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Just found this thread. I bought a house last year and I plan on having a vegetable garden for the first time in a few years. A few years ago I had a small community garden plot, but had to give it up when I moved and my life got crazy. I’m in Boston, so its still early, but reading this thread and all the seed catalogues I’m getting, I can’t wait to get my hands dirty. I plan on using a strip of land between my house and my property line. It is about 30 feet long and about 15 feet wide, and slopes gently away from the house. I have big trees on other places in the yard, so this place is the least bad location. The pro is that it faces south west, and I’m in a valley so the soil is naturally rich and loamy. Another potential pro is I am trying to figure out the best way for my rain gutters to drain into a cistern or a series of plastic garbage pails that I will use for irrigation. However its an older house and the gutter on this side fell off so I will have to cough up some money soon to get it fixed. Another con is that I’m probably going to get 5 hours of direct sun right next to the house, further away perhaps 8 hrs direct with a couple more hours filtered light in the morning. When I bought the house, along the foundation it was overgrown brush and below that was an overgrown lawn. I hacked away and chopped all the brush, but I still have to dig out the roots the best I can. I sprayed the grass with roundup last fall and under the cover of darkness got all the bags of leaves my neighbors but in those brown paper yard waste bags and mulched the entire area a foot deep. The grass is dying, the leave are partially decayed now, and I plan on digging some of them in and composting the rest. I have been throwing all my vegetable peelings, egg shells and used tea leaves in a corner of the yard all winter and plan on composting them when the snow melts and it warms up. I want to grow a mix of things I will use throughout the summer and fall fresh and things that will store well with minimal processing like root vegetables, winter squash, and fresh and dried beans. Also, I grew a little bit of kale in my community garden a few years back and harvested the last plant in January, so I want to try that again. I would appreciate any tips, especially with crops and varieties that store well and strategies for collecting all that rainwater without it turning into a mosquito love fest. madlilnerd posted:What's "bolting"? All the books I read tell me that with species like beetroot, leeks, carrots etc, I have to lift them out before they bolt. Is that when those species go to seed? So, if I wanted to collect leek seeds or whatever, I'd leave the a few leeks in the ground until they bolted... right? I know carrots and I think beets biennials, which means that you have to keep them in the garden until next year to get seed, or you might get away with harvesting the roots and planting some the following year.
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Mar 11, 2009 16:46
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whyrat posted:I didn't know that about green bean seedlings, well I have a ton of leftover seeds so I'll just sow some directly into the garden if the ones I start indoors don't take. What kind of beans are you planning on growing? Bush beans will grow faster and mature earler, but since your garden isn't exactly huge, you might want to think about pole beans. You will get a larger harvest spread out over a long time. Or you could do both. Pole beans will require support and could grow 6 or 7 feet like nothing. In Texas you should have a long enough growing season that assuming the zuccini gets overgrown, or you get tired of zuccini bread, if you plant the bush beans late summer you should get a fall crop. Also, if I were you, I would think about a cherry tomato plant. I say this only because I think cherry tomatoes are like candy and I can eat them by the pound. Mesclun mix is mostly different types of leaf lettuces with other things thrown in. Read to see what is in it; some mixes contain greens that are spicier or more bitter than the average lettuce. It depends on your preference.
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Mar 14, 2009 18:00
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Banana Factory posted:I've heard growing tomatoes upside down in a bucket is a viable technique- what about growing other vine plants or plants that can't support their own weight? I don't think there will be anything that gets in the way of that working. Has anyone tried it with any success? I don't think it will work, just because the beans need something to wrap themselves around and won't thrive just hanging down, and squash needs an amazing amount of water once it gets going, and I don't think a hanging basket could provide an adequate amount. In addition, the squash themselves will need support once they get big, or else they could pull the entire thing out. That said, you have nothing to lose by trying it. The only downside is probably $10 of materials and your time. Go for it.
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Mar 16, 2009 05:19
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Banana Factory posted:What about the wrapping around makes the beans thrive though? I thought it was because they climb to reach more sun. Is there some sort of importance in the actual holding onto things? I figure, if they are getting sun anyways they should be fine. I might have to keep pulling them off whatever they find and wrapping it back onto itself to keep it hanging. They wrap around things for support as well as to survive. Assuming they have nothing to wrap around, they will probably wrap themselves around each other and try in vain to grow upwards, or more likely some of them will manage to send out shoots that will manage to grow upwards and the plant’s energy will go toward these shoots that make it, and these will manage to cling to the outside of your basket and then start wrapping themselves around the wires that the basket is hanging from. However, like I said before, you should try for yourself. Part of the fun of gardening is when you figure out how to do the impossible. When I was a kid I wanted to grow watermelon. Unfortunately this was in Northern Vermont, North East Kingdom, up in the mountains, about 20 miles from Canada. I had to find the earliest, smallest variety I could find, something like sugar baby. I started the seeds, put them in black plastic mulch and waited, and waited, and when we had our first killing frost on Labor day I had to cover them, and finally at the end of September they were ready. We had an unusually cold rainy summer and other people barely got tomatoes and I had the bragging rights that I grew watermelon. The amount of time, effort and money for what I got was a pathetic. I got about 4 watermelon; the largest was about 8 inches across. The logical thing would have been to go to the store and buy one, but still, I managed to grow it.
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Mar 16, 2009 14:53
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I look forward to seeing the “hanging gardens of Banana Factory”  Take pictures.
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Mar 16, 2009 15:31
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HeatherChandler posted:
Is that basil growing out of the top of those buckets? That is so awesome!
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Mar 17, 2009 02:46
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I agree about the dogs and cats (and coyotes) digging through your yard. Also, you might be attracting flies, and where there are flies there will soon be maggots. In this paylake, they must be constantly feeding these fish, so the nutrient load in the lake must be high. Are they constantly pulling out algae and seaweed (lakeweed)? That might be a better option.
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Mar 19, 2009 16:39
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madlilnerd posted:Okay guys, horrible shady area next to a massive conifer tree and my neighbours 4ft fence. I've dug out most of the brambles and removed a ton of roots, and will finish this at the weekend. There were lots of bulbs (most likely bluebell) that I've removed to replant later. From what you describe its going to be hard to grow a lot. It will likely be an uphill battle just keeping the area free of roots. My boyfriend tries to maintain a flower bed under his maple tree and every year he digs out the area, shakes all the soil off the roots, mixes in compost and horse manure. And every year the roots have grown back to the point where the ground is solid and it's hard to get a shovel a couple inches deep. Your best bet might to replant those bulbs now, this fall plant some tulips and daffodils, get some hostas, and ferns, and if you want to experiment, in some of the deeper, richer patches away from the trunk, try growing things that might have a shot like leaf lettuce, spinich, or chard.
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Mar 28, 2009 16:16
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ChaoticSeven posted:Do squash stems work like tomatoes? IE, can you plant squashlings right up to the bottom leaves for the same reasons? The reason you can plant tomatoes deep is because their stems will produce roots whereever they are buried. Most plants, including squash will not do this. You should plant them a little deeper, perhaps half an inch deeper than they were as a transplant, but you don't want to go right up to the bottom leaves. For this reason, tomatoes are somewhat forgiving if they didn't have enough light as seedlings and they got leggy, but squash isn't forgiving at all.
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Mar 28, 2009 16:21
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kid sinister posted:Honestly, I think your boyfriend is going to too much trouble with his flowerbed. Just plant some full shade perennials under that tree and be done with it. Feel free to call in the heavy artillery when digging near a tree. Trees can survive quite a bit of root damage without any problems. I usually keep my set of loppers and a knife close by when digging under a tree. I think he is too. This year when he dug it out again he put some special fabric that is supposed to stop the roots. That's the thing about gardening. No matter what happened last year, no matter what died, what became overgrown, what never made it, this time of year hope springs eternal. Edit to say that he's a teacher. They get so much time off; hacking away at tree roots keeps him out of trouble. Zeta Taskforce fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Mar 28, 2009 |
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Mar 28, 2009 16:39
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http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2153.html It is true that if you find damage and physically pull out the larva, you do want to bury the stem and it will form roots at the leaf joints (it does form roots to some extent anyway, without intentionally burying the stems) I just don't think squash benefits from intentionally buring the seedling deep though, nor will that part of the stem form roots since it doesn't have any joints.
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Mar 28, 2009 22:01
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Cakefool posted:I finally turned out our compost bin, some 3 years after we started it. Seeing as we never did it properly, just drilled some air holes in the side of a plastic dustbin, it's never had the good stuff turned out, so it was powdery black/brown, the only recognisable stuff was eggshells, which the wife assures me is normal. I would add the ash directly to the garden and mix it directly in the soil. Ashes are rich in potassium and other trace nutrients. I would avoid the areas that you already planted so it doesn't burn your tender seedlings.
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Mar 29, 2009 16:07
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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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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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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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madlilnerd posted:Can anyone tell the difference between a pumpkin and a zucchini seedling? Only the squirrel smooshed them all about in the seed tray and I don't know what's what but I had a specific place for the pumpkins and was planning on containering the zucchini again this year Translated for those of us on the other side of the pond. I honestly don't have a clue. They are likely the same species. Zucchini is a type of Cucurbita pepo as are many varieties of pumpkins. There probably isn't a way, at least until they get bigger and some of them start developing a vining habit and some stay bushy.
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Apr 11, 2009 19:58
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They’re probably eating something in the soil. If it’s only a few, I wouldn’t worry. It’s not like nature entirely stops at our front doors, especially when you have plants, and its not a sign that you are messy or anything.
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Apr 14, 2009 16:37
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imaginaryfriend posted:I'm just popping in to say I love this thread! It's good to know there are so many others out there gardening. What's it like growing stevia? How does it taste? I'm a big fan of artificial sweeteners, especially Splenda, but I've never been able to get used to stevia.
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Apr 15, 2009 02:32
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landis posted:I understand that stevia can steep like tea, there's a guy in SA Mart selling the stuff. However he's not clear on whether he's selling the leaves or the extract (his pricing implies leaves, his description implies extract). I was already tempted to grow my own tea, and now even more so, if I can ever manage to finish digging up my yard. One of the seed catalogues I get has a tea variety hardy to zone 7. Chances are it will never work out. First, I’m in Boston, and although I’m about a mile from the Harbor which moderates things, it’s still New England. Zone 7 is generous. Any hardiness zone map shows that I am solidly in zone 6, but it never drops below zero here due to my elevation and proximity to the water. Even if the tea grows, I am looking at a couple years minimum before harvest. Also, I prefer black tea and I have no idea how to ferment and roast the tea. That combined with the fact that there are numerous blends that I enjoy and could buy a couple pounds of those fine loose leaf teas for the cost of the plant and fertilizers, and those couple pounds will make about 40 gallons of tea. Any sane and rational person will just buy some tea. Therefore I’m going to get a tea plant and see how it goes. http://www.jungseed.com/dp3.asp?c=&sku=12261
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Apr 15, 2009 14:57
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krushgroove posted:drat landis you've researched this all out My reading of that is that they are not tropical, but instead have characteristics of both being temperate and subtropical. The best tea growing regions are on the highlands of China and India, and Japan, Taiwan, and Kenya grow quite a bit too. Based on where the most prolific tea gardens are I would imaging that they don’t like it either bitterly cold or sweltering. If you can’t plant it outside in the ground, rather than growing it as a houseplant, I think you will do better putting it in a big pot, keep it on a deck, and bring it in late fall after it gets cold but before it gets sub-zero bitterly cold, and bring it in to an attic or unheated garage, and once the crocuses come out, bring it back outdoors. imaginaryfriend posted:And finally, anyone interested in growing microgreens should really give it a try. It's fast, easy, cheap and they are delicious and amazingly nutritious. Basically it's all the goodness of the fully grown plant but in tiny baby form. So the nutrients and taste are multiplied. Yum!!!! I had to look up microgreens too. I’ve never heard of it before until now, but was reading about them. Are they really 30% protein? That’s amazing! I’m going to try it out. Do you eat them straight or add them to stuff?
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Apr 15, 2009 17:32
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landis posted:I believe the tea grown in Kenya is actually red tea (a completely different plant) but I could be completely wrong here. http://www.kenya-information-guide.com/kenya-tea.html It reads like the Kenyan Chamber of Commerce, but they grow black tea there. Red tea is mostly grown in South Africa.
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Apr 15, 2009 17:47
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osukeith161 posted:I have been posting in the GWS gardening thread. I did not get a response about the EarthTainer, so I figured someone in here may be able to help. First off, I am growing 7 different peppers, 5 different tomatoes, and an eggplant. I've never constructed anything like that and I don't see any downsides. It looks like a good idea. The only downsides might be that it is a lot of work, and because of that wouldn't be the best system if you had plenty of land and water wasn't in short supply. But where it was, or if you were on a balcony or something it would be great.
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Apr 20, 2009 03:25
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Blue_monday posted:My herbs are doing well so far, I need to find suitable pots for them once they've gotten a little bigger but I'm having no luck right now. If they are still tiny I would leave two or three until they start competing with each other, and then decide which one is the strongest. If they are already competing with each other, then pick the strongest one with the thickest stem. More pictures of the "garden". This is what I was doing on Patriots day. Digging out the tree out of the corner of the yard  Stumps removed  As I continue to dig, I found out that those stumps were the least of my problems. I have a large maple tree 50 feet away that has spread deep roots in every direction.  There were occasional roots that I was able to yank out until I came to a thicket and kept digging and found this:  As I dug deeper I found three root trunk all braided around each other. The deepest one is about 3 inches in diameter, and almost two feet deep.  My back is beyond sore and there is so much left to do. I'm thinking I'm going to miss out on planting spring crops, and will settle for stuff this summer. I'm so envious of all your pictures of beautiful plants. Perhaps I can still get a crop of bush beans and when they are done I will still have enough time for a crop of carrots, beets and turnips for fall storage. I might also plant pumpkins and squash where I've dug already and keep digging the rest before the vines cover it. The good news is the soil is amazing. It is this rich loam, the topsoil is a deep rich greyish mahogany brown 18 inches deep and even the subsoil is loose and free of rocks. I'm finding worms two feet deep. Zeta Taskforce fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Apr 22, 2009 |
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Apr 22, 2009 06:07
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Anyone ever make potato sets and plant potatoes from a big sack of grocery store potatoes? If I get Maine potatoes, odds are they will be a good, solid, old, tried and true variety like Red Norland or Kennebec that does well in the North East. I guess the direction that I am coming from is I don’t know when I will be ready so I am reluctant to start seeds and buy more expensive sets that can’t be planted when they need to be planted, so I am looking for the cheapest, easiest ways to fill up the space and for at least this year I’m not too picky with what I get.
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Apr 23, 2009 21:33
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qentiox posted:Hey everyone, I've never done any gardening whatsoever, and we just bought a house and I'd love to get a vegetable/herb garden going. I'm clueless. I think that south central Kansas would be a gardener's dream, assuming you had decent light and water, and depending on the time of year you could grow virtually anything. What you grow more than anything else depends on what you like to eat. I would plant peas ASAP, everything else you mentioned after last chance of frost. Once the peas die in early to mid summer you could experiment with planting crops to harvest in the fall. You don't have to start your own plants, and if you have never gardened before, there is no shame in buying transplants for peppers and tomatoes, and whatever else you want.
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Apr 26, 2009 00:12
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krushgroove posted:Just picked up some dried goji berries, I'm going to soak several of them in water and plant them out. Hopefully I'll have some bushes soon, apparently it takes up to 2-3 years for them to mature enough to produce the fruit. You could probably save a year or so if you bought the plant: http://www.gardeners.com/Goji-Berry-Wolf-Berry/37-511,default,pd.html
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Apr 27, 2009 15:51
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Slung Blade posted:I bought 2 kilos of white clover seeds. 40 loving dollars. What are you trying to do? It sounds like you might be trying to plant them instead of a grass lawn.
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Apr 30, 2009 04:45
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Slung Blade posted:I am. Grass is terrible stuff, I want the clover because it doesn't grow too high and it will feed bees. I'll slap you across the face with a wet noodle! I would mix it in with the grass. Monocultures are terrible things and unsustainable in nature. If you planted nothing but the clover, by next year you will have grass mixed in anyway, and it would probably be an undesirable grass like crab grass or quack grass instead of a grass with desirable turf properties. I think you would be well served to plant it with the grass. Grass is more resilient to foot traffic and more general wear and tear. The clover will fill in some of the bare patches and every time you mow it, the nitrogen rich clippings will fertilize the grass.
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Apr 30, 2009 05:18
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Slung Blade posted:I have the grass seed too, I just wanted to know if the advice the lady gave me was sound I don't see why not. I think she wanted you to plant the grass because most people want lawns that are primarily grass and assumed the clover would be an afterthought. By planting the grass first, it would get a head start, plus grass seedlings take a while to get going. If you plant them both at the same time, you might have a lawn that is largely, but not entirely clover at first, but the grass will fill in over time. If you want to advance scientific knowledge, or at least goon knowledge, you could do both in different parts of the yard and report back with pictures what happens.
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Apr 30, 2009 06:04
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Cuddlebottom posted:I know this is a veggie thread, but since there's no general purpose gardening thread I figured I'd ask here: It depends. A big part of it is the variety. Some varieties are bred to be smaller than others. Also, they could have done something hormonal. Just as they can pick green tomatoes and force them to turn red by applying ethylene gas, they can use natural plant hormones to force them to be small. Lastly, by keeping it in such a small pot, it kind of forced it to be a bonsai.
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May 2, 2009 18:26
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mischief posted:Quick question... I put in my first garden this year and it took a ridiculous amount of effort and materials to make the clay into something worthwhile. Like 650 lbs of mushroom compost, 9 cubic yards of peat moss, and 3 truck loads of soil conditioner. The dirt is pretty awesome now except when it rains. It makes a "skin" almost of clay on top of the dirt and pretty much strangles any new growth I've got from seed. My tomatoes, cukes, peppers, and bean plants are chugging right along just healthy as they can be, but lettuce, herbs, and other leafy plants got covered up before ever getting tall enough. I think in future years you won't have this problem. Since everything was just tilled, every time you water the clay and everything else separates, but eventually as earthworms work it and the compost continues to decompose, the soil will bond better to itsself. In the meantime, the mulch will help by keeping the top of the soil moist so that it never dries out enough to make the crust. I think the "best" mulch is whatever you can get your hands on cheap. If you have any leftover compost you could broadcast another layer on top too.
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May 2, 2009 20:52
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Tequila Mockingbird posted:I am only growing 3 veggies this year, keeping up my rosemary bush and keeping last year's onion and garlic in the ground for pest control, and 3 potted tomatoes that won't even feel the wind on their cheeks until late June. That's a cute little garden! The only thing that concerns me is the rain gutter downspouts look like they drain right into the top of the garden. You might be able to get a rainbarrel and it will limit how much tap water you will need and divert it from turning your garden into a waterfall next time you have one of those prairie thunderstorms. You are not going to kill the dahlias, even if they are in a shadier spot than they prefer. If it is too shady, they probably won't flower as much, but should still grow and form a tuber that you can dig up for next year. They do tolerate part shade, but prefer sun. You could keep them in pots and put in a sunny location like a porch, but indoors is rarely as sunny as we think it is and its hard to get most things to bloom inside.
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May 11, 2009 02:16
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Tequila Mockingbird posted:How can I perk up my dahlias? They seem to hate the heat, last night was very cold and they looked great - their leaves were stiffer and standing up and facing the light. As soon as it warmed up to about 10c, they wilted again. It was raining, so they have plenty of water. What am I supposed to do? I was afraid the cold would kill them... but they seem to hate the warm sun! Have you tried wetting the leaves too when you water them? If that doesn't work, if they lost a bunch of roots in the process of moving them, you might want to trim the tops so the plant is once again in balance.
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May 20, 2009 03:01
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Tequila Mockingbird posted:Thanks. The leaves have gotten really wet in the rain we've had, so a good chop might do them good. Where should I chop, above or below a leaf section? I know some plants are picky about pruning. If you need to prune, you are better off doing it right above a node where a leaf joins the stem. Scissors would probably work the best.
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May 20, 2009 22:25
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I’m so worried about my garden. After spending the better part of 100 hours digging out 5 surprisingly massive tree stumps and 50 foot lengths of a tangled mass of tree roots buried up to two feet deep, all that mixed in with cinder blocks, bricks, granite paving stones, on Monday I finally planted it. I still have windrows of stones and roots piled up along the sides, but I feel like I already spent way too much time getting it ready. What I didn’t plan on was the last two days being in the mid 90’s with about 10% humidity and 40 mile per hour wind gusts. And last week it was cold and drizzly. Gotta love New England. I’m resigned to get what I get and just happy that I’m not going to starve either way. Next year I should get an earlier start since all I’ll have to do is plant it. I’ll post pictures soon and start hauling out the roots after that.
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May 22, 2009 21:06
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Anubis posted:Yeah, have faith that the first year is the major pain in the rear end and after that it's generally a hell of a lot easier. Starting any kind of garden is a long term project with a lot of front heavy work, but an oh-so-rewarding experience in the end. Thanks for the encouragement. You are not telling me anything I didn't know, but it is always nice to have someone else say the same thing as the voices in my head! As I was digging it out, I was thinking I might harvest something like 30,000 calories and I probably burnt something like 50,000 calories over the last month in all my free time ripping through the soil. How did our ancestors do it when they depended on their gardens to feed themselves?Also, does anyone have any experience with Jerusalem Artichokes? I just ordered some. I have a garage that has what started out as a flower bed but has been overgrown with this weedy queen anne's lace. These are the piles of rocks, roots, and rubble that I still have to remove  One of the stumps that I dug out that was next to my foundation. I thought it was a bush, it turns out it was a tree that the previous owners chopped down before they put the house on the market. Only a few nubs were above the soil when I started. Note the keys.  Ready to plant  Taken last monday, May 18th. Don't know if it's going to work having the bean poles straddle the two beds. If it doesn't turn out to be a complete abortion, next year I want to have a bean tunnel. 
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May 24, 2009 20:57
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MarshallX posted:Do cherry tomatos do this? I planted some along my gardens small fence for this exact reason, hopefully I didn't make a mistake. Tomatoes will benefit from being near a fence, but they won’t climb it automatically. You will have to tie the stems as they grow, or if it is something like chicken wire you could weave the growing stems back and forth through the wire. I’ve done this in the past and it was great when they were growing, great when harvesting, but it was kind of a bitch ripping the vines off the fence in the fall. LTBS posted:Everything is growing pretty well. Those pictures are from the day I planted them. I have been watering every day and they seem to be getting plenty of sunlight. They have started to curl up towards the sun. Are the peppers in the same planters as the tomatoes? If so, that would be a good idea before they get established in their new home. As kid sinister said, those hanging baskets are on the small side, and especially once the tomatoes get bigger, on a sunny, hot, windy day they will dry out amazingly fast. The pictures earlier in the thread had them growing in 5 gallon pails. If you find them drying out fast you could try putting in a water bottle with a pin prick hole and then it will leak out over the course of a few hours. Like kid said, it is kind of late to start a lot of herbs from seed, but the chives and oregano are perennials, so you might not get a lot this year, but take care of them and they will do you well for a long time. Parsley is a biennial, so it will be there next year too before it goes to seed. The basil will grow pretty fast once it gets going, but the seeds are tiny so keep it well watered. Even though your garden isn’t huge, nothing connects you better to the natural world than eating something that came from your own hands, and unless everything goes wrong, you will experience that, you will see what works and do more of it and see what doesn’t and read up on it and try something else next time.
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May 29, 2009 16:01
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tehlump posted:I planted my first garden this year. My 4 yr old son had a ball helping my friend with his garden so I figured it would give us something to do together. Every day after work we go out and work in the garden, he loves to see the developing plants and secretly I'm just as amazed! Beautiful pictures. I’m so jealous of your long growing season.
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Jun 2, 2009 16:20
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tehlump posted:another suggestion that may get you arrested: Although there is nothing that prevents you from peeing into an empty bottle and pouring it out, I admit that walking around late at night and spraying everything in sight is a lot more fun
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Jun 2, 2009 19:45
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FuzzyDunlop posted:Oh god. Your best bet is to grow resistant varieties next year, of which there are many. Look for varieties that have V & F after them. That will probably mean planting a newer hybrid variety; no more heirlooms. Here is a partial list http://www.oznet.k-state.edu/path-ext/factSheets/Tomato/Fusarium%20and%20Verticillium%20Wilt%20of%20Tomato.asp You don't want to plant a Solanaceous crop there next year, so no peppers, other tomatoes, eggplant, or potato.
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Jun 21, 2009 00:42
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