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STAC Goat posted:God drat. My garden was going fine this year. Tomato plants were starting to really start to get big and viney and my first round of pepper plants were starting to look tall and good (which I never have luck with) and then I woke up this morning and the tops of all of them were eaten off. I had this problem last year and whatever it is (I'm guessing deer from the height) just destroyed my garden and I got nothing. I contemplated putting up a fence this year but I would have to but up a giant one to still give me room to garden and it will be ugly as hell in a very open backyard. I just have no idea what to do. I bought this piss smelling "liquid fence" stuff and was spraying it regularly but apparently that was no good. loving deer. I'm told they're tasty, but my wife tells me I'm not allowed to find out. We have a 10' high fence around our garden . 6' didn't do it, I watched Bambi's Mom hop over one afternoon and nip the tops off lettuce and strawberries before I chased her out. I agree, I really don't like having a miniature concentration camp in the yard but at least I'm only fighting with voles, birds, and insects now. Outside the fence the only deer repellant I've found that works is Bobex, and only if applied weekly or after rain. Plantskydd is supposed to be similar and lasts longer but I haven't tested it yet. There's a possibility that there are regional differences in deer taste so what works in one place might not in another. I only spray the plants that absolutely must not get eaten like new grapes being trained up above browsing height. That way the deer still have my wife's roses and the lower branches of the fruit trees to keep them amused. The does are giving birth and lactating right now so they're ravenous.
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Jun 26, 2018 16:17
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Thalantos posted:Yeah, just trying to figure out what time I should start prepping seeds for late summer/fall crops. Dunno if there are factors that might make Atlanta's Zone 8 different from West Coast Canada / Saltspring Island Zone 8, but you might like to check out Linda Gilkeson's website. I've found her advice on late fall / winter gardening really helpful. She also has an email list that's really good to remind you GET YOUR BROCOLLI IN NOW!
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Jul 8, 2018 23:21
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Sir Lemming posted:
I went to a talk by Brian Minter this afternoon. He mentioned a fellow garden writer who had what he considered the worst job in the world, travelling around giving garden talks after writing a book about deer proof gardens. For every deer proof plant he wrote about there's a band of deer somewhere in North America happily eating it. Same thing with deer deterents. They work until they don't work, if they work at all. I've seen deer habituat to motion lights. I'm really curious if they would put up with being sprayed by a motion detecting sprinkler. Bobex is working for me, but I know that sooner or later either I won't re-apply it soon enough after a rain or a deer is going to think wolf urine adds a special piquant taste to my tea bush and grape vines. During a heavy (for us) snow fall late last January a doe kept trying to eat the roses next to the house. The crunching on the snow would wake up the dog who would start barking, rousing the rest of us at 02:00 dark. Hanging a string of randomly flashing LED christmas lights (violent and vividly flashing - we're talking pixies on acid here) on the roses solved the problem. gently caress the neighbours. We used the lightweight black plastic version of the deer fencing Mischief mentioned above for a couple of years when we were short on time and money. It worked well and kept out both the deer and rabbits. It's easy to damage if you're weeding along the fence line and I suspect rodents or rabbits were actually chewing their way through it so we had to replace it after a couple of years. We ended up with 2" chicken wire on 10' pressure treated posts because I'm cheap like that and gently caress the neighbours if they don't appreciate my concentration camp aesthetic. Leaving an extra foot of poultry mesh the bottom, bending it out at right angles to the fence and burying it under a bit of sod seems to keep the rabbits out.
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Jul 11, 2018 04:18
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Sir Lemming posted:
That reminds me of something I forgot about - one of my elderly neighbours, a former electrician, set up a motion activated light and buzzer covering part of his raspberries and herbs. It kept going off the first couple of nights and then stopped when the deer learned where its perimeter was. They obviously don't like the combination. He also puts down chicken wire and stucco wire flat on the ground around the base of his fruit trees, well pegged down so he doesn't have to deal with a tangled, thrashing Bambi. Like horses, deer can very sensitive about where they put their feet since a leg injury is life-threatening. Forestors in this area started leaving more logging slash in place after they found less browsing damage on replants than at sites where the slash had been piled and burned.
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Jul 12, 2018 18:54
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Shame Boner posted:Edit: Last night was garlic harvesting night and the crop kinda sucked this year. I'm blaming the relatively small bulbs on our spring getting hot and staying hot earlier than usual, and fighting to keep water in the ground in that heat. I got 24 bulbs of Spanish roja (a well-preserving mild softneck) and 46 bulbs of Duganski (a spicy gourmet hardneck) I had a similar problem last year when I ended up with a bunch of small bulbs with black marks on the cloves. There was a suggestion I left them too long in the soil before cutting back on water and harvesting them. This year I couldn't cut back on the water (same drip lines feeding fall crop seedlings growing in the other half of the bed) so I folded them over as soon as they started to turn yellow. Better results than last year, although I still have some small bulbs, especially among my Gabriola Gourmet (local Gulf Island hippy haven variety). The Duganski and Bogatyne are really good though.  First year I've grown either of them. The Duganski tasted like the perfect choice for a jar of home-brewed kimchi now bubbling on the back of the counter. My timing was good for the Napa cabbage and garlic but I screwed up with my early planting of daikon radish and had to buy some. Ah well, maybe in the fall...  The kimchi recipe calls for Korean salted shrimp. I have to do a bit more research on these - I'm pretty sure these are euphausids, a.k.a. krill. Technically, I suppose you can call them shrimp but in my mind they're more "plankton". I'm sure these little bits of self-propelled eyeballs are critical for a good batch of kimchi.  Cory Parsnipson posted:
Just for the hell of it I started a line of Green Globe artichokes along one fence this spring. I've never grown them before and never had them fresh, only canned where they basically come out as vegetable flavoured green slime. Guess I need to figure out how to eat these now.  If they're worth it I might plant some Cardoon artichokes next year. They look more like your picture and would jazz up the garden a lot better than Green Globe, which looks like it was designed by the military.
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Jul 31, 2018 23:30
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Crakkerjakk posted:I currently have a couple raised beds and a herb spiral, I'm in 7b, northern hemisphere. I was thinking about just trying to plant in ground and building a hoop house for the winter. What's the best orientation for those? North to South or East to west? My hoop house is oriented north-south, the same as my regular raised beds. My thinking might be wrong here, but what I figured was that there's less inter-plant shading this way as the sun will hit both sides of the beds; you don't have a line of plants in the back of a bed in constant shade from the ones in front. OTOH, if I was building a permanent greenhouse I'd put it east-west to take advantage of a solid heat-storing back wall. I might not have thought this out very well. It will be interesting to see what others think.
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Aug 7, 2018 18:31
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Lady Demelza posted:... There's some good advice upstream. Again though, it would help to know the zone and roughly where you are. If you're in the right zone winter gardening (especially with a greenhouse) is a definite possibility. You might want to take a look at the One Yard Revolution YouTube channel. He's in Zone 5 and faces a lot of the same challenges you describe - suburban back lot, poor native soil, and shade you can't deal with just by grabbing your chain saw. This spring we tried a small bed of Three Sisters and planted our melons and squash using the Square Foot Gardening spacing. This was a mistake. We have no paths now. Next year the melons go on trellises like OYR Patrick suggests.  What looks likes like a path on the left past the Peaches and Cream corn is a bed of winter brassicas transplanted out last week and mulched. Moving right we have a Delicada and Pattypan squash arm wrestling for control of what used to be the path. I think there's still a bunch of Black Turtle beans between them and the Bodacious corn. Next, there should be a path where the spaghetti squash is (and another line of Black Turtles). This squash has ambitions; it has taken over the path, passed through the fence and is now going after "the lawn" (a.k.a., flat area over the septic field that is green when it rains and gets mowed sometimes.) Oddly enough the deer aren't eating it. I should probably check under the leaves for bones. What I'm trying to say here is that corn and squash are big, vigorous plants if you give them what they need. They're a bit daunting when they start producing. If you think zuccini are bad for drowning you in squash, try a pattypan plant. I've had to start eating them for breakfast: Slice horizontally, slice off stem area and scoop out seeds to form a bowl. Microwave for 2-3 minutes. Microwave a couple of strips of bacon for 2 minutes. Fill pattypan with a mixture of chopped bacon, homemade relish and/or homemade salsa verde. Top with with grated cheddar and/or parmesan. Return to microwave for 2 minutes. Enjoy the sensation of grossing your family out by being a barbarian who eats this sort of thing for breakfast.
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Aug 14, 2018 20:27
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In that case, you might want to keep an eye on Charles Dowding's YouTube channel. He's in the U.K. as well and regularly talks about timing and local growing conditions. I like his no-dig method. I switched to it several years ago when I changed from overhead watering to drip irrigation. With permanent beds I can leave the drip tubes undisturbed under the mulch and not have to re-build every spring. Given that: 1) My plants aren't complaining, and 2) I'm inherently lazy, I think I'll keep using this method.
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Aug 15, 2018 00:25
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mischief posted:I had a wire ring compost setup at the old house but it inevitably just turned into clay. I guess it is going to take more time and effort and ehhhhhhhhhh.... I'm curious about this too. I'm a minimalist composter. I don't own a compost thermometer, pay no attention to carbon/nitrogen ratios, and there's only one rule: Was it alive at one time? If yes, pile it up and come back in six months to a year. Anything not composted at that time gets added to a new heap (with the exception of rocks, which are only there in violation of Rule #1). Occassionaly I'll get a slimy clay-like layer if I didn't take time to layer moldy hay or plant stalks with kitchen scraps or animal manure. If I don`t fluff up and layer this type of material it seems to compact and go anoxic rather than composting properly. Is this what might be happening with your compost? There's actually a second rule, not relevent to most (civilized) people: In early fall, when the bears start coming down from the mountains, seal the compost under a layer of horse manure. Do not add kitchen scraps, fruit, or other attractants to the heap unless they`re immediately sealed under another layer of horse manure. I have no scientific evidence that this works, just 15 years with no more bear-compost problems since we started following this rule, and a YouTube video from an Alaskan composter getting similar results with goat manure. Given how much dogs enjoy ``barn burgers`` (  ) I don`t get this at all. 
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Aug 16, 2018 18:39
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Tomato varieties need to be open pollinated and you need to control which plants pollinate each other unless you're only growing one variety. I learned this the hard way trying to propagate my favourate grape tomato from Costco. I did successfully grow offspring but they were uninspiring, to say the least. You're not going to get what you expect if you start with an F1 hybrid parent, if it works at all.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:01
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CommonShore posted:So I have two heirloom roma plants that are on the other side of my house from the rest of my tomatoes (except for one cherry tomato plant on my deck). If I choose a fruit that is representative of the ones produced by those plants, am I likely to be disappointed given that I didn't really do anything to prep for it all year? Unless someone is mis-using the term "heirloom" they should be open pollinated and work fine. My understanding is that cross-pollination in tomatoes is more of a concern when they're grown together in the same or adjacent beds, not so much on the other side of the house. I would definitely go for it. If there is cross-pollination and you don't like the results you can always get out the paint brush and paper bags next year. The most common advice for collecting seeds is to put some of the core into a glass of water and let it ferment for three days, strain out and wash the seeds, then spread them out to dry. Being lazy, I've just smeared tomato guts on a paper towel and scraped the seeds off when dry. There's probably good reasons for going the ferment route, but this worked fine for me.
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Aug 28, 2018 01:41
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CommonShore posted:3) Any suggestions for getting/choosing the garlic that will go into the dirt? I've heard that planting bland grocery store cloves will produce garlic of "gently caress you" intensity, which is what I want. Would there be any benefit for buying higher quality cloves, or should I just get a bag of whatever and put them in dirt? I'm a typical West Coast chauvanist so my reaction to overwintering anything in Manitoba is  . Neither informed nor helpful I'm sure.Out here the Doukhobors and old world hippies have developed a lot of really tasty varieties of garlic that do well under local conditions. These varieties don't appear in the corporate garden centres but they do show up in the mom and pop operations. The local Buckerfields is a really good source. I don't know if Buckerfields is a Manitoba thing, if not I'm pretty certain you have even better farm stores back there. Local garden clubs and farmer's markets could point you to suppliers too. A 4' x 5' raised bed produces a year's worth of garlic for my wife and I. We're the type who start by frying up some garlic and onions, then deciding what to make for dinner. There's enough space to experiment with at least a half dozen different types of garlic. Now we know that we like mild Elephant garlic in salads, Duganski for a dish that needs a fiery bite, and Gabriola Gourmet happy hippy garlic for everything else. Gabriola Gourmet is a bit fussy though and needs more nitrogen in the soil to do well. But I'm rambling: imo, yes, locally bred varieties are worth it. If you like a commercial variety though go ahead and plant it, they don't take up a lot of space so you can afford to experiment. Be careful though. Judging by some of my friends' obsessions growing garlic can be a bit of a rabbit hole.
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Sep 2, 2018 16:23
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Eeyo posted:Also, is there much I can do against cabbage worms? Every few weeks there's new eggs on my choi sums. After an initial infestation of worms that almost killed them I've been religiously removing the eggs but it's a bit annoying. That seems to be effectively protecting the plants at least. See if you can find out when in the year the adult moths are flying in your area and keep row cover / Reemay cloth on the plants when the adults are out. Not my favourite because it obscures the plants and makes weeding more difficult but it does work. There's coarse-meshed bug fabric available now that's supposed to be easier to work with but I haven't tired it yet. BTK spray is organic and more effective than hand picking if the worms start to get out of control.
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Sep 24, 2018 07:36
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Where's south?
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Sep 25, 2018 21:22
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I actually have some groundnut! -- bought it at a native plant sale a month ago. It grows wild around here, but I don't see it very often. I'm excited to try eating it next year and will share my findings with everyone. Huh. I don't recall ever hearing about this plant before, but it sure sounds interesting. Apparently its native range extends up into New Brunswick and it's been grown in Europe so maybe it would produce in coastal B.C.? I'll have to see if there are any Canadian suppliers and give it a try next year. OTOH, the cold adapted varieties of sweetpotatoes I got from a Nova Scotia farm last spring weren't very impressive - just finger diameter roots on everything except the Superior variety. I think I was too paranoid and got them in the ground later than I should. I'll try again next year a little earlier and use a low poly tunnel to get them going. Or maybe grow fewer tomatoes and stick them in the high tunnel. Lord knows we have enough canned tomatoes and tomato products to last a couple of years, we can afford to cut back production next year. We will definitely be planting La Roma paste tomatoes again - large, meaty, and excellent flavour after they've been cooked down.
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Nov 6, 2018 06:36
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:Anyone doing a winter garden or anything? I'm thinking about planting some winter radishes to see what happens. Might be a bit late for seeds, depending where you are, but worth a try. I find winter gardening out here in coastal B.C. a bit hit and miss. I don't bother with regular radishes much because my wife doesn't like them but I put daikon radishes in as a winter crop because I love kimchi. She doesn't, but that just means there's more for me. Last year I planted out winter cabbages in early August. They grew well but never headed and bolted as soon as the sun returned. This year I got them out in early July and they're heading up nicely. I'll have fresh cabbage and daikon next week for a new batch of kimchi. /dance Night temps are getting close to freezing now so I've been putting a nice fluffy mulch of maple leaves around my winter vegetables. The daikons especially like to grow with the top of the root exposed and it will freeze. The rest of the plant doesn't seem to care. For coastal zone 8 Linda Gilkeson has a lot of good advice. Winter gardening is a bit of a rabbit hole though; once you get down it there's a lot of planning and preparation going on in late spring/early summer already. It's worth it though when your neighbours are doing double takes at all the green in your garden in November. Come December I need to send some pictures of the Christmas brussel sprouts growing in the garden to my friends back east, building on the West Coast tradition of complaining about having to mow the lawn in February when the rest of Canada is under a meter of snow and ice. We coasties can be arseholes that way.
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Nov 13, 2018 20:03
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Yeah, dry it out if you want to keep it for any length of time, otherwise you're going to get anaerobic decomposition happening if it sits wet, warm, and stagnant. Or leave it and blame the sulphur smell on the dog. Don't ask me about the box of soil block mix I left sitting in the downstairs kitchen for a couple of weeks...
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Nov 14, 2018 21:10
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At this point I'm beginning to wonder if home mushroom spawn innoculation is like chinchilla and bullfrog farming during the 1940s - the money is in selling starter kits, not farming the critters. Last spring I innoculated maple, poplar, and spruce with shiitake, Angel Wing, and Chicken of the Woods plugs. At this point both the innoculated and uninnoculated (i.e., firewood) poplar logs are covered with a tiny blue bracket fungus I can't identify and did not buy and only the maple and spruce are showing activity around the plugs that might be fruiting bodies developing. Could be I should have ignored the advice to let the poplar logs sit for several weeks before innoculation and innoculated them sooner. Maybe now would be a good time to try the technique of giving each log a good thump with a sledge hammer. Or maybe I just need to have more patience and sit tight.
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Nov 23, 2018 19:44
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Lady Demelza posted:Does anyone have any mini/patio fruit trees? What's the yield like? If they are planted in the ground, do they still stay mini or do they grow taller? I don't want trees taller than about 2m/6ft! The rootstock the tree is grafted onto keeps it a dwarf regardless of where it's planted. I inherited a twenty year old dwarf pear tree from my mother that's about 1.5 metres tall and never produced until I planted it in the ground, probably because I didn't pay enough attention to fertilizer when it was growing in a pot. Yield has been about half to a dozen pears. I've sure you can do better with proper pruning, feeding, and sun exposure. I haven't worried about this tree's yield because we're inundated with fruit from our semi-dwarves at that time of year. The nice thing about dwarf stock is you can work them standing on the ground and cram a lot more trees into a given space, actually exceeding the yield per hectare of semi-dwarf or standard trees. On the downside the trunks are weak and must be supported, and the trees have a life expectancy of 20 years. Being nose-level with the deer can be bad too, depending on where you live.
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Dec 9, 2018 02:16
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STAC Goat posted:I have a vague plan to try and keep my tomatoes from going all jungle next year by just building trestles along 3 sides of the bed and growing the plants up them, leaving the center free for pots or me to move around in. Not the best use of space but better than a giant jungle I can barely get into to pick or prune. I found that learning how to prune tomatoes (pinching out the new developing stem between a leaf and the old stem) helped a lot to keep them under control, as long as I was diligent about it. Trellises, stakes, and tying up are also critical. I've found it really easy to grow a jungle using the square foot system if you're not careful. I been running two rows of tomatoes in a bed with the plants at 24" spacing. Next year I'm going to run a single row per bed - I don't need that many tomatoes and maybe I won't end up stepping on tomatoes all through August. Squash are going to be banished outside the fence to take their chanes with the deer; some parts of my garden this summer were no-go zones after the spaghetti and hubbard squash got going. My trellises were too short for square foot density.
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Jan 3, 2019 06:47
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Grand Fromage posted:How big were your trellises? I have some plans for squashes and cucumbers and am a little concerned they'll take over. They are basically this: Made out of heavy wire concrete reinforcing mesh. When bent in half to span a 4' bed they stand about 3' high. They worked really well in previous years when all I had on them was pickling and English cukes but the squashes took over this year and I kept finding cukes the size of wine bottles when I took everything apart this fall.
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Jan 4, 2019 00:17
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If it was me starting off with dug soil my priorities would be a rake (for forming raised beds), a composter (for weeds, clumps of sod, and other "refuse"], and a Ho-Mi digging tool. I'm no-dig so once a bed is formed I don't need to disturb it and the spade could wait until I have to plant trees or move compost and mulch. There are hand hoes and trowels that do the same job as a Ho-Mi, but the Ho-Mi is one of those tools that feels like a natural extension of my arm. If you can find a digger that feels like that grab it.cakesmith handyman posted:Spade, fork, soil rake, I get more use from a hand hoe than a full size but that's down on your knees rather than standing. String, watering can, gloves. Bucket or trug or wheelbarrow depending on size/budget/need. I'll second this list, once things get going. The only thing I'd add is a set of pruning shears. Angrymog posted:These are some of the things I want to grow. Very easy to grow, but plan now for how you're going to contain them. Mere paths will not stop their spread into neighbouring allotments and they're a pain in the arse to have to weed out of your beds. They'll need a metal or concrete barrier before they go in, if you value your sanity. How do I know this? Well.... Angrymog posted:
If you can find wood chips to mulch some dwarf fruit trees this is a good pairing. Stropharia (Garden Giant) is large, tasty, light tolerant, and is supposed to do well under trees and berry bushes in a garden. I want to try some under my blackberry hedgerow but the people I want to buy the spawn from are old-world hippies with a relaxed attitude towards people trying to hand them money. Which reminds me, it's time to send them another email. Angrymog posted:Do you have to harvest all your plants (e.g. all your potatoes) at the same time, or can they be left in the ground? I don't have a lot of storage in my flat. In your climate (similar to our west coast Canada climate) a lot of things will stand in the garden. Potatoes will sometimes rot but I've had them last longer in the garden than bringing them inside where it's too warm and they sprout - we dug them throughout winter into April last year. If you select the right varieties of brassicas and time the planting right you'll be picking kale, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cabbage throughout the winter. If you do go down the winter gardening rabbit hole you'll need to make sure you have a good supply of leafy mulch and keep an eye out for "Beast from the East" forecasts. Angrymog posted:Strawberries Look for local varieties whose berries aren't found on the commercial market (don't store well, can't resist more force than your 7 kph car bumper). I have one of these that tastes like it was rolled in sugar. I'm sure it can't be good for my health. No idea how well they store, they rarely last long enough to make it to the kitchen. Since you're British (even if you weren't, but especially when you are) I'd recommend getting to know Charles Dowding's books and YouTube channel.
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Jan 7, 2019 04:57
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Crakkerjakk posted:Yeah, eggplants are very similar to tomatoes. I grow mine on trellises. You have to train them but otherwise they take to them fine. Huh. I did not know that. So far they've always stayed upright for me but maybe that's the square foot spacing at work helping them support each other.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:31
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Crakkerjakk posted:I mean, they have enough internal structure to stand on their own, but if you train them up a trellis they'll take to it happily and it helps with the heavier fruiting ones. That's probably what it is - most of mine are small-fruited varieties that you pick at tennis ball size or slightly larger. We don't very often grow the big black aubergine types. The Taiwanese Ping Tung eggplants will get quite large but we pick them small so we don't get inundated in them. I'll have to try a bit of support if we grow one of the giant varieties again. Speaking of seed catalogs, if you're in Canada and want to try some weird stuff including cold-tolerant sweetpotatoes Mapple Farm in New Brunswick just sent out their 2019 brochure. Sounds like this might be their last year for sweets but they're still shipping seeds around North America. All open pollinated if you're into seed saving. I'm definitely going to keep growing their "Mystery Keeper" tomato. We cleaned up our tomato patch in late September and brought all the green tomatoes in to ripen on the basement windowsills. Mystery Keeper and related varieties ripen slowly from the inside out over several months. It takes a bit of experience to figure out when the inside is ripe while the outside is still pale. The taste is better than anything from the stores at this time of year. This was lunch today: 
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Jan 11, 2019 00:37
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Angrymog posted:I had been intending to put some onions in the ground, but I guess with temperatures looking like this for the next week or so, they'd do nothing at best, or freeze at worst? Celcius or Fahrenheit? If Celcius, no problem. I don't worry about my winter onions until -7 or so. Throw a light mulch over them if you want to be absolutely sure. They won't do anything yet but they'll be ready to bust out when temperatures are right.
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Jan 19, 2019 19:12
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Mikey Purp posted:I could use some advice on grow lights. I have a mini green house that is 28" wide with four shelves. I'd like to get 4 grow lights that I could hang from each shelf to start seedlings in my basement and I'm shooting for two trays per shelf. I tried to use LED strip lights last year but the seedlings came out leggy so I don't think that they were powerful enough. Any recommendations? Sorry for the late reply - my keyboard borked late last week and I couldn't get another one until today. I might be misunderstanding here - you're planning to use one of these LED plates per shelf, two standard 10"x20" flats per shelf? Most (all?) of the light fixtures I've tried put out very little useable light to the sides - trying to grow anything on the edges results in leggy seedlings falling over while trying to get to the best light. This LED plate would only cover half of a standard flat. If the LEDs are intense enough you might be able to raise the plate higher and seedlings on the edges will still do well. The seller doesn't list any stats on that unfortunately. From some of the code words I'd say the lights are aimed at the cannabis market so they're probably intense but designed to keep one well-pruned cannabis plant happy. For comparison, one of my lights is an el cheapo full spectrum 48" LED shoplight fixture from Costco. It uses 46 watts and does an adequate job of starting 2 flats of seedlings as long as you keep it just a couple of centimeters above the plants. At 75 watts you can raise the light higher than you would with this type of light but the amount of spill will depend on how the LEDs are embedded and where they're directing their light as a result. I've been through similar discussions before growing aquatic plants under artificial light. It often comes down to "Maybe? Try it and see? " Keep your hanging system flexible so you can reconfigure lights once the plants start telling you what they need. The best bang for the buck (in my location at least) is still a big box T-8 flourescent shop light fixture, with tubes in a colour that doesn't make you puke. My shop lights use 1 watt more and produce slightly less light than my LED fixture. The difference is so slight it's probably measurement error and the plants don't seem to care. I use light chain and hooks or sash cord and prussic knots to adjust the fixtures. Ugly but it works, at least for starting seedlings and keeping orchids happy in the winter. If I ever start growing cannabis  I will probably need to upgrade to something like the lights you posted.
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Jan 29, 2019 06:27
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awesmoe posted:DISASTER! DESPAIR! WOE, ETCETERA! the black krims are rotting! Blossom end rot? Basically it's a calcium deficiency.
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Jan 29, 2019 06:32
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The usual advice is 12 hours on, 12 hours off, centred roughly around the natural daylight cycle for your area so natural and artificial light reinforce each other. My timers are set for 7 a.m. on and 7 p.m. off, sunrise today is 7:40 and sunset is 5:19 p.m. Unless you're starting light sensitive seeds it's really, really hard to give seedlings too much light in the winter. They do need a dark resting period. I wouldn't worry too much about the timer though - I've had no problems in the past when I didn't have a timer and just turned the lights on manually when I got up and off sometime before I went to bed. There's other advice of course.  nerds endlessly debate light/dark cycles but this works well for my plants sitting on their west facing windowsills.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:32
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B33rChiller posted:Question for Hexigrammus: Sorry for the late reply - haven't been around lately to get this. I haven't been growing garlic that long. The first couple of years we planted peas hoping for a fall crop. An usually hot summer (like the last four) can screw peas up though. The last couple of years we've put in late fall / winter crops that have worked better. The celeriac and florence fennel did well this year after following the garlic in mid-July. If the garlic is harvestable in early July (like my neighbour's) then carrots, beets, rutabagas, endive & raddichio, Swiss chard, leaf beet, and kohlrabi can go in. If mid to late July (like ours) then Arugula, fall & winter lettuce, collards, kale, daikon, leaf mustards, chinese greens, spinach, and broccoli raab are plantable. (Linda Gilkeson's list.) Also winter onions and scallions, except alliums are a group that really need to be rotated so I don't follow garlic with onions. West Coast Seeds has published a fall and winter crop planting schedule this spring that looks really useful too. We planted West Coast Seeds "Fast and Furious" lettuce mix last summer in another part of the garden and it really lives up to its name. It can be a bit tricky to keep the surface of the seed bed moist at that time of year but you'll be eating full sized lettuce in a little over a month. We also had Winter Density lettuce that got eaten well before the cold got serious. Need to plant more of that next summer.
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Mar 2, 2019 08:11
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Most of our earthworms are alien invasives although there are some native species that managed to survive the last glaciation in refugia on the west coast of B.C. Thanks to 1800s shipping routes (high value compact cargo, people, and ballast in, bulk coal and timber out) we had a lot of interesting microfauna transferred from Europe when the ships dumped the rocks and dirt they used as ballast on shore. My neighbour has a species of Lumbricus earthworm on his property that I suspect is the giant from Germany, well over 30 cm. Those things will give you nightmares. Unlike our locals Lumbricus likes to feed on the surface and drag things back to its burrow for caching. Looks like this behaviour might be instrumental in the propagation of ragweed. So there you have it - earthworms good, earthworms bad. Take your pick, depending on your phobias, allergies, and attitude towards alien invasives. Grand Fromage posted:We can agree slugs and snails should be annihilated without mercy at least. Yep. Both the banded garden and green garden snails are imported pests here. Not sure about the small black slug that is fit only for squashing and composting, but the big banana slug is native and polite enough to stay in the forest where it belongs so we co-exist happily except for the occasional slime trail up the back door. We haven't had slug/snail problems in the garden since I surrounded the perimeter with a cedar chip path. Keeping my fingers crossed that this will continue to be effective.
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Mar 8, 2019 20:51
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Jhet posted:Sometimes popsicle stick markers in the bed with names in permanent marker. My prefered method. Unfortunately Sharpies (the most common permanent marker) fade in sunlight. There may be brands that don't fade but I ended up buying a garden pen from the seed store because I didn't want to try different brands and have to deal with faded tags in September. I was checking the cabbages today and it looks like my wife used a Sharpie on one of the labels. I can still read "Cabbage" but I have no idea if they're Danish Ballhead or Consul. Whatever. Stocks of kimchi and sauerkraut are reaching critical levels.
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Mar 12, 2019 23:37
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Deathwing posted:So, uh, not sure if fruit tree questions fall in the purview of this thread, but thought I might ask: I've lost trees with similar damage. (Peter Cottontail must die!) If there's not enough conductive tissue left the tree will start to struggle and decline over the next couple of years, eventually dying. I've gotten lucky and had trees heal after marking time for a couple of years but they have never grown or produced like their undamaged siblings. (That could be due to other factors though.) Are those trees grafted or are they on their own roots?
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Mar 15, 2019 05:57
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JulianD posted:Before I try an indoor ladybug -> spider -> bird -> cat chain, I just linked a picture of the little bastards. I want to make sure they are aphids first because they don't look like the pictures I've seen in searches. Are they crunchy? Might be scale insects. There's something else there that might be the worm-like instar phase. I think aphid instars look more like the adult.
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Mar 16, 2019 04:06
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JulianD posted:They don't seem to be, but they're super small so that might be why I haven't noticed any "crunch" when I've removed them from the plants. Horticultural oil (a.k.a. food grade mineral oil / baby oil) will smother scale and aphids. I've only ever used it on dormant fruit trees so I don't know if it would be suitable for indoor plants. Definitely non-toxic though.
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Mar 16, 2019 18:35
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ShortyMR.CAT posted:Not sure if this is the place to ask( I read the OP about weeding ) but I was wondering if I can get any recommendations for TOTAL vegetation kill/clear products or techniques. I mean, I want to literally kill every plant in my backyard FOREVER. I got plans for a patio or family area. I know I'll have to get down and dirty and just hoe and hand it, but I'd like to make my life easier by killing these giant bushes and foot tall grass/weeds that have been thriving in my back yard. I've seen some videos on white vinegar spray I could make and I've read alot about GroundClear. Just wondering from personal experience what all ya'll would recommend. Homemade is the cheapest option for sure, but if I can spend a few extra bux on some premade mix that'll last a year or so? I'd be up for that. Glyphosate (the active ingredient of a lot of the popular herbicides, including GroundClear) isn't magic - stuff resprouts from deep roots, some weeds are highly resistant, etc., etc. I've used it to eradicate an invasive ivy that was threatening a watershed, but that project was constant vigilance over three years. From what we know now about glyphosate's possible effects on the microbiome using it is as dumb as poisoning the ocean's plankton. Take a machete and grub hoe to the big stuff and: kedo posted:Using a chemical is a bad idea and you shouldn't do it. Anything that would actually, for real kill everything in your yard and prevent anything from growing in the future will be nasty and toxic. It'll reduce the value of your home because you now have a toxic waste dump in your back yard. Even if you put a porch over it a future buyer might want to have a lawn. Costco has cheap rolls of landscape fabric if you want something more permanent than cardboard under the mulch. Landscapers love the stuff because they get paid twice - once to install it and again when the homeowner decides they're tired of loose gravel everywhere. If you need to deal with stubborn weeds like buttercups coming up beside piers or walls acetic acid (vinegar) followed by digging is quite effective. Not the stuff you buy in the grocery store, it's too weak. You need to find a janitor's supply house and buy an acid cleaner like this. Be warned that 20-30% acetic acid will gently caress you up as thoroughly as the plants if you don't handle it properly. Using a small propane torch to coagulate the leaves of plants like dandelions is supposed to be an effective way to kill the roots. I have no idea if it actually works, since my philosophy is that if it's green and I can mow it, it's a lawn. Bonus points for adding the possibility of burning your house down though.
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Mar 18, 2019 23:52
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I also had some mystery tomatoes growing in my backyard. I never planted tomato seeds soo uhh 
pulled those out real quick.
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bird with big dick posted:My wife bought one of these things (or similar, maybe there are different models or sizes): Not sure how much of my experience is relevent to Nevada, but here goes anyway: Turning is not necessary, it just makes things go faster. I have three similar sized composters and in this climate it takes around six months from a dead start before I can start taking finished compost out of the bottom. I don't turn; that's the worms' job. I only have one rule for contents: was it alive at one time? One modification for cat and dog poop - that gets "sheet composted" under the blackberries. Hopefully where the dog won't find it and run the cat poop through her own composting system. If the composter is open at the bottom worms and bugs will find their own way into the bin, otherwise I'd start with a 2" layer of the liveliest soil you can find - maybe the raised bed is full of worms? On top of that put in a similar layer of kitchen or garden waste, then seal it with just enough soil to cover it. After two or three iterations don't bother with the dirt anymore unless you're worried about odours, flies, or need to seal in moisture because of your dry climate. Adding large amounts of fresh cut grass can sometimes result in a matted layer that goes anoxic, looks and smells like cow barf, and refuses to break down until you fluff it up with a spading fork. Again, a bit of layering with other materials will prevent this. Keep an eye on the moisture level - the compost should be damp but not wet enough to squeeze water out of. Sprinkle if necessary. If you want fast compost you can geek out, buy a compost thermometer, start worrying about carbon/nitrogen ratios, and buy two more bins so you can turn from one to another. Too much work imo, but if you need compost NOW this is the way to go. My composters are designed to have finished compost removed from the bottom while the upper part continues to rot down and have new material added. That doesn't really work well - the stuff at the back is hard to scrape out effectively. Instead of that every six to nine months I empty the composter, using the finished compost and putting aside any unrotted material, usually the top 8". That gets put back into the empty composter along with a sprinkling of soil and the circle of life begins anew.
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Mar 24, 2019 05:27
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Ape Has Killed Ape posted:Anyone know a good place to buy a blackberry with thorns? I tried planting blackberries and raspberries last year, and they both did well until the deer found them. They ate all the leaves off the blackberry plants, but left the thorny raspberries alone. I'd like to put new blackberry plants in this year, but every variety is thornless these days. Where are you located? The several varieties of thornless blackberries we tried didn't taste like much and eventually died out. We did not mourn their passing. The Himalayan Giants otoh thrived and while the deer still browse them they carry on like a honey badger. Himalayan Giant is the classic alien invasive blackberry species in North America so nurseries might be a little leery about stocking it in amongst all the other alien invasives they sell. Our plants came from an abandoned homestead a couple of kilometres away so they would have gotten here sooner or later anyway. fake edit: I got curious and did a little Googling: there's lots of mail order sellers in the U.K. and an eBay seller offering Himalayan Giant bare root plants in the U.S. If you're not on the West Coast the plants might need special treatment - I'm told blackberries need to be carefully wrapped to survive the -40 Peace River winters for example.
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Mar 24, 2019 18:13
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Ape Has Killed Ape posted:So last summer I planted some kiwi seeds from store bought fruit, just for fun. I ended up with six plants that I slapped into nursery pots and mostly forgot about, expecting winter to kill them. It was an unusually harsh will winter for zone 7a (multiple weeks of below 10f and a foot of snow at one point), so I wrote off the kiwis as dead. I'm developing a profound respect for kiwi vines. We've had a pair for years - only the male ever amounted to anything. The female disappeared in the weeds five years ago and got mowed accidentally. No sign of her when we rototilled the area and put in the asparagus bed. After being out of sight for at least two years she popped up on one edge of the asparagus. I dug her out this spring and ended up with three plants, the healthiest I planted where I want a kiwi and the other two ended up on the fence line where they can arm-wrestle blackberries and alders. Kiwis can be a bit finicky when it comes to flowering. We've never had flowers on either of our vines and a friend just ripped his out after getting tired of no results. If you want kiwis I'd suggest waiting until it flowers then buying the opposite sex from a nursery.
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Mar 29, 2019 16:17
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CommonShore posted:Is there much risk of them producing inedible fruit? From my attempts to save seeds from "Sweetelle" (seeds not available in Canada) and other store-bought varieties the results are still edible with enough mayo but not worth growing again given how many wonderful varieties there are out there. OTOH they were better than "Silver Fir", a supposed Russian heirloom straight out of the nursery. You won't know unless you try. There will probably be sand involved before you find gold.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:05
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Jhet posted:That’s worth the time then definitely. I don't think Vancouver Island does straw the way the rest of the continent does. It's expensive as hell even from the farm-oriented feed stores and has a ton of seeds mixed in with the stalks. I found out about the seeds when I got desperate for mulch a couple of summers ago and bought a bale. Those beds were a green haze after the first rain.
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Apr 9, 2019 05:17
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