird control, although they do cost a lot in shoe laces and new hats. Anubis fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Apr 6, 2009 |
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Apr 6, 2009 15:21
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My lettuce started sprouting today. I m thrilled and excited. My plan was to start lettuce, melons and carrots inside. I'm going to plant the beans outside in a rotation in order to maintain a good harvest and we'll plant the pumpkins outside too.
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Apr 7, 2009 00:56
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HeatherChandler posted:So how about this weather? We are on a tornado watch tonight, and snow through Wednesday. Salad germinated like crazy quicker than I expected so I went ahead and drug it in. All my tomatoes and peppers have been potted up and zucchini and cukes germinating--and snow?. Just doesn't feel right! I think it sucks. Gathered up everything that would fit over a tomato plant, picked the ones that still looked like they had a reasonable chance of thriving and stuck em'. We'll see who makes it. 
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Apr 7, 2009 01:17
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ChaoticSeven posted:I think it sucks. Gathered up everything that would fit over a tomato plant, picked the ones that still looked like they had a reasonable chance of thriving and stuck em'. We'll see who makes it. Hahaha my goodness. I was reading a gardening forum and some guy constructed a tent system with sheets and christmas lights strung around the plants for heat, it was kind of cute. I was going to go pick up some straw bales today but I can't seem to get in the mood with snow falling. If anyone else plans on mulching with straw, seriously call around and find a local farm that sells feed and bedding. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, the price was a quite a bit cheaper. So glad it is going to be normal again tomorrow, I have no light for my mesclun jungle, although it doesn't seem to care too much yet:  Click here for the full 800x600 image. I have been thinning them like every day, don't remember putting that many seeds down. Tomatoes seem very happy to be transplanted, they are doubling every night it seems:  Click here for the full 600x800 image. And peppers do not grow as slowly as I have been led to beleive:  Click here for the full 600x800 image. Guessing those seed leaves are getting geared up to die.
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Apr 7, 2009 19:56
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My boyfriend and I just started our own "garden" this spring on our 5x5 balcony (that gets southwest exposure). WE have a small box of strawberries, a box with a lattice for pole beans, and two hanging bags - one for tomatoes and one for peppers. It's been two weeks and we haven't killed a single thing! We have three "trios" of strawberries and they go from totally blooming with signs of berries to just green and thriving. Our hanging peppers, while small, are very green and show signs of budding. Our tomatoes are growing with signs of budding, but a few of the leaves are starting to curl (should I water them more, do you think?). The most exciting are the pole beans. The seed packet just said to stick them 4" apart and an inch deep. So we did. Didn't start them indoors or anything, just stuck them in the ground. Right now we have about 6 or 8 little sprouts with leaves. It's super exciting to watch! Now if only I had a back yard...we've been reading about aquaponics and are itching to try it out...
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Apr 7, 2009 21:48
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I'm not sure what's going to happen to my garden this year. I really have my work cut out for me. The previous owners let these small trees get established right next to the foundation and let the whole area get overgrown with grass and weeds. Last fall I decided I wanted to make that area into a garden so I chopped down the trees and put about a foot of leaves over the entire area. On garbage night I stole all the leaves my neighbors put out to make sure I had enough. The good news is that I managed to kill all the grass and the area is teaming with worms. No complaints about the composition; it is mostly loamy. The leaves are somewhat decayed. Finally the garden is right next to my rain gutters so I want to have some system to save the rain and use it to irrigate. The bad news is that I was hacking away at one of the stumps, and not even the biggest one, and it took me an hour to dig it out. Tree roots overspread the entire area and digging through it is hell. I'm trying to cut through the roots, overturn the sod, and dig in as many leaves as I can. After about 5 hours on Sunday I managed to do about 10% of it. And its still chunks of rooty soil, not at all loose and crumbly. I'm alternating between my shovel and my pruning shears. On second thought, I might rake most of the leaves off to one corner and compost them. I really don't know what I'm going to get to this year. My options are to prepare a small area and just have a few tomato plants and a small salad garden and plant the rest to a cover crop and keep digging and hacking away at the tree roots, or to plant pumpkins and just have them spread. Any ideas?  The intended spot for my garden.  One of the stumps. I started collecting kitchen waste in hopes of eventually having a compost pile.  Its good soil and worm paradise under there. Zeta Taskforce fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Apr 8, 2009 |
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Apr 8, 2009 04:45
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Well, my bromeliad is looking better. However, my caladium has taken a sudden death spiral. Almost all of the leaves are turning crinkly and shriveling up, usually from the edges inward. It also sort of looks like they're fading, they don't have the contrast they did. My other one is doing great and it gets the same amount of light and water as this one.
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Apr 8, 2009 05:42
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Zeta Taskforce posted:
That's going to coppice, so it's best if you dig it out completely, unless you're planning a career as a coppicer/charcoal maker. ChaoticSeven, the silvery stuff on your leaf looks fungal so you might have to spray to get rid of it.
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Apr 8, 2009 15:17
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Zeta Taskforce posted:Any ideas? Seconding digging out that stump. All those stems should show you just how resilient that plant is to just being cut back. That is good dirt, but you main limit of what you can grow is your climate and the sun exposure your intended spot gets. If it's between two houses that close together, there's a good chance that spot will be shady. Does it have unshaded southern exposure at all?
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Apr 8, 2009 16:15
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madlilnerd posted:That's going to coppice, so it's best if you dig it out completely, unless you're planning a career as a coppicer/charcoal maker. Going to coppice? It already has, at least twice. That one is the worst one, but this past weekend I dug out the second worst one and that took the better part of an hour. Because its been there for so long, its had time to send out these monster thick roots in every direction. The previous owners had this nasty habit of wanting to the absolute minimum possible, but then mis judging how much effort was required to reach the minimum. kid sinister posted:Seconding digging out that stump. All those stems should show you just how resilient that plant is to just being cut back. I am the proud owner of three huge maple trees that sit on 3 corners of my property, and a black walnut on the other corner, so this is the best spot. (BTW, there are no black walnut leaves in the garden, I know they inhibit plant growth) The sky is open to the south and it does get a surprising amount of light for being directly between two houses. In the end where the stump is gets the most, probably about 8 hours direct sun, maybe more in June and July. The other end gets a few hours in the morning and a few more hours in the afternoon. I’m about a mile from the ocean so I have a long growing season that’s moderate, at least by New England standards. My next door neighbors had tons of tomatoes, but their peppers didn’t’ do well.
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Apr 8, 2009 17:00
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The weather finally broke here and we had mid-60 degrees instead of the snow. This made the kids excited because they could finally dig up their gardens. In fact, that was the question I was greeted with this morning. What? You WANT to go outside and do something active? Like I'm going to say no!
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Apr 8, 2009 23:19
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In just four days all my basil has sprouted, and it seems that overnight my tomatoes have sprouted up over and inch! However, the tomatoes are all gangly and falling over. I hadn't had time yet to set up my lights yet because I didn't expect anything to come up so soon. Will my little tomato sprouts strengthen up once I get them under growing lights tomorrow, or are they doomed to be weak and useless? Right now they're just sitting in a window without direct sunlight.
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Apr 9, 2009 06:27
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Windy posted:In just four days all my basil has sprouted, and it seems that overnight my tomatoes have sprouted up over and inch! However, the tomatoes are all gangly and falling over. I hadn't had time yet to set up my lights yet because I didn't expect anything to come up so soon. Will my little tomato sprouts strengthen up once I get them under growing lights tomorrow, or are they doomed to be weak and useless? Right now they're just sitting in a window without direct sunlight. I don't know for sure if they will perk up, but IF they don't, you can always just pot up into a deeper pot and bury the stem all the way.
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Apr 9, 2009 16:13
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Windy posted:In just four days all my basil has sprouted, and it seems that overnight my tomatoes have sprouted up over and inch! However, the tomatoes are all gangly and falling over. I hadn't had time yet to set up my lights yet because I didn't expect anything to come up so soon. Will my little tomato sprouts strengthen up once I get them under growing lights tomorrow, or are they doomed to be weak and useless? Right now they're just sitting in a window without direct sunlight. You might want to cull your basil back to one plant. A single basil plant can form a bush 4 feet tall and around, more than enough for one household. Tomato plants themselves aren't very strong, they are more like vines and are grown in cages for added support. Still, they're strong enough to stand upright by themselves without support until they're at least 18-24 inches tall. If they're that bent over now, it's because they don't have a direct light source like you said and are growing towards the light, most likely the nearest window. Once you add a proper overhead light, they'll correct their stems and start growing towards the new light source. edit: My dad and I should know something about growing tomatoes. We grow ours so large that we could never find cages for sale that were big enough to support our plants, so we had to make our own. We've had plants that have topped out their 6 foot cages, fell over and touched the ground again. I should really get pictures of them one of these years... We grow mostly Better Boy and Brandywine tomatoes for the record. These ones get an extra special recommendation though, Sungold. They're little orange cherry tomatoes and they're so sweet they're like candy. The only kicker about them is that they're F1 hybrids, which you can't really harvest the seeds from them. Plants from those seeds won't have near the same vigor as their parent. kid sinister fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Apr 9, 2009 |
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Apr 9, 2009 17:37
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kid sinister posted:You might want to cull your basil back to one plant. A single basil plant can form a bush 4 feet tall and around, more than enough for one household. Ok, hopefully they'll look a little better when I get the lights up this afternoon. As far as the basil goes, I use it a lot for cooking, drying and making my own jars of pesto so I'm prepared for hoards of delicious little plants should they all survive when planted outdoors. edit: How are the Brandywines Kid Sinister? My mother usually plants Better Boys, and the seeds I started are an heirloom mix. I honestly won't know what kind of tomatoes I have until they mature. Windy fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 9, 2009 |
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Apr 9, 2009 17:48
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 06:41 |
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 I had no idea about planting tomatoes way up to their leaves when they get leggy. I've got some I started inside in the middle of winter, just to see what would happen. They're now several feet long and crawling under my dining room table. Thank you, thread!Zone 7 here; so far I've got in: romaine swiss chard red & green cabbage broccoli brussels sprouts poblanos serranos string beans acorn squash and several varieties of tomato (probably putting them out this weekend) This is only my second year gardening. I did pretty well last year (I was giving tomatoes away) knowing next to nothing, so I'm hoping this year will be even better!
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Apr 9, 2009 19:16
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