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Wallet posted:I feel your pain on this. The previous owner had some landscaper dump loads of stone on the gardens year after year for reasons I don't entirely fathom. It was all ¾ to 1" which is just large enough to be a nightmare to try and dig a shovel into. When I took over the butterfly garden from an older volunteer I dug up a bed down to a foot or so to remove four-o-clock roots, and also removed a bucketful of rocks I found in there. I assumed they just happened to be there, but then the former volunteer chewed me out for removing them because "they were for erosion control" - only this part of the garden had no slope whatsoever.
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Mar 28, 2021 16:24
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Jhet posted:Normally outside I would say just leave it, height and sun and wind will take care of telling it how big to be. Inside, your roots only have X space which means they can only take up Y nutrients in a day. This is still a lot but there’s no harm in pinching some flowers to get better size cucumbers if they’re growing small. I’ve never lived anywhere that cucumbers wouldn’t die as soon as it frosts, so I’m not really sure if they’ll live for years. I’d imagine they can live quite long, and maybe longer with pruning and pinching. Thanks! I ended up pinching/snipping about 40 of the little ones, leaving still at least 20 that are pollinated, and about as many still growing in. drat this thing has a lot of fruit. I'll see how those look in a few days. Hopefully I won't have to pinch any more. This particular cucumber plant, the spacemaster, seems to have a shelf life even without frost. The first one I grew eventually just started dying after maybe two months of consistent production, which was in line with what I read about this particular determinate. We have another plant that is a few weeks away from its own budding, so I'm not too worried about ruining the current one with experimentation. One benefit I've found to indoor growing is that it's easy to iterate, since the season never ends.
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Mar 28, 2021 17:54
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Shine posted:If you're interested in the whole semi-tryhard indoor grow tent approach, then check my post history for my little quarantine garden journey. We live in a condo in Vegas with a constantly shaded balcony, and we keep thick curtains over most of our windows to at least make our brains think that we're keeping the drat heat out, so 95% of what we do (including cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers) is indoors, in a tent. Your posts were helpful and a good source of inspiration, thanks! It's exciting to see what you can get done in such a small space. Do you have much going on besides the tent and lights (fans, stuff like that)? Is there a good starter guide that you recommend with an example parts list for a setup of this scale?
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Mar 28, 2021 20:07
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. I'm spoiled by the spacemaster cucumber, which goes from seed to fruit in like 6 weeks. But whatever, they'll be worth the wait.
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showbiz_liz posted:I'm worries I hosed up my tomato seedlings Make sure you acclimate them before sticking them straight outside. Build them up by exposing them to the outdoors and sun in gradual amounts. Is your soil constantly moist for your seed tray? Might have some good luck running a small fan over your seed tray as well to help with moisture and toughen up your sprouts.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:12
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Make sure you acclimate them before sticking them straight outside. Build them up by exposing them to the outdoors and sun in gradual amounts. Yeah I've been keeping the seed tray moist, which now seems like it was a mistake. The hardening-off part I know - but I won't be able to put them out for over a month yet, I'm in New York and it's still getting to the 30s and 40s at night. Last year it was I want to say late April before I started putting my peppers out during the day. Just gonna put them by my windows, and hopefully that will get them more light than my cheapo grow light. showbiz_liz fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 20:38
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showbiz_liz posted:I'm worries I hosed up my tomato seedlings Don't be afraid to mound up soil up against the stems, they'll sprout new roots.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:32
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I managed to find an hour or so to get into a gardening mood myself. My radishes and pok choy have all sprouted and I put in long beans, cucumbers, and a chard variety in to start too. Eggplants in two weeks should be fine. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s March and the nights will still be getting cold and to not put out too much too soon. I also potted up my Bird Aji into larger pots, but they get to hang out in the garage where it’s closer to 60F. I’m going to need to build out a seed starting cabinet the whole way. The temps in the garage just don’t stay warm at all. All the peppers are doing fine and aren’t dropping leaves, but they also have stopped growing which is to be expected. Should be fine to build a warm box for the winter and keep them over okay. It’ll just be a space issue instead. Or maybe I just insulate the roof and see how warm I can keep the whole thing.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:03
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My wine cap mushroom spawn arrived! It's still cold outside here so I'm thinking about mixing it into a pail of wood chips to grow a bit and then closer to the frost date (10 weeks rip) distribute around the yard more. Good idea y)n?
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Mar 29, 2021 16:14
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Wallet posted:I feel your pain on this. The previous owner had some landscaper dump loads of stone on the gardens year after year for reasons I don't entirely fathom. It was all ¾ to 1" which is just large enough to be a nightmare to try and dig a shovel into. I'm glad I'm not alone on this. I went to fix the pipe and it's not an easy fix... I'm starting to think it's going to be replacing the whole pipe. And the worst part is I think the pipe feeds into the sewer. My partner really wants to hire it out, but I know hiring stuff out generally creates something you end up paying for twice... Once for them to gently caress it up and one again for you to fix their gently caress up.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:14
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Just pulled these guys I missed last year out of the dirt. Looks like dinner tonight.
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Mar 29, 2021 20:59
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King Cocoa Butter posted:Your posts were helpful and a good source of inspiration, thanks! It's exciting to see what you can get done in such a small space. Do you have much going on besides the tent and lights (fans, stuff like that)? Is there a good starter guide that you recommend with an example parts list for a setup of this scale? For a tent this size, a single exhaust fan and a flap open for passive intake is sufficient. Later this evening, I'll post a list of the stuff we're using.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:26
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Okay, this ended up being a very busy evening, to the point where I barely played any Monster Hunter Rise. Gotta get to bed, but here are the quick points for our setup: Our Basics - A 4x3 tent with an upper 1x3 shelf. These are a dime a dozen on Amazon, presumably cranked out by the same factory in China and stamped with various brands. ~$100 when we bought one. - The Tmlapy lights I linked earlier. The mid-sized one can easily cover the floor and provide enough light for tomatoes and cucumbers. We suspend it with some rock climbing daisy chains and carabiners. We initially used three 120W-equivalent white LEDs from Lowe's for the top shelf, and they were just fine for growing lots of lettuce. We recently added the small Tmlapy up top in service of putting fruiting stuff up there (a jalapeño and a second cucumber are up there now). We suspend the smaller light with little birdhouse chains that my spouse had sitting around. These Tmlapy lights may well be overkill, but I bought them with "this definitely isn't too little" in mind. This garden was something started to help with my spouse's mental health during the initial C19 shutdown, so I erred on the side of caution rather than frugality when I picked a light. - Timers for the lights. Any cheap thing works. We have ours on a 16/8 schedule, since that seemed to be a common "jack of all trades" setting, though I keep meaning to research that in more detail for the specific plants we tend to grow. - An exhaust fan. The tent is 4x3x6, so we bought a 6" 240cfm (cubic feet/minute) fan with a speed adjuster, to run it at lowish speed, figuring that would be quieter than running a smaller fan at high speed. You can get them at hardware stores, or from a ton of places online, including with a filter, if you want. You shouldn't have any substantial odors to filter out with common vegetables (the "it keeps smells out" is more something pot-growers care about), but we have our tent filtered just in there just in case some sort of Chemical X forms on a plant and tries to exhaust into our living room. - Containers! We got those cube-shaped fabric grow bags that come in various sizes, again available from interchangeable companies on Amazon. We mostly use the 7-gallon, which are roughly a cubic foot, but we have some 3-gallons for herbs (including a very happy dill that is making a ton of seed pods), and 10-gallon for bigger stuff like sweet potatoes. That's really it, for basics. Over time we've made a few neat-but-not-mandatory modifications, including a very nice exhaust fan that is super quiet, a small intake fan, moving our old exhaust fan inside the tent for air circulation, some metal shelving cubes to work as grow bag holders/garden stake supports, a few hanging pots dangling next to the top shelf to get a little more stuff growing at once (using it currently for two types of basil, and some tomato starts to replace our almost-done plant), and whatever I rig up for mushroom fruiting (could simply be hanging paper bags). But the pics of cucumbers and sweet potatoes that I posted last summer/fall were grown with just the basic stuff listed in the prior paragraphs.
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Mar 30, 2021 09:58
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Lead out in cuffs posted:For getting the soil prepared, double digging is the way. It's a lot of work but very much worth it. When you say "double digging", am I correct in assuming that to mean tilling the existing soil, adding my amendments, then till again to mix them in? Also, I may not need to order as much dirt as I thought I would. According to the USDA web soil survey, my backyard soil should be better draining stuff that what's up front. I dug a few 12" test pits in the plot just to see what the soil composition looked like, and it doesn't seem to get very clayey until about 6-7" below the surface, and even then it looks/feels like lighter clay than what's up front. There's also a roughly 2" sandy/silty layer just above that, so it should drain well enough. I has been assuming the soil in my back yard was more or less the same as what's up front, but it seems that isn't the case. Roots from a nearby tree look like they're going to be a larger issue. Mostly small, but there look to be a fair number of them. Another concern is rodent control. We get a fair number of rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels around here. I know that marigolds and predator (usually coyote) urine are supposed to be pretty good for this, but is fencing around the area going to do anything to help? My first instinct is to say no, since chipmunks and rabbits tend to burrow underground, and fencing would probably just help squirrels with access. I don't think I'll be planting anything favored by birds, so I'm not taking them into consideration. Are there other effective deterrents I'm not thinking about?
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Mar 30, 2021 15:22
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It is far past pumpkin season and this thread needs a new title. Suggestions?
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Mar 30, 2021 17:49
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:It is far past pumpkin season and this thread needs a new title. Suggestions? Gardening: the houseplant thread is elsewhere
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Mar 30, 2021 17:53
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Gardening: no, not that kind
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Mar 30, 2021 18:16
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Gardening: Just do your best! No, not like that. Or Gardening: Plant your pumpkins now.
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Mar 30, 2021 18:53
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Gardening: don’t leave your pumpkins in the shower! (hi five if you’re picking up what I’m putting down)
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Mar 30, 2021 19:04
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Before the thread title changes: Pumpkins.  I think it was someone in this thread who said their rotten pumpkins seemed to grow better than cleaned seeds. This was a mini pumpkin that rotted a bit so I put it in dirt.
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Mar 30, 2021 19:37
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Earth posted:Gardening: Just do your best! No, not like that. Yeah, if you start now you can have a yard full of pumpkins
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Mar 30, 2021 19:37
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Schmeichy posted:Yeah, if you start now you can have a yard full of pumpkins Life goals.
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Mar 30, 2021 19:39
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I just sprouted my pumpkins it's still pumpkin season
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Mar 30, 2021 19:52
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Ok now y’all got me wanting to plant pumpkins. What’s the best variety to plant for pies and such?
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Mar 30, 2021 23:29
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Gardening: We grow food you eat!
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Mar 30, 2021 23:47
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Gardening: Dirty deeds done at exorbitant cost
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Mar 31, 2021 00:55
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Chad Sexington posted:Gardening: Dirty deeds done at exorbitant cost I like this one. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and hours to save pennies.
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Mar 31, 2021 03:26
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:Ok now y’all got me wanting to plant pumpkins. What’s the best variety to plant for pies and such? Not sure about best. We didn't try that many before we found Small Sugar and quit looking. Small fruit but very tasty (and productive).
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Mar 31, 2021 16:08
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Do pumkins and gourds still get squash vine borers?
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Mar 31, 2021 19:13
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I've never grown gourds but have definitely seen them in grandma's garden in pukkins before.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:17
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I definitely think small and productive is better than going for monsters, or even mediums. More taste, less seeds, less loss to pests. Buy a pumpkin for carving if you want to do that. My rocket is starting to pop up and is going to need thinning in a week or so - just chuck the thinnings in a salad as micro greens? Nothing else that I direct sowed is up yet, except for perhaps radish (hard to tell yet, might be weeds).
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Mar 31, 2021 19:42
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Do pumkins and gourds still get squash vine borers? My research says winter squash are less susceptible, but still attacked. I grew spaghetti squash last year, it got pretty bad, but I managed to save them by cutting the maggots out. My patty pan were decimated which is how I figured out there was a problem and investigated the spaghetti squash. This year I'm going to try the various preventive measures I've found online.
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Mar 31, 2021 19:55
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The pumpkins my wife inadvertently tried to grow last year most definitely had vine borers get into them. They came up next to our raised bed (the previous October she threw out the guts from the pumpkins the kids carved) and we just happened to plant our squash and zucchini in that bed. Everything did well for a while, dispute me not realizing what was coming up and mowing the pumpkins down several times. Eventually they got vine borers in them, and I’m pretty sure that’s where the infestation that finished off the squash/zucchini came from.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:33
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CancerCakes posted:I definitely think small and productive is better than going for monsters, or even mediums. More taste, less seeds, less loss to pests. Buy a pumpkin for carving if you want to do that. Heresy! Papitas are the best.
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Mar 31, 2021 20:46
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I know I should have asked this last fall, but... I have a small raised bed with just strawberries in it. Since it was planted late and I had some very ferocious chipmunks, got a whopping 2 berries out of it, but did get several runners that I managed to place in decent positions before they rooted so they didn't crowd each other, so hoping to get at least enough for, like, 1 tart this summer. But should I have cut back the brown and dead leaves, runners, etc... last fall? And is it too late to do it now? In northern VT, where only just barely a few things are peaking up out of the ground (mostly early bulbs like crocuses, though I saw the tiniest of new green leaf on one of said strawberry plants.)
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Apr 1, 2021 20:40
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DrBouvenstein posted:I know I should have asked this last fall, but... If it's brown and dead you can remove them now without issue. The dead parts won't start growing again if they're dead, so the plant won't miss them.
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Apr 1, 2021 20:48
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Chad Sexington posted:Heresy! Papitas are the best. Real talk here. This poster gardens. DrBouvenstein posted:I know I should have asked this last fall, but... I have never failed more spectacularly than when I've tried to grow berries. Everything in nature has some kind of homing beacon on them. Strawberries = farmer's market for this guy. Y'all can have that crap.
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Apr 2, 2021 00:00
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mischief posted:Real talk here. This poster gardens. Real, in season strawberries are so, so, light years ahead of supermarket strawberries and homegrown ones warm off the vine while you’re doing yard work are even better, but lol at ever getting a ripe one that the ants or the worms or the birds or the squirrels haven’t already gotten. Blueberries and figs at least just overwhelm the predators and make enough for everyone.
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Apr 2, 2021 00:37
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Last year I had strawberries up the wazoo: That was like one afternoon's haul.
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Apr 2, 2021 00:47
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We have a wandering patch of strawberries in our big bed that (via runners) does it's thing every year where it feels like it with little supervision. We get some fruit, but not a ton. They're neat.
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Apr 2, 2021 01:47
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Real, in season strawberries are so, so, light years ahead of supermarket strawberries and homegrown ones warm off the vine while you’re doing yard work are even better, but lol at ever getting a ripe one that the ants or the worms or the birds or the squirrels haven’t already gotten. Blueberries and figs at least just overwhelm the predators and make enough for everyone. At least it's not just me. There is a huge strawberry farm/you pick type deal less than 10 miles from our land and they just explode every year with strawberries. We're extremely heavy clay here though and that farm looks to have done some serious amendment to their dirt. Me personally, I'd rather spend time getting angry at more tomatoes. I'll buy my berries.
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Apr 2, 2021 02:06
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