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Motronic posted:That should be quite nice for them if they were already properly hardened off. Hmmm, I probably should have taken them outside the greenhouse every now and then. They were definitely of decent size but its for sure 20 degrees colder out in the rain now.
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Jul 1, 2020 16:21
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Are there any tomatoes varieties that do better with wet soil? My small garden plot is right next to a lawn the university tends, and the sprinklers hit my garden twice a week, keep the surrounding soil damp enough my garden rarely fully dries.
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Jul 1, 2020 16:33
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ixo posted:I have one, the biggest downside is that you can really can't use all of the slots because of spacing issues. Lettuces, choys, sorrel and basil have done great so far, I don’t think I could fit more than one or maybe two tomato or pepper plants in my six slot version. Get the nutrients and replacement coir puff things off of amazon and put your own seeds in. I’d like to sink my teeth into hydroponics and do some salad greens and herbs inside the kitchen. Ideally I’d like to either do a herb wall, or put some shelving or planting system in front of the bay window. The aerogarden farm looks pretty spiffy, but it’s kinda pricey and the spacing just sucks. Thinking maybe a custom vertical zigzag of drilled pvc pipes might be better, or a tower hydroponic system. Anyone here do something like this in the kitchen for fresh herbs and greens?
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Jul 1, 2020 17:38
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OSU_Matthew posted:I’d like to sink my teeth into hydroponics and do some salad greens and herbs inside the kitchen. Ideally I’d like to either do a herb wall, or put some shelving or planting system in front of the bay window. I looked into hydro for a long time before taking the plunge and the thing that seemed like it was both most beginner friendly and least likely to have a catastrophic failure was deep water culture. If your air pumps fail, assuming you don't have your reservoir overfilled, you've basically created a Kratky system. The aerogarden is basically a really expensive turn-key DWC set up with integrated lighting.
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Jul 1, 2020 17:47
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Sockser posted:Phase 4: 5. Japanese beetles eating my corn plants 6. Some sort of maggot/grub in my radishes When I've set up gardens in the past, I've had one pest and been able to mitigate. At this point I wonder what pests I have yet to acquire
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Jul 1, 2020 17:55
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Sockser posted:5. Japanese beetles eating my corn plants Gotta catch em all. I feel your pain with my singular turnip harvest. One D:
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Jul 1, 2020 17:57
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Yesterday I watched a goldfinch pluck all the petals out of one of my sunflowers 
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Jul 1, 2020 18:12
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showbiz_liz posted:Can anyone suggest resources for year-long garden planning? This year (my first year) I just started all my seeds at the same time in February, which worked out OK since I only had peppers and herbs, but I probably should have actually started most of the herbs later - by the time they could be put outside, a lot of them were already too leggy. It's quite a change in mindset. Working out the timing can be challenging but it's a really good feeling to be picking dinner out of your garden in January. Otoh it feels weird to have beds partly empty at this time of the year waiting for planting later in the month. Patrick Dolan has a number of videos about winter gardening on his OYR YouTube channel. Zone 5, so covers are mandatory, but it's still impressive what he does with unheated hoop houses and cold frames. You might need to consider some cover to keep your pots from freezing. (Don't worry about that if you're growing Chinese Artichokes or any other type of mint in pots - freezing doesn't discourage them at all.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtw7pnqFeS4 West Coast Seeds has a lot of useful information. Their gardening calendars are really helpful. Mostly oriented to coastal Zone 8 but we do have Zone 7 in South Central Interior B.C. WCS does a really good job of identifying winter varieties. Not all cabbages are created equal, for example, and you want to plant summer varieties in March and winter varieties in July. Our local garden centres have picked up on the interest in winter gardening but they're selling summer varieties for winter planting.  Our local expert on winter gardening is Linda Gilkeson. Again, Zone 8 oriented but she does a good job of working through the logic of winter gardening. She has a PhD in entomology so her bug resources are top notch too. Which reminds me, I need to throw some money her way for her latest book. Then I need to go outside and plant my winter carrots.
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Jul 1, 2020 19:54
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Built 2 raised beds yesterday. Haven't filled the second because I vastly underestimated how much soil would be required. For now I'm just piling some clippings at the bottom, might try to use it as a compost pile until it gets decently full and composted. It's been kinda cold so I'm not actually thaaat far behind on the tomatoes, I'll build them a trellis soon, and hopefully they'll really take off.
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Jul 1, 2020 20:14
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poeticoddity posted:I looked into hydro for a long time before taking the plunge and the thing that seemed like it was both most beginner friendly and least likely to have a catastrophic failure was deep water culture. If your air pumps fail, assuming you don't have your reservoir overfilled, you've basically created a Kratky system. The aerogarden is basically a really expensive turn-key DWC set up with integrated lighting. i think a lot of the pvc designs that are out there are really snazzy, including wall and a-frame builds, but while they look awesome i'd feel no peace of mind with out redundancy and redundancy introduces complexity. being a beginner myself i went with kratky because it was dead simple but i never considered that the failure mode of DWC was kratky, so hell ye give it a go. i still have a soft-spot for kratky, personally, b/c we live in a small space and its the most beneficial for us when taking into account that variable stone soup fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jul 1, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2020 20:33
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Yesterday I watched a goldfinch pluck all the petals out of one of my sunflowers That's the best reason to grow sunflowers! Goldfinches LOVE them and are one of my favorite birds to watch.
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Jul 1, 2020 20:34
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poeticoddity posted:I looked into hydro for a long time before taking the plunge and the thing that seemed like it was both most beginner friendly and least likely to have a catastrophic failure was deep water culture. If your air pumps fail, assuming you don't have your reservoir overfilled, you've basically created a Kratky system. The aerogarden is basically a really expensive turn-key DWC set up with integrated lighting. Definitely do DWC or possibly Flood & Drain. I've got my NFT setup and already it's given me more headaches in two months than the other system designs have in two years. A ten gallon aquarium ($10 used off craigslist), an air pump and air stones off Amazon, and a panel of foam from the hardware store will get you set up. Add grow lights for more production. Adding fish will mean you don't have to buy (most) nutrients except for fish food, though you'll have to make sure they don't eat plant roots. You can do F&D if you're worried about that, it will only require a water pump, a plastic tub, and some gravel or other grow media. All told it should be $50 or less
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Jul 1, 2020 21:03
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OSU_Matthew posted:I’d like to sink my teeth into hydroponics and do some salad greens and herbs inside the kitchen. Ideally I’d like to either do a herb wall, or put some shelving or planting system in front of the bay window. my friend, go build you a neumayer wall: https://youtu.be/jAUv5YxIkS4
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Jul 1, 2020 21:06
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poeticoddity posted:I looked into hydro for a long time before taking the plunge and the thing that seemed like it was both most beginner friendly and least likely to have a catastrophic failure was deep water culture. If your air pumps fail, assuming you don't have your reservoir overfilled, you've basically created a Kratky system. The aerogarden is basically a really expensive turn-key DWC set up with integrated lighting. Whelp, I’ve been wanting to install a hydroponic herb wall in the kitchen for awhile now, and after seeing those Aerograden farm units with the summer sale, one is officially on its way to my house! A custom built pvc rack probably might’ve been better and cheaper, but man they look so nice and the ease of entry into hydroponics is pretty attractive. And I love the stackable modular platform, or it would fit nicely on a shelf if I expand with something else down the line. I also bought the seed starter tray to play with getting garden seeds started next year... really excited to see how that works out!
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Jul 1, 2020 21:17
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OSU_Matthew posted:Whelp, I’ve been wanting to install a hydroponic herb wall in the kitchen for awhile now, and after seeing those Aerograden farm units with the summer sale, one is officially on its way to my house! As someone that's done a bunch of their own systems the Aerogarden is a really attractive unit that's great for what most people will use it for, an indoor herb garden You can also use the unit for your own seeds after you run out of the overpriced pods
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Jul 1, 2020 21:59
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Gonna plant sweet potato slips in the failed bush bean bed, eat the greens as spinach. Let's see if I get tubers.
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Jul 1, 2020 22:29
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Lhet posted:Built 2 raised beds yesterday. Haven't filled the second because I vastly underestimated how much soil would be required. For now I'm just piling some clippings at the bottom, might try to use it as a compost pile until it gets decently full and composted. imo you don't need to wait for anything to compost Your beds look pretty deep (I'm guessing at least 12"?), so you can just fill the bottom 4-6" with clippings, twigs, small branches, etc. Dump some soil in on top of that to fill in the gaps, compact it down a bit, and then fill the rest with good soil. I've had 8" beds in the past where the entire bottom 4" is just random yard crap, and veggies did great. It's not really hugelkultur since all that small stuff will break down fast, but plant roots will still do fine as long as it's not packed so densely that there's no room for them to grow. I know someone will probably disagree with me, but in my experience it's never worth it to fill a whole 10+ inch raised bed with good soil. If you're amending your soil at all, then nutrients will eventually make their way down and generally even plants that go deep won't have dense root networks 10-12" down. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jul 1, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2020 22:47
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Paradoxish posted:imo you don't need to wait for anything to compost That sounds good. They're ~16", and the first one actually has some a few inches of clippings and just enough pine bark mulch to cover them, followed by nice soil. For the second I'll probably just try filling ~10" full of cuttings, and after it dries a tiny bit, skip the pine mulch in favor of pure soil. I assume it'll collapse quite a bit but should be a good experiment.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:13
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DarkHorse posted:As someone that's done a bunch of their own systems the Aerogarden is a really attractive unit that's great for what most people will use it for, an indoor herb garden Yeah, the Aerogarden is pretty slick looking while my DWC set up is very clearly a DIY with no thought given to aesthetics. Apparently the Aerogarden pods take a very standard sized grow sponge that's sized for 1" net pots so I think every consumable has a non-proprietary replacement option.
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Jul 1, 2020 23:38
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Aesthetics are most of the reason why I want an Aerogarden, my wife puts up with a lot of bullshit from my hobbies, but she drew the line at the prospect of a DIY hydro herb garden taking up counter space. In actual garden news, diamond eggplant might end up being the secret star this year, already have two babies. Named the bigger one Baba Ganoush! Finally gave up on all my brassica homies. The only thing they decided to grow this year were common butterflies so they were yanked out yesterday and fed to the compost bin. Squash and cukes are doing really well, not flowers yet, but should have some soon.
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Jul 2, 2020 00:17
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If goons are interested in helping me to design it I have a similar problem on my mind... My partner and I just bought a home with a literal acre of open land. Our possession date is going to be September 1. I'm debating how best to turn this into vegetable garden space so I can grow assloads of vegetables. Right now I have 4 obvious options: 1 - low raised beds 4*8. Pros: cheap if I'm building a lot of them. Cons: low. 2 - hugulculture raised beds. Pros: loving sweet. Cons: lots of building materials to do correctly, especially 3 - hugulculture mounds. Pros: pretty cheap. Cons: looks trashy. Could do some just straght mulch pile stuff (which I might do anyway in addition) 4 - till that poo poo. Pros: can bring machinery into play. Cons: need to get machinery, but I need to get a riding mower and snow plough anyway so.... Also a friend of mine tells me that he can get me a 2000 sqft tube greenhouse used, which is a whole other ball of worms that I'd need to figure out. So what do goons think?
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Jul 2, 2020 00:30
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ixo posted:my friend, go build you a neumayer wall: Ooohhh... I really like that... this is the long term dream, maybe once I get the basement rehabbed. That, and someday a Farmbot. Next year I really want to build a greenhouse once I get the privacy fencing in. Between canning, fermentation, and all these neat technologies to boost food yield, I’m just perpetually dumbfounded by how cool all this is. We recently picked up a water seal fermentation crock from Ohio Stoneware and have some sauerkraut chooching away, and have been canning a buncha interesting jams with the Misfits subscription box. Nothing tastes better than the foods you produce yourself 
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Jul 2, 2020 00:37
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CommonShore posted:If goons are interested in helping me to design it I have a similar problem on my mind... One of my hiking buddies is really into the idea of SPIN farming: https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2011/04/get-started-with-spin-farming/ I don’t know much about it or its feasibility, but the sales pitch sounds pretty cool!
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Jul 2, 2020 00:41
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CommonShore posted:If goons are interested in helping me to design it I have a similar problem on my mind... I vote raised beds. Hugulculture is awesome but you can always do it later the right way when you're sure you'll be there for a while and can maintain them. I've got drip lines from DripDepot.com for our raised beds and they've been great
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Jul 2, 2020 00:43
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Anyone know what might be going on with my zucchini/squash (idk which lol my wife planted them one morning and didn’t bother keeping track)? All the leaves on this one particular plant look like the picture, but it’s still flowering and growing as normal.  Sorry if the pic shows up weird, I’m posting on my phone.
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Jul 2, 2020 00:50
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Give it some fertilizer, maybe some water, make sure it doesn't have squash vine borers. There's maybe a little powdery mildew going on, but it doesn't look too bad.
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Jul 2, 2020 01:05
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I'm guessing nutrient deficiency, maybe iron. Veins and around them are green, further away is yellowed, which might indicate a shortage of chlorophyll (which needs iron, among other things, much like hemoglobin in blood needs iron). Can be caused by pH being out of whack for the plant too, limiting the amount of iron available That's just a guess, mind.
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Jul 2, 2020 01:06
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hmm i'll give fertilizer a shot. any type in particular y'all recommend?
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Jul 2, 2020 02:22
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DarkHorse posted:I vote raised beds. Hugulculture is awesome but you can always do it later the right way when you're sure you'll be there for a while and can maintain them. How tall are your raised beds? Do you do the treated 2x8 frame for a 4 foot by 8 foot bed, or do you go higher above the ground?
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Jul 2, 2020 02:27
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CommonShore posted:So what do goons think? Do something small first. And definitely wait on the row cover. mischief fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 02:30
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HamAdams posted:hmm i'll give fertilizer a shot. any type in particular y'all recommend? The miracle gro stuff you dump in a watering can for tomatoes is good. You probably don't want something super high nitrogen. MiracleGro in general is good at having all the little micronutrients that something like generic 13-13-13 might not have.
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Jul 2, 2020 02:38
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I really like the 2-4-2 from Neptune's Harvest as a pretty much year 'round fertilizer. You used to be able to get a little more robust hydrolyzed squid liquid fertilizer but it's nowhere to be found lately. Edit: I try not to use the salted fertilizers when I can in the garden, it just seems like you end up with better dirt over time. We use Miracle Gro religiously on our potted mums and gardenias and I'll splash a leftover can of it on the hostas sometimes. My in-laws use generic 10-10-10 religiously and he grows 10-12' tall tomato plants that set fruit at the very tip. Make good dirt and you don't have to feed your plants so hard. mischief fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 02:45
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CommonShore posted:Also a friend of mine tells me that he can get me a 2000 sqft tube greenhouse used, which is a whole other ball of worms that I'd need to figure out. This would be so much fun, I'd love to have this and an outdoor flower garden
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Jul 2, 2020 03:56
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CommonShore posted:If goons are interested in helping me to design it I have a similar problem on my mind... When my partner and I got back into serious gardening six years ago we started with 4 - 10'x4'x10" deep raised beds built from cedar planks. I'm glad we started small because we've been able to work a lot of details out over time as we've expanded. Part of the fine tuning is figuring out how much we can use vs how much we can grow. One year we grew three years worth of pickling cukes. Definitely cutting back on cukes until we finish eating the canned backlog. We found, through experience, that we don't need a full bed of winter squash. Like, seriously, how do you even begin to eat that much produce? How could this even have been predicted? We bought a cheap second hand garden tractor the second year primarily as a riding lawnmower but quickly discovered the joys of the 4' wide 400lb rototiller that came with it. Annual rototilling lasted a couple of years until we switched to permanent raised (mounded) beds and no-dig gardening so we didn't have to dismantle and reinstall the drip irrigation system we put in to help prevent late blight in our tomatoes. (Nothing more depressing than losing 4 beds of tomatoes overnight to blight, unless you're Irish from the 1800s watching the same micro-organism turn your winter food supply into rotting mush.) If I had the chance I'd tell myself from six years ago to start with the first four beds (the extra deep soil is really nice for sweetpotatoes and parsnips), get the garden tractor, but don't bother with annual rototilling. Use the rototiller to establish a new bed but immediately cover the paths in mulch and go straight to no-dig. Two reasons for this: 1) I'm lazy, and no-dig beds along with square foot plant spacing is low maintenance once you get it set up. Bigger gardens really benefit from being low maintenance. It gives you more time to juggle everything you need to get into winter gardening. 2) After 3 years of no-dig the soil is amazing. I've never gardened in soil with this much mycorrhyza and worms in it. It feels like it's alive. I still feel a little regret though because I really, really enjoy the sight and smell of newly tilled soil. If you do go the machinery route you might want to consider the difference between a garden tractor and a lawn tractor (riding mower). Lawn tractors are light duty and have limited (if any) tillage options. They're not really meant for ground engagement and will probably break if you try. Anything in a rack in front of a big box store is a lawn tractor. Depending on where you are in North America you might be able to find second hand garden tractors and accessories for reasonable . They look like riding mowers on steroids. The rear wheels are almost always held on by multiple bolts instead of one big one like a lawn tractor. You can grab a lawn tractor by the rear and lift its rear wheels off the ground. Try this on a garden tractor and you will not be able to move it. Mine is capable of having 1800 lbs hung off it and go digging in the dirt. i do use it for cutting grass but most of the time it's moving dirt or snow, raking, leveling, or hauling trailers around the property. They're cool little machines. One thing I would definitely do immediately is figure out where to put at least three large compost bins and get that started first. There was a time I would have said that seven was excessive. Not so much anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeBUX9iEFwg CommonShore posted:Also a friend of mine tells me that he can get me a 2000 sqft tube greenhouse used, which is a whole other ball of worms that I'd need to figure out. Ignore everything I said about starting small. Do this. You can still start small with a little table in the back and use the rest for parking the garden tractor. 
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Jul 2, 2020 06:37
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CommonShore posted:So what do goons think? I used to be all about the till + in-ground vegetable garden but once I switched to raised beds I never looked back. Raised beds are so much easier to manage in so many ways: soil quality is higher because I can amend it in smaller quantities, weeding is easier, planning / spacing / rotation of planting becomes dead simple. Start with one or two and then add a couple every year until you reach the point where you can't maintain them. I wish I had a couple more, I like to have a bed ready for any random plant I come across, and I've never been able to keep an in-ground bed empty and ready to plant. Every one of my in-ground beds requires tons of regular maintenance to keep weeds from encroaching and it's simply too easy to till 200+sq feet you don't really need and get completely overwhelmed.
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Jul 2, 2020 13:48
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Hexigrammus posted:
Thanks for the words! One of the few things that's good about where I live, aside from property values being actually somewhat affordable, is that there are tons of farmers around and they like to retire and/or die and have their stuff put up for auction. I'm already starting to browse auction listings but :covid: has slowed that down a lot. That's going to be my strategy for getting a garden tractor. Thanks for the nomenclature on "garden tractor" vs "lawn tractor." I'm also looking into things like getting a quad atv and attachments. I need to be able to move snow this winter, so it's not really optional. I should add too that I'm not starting at zero on this - both my partner and I have experience growing and a family history of some serious gardening. Right now just in my in-city back yard I'm growing in at least 500 square feet (I haven't measured it exactly) of combined in-ground and container/mulch pile garden space. I do stuff like "oh poo poo instead of throwing out that door frame I'll just dump some compost in it and grow potatoes" or "wow I betcha I can grow some sweet lettuce in this cardboard box." I don't see myself setting up fewer than 10 4*8 beds at whatever height for year 1 - one of the several reasons we decided to go to the acreage was so that I could level up my garden game a tier or two. It's probable that whatever I do in the end will have a mix of a few different approaches. I'm toying with the idea of growing a particular variety of winter squash to sell at a farmer's market and donate to local events, for example, and relatively little soil needs to be disturbed for that compared to the square footage that the plant needs. I might end up next spring with something like 6 low raised beds, 2 taller ones, a small square of tilled or turned ground, and a mulch row for potatoes. My mom has been nagging me to do hugul mounds. I'm not sure if there are any downsides to them. My fall project is definitely going to be composting. I'm going to go through the effort of hauling all of my compost, mulch, and wood chips from my current spot and see about getting even more so that things have a chance to break down a bit before the spring. I have a few lines on unlimited wood chips and coffee grounds, so I might aim to make a big heap of that kind of mix. So where I am now, and where I'd like some advice, is I'm not sure what the most cost effective way to build these beds is. I really like the idea of the taller ones - 3 to 4 feet - but that's a lot of material and post-hole digging. I'd rather not spend hundreds of dollars per bed, and that's what has me thinking about the low beds: I can put together the frame for a lower one for like $20 of treated lumber. Do any of you care to share some pictures of your beds and tell the story of how you built them?
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Jul 2, 2020 20:42
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BTW I'm 100% going to have a crazy person's compost system with 7 piles.
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Jul 2, 2020 20:44
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CommonShore posted:BTW I'm 100% going to have a crazy person's compost system with 7 piles. Why
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Jul 2, 2020 21:00
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Watch the video above
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Jul 2, 2020 21:01
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CommonShore posted:Watch the video above For sure, I'll be more clear: I do a similar system with 4 large bins, what do you feel the extra 3 will do for you? Just the difference in bacteria vs fungal? It can be difficult to fill as much as you're planning. I have large animals giving me plenty of poo poo and I still cant do more.
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Jul 2, 2020 21:12
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