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JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Dead center in a cucurbit patch full of happy healthy plants like this summer squash:


I have another plant of the same variety that looked the same a few days ago but now looks like this:


Here's a close up of some leaves, in case that helps:


It does show signs of new growth though:


It went from healthy to half dead pretty much overnight (but it happened a few days ago, which explains the new growth). It's entirely possible that something (including possibly my clumsy rear end) trampled on it and it's not a disease of any sort. I really have no clue.

I'm rusty at this whole gardening thing; this is the first one I've had in probably 10 years. So I have 3 questions for the more experienced gardeners:
1) do you see any clues that tell you what might have happened?
2) does it look like something contagious so I should remove the plant?
3) with the new growth starting, is it likely this plant will bounce back?

If I lose one squash plant it's not the end of the world. I'm ALREADY overrun with yellow squash and zucchini, and I have 2 more of those plants. I mainly want to educate myself on what might have happened here.

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JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

Is a 400 sq ft vegetable garden way huge for one person to tend and eat from?

I live alone. Last year I put in the first garden I've had in years, went with about 1000 square feet, and I'm already considering expanding. I could probably be a little more efficient in my layout, and 1/4 of that square footage was dedicated to a constant supply of corn on the cob, but 400 square feet definitely doesn't sound unreasonable.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Starting peppers last week is like starting tomatoes next week...go for it. Worst case, you waste a few seeds and a little time.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
One of my tomato plants has this dense, bunched up mass of bullshit at the top and doesn't seem to be putting on any more height. It's maybe 18" tall right now. My picture sucks, but it almost looks like a massively fasciated blossom.


Any clue what would cause this? It's my only Cherokee purple plant, so I'd like to see it pull through and do well, but at this point it looks like I'm gonna get a massive 4 pound supertomato and the nothing else, at least from the main stem. Luckily I've been lazy about pruning, so there are a couple decent suckers I can probably leave alone and let one of them become my new main stem :shrug:.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
I didn't know it could happen to the whole stem like that, but I'm kind of looking forward to seeing whatever frankentomato ends up developing :cool:. I'll let a couple suckers grow and be less ruthless with pruning that one so I'll hopefully still get a decent yield.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Pickling is great, or you can also stuff them. There are tons of different recipes out there, but last year I cut them in half lengthwise, then stuffed with a mixture of cooked, crumbled hot sausage and shredded cheddar. Mighta been something else in there like cream cheese...I forget. Freeze them, then cook them from frozen at like 375 for 20 minutes as an appetizer/side (or an entire meal if you're a garbage person like me). I ran out right around the time I was starting seeds this year.and started going through withdrawals. Gonna freeze twice as many this summer.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
They're squash bug eggs. You probably have more, in clusters like that, if you check the tops and bottoms of all your leaves. Duct tape works pretty well to remove them without damaging the leaf.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Earth posted:

Thanks a bunch! I am on the process of getting after it. I popped out at lunch and looked closer and they are ALL OVER the plants. Looks like I've got some work ahead of me since I don't want to use sprays.

While you're out there, you might want a spray bottle of water with a few teaspoons of soap in it. You'll probably see some adults and nymphs hanging out too...the soapy water will kill them pretty quickly without "spraying" as in dousing your plants with insecticides.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Going back to the paste tomato chat from the previous page, I just harvested a shitload of tomatoes I should have picked before yesterday's torrential downpours...I have a ton of cracked/otherwise thrashed tomatoes, and for a lot of these I'll just be salvaging whatever portion of the tomato I can for sauce or whatever. Anyway here's a couple Amish Paste, with a few chunks taken out due to splitting, etc:


Another really nice heirloom paste tomato is the Opalka, which is a little harder to find:


Of the two, Amish Paste probably wins for productivity, and Opalka for flavor. The Opalka probably has a little higher meat ratio too. But they're both great tomatoes.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Fermented hot sauce is really good. Just peppers + salt + water (+ optional garlic, ginger, etc) + time. Then you blend it up. Just make sure you're only using ripe peppers. I made a huge batch last year with assorted hot peppers, mostly unripe, and it was so disgusting and bitter I had to toss the whole thing :(.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Spraying castor oil works for voles. What worked even better was a few years ago when I applied it more heavily than the recommended "surface spraying" rate and tilled it in. Haven't seen vole damage since... and they were really bad before.

This is what I used: https://a.co/d/7xHfeIo . I forget the dilution rate and I'm too lazy to look it up, but it was pretty similar to lots of other sprays...a couple tablespoons per gallon with a squirt of dish soap or whatever.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

mischief posted:

My MIL told us at the end of a growing season several years ago that they had experienced septic tank issues. Their garden is downhill.


We'd been eating poo vegetables all summer.

A decade or more ago I did some work at a combined cycle power plant in the Mexican desert. Where do you get water for steam turbines in the desert? They also had a sewage treatment plant on site, that serviced the surrounding area. The water was treated and used in the turbines. The "sludge" as they called it was trucked away and used to fertilize fields. I'm not saying that's why Chi-Chi's caused a hepatitis outbreak, but I'm also not saying that's not why Chi-Chi's caused a hepatitis outbreak.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Joburg posted:

I know! I check my tomatoes most days but apparently missed those monsters. They were so big that the ducks had trouble eating them.

A couple years ago I learned if you go out at night with a blacklight flashlight they're really easy to spot.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
A strange plague has overtaken the local groundhog population. They've been dying suddenly, and show no signs of disease. Conversely, the nearby raccoons, possums, and turkey buzzards seem to be very fat and happy; so whatever it is must be selective in nature. My best guess is high airborne concentrations of heavy metals. In other news, my garden seems to exhibit greatly lessened pest pressure.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Any idea what specific type of rear end in a top hat ruined half of my habaneros?



At first glance I thought it was corking, and I guess it could be, but the few I checked in more detail all seemed to have a similar worm hole on them. It's specific to the habaneros, and only the ripe ones (although maybe the unripe ones have some immature larvae lurking inside them or something). The only other C. chinense variety I have that's producing right now is ghost peppers, and those are all fine, even the ripe ones. But from what I understand those aren't pure C. chinense - not sure if that makes a difference as far as pest preferences.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Yeah, I definitely think it's some kind of bug damage. It was like 30 peppers though :cry:. As long as it doesn't happen to the rest of the peppers I'll live. Just trying to decide if I should drench them in BT or something to knock out any remaining assholes.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Meaty Ore posted:

Are there any good ways of putting plants that have been in ground into pots? I've got a few super-hot peppers that have been in ground since May, grew very slowly, are still small and are just now starting to produce anything, with high temps barely breaking 60 degrees F. I'd hate to lose them now.

I've never successfully overwintered a pepper plant, but Pepper Geek has a pretty good video that goes into some steps I never tried before. So hopefully this winter I'll finally manage to save a few:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wo3bwp5uQA

There are a few related videos on that channel too - common questions, a follow-up where he takes them out of hibernation, etc.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Meaty Ore posted:

Thanks, I might have to try this! I've got a ghost with one fruit, a carolina reaper also with one fruit, and a trinidad scorpion with no fruits but which otherwise looks the healthiest of the three plants. Even if they don't survive the whole winter, I'd like to try and get something out of them.

You're welcome, although as Chad Doingitington mentioned, this doesn't really work for continuing this season's growth/production. It should get you a nice head start next spring though.

Reapers take forever. Last year I think I got 2 ripe peppers out of 2 plants. This year I planned on starting my superhot seeds on New Year's Day, but life got in the way. There's always next year.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

JoshGuitar posted:

You're welcome, although as Chad Doingitington mentioned, this doesn't really work for continuing this season's growth/production. It should get you a nice head start next spring though.

Reapers take forever. Last year I think I got 2 ripe peppers out of 2 plants, and I started seeds in I think early February. This year I planned on starting my superhot seeds on New Year's Day, but life got in the way. There's always next year.

Quote != edit :saddowns:

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
I can't speak to whether you NEED cement, but regular-rear end PVC cement is approved for potable water, and therefore food safe. After curing anyway. Don't drink it.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Tremors posted:

Does anybody have any recommended heat mats or lamps for starting seeds? I want to grow a few hot peppers from seed this year and realize I need to get on that soon.

I have a Vivosun and it's worked well for me, not necessarily saying it's the best one available or anything. However, last year I started my first seeds, then life basically got in the way of being able to nurture them or do much else, so they all died and I was stuck buying starts from a nursery. Recently I started all my superhot pepper seeds for this year, and when I grabbed my heat mat it was warm. Oops, I never unplugged it :downs:. The nice thing is, that means it can be plugged in for literally a solid year without burning your house down. So that's a plus.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Shifty Pony posted:

Welp, I've tried everything short of building an entire building complete with foundation around my strawberries. The squirrels took the hint, but the chipmunks decided to burrow under the sharp edge (scratching the poo poo out of themselves judging by the fur they left behind) and ate all of the almost ripe strawberries that kiddo had been eagerly watching.

I'm done spending the very few hours of free time I have building pest-exclusion stuff and still seeing my kid's disappointment as the garden stuff gets spoilt. An entire colony of chipmunks is going to learn about the death bucket the quick way.

You might be able to adapt the fencing setup I used to (mostly) successfully keep groundhogs out. The general idea is you shallowly bury some hardware cloth or fencing laid flat on the ground, coming out about a couple feet from the garden (or strawberry bed, whatever). You can either use much taller fencing than you'd otherwise need, bent into an L shape, or run your main fencing like normal but first bury the horizontal stuff (it should come into the garden, past the fence, for at least a few inches). If you go with the second option, you have to zip tie the vertical fence to the buried stuff every few inches, which takes way too long. So they can't directly go under the fence since it's attached to the part that's laying flat. And they try to dig under it, starting right next to the fence, and they hit more wire. They're not smart enough to start digging several feet back and tunnel into your garden like Bugs Bunny.

The reason it's only been "mostly" successful is because I cheaped out and used chicken wire instead of heavier wire fencing. It gets damaged a lot easier, and if the spacing is a little too wide between 2 zip ties, they'll kind of force their way underneath, stretching the chicken wire. Chipmunks won't have the strength for that, but they'll also fit through a much smaller opening - so you'd need to take that into account. Anyway my current fence has done its job mostly, and I have a better design in my head that I'm hoping to implement later this year.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

ThePopeOfFun posted:

% per lb

8 characters, Schultz!!! That’s all I need!!!!

"Percent per pound" isn't really a thing. % would be % for any unit. If something is 20% nitrogen, a pound of that fertilizer contains 0.2 lbs of nitrogen. A gram of that fertilizer would contain 0.2 grams of nitrogen. A metric fuckload of that fertilizer would contain 0.2 metric fuckloads of nitrogen.

For a home garden, application rates per acre aren't necessarily as useful (even scaled down) as they are for a farm. On a farm, fertilizer would often be broadcast across the surface of a field, so the spaces between rows would see just as much fertilizer as the crops themselves. If you're directly applying fertilizer to each individual plant, you won't need as much fertilizer as if you're drenching your whole garden with it.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

sterster posted:

If someone else has figured out that running a .5 gallon/hr emitter for approximately 23.33 (repeating of course) min when humidity and wind are x and y to me that's a short cut.

If you're trying to be scientific about how much water you need to offset evaporation you'll also need to know the temperature :D.

The reality is that there are too many variables for anybody to tell you exactly how much to water or to fertilize for optimal results on a home garden scale. In addition to climate, different soil types retain or shed water differently. A large adult plant uses more water than a little seedling. A squash plant needs a ton more water than a cactus. Different varieties of the "same" crop can have different watering needs. One corner of your garden might even have different watering needs from another due to differences in drainage. Containers dry out quicker than raised beds, which dry out quicker than in-ground gardens. Timing of watering makes a difference too. Watering in the morning is more effective than watering at the hottest part of the day. If you heavily water a tomato plant after a dry period, all the fruit can split. Blossom end rot is directly caused by a calcium deficiency, but the root cause is usually improper watering even when the soil has plenty of calcium.

It's not just water, differences in your soil type and soil biology can affect nutrient uptake - even if the actual nutrient content is identical. Different crops need different nutrients at different stages of growth.

The best anybody's gonna be able to do is give rough guidelines as a starting point, like "an inch or 2 of rain in a week is usually sufficient" or "corn is a heavy feeder, and you should fertilize at these particular stages". From there it's all about learning how to tell if your plants need more (or less) water by looking at things like drooping leaves, and learning to tell if your soil is moist enough by checking a couple inches below the surface. Same thing with fertilizer - you might start with a rough ballpark application rate, but if your leaves show signs of say a nitrogen deficiency, you'll still need to adjust from there.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
I pickle them, and garlic scape pesto is pretty good. Last year I made some garlic scape and black walnut pesto, all from my yard/garden. I need to dig around for more things to do with them. It's too bad peppers aren't in season yet...a fermented garlic scape hot sauce would probably be good. I guess I could ferment the scapes now and stick em in the fridge, then ferment the peppers when they start producing. Or go buy some.

I also always laugh at the shelf lives listed in recipes, especially for pickles and other preserved foods. I have pickled scapes in my fridge from this time last year, and they're still good. They were just a fridge pickle too, not canned or anything like that.

Semi-related, the other day some friends and I also drank some homemade eggnog that's been in a mason jar in my fridge since 2015. I swear it's still getting better with age. It was from a recipe in GWS, and the alcohol content is high enough (about 15% IIRC) that it's supposed to be shelf stable at room temperature. If you're storing it for 8 years, the fridge is the way to go :D.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Machai posted:

If you mix a pound of lead with a pound of feathers, it is 50/50 by weight, but the lead is def not 50% of the volume. Measurements do not translate like that accurately.

I just happened to click on this thread right after you replied. I never said anything about volume. N-P-K values are (at least usually, to my knowledge) by weight. Pounds and grams are units of weight. Metric fuckloads are a non-standard measurement, so I guess they could be either weight or volume.

If you take a pound of your 50/50 lead/feather mixture, it's gonna contain a half pound of lead. A gram will contain a half gram of lead (assuming it's a homogeneous mixture with a small particle size). A metric fuckload, if that's a unit of weight, will contain half of a metric fuckload of lead.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Machai posted:

You were replying to someone complaining that the fertilizer did not specify the measurements were based on weight. If the mixture is 50% lead / 50% feathers by volume, then taking 1lb of the mixture would give you more than .5lbs of lead. It is important to be clear about how things were originally proportioned.

In your previous reply, your lead/feather mixture was 50/50 by weight, not volume. Now that you changed it, I agree that if something was 50/50 lead/feathers by volume, and you took a pound of it, it would contain more than a half pound of lead. It would still be 50/50 by volume, assuming homogeneity.

Meh, this is a stupid argument, and I need to go replace a few plants that I watered in with fish fertilizer, that turned into holes overnight because a local wilderness creature decided that smelled tasty.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
For the sake of goon science, I just cracked open a packet of Velvet Queen seeds I forgot I had. I found little bits of shell and some powder and maybe some bug poop. Results are inconclusive, although the little shell bits look stripey. Although who knows, those could be bug pieces or something :shrug:

This site shows striped seeds, but that seems to be a stock photo they use for all sunflower varieties.
This one looks like the seeds are black.

I can vouch for mammoths coming in both striped and black varieties, even from the same packet. It's possible that the same is true for velvet queen too.

My best logical semi-educated guess is that the bag on the left is probably mammoth. Those flowers are much bigger than velvet queen, so it's likely that your coworker had more mammoth seeds to spare. I saved the seeds from last year's biggest flower (about 13' tall with a "trunk" bigger than my wrist), and it filled a gallon ziplock about 1/3 of the way.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Chad Sexington posted:

Came back from vacation to a decent haul. Three jars of tomatoes already so far this year. Amish paste tomatoes are crushing. Honeynut butternut squash coming in force.



Are you eating the butternuts as summer squash? You'll get better storage life out of winter squash if you let it completely mature and ripen on the vine. Some people even wait til the vines completely die back before harvesting any.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Futaba Anzu posted:

i've been thinking about getting into gardening some garlic and onions but i was wondering if the small space i had available would be able to host anything at all, do these tiny row planters you often see outside houses ever amount to much, would it be possible with these?

they're about 11 inches wide, would that be enough width to accommodate root vegetables? They're about 2-3 feet deep and I'm fairly certain they have irrigation or drainage.
another consideration that i feel makes this starting off on a losing foot though is that my family had a history of just dumping waste water which would sometimes contain trace amounts of bleach or soap into the dirt, which has probably killed what's there already. I was always planning on getting some starter soil to mix in, but would i be able to at least use some of what is still there or is it just dead dead and i should replace it entirely?

e: i guess in addition i was also considering green onions and radishes like the post above, plus maybe some fall time herbs that i could use the pots for

That space will easily work for any of the veggies you mentioned - in fact the things you mentioned are a perfect way to get some usable food from a space like that. You could run a double (or even triple) row of most of what you mentioned, the whole length of the planter, or do say onions for part of the length, then switch to garlic, etc. But with those being 11" wide, I'd probably just use the square foot gardening spacing recommendations: https://squarefootgardening.org/planting-chart-cheat-sheets/ . The book explains things in more detail, but for example for garlic it says 9 per square foot, so you'd arrange each square foot in a grid pattern, 3 wide, 3 deep, where each plant is about 4" apart. They're recommending closer planting for onions than for garlic, but if you space them a little wider you'll get bigger onions (depending on variety). Once you know how many feet long that is, you can easily do the math based on that chart and figure out how many feet to dedicate to each crop and how much you can expect to get.

Depending on timing, you can also interplant things like radishes and green onions, before the other plants in that same area reach full size. For example you could plant onions at twice that density, then pull every other one for green onions when you need them. That will leave the remaining onions with enough room to bulb up when they're ready. Radishes take a few weeks to a month from seed to plate, so you could also squeeze them in between immature plants and they'll be out of the way before the other plant needs that space.

As for the soil, trace amounts of regular chlorine bleach should be no more harmful than watering with chlorinated water. It may kill off some soil life at the time, but it won't stick around in the soil long term. For the "soap", that probably depends on whether it's actual soap or detergent. I'll let somebody who knows more than me answer that one.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Depending on what you mean by "better", for things like disease resistance modern hybrids are often the best bet, but they're not necessarily bred for the best flavor. Places like Wild Boar Farms breed some really interesting tomato varieties, both in terms of looks and flavor. Those places don't always plainly state whether they're open pollinated or not, so if you want to save seeds you may have to dig for info.

Personally I prefer open pollinated and heirloom varieties at least for things where seed saving is easy... tomatoes, peppers, beans, etc. For stuff like corn where you have to take drastic measures to avoid cross pollination, I'll buy whatever, usually a hybrid. Squash, cucumbers, onions, I'll buy OP or heirloom and then 90% of the time I'm too lazy to put the effort into saving pure seed so I have to buy more later anyway.

My philosophy on tomatoes is save seeds from OP varieties, then save seeds even harder if you get a really healthy volunteer plant, especially if you can identify the variety. The way I figure, if they do well with no effort, they have the genetics I want.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Any idea what these black specks are that I randomly get all over my veggies? They vary a bit in size, usually around 1-2 mm. They're also raised up from the surface. They're hard, but scrape off pretty easily leaving no residue and no apparent harm to the veggies. I'm in Pennsylvania if that helps. I mostly see them on my peppers, but this is a butternut squash:



Bug eggs? Bug poop? Some type of fungus?

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
Thanks, looks like that's it. Apparently it's more of a nuisance and not really harmful in a garden, but I'll look into some of the control measures I'm seeing. Harmless nuisances are still annoying.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Shifty Pony posted:

Missed quite a few bulbs of garlic when harvesting so they started to sprout. I transplanted them into rows so we'll see what happens.

That happened a couple years ago and I never caught it. The next year I had a couple clumps of garlic plants. Funny thing is, instead of being deformed or anything, those were the biggest, nicest, most symmetrical bulbs I harvested.

Soul Dentist posted:

This only matters if you're collecting seeds and replanting next season. Cross pollination doesn't effect the initial plants

I've heard people claim since a lot of the heat is in the seeds, cross pollination can make this year's bell peppers spicy or whatever. I'm skeptical, and haven't done enough digging into actual reliable information there. I know it's a thing with corn though, because the seed is the crop. So cross pollination can make your sweet corn starchy or turn yellow corn bicolor or whatever.

I've always had mixed results with jalapeños. This year I grew Zapotecs, and I think that's now my jalapeño variety for life. Nice spice level, great flavor, nice thick walls, tons of cool corking...we have a winner.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Jhet posted:

It’s like suggesting a mother should have brown hair instead of blonde because well, the baby has the gene for brown hair. The gene for brown hair only affects the next generation, just like the genes for heat or color only affects the next plant you grow using those seeds.

But if blondes and brunettes tasted different, and in eating the mother you're also eating a blonde or brunette fetus that makes up part of her flavor, then this becomes a really loving weird metaphor. It's definitely a thing with corn though, as far as I understand. If true with peppers, it won't turn your bell peppers into Carolina Reapers, but it could give bell peppers a touch of heat. IF the genetics in a pepper seed affect that seed's flavor in the way that the pollen a corn kernel receives can affect its flavor. I personally think it's bullshit with peppers but what do I know?



Shifty Pony posted:

If we let it happen for enough years in a row will we get perfectly spherical garlic?

Of course!

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Jhet posted:

It's not a perfect metaphor, but it illustrated the point. Corn isn't a good analogue either, because the kernels are next years plant already starting to grow. Basically corn is a messed up plant and the kernels form using the genetic material of the current plant and the parent plants. Corn is weird.

Pepper seeds contain the embryo, endosperm, and seed coating (there are more parts, but they're more parts of the three big parts). The embryo contains the new genetic material, the genetics for everything except the new info comes from the genetics of the current plant. The embryo doesn't contain capcasin either, it's absorbed by the seed coating from the oil coating the membrane inside the pepper fruit. This is well understood science though, but because corn is weird gardeners like to think it holds true for other plants even if they're incapable of it. Basically, gardeners can be really good at making plants grow, but I don't trust them for plant biology.

Pepper breeding is sort of interesting, but takes a long time to produce anything homozygous or that will stay true to seed, and not all sub varieties like to cross with others. So a bell pepper and a carolina reaper won't really want to produce viable see well in the first place.

Ok, sounds like you know more than me here, and this is pretty much in line with my position of "it's a real thing with corn, and I'm skeptical with peppers but can't intelligently argue against it". Works for me.

Now I'm just randomly wondering, I know beans rarely cross pollinate. But with beans, the seed is the crop, just like with corn (although obviously what part we eat isn't the deciding factor for how a plant works). If you hand pollinated some black beans with navy bean pollen or whatever, would the resulting beans on that year's crop still look and taste like normal black beans, or do the "corn thing" and give you some gray/zebra striped/however genetics work beans?

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Discussion Quorum posted:

I'm starting tomatoes, peppers, and some wildflowers indoors this year. Specifically in my home office, and they're due for their first baby dose of fertilizer soon.

My go-to water soluble ferts have been fish emulsion (which smells like what it is) and Miracle Gro organic (which smells like cat piss). Recommend me something that will not have my office smelling like a dead fish that pissed itself. I can get Fox Farms stuff at a local ag supply store, but I can't exactly crack open the seal and give it a smell test in the store.

For the past few years I've been using Dr. Earth Pump and Grow :wiggle: for my seedlings. It has a slight odor, but it's more of a molasses smell than anything offensive. The only time it's really even noticeable in the room is after everything's been potted up and I'm fertilizing like 12 flats at a time with it.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Shifty Pony posted:

No matter what you call them though heavier = works better to drive the tines into the ground.

Chad Sexington posted:

Go heavy or go home.

I have a tiller attachment for my vintage garden tractor :cool:. After years of fighting with a walk-behind tiller, it's nice to just throw it in 1st and drive. Definitely overkill for a smaller space though, unless you have other uses for the tractor.

JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005

Vicious Panda posted:

Found sun gold but not black krim, I’ll keep an eye out for it though cause now I’m curious.

If you can't find them, most other "black" tomatoes should be somewhere in the ballpark. Another one I really like is Japanese Black Trifele. I don't think I've ever seen starts for that in regular stores, but I've definitely seen them at farmer's markets. The 300 year old guy who mainly sells sad rusty looking produce usually has decent looking plant starts...and he always misspells that one as "truffle".


the milk machine posted:

sun golds and black cherry tomatoes are the best/tastiest varieties I've grown

I love the black cherries. Sun golds are great, but I also like the Napa Chardonnay. I don't usually bother with red cherries anymore unless I have extra starts that need a home (I start a few of those for family members who want them).

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JoshGuitar
Oct 25, 2005
I'm in the process of expanding my main in-ground garden plot and building a better fence anti-groundhog fortress around it. I couldn't get motivated earlier in the year, so unfortunately the area isn't ready yet and no cool season crops got planted this Spring. I wasn't 100% sure what the dimensions (and therefore necessary number of plants) would be during seed starting time, so I won't quite be able to fill the area this year. Not unless I want to just grow way more than I need of some random direct sown stuff. So several hundred square feet will probably just get cover cropped to keep the weeds at bay and help build the soil.

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