Hows your garden getting along, my tomatos are growing well and starting to fruit. Got lots of vines and the earwig which has moved into the planter will hopefully kill off some of the fricking aphids. Courgette plant growing like a mother fricker gonna get at least 8-9 courgettes.
I just put new habanero seeds for germination in the indoor garden. Also some Bolivian rainbow going strong and can harvest in a week or two. Will probably do another run of those.
Outdoors got like 20 cucumbers, plenty strawberries and raspberries (both done for the season) and a few small apples (only 3rd year). Figs ended up inedible, pears didn’t show up at all. Oh and I got rosemary, like a cubic foot of it. Same for borage/starflower but no idea what to do with it
Sounds good, Rosemary is really invasive that stuff will explode when you least expect it. Mum makes some oil out of it than let it waste and good for using to unstink bins.
>pears didn’t show up at all
same. the tree didn't even sprout any leaves 🙁
I moved into my cirrent home two years ago and the pear tree also didnt produce a thing this year. theres also an apple tree that looks like a rats nest so im assuming they mostly used it for shade to sit under. i know they could both do with a good pruning, but im not sure what I'm doing. maybe ill hire someone and watch what they do.
This year I've expanded into growing potatoes, tomatoes, and beans. In all things have not gone great but not complete failures either, I've gotten valuable lessons from each. My potatoes were placed too close together and the rows are hard to access on w they grew, also realized I greatly underestimated how much fill I need to hill them to their true potential (cut grass works great though). Tomatoes and beans I learned have to be very strictly controlled at first to grow straight and orderly or else you get a mess that's hard to fix afterwards. But hey, learning as I go. If I'm gonna eventually grow a huge chunk of my own food I gotta start somewhere
Picrel is a lovely potato flower
>Picrel is a lovely potato flower
Nice, check my sweet potato flower
Nice. What variety is it? My yams never flower.
How did you get it to produce a flower? I thought potato plants didn't reproduce that way.
Not him, but yams can bloom if they have the right conditions. Normal potatoes from the nightshade family bloom once tubers are established, but most cultivars have been selected to grow more vegetatively.
Yams and sweet potatoes are more closely related to morning glories, and can bloom on their own, or if other plants around them are blooming due to mycorrhizae and hormone interactions.
You don't expect to grow many of them from seed because the offspring might not process sugars and store it as starch as well at the well-bred stock, but the wild plants can reproduce by seed rather than root cloning.
Trigger blooms by grafting vines to a flowering rootstock (or just use hormones) and cross different varieties if you want to increase diversity for disease resistance or to try to make a new variety.
I grow a ton of potatoes and I've never seen a single flower. I'm going to heavily fertilize with phosphorus to hopefully produce some now.
Try steeping yellow and brown banana peels in water and applying the solution at the base of the plant. The agent most store chains use to accelerate ripening once it gets to a domestic warehouse can trigger fruiting and blooms in other plants.
Beware, this can trigger yellowing of the leaves since the same hormone is released from deciduous plants in the fall.
Potato berries are poisonous, so don't eat them or touch too much of the pulp to get the seeds.
Nice!
I got my sweet potatoes to flower once after a heavy rain and then hot day after. The wet heat seems to increase the chance of flowering
Its been really bad - its got a lot hotter and drier a lot faster this year and all my saplings fried up. Next year investing in shade cloth for sure. My tomatoes are doing well but that's kinda it, even my herbs died ;-;
Hey I'm this poster and since posting this, My tomatoes have exploded! I'm seriously considering just growing only tomatoes. I've got Black Krims, Green Zebras, and a bunch of cherry varieties. I've already started making incredible spreads and sauces with my fresh tomatoes.
Herbs are so easy to grow. You just toss the seeds on the ground and forget about it and it still grows well lmao
Coming along.
Have eight of these (Trinidad scorpions)
12 Habaneros (4 Mature, 8 Seedlings)
4 Cherry Tomatoes (I hate tomatoes but give these to my neighbors that have to look at the abomination of a greenhouse in my backyard)
2 Ristra Cayennes
2 Ghost Peppers
I'm hoping to get keep growing to at least November. I'm in the lower midwest, which would usually see at least one or two sub 40 nights by that time, but I've heard that greenhouses can be hugely beneficial in keeping heat. Might even get a small heater and cover it in a thick clear plastic tarp and wrap it under to really insulate it.
Have you thought to blending the tomatos and chillis into a sauce? Garden sounds good mate.
Not too bad I have hot chilies growing in the back and some good ass mint
>Hows your garden getting along
Really well. I am stuck with a balcony and pots in the city, but that still seems to work great, currently crops are growing quicker than I use them.
In picrel:
>bok choi/pak choi
>chard
>lavender
>salad
>asian greens (different salad types)
>sorrel
>kohlrabi
>sunchoke
>cucumber
>indian cress
Not in picture, but on balcony too
>tomato
>chili
and herbs in hanging pots not in picture
>mint
>rosemary
>thyme
>laurel
The only plant that doesn't grow so well is the salad, but because I oversowed and didn't care for it so well. It's been really fun so far.
Also
is the usual stop for gardening.
I'm got a balcony but I haven't planted anything yet.
Is it too late or do you know of some good stuff to plant now?
I'm in southern Norway so it's not too cold here.
I'm not sure how different temperatures in southern norway are to where I live (germany) and I'm not particularly experienced with gardening as a whole, but there are probably some good picks even if you missed some quality growing time.
Something that I'd do is search for a sowing calendar online. Searchterms like "vegetable sowing calendar" should give you a table with some stuff. Normally I prefer english content when searching for stuff online, but in this case search for the norvegian equivalent, because it will be specific to your growing zone. They won't have all of the interesting stuff, but it's a good starting point. Some of the better ones separate the sowing period (sometimes for outside sowing and greenhouse sowing separated) and the harvesting period. The great ones also include info like the germination temperature (which gives you a rough idea about if it's too hot or cold), time it takes to germinate (in case you freak out), distance between plants etc.
Once you have found some plants that interest you and you want to plant, look for what amount of light they need. Depending on which direction your balcony is faced you should have either full sun, half sun, or shade. In my case my balcony is on a corner of the building, so I have full and half sun areas and planned which plants go where based on that. For this year I chose mostly plants that were easy to grow and grew quick, which was awesome because I got a lot of harvest. Look into plants that handle lower temperatures, root vegetables or plants that stay green year round (and are multiannual/perennial). You can also get already grown plants where the sowing season is over but they still would live on, such as rosemary, laurel, maybe even thyme.
(cont)
(cont)
Maybe chard is a good idea, since it grows insanely quick, depending on heat you may manage to get a cucumber to still grow etc. or pumpkin or something.
As I said I'm relatively new to the whole balcony gardening, so I have limited experience and I will only look into what to grow once the harvest of these plants I am growing at the moment is over, but that's roughly how I'd go about it. You can probably also get some shit to grow that normally wouldn't if you do the germination indoors and then take them outside. I'm probably going to sow some more indian cress in my pots, missed the sowing period for them but who knows, worst case I lost 15cts worth of seeds.
If you like the idea of self sustainability or saving money then also look into how the plants spread. I have for example let 2 of my bok choi/pak choi plants grow to seed this year and will harvest the seeds, seal them in a plastic bag, then sow them next year.
I'm making do with what I have.
Had a bad mole/gopher problem last year, so I wanted to try raised beds, but wood was too expensive.
I opted to pick up a stack of old tractor tires and composted horse manure from a farm outside of town, lined the bottom of the tires with hardware mesh, and mixed the manure into some sandy soil from a mound behind the shed.
Drilled out some spent litter buckets and filled them up, too.
Tires have a little bit of everything. A vine, a stalk for it to climb, and a tuber to fill up the basin. This set has squash, sunflower, and oca.
A few rows over there's sunchokes with cukes. I think I stunted the sunchokes by over watering this spring, but hopefully they still flower. I want to try crossing them with a mammoth sunflower and see what seeds actually take.
I had potatoes by themselves in another set, but I already harvested them due to some sort of bug perforating the leaves and making them yellow.
Buckets have carrots, beets, and tomato I started late from cuttings.
It always frustrates me that I seem to spend a lot more water and effort on the food from my garden than I could buy by spending what I'd earn for the same time at work, but it brings me peace to keep things alive that bring some benefit to me and my family, so it's worth it.
I find it amazing that food can even be grown at all. I live in a desert that kills everything.
ive been dumpster diving at my homedepot and got so much stuff from it , from succulents,pots lemon trees and a 5gal bucket of seed packets
picked 1/2 stone of strawberries today!
fricking dog dug up some bulbs we'd planted with bone meal. snorted the dirt like a fricking junky. put up a shade cloth in the back yard and the fuchsias improved almost immediately.
>dooger.jpg
oh shit i'm gonna dDDDIIIIIIIIIGGGG
tomatoes are doing well and producing fruit, though none are ripe yet. zucchini all succumbed to vine borers and are now dying off without having produced any fruit. eggplant plants are still growing. no sign of fruits yet.
Going to post here on top of the post I made on PrepHole. My pumpkin plant looks all kinds of fricked up, it started happening over the course of the last week. It's upsetting me, because I finally managed to spot a female flower, and get it pollinated today...
Ah im sorry anon that sucks
Looks like squash vine borer. Your plant is fricked. You can cut up the stems and find the larvae inside to kill if it makes you feel better.
>Your plant is fricked.
you can grow roots beyond the infected stem to save the plant. after roots are established, can you remove and discard the infected portion. it really isn't a big deal.
Depends on how infected the plant is. The larvae climb up through all of the stems. Possible to save the plant, but not easy.
>Depends on how infected the plant is.
I mean, if you let it get out of hand that's your own fault. It shouldn't get to that point. Also, it's extremely easy to make a plant like that root. They do it on their own without extra hormones or human assistance.
>automate it completely.
Get something like pic related. No clue how good this model is. I grabbed the first picture from google. They're really easy to setup. Look up irrigation timer.
>I also have kids running around, so 1 less tripping hazard.
You should bury the PVC. PVC gets extremely brittle in the sun so you'll be replacing it a lot more often if you don't put it underground.
>Any indication how big the holes need to be?
Depends how much water you want to put out and the flow rate. I google this 30 seconds ago and found this video. I clicked through it and he seems to explain everything. He used a 1/16th drill bit for the holes
thank you kind anon! I am completely new to the topic, I have a garden for a couple of months now and after finishing the renovations it's time to give it some love.
will report back
Anytime. We were all there at some point. If you have any other questions, let me know. I moronicly went to school for agriculture.
As someone who didn't go to school for agriculture, but has the time an energy to self-teach, would you know where can I find a good online ag curriculum? Any important textbooks, good KhanAcademy courses, that kind of thing?
My interest is purely homesteading/hobby farming, but I'd like to build up to producing most of my family's food. Moving out to a 5-acre parcel soon with this in mind.
all of what is taught in ag courses comes from a textbook. sure the phd/research professor can answer questions, from life experience or because they teach the course, but that's all the courses are really. comes from the textbooks. poultry science, animal science (which tree tops it all), equine science etc. library books, books online/in store, second hand book shops. sure for things like milking cows or preg checking cattle is hands on stuff but there's got to be a farm or farm vet around that would let you tag along when procedures are done. youtube is also a vast resource. IG too
bookmarked this guy recently https://youtu.be/ECVmuhSQzDs
>I moronicly went to school for agriculture.
>took an agg course
>asked my professor what was the difference between him and a regular farmer
>well, a farmer knows how to plant crops...
>and uh... I know the reason why what he does works
money well spent.
nice what are you doing now
never thought of this actually, should 1 pipe in the middle suffice? Or maybe twice?
Maybe, I don't know the area you're trying to cover. I have a raised bed that is 2 foot wide and I have one straight down the middle with a constant drip. The roots will find the water.
Ah you are talking about the raised bed, I am talking about the grass.
>You should bury the PVC
forgot the quote
I am using this exact model and it is a brilliant budget option but I have two complaints.
1) you need a water hammer arrestor ($10-$20) or its going to frick up your pipes. Many timers will require one of these so not a crazy issue, but just be aware.
2) It only lets you set a watering schedule in even increments. You can only water every 12 hours, every 6 hours, every two days, etc. I would prefer something slightly more custom, like watering at 6am and 8pm, vs 6am and 6pm. Not a deal breaker, but not ideal either.
Alright. I tried to save it.
Whats a good brand for insecticide for plants?
I split the vines at a point where-in they seemed sturdy, and at least a short distance away from any damage caused by the maggots.
There's also the biggest off-shoot, that isn't pictured. It already rooted itself down in the middle of my backyard, lol. Its also the one with the pollinated female flower. Hope it doesn't abort.
>Whats a good brand for insecticide for plants?
It doesn't really work like that. What sort of insect are you trying to treat?
Dewalt is always my go to. None of that jap makita shit.
The squash vie borers are seasonal. You likely won't have any new issues with them this year. How many larvae did you pull out? There are almost always multiple larvae in each plant.
4, all out of the main plant. I've only seen the 2 squash bugs (did some research on what to look out for), and I smashed them in the middle of having sex., double checked for eggs from them, didn't find anything. The two vines I threw in the garden are droopy, but they haven't lost any color, and it seems like some of the small roots have anchored. the bigger vine in the middle of my backyard is doing okay, one of the root has snapped off for some reason, I think maybe my neighbors dog. The flower flower has fallen off of the vine, but the base is still there and looks bigger than it did yesterday. I'm a little worried, as there's splitting around the end of the vine where I severed it from the main plant, but no discoloration. If the color starts to go brown or yellow, I'll go looking for more borers.
anyone here with experience with garden irrigation?
Simplified - I have a ~3m wide garden around my ground level apartment, roughly 1/4 of a circle.
I need a system which can water the grass without making the windows wet, which the twisting sprinkler does, also throws almost up to the 2nd floor neighbors. In the middle there are raised bed with my wife's tomatoes which also should not get wet. I think sprinklers are out of the question, they will wet everything. Was thinking of laying PVC pipe and then drilling holes aimed inwards, but that would also be tricky to aim and control the flow strength.
Here's a pretty unscientific drawing. On the outer edge there are laurel bushes, would be nice if they too can get some water at the same time. I will soon get a dual-channel irrigation controller thinigie with drip hose for the flowers and tomatoes, but am clueless about how to tackle the rest.
all input appreciated, thanks!
>I need a system which can water the grass without making the windows wet, which the twisting sprinkler does, also throws almost up to the 2nd floor neighbors
You can put a pressure reducer or get sprinkler heads that have a shorter spray range. Your PVC idea is the ideal setup though. Plants do best when they are watered at the roots. You'll avoid things like powdery mildew by watering like that.
>You can put a pressure reducer or get sprinkler heads that have a shorter spray range.
Good idea actually, but I'd like to automate it completely. I also have kids running around, so 1 less tripping hazard.
>Your PVC idea is the ideal setup though.
Any indication how big the holes need to be? Or should I just get everything needed and decide on the go.
It's me again, got some micro-drip pipe, hose adapter and 20 micro drip sprinkler thingies, which cover 3m distance and up to 14m2 at 180*. What distance should I put them on the pipe? I was thinking going for 2m and see how it goes, I can always add an additional one in between.
works like a charm! Need to swap one of the 180 sprinklers for a 90 one and we are set! this is fun!
>micro-drip pipe
post pictures of the components and installed!
have been daydreaming for years of putting in a automatic system. options are 1. water timer either single zone or multi zone, inline to a pump with flow switch and 300+ gal of water collection barrels/totes. 2 timer like this but multi port for zones attached to spigot for easy winterization. 3. play around with a lawn sprinkler type system
im in the hot desert and the irrigation guy at my work does every 18 inches. But your logic is sound, start with less and add more intervals if needed.
Any of you guys used one of these moisture sensors before? There's a ton of tutorials on the internet, so they can't be total crap, but I'm also seeing people say the readings are almost too noisy to be useful. Probably gonna buy the kit anyway cause that's a pretty good price for just an arduino these days, but I'm wondering if it'd be a better idea to just set the pumps on a schedule.
>Any of you guys used one of these moisture sensors before?
Yeah, the system my university uses is moronic expensive. The data is nice but you can achieve the same thing with a 20 dollar timer. We use ours to track transpiration rates, stem contraction, and fruit growth rate throughout the day/week/month. Again, the data is useful, but outside of our R&D it isn't that helpful.
>I'm wondering if it'd be a better idea to just set the pumps on a schedule.
That's how I do it at my farm. It might help to get a system that allows you to skip/put off programs just in case it is raining or something like that.
>system that allows you to skip/put off programs just in case it is raining or something like that.
That's a good idea. Even if these cheapo sensors aren't accurate enough to maintain perfect moisture levels they'll probably be good enough to supplement a schedule if the weather swings either direction.
Those arduino sensors are pretty shit. They corrode in about a month and then you'll be replacing them. Opt for timers or if you're decent at programming you could parse the rainfall data for the day and then if it's not going to rain then make the sprinklers go, if it is then make them wait until the next time it needs to be watered.
>Those arduino sensors are pretty shit. They corrode in about a month and then you'll be replacing them.
Not really. You just have to do some work to build them right:
- buy sensors where the capacitive plate part is watertight (that's the case with the ones in
for example)
- seal the smd components on top with either a exensive sealant or (what I do) buy the cheapest nail laquer you can buy and use that to seal the parts
- make sure the plug connections to the cables are watertight too.
If you use them as they arrive, then yeah they will corrode. Do some prep to seal them and they work decently.
Why do it the hard way when you can get pic rel and let physics do the job for you?
Can't take a picture with this phone. My jalapeno and bell peppers keep growing with blackish-brown dried patches on them. The fruit will be red or orange, then towards the bottom have the dried patch of skin. I think it's some kind of fungus, but I'm new to growing and not quite sure.
Pic related
damn, got the same problem with my tomatoes (the bush tomatoes seems to be fine in most cases) and a few paprikas.
will take notes, got eggshels in the compost. I hope next year will have a bigger success ratio than this years.
Probably blossom-end-rot. Very common, might still get good fruit this season if you take care of it soon.
Supplement calcium into their water, and reduce your watering schedule. Either calcium citrate or bone meal.
I've also found a combination of a drop of baby soap, 1 tsp Brewers yeast, and 1/4 tsp of yucca enzyme per 5 gallons of irrigant applied once the plants are in their final pots helps stave off opportunistic fungal infections by keeping the soil aerated. Only recommend for tomatoes and peppers, since they do the worst in overly wet soil
I see, would eggshells and lime be sufficient for supplementing calcium, or would some type of powder mixed into the water work better?
Thank you, Anon, I see I have a lot more to learn
I know next to nothing, anon. There is always someone wiser or with more experience to glean from.
I've used eggshells before, but if you want to see quicker results, you need to make the calcium more available. 4 eggshells in a quart of hot water and 4 tablespoons of lemon juice left to soak overnight should be enough to treat several large plants for a season. I've heard people say to use vinegar instead of lemon juice, but in my experience, it's a little too harsh on the roots.
Not fast acting enough to solve your probably this season. Go out and buy some liquid fertilizer. A fish impulsion if you're looking to stay away from completely artificial stuff
make sure you bake the eggshells before you use them. I have a cheap air fryer (<20 dollars) I use to get mine ready for the garden. Also I'd be carefully using lime. Lime is mainly used to adjust pH of soil. You might frick your plants up.
i got blossom end rot on tomatoes, if same then u lack clacium, u can get it from Lime(no the fruit)
%28TheRustedGarden%29
Cut some of the huge rosemary bush and dried enough for a year. First time producing herbs. Dried it in the oven but that seems kind of wasteful, so put the remainder out in the sun and hope it dries as well (it’s 90f outside) over the next few days, going to make rosemary infused olive oil probably. Also got a small pot of thyme and first peppers will be ready soon
Yoooo hopefully you didnt make the mistake already. But do not dry herbs in the sun. Lay them out on newspaper somewhere dry and in the shade. You definitely won't want straight sun since it will ruin your herbs a bit. They will lose a lot of aroma. So yea, dry them somewhere nice and shady. In the heat we are getting in europe right now, even the kitchen table was good enough.
That is advice i got straight from my elders.
Did anyone try growing black pearl or explosive ember peppers? I’m looking for an annuum that stays under say 30cm tall and had pretty small fruits, because I’ll stack them
I've grown peppers but not those varieties. Did you have questions about it?
Do I need anything special? I had some other chillies that had a magnesium deficiency once (didn’t know they need extra) and died after 2 months or so. Are they very pungent?
i'm not a gardener but i am tending someone elses garden and some of the plants are getting droopy and maybe dying. i dont know if i'm overwatering them or underwatering them. i water once in the evening with a hose, and maybe i am doing it too much, but it's hot out so i figured the plants need it? am i overdoing it? or is it not enough, especially the cucumber plants are sagging a lot, but i watered them extra yesterday. thanks
Without pictures it's hard to say. I would assume you're not watering them enough, as it's summer. Keep in mind that you really want to soak the soil quite deep, not just water the surface. I leave my water pump soaking the growing area for quite a while. You can test the soil by digging a small but deep hole, you will see if your watering isn't adequate.
For next year I'm thinking about mulching my growing areas so I don't have to water them as frequently.
okay thanks for replying
Let the soil dry out before watering again. Put finger in soil, if you feel moist soil at your fingertip you don’t need to water. It takes a lot of drought to under-water common crops like cucumbers, you can get away with deep watering them every 4-6 days normally or every 3-4 when it’s hot out
>garden was going nicely
>everything seemed happy and starting to flower up
>pic related happens for 4+ weeks
bros, if anything survives this shit I'll be suprised. The 30th where it will "only" be 89 is the coolest it's been in at least a full month.
Can you move your plants to the shade or use a shade cloth?
Meanwhile, in the middle of bumfrick nowhere, Michigan:
Got a question for some of you with larger gardens.
What would you keep if you had to drastically downsize your garden. I was thinking about expanding my balcony garden next year, so i wanted to prepare a bit with a list of stuff i could grow (balcony is massive 30m2~).
This year i only have a bunch of herbs growing because of renovations. But i wanna go bigger than ever, and don't be afraid to throw any plant at me. Tomatoes for example loved it here, squash and cucumber didn't tho (probably too much sun for them).
I’d look what really thrives in my garden I guess. If I could keep say 1/8th of my garden I’d still keep a big cucumber plant because I know it makes ~30-40 fruits a year without much maintenance at all. Same for cherry tomato. I could put 5 different other fruits there instead but then I’d have no idea if I’m going to get anything from it. When cultivating a new part I just throw a bunch of random seeds/seedlings and see what thrives, and plant that the next year. (That’s also how I ended up with about 5+ square meters of useless starflower and pineapple sage though)
Ah fair point, i guess i can just go all out and try as many different things as i can throw at it, and see what keeps best.
How is pineapple sage compared to the standard variety, I have the standard one and use it for tea and the occasional cooking.
Makes pretty okay tea but it grows real fast, so unless you dry it or have 20 cups of tea a day, a lot of it is waste. Some say you can use it as a tobacco substitute but I wouldn’t recommend it
I threw the sun dried batch away, kept the oven dried. Got too much anyway. I kinda knew that but weather is too unpredictable here to do it slowly
Id focus on rares - heirloom tomatoes, I have some v rare succulents that I flip cuttings of on craigslist. Basically the harder it is to find at a store, the more valuable it would be in a scenario where I have to budget my space.
Am apartmentcuck, but got 4m^2 encased balcony.
Does anyone have any good plannts to grow? Preferably fruits but vegetables also works.
It's cold climate (southern) Norway.
Strawberries for sure - they were my best producer when I was an apartment gardener. You can get alpine if you want to grow a rare, cold tolerant variety. You will need sun to grow anything - which way does your balcony face? How much direct sun do you get?
It's south facing so it's light all day.
And I got a corner apartment so if it gets to cold I can put them in either window facing south or west.
Thanks for the advice.
lost 8 zucchini plants to vine borers. started 5 more and hoping that it is late enough in the season that they won't also succumb. I've started harvesting cherry tomatoes and blackberries. both have been getting picked at by birds, so I've put plastic netting over them. eggplants have grown flowers, but no sign of fruit yet.
I sympathize with you on the loss of your zucchinis, borers are a b***h and a half. I had to chop up my pumpkin vines for similar reasons, thankfully the runs were rooted well enough past the major infection to support itself without the primary root.
Asked my grandpa what he does to keep them at bay, he says to hang yellow flypaper low to the ground and bury as much of the vine as you can, especially around the leaf/flower nodules. Read that you can dust the vine with diatomaceous earth during egg -laying season to kill the small grubs before they have a chance to hide, or spray& inoculate with live BT throughout the season.
It's winter so everything is growing slowly and getting raped by slugs.
I'm pretty much relegated to growing peas and leafy greens because if the shitty conditions, frick winter I hate it so damn much.
I did get a great sweet potato harvest though.
Hey I planted my tomatoes in a bad spot. I got some kind of rare varities from a friend and I am curious what the best way to preserve them for next season would be - should I take cuttings and nurse them overwinter, or keep seeds and replant next season?
both
2x8's, stacked rocks
Any advice for making raised bed gardens that'll last with inexpensive materials? Not out of free garbage that I have to spend hours collecting, just inexpensive materials I can get at a regular store. Thinking like $300 budget to cover a 30'x30' area
Cheapest way is the traditional way: bastard trenching. You dig a trench, flip the sod over, and start hilling the dirt where you want the raised bed to be. You methedologically break up the dirt after you toss it on top. By lowering on one side and raising on the other, a raised bed is formed. This bed will last until wind and raise erode it, and that will depend on your particular site conditions and how large your make it. This is back breaking work but only requires 1 person and a shovel/spade. Look up the term 'bastard trenching' for specifics.
Materials cheaper than wood will depend on where you live and what kind of transport you have. Some people make raised beds out of cattle/hog pannels. Basically, large 16 foot pieces of fencing that you then deform into a box by folding it in on itself. Then you line the box with some kind of weilded or chicken wire to help hold the woodchips you are going to line it with. Essentially the outside/edges of the inside of your bed will be wood chips, and then you put dirt in the middle.
To do this properly you need simultanious access to woodchips and whatever growing medium you will be putting in the bed. Soil, compost, ect. You do it in layers, to reduce the amount of woodchips needed so you maximize your growing area. Prepandemic this was significantly cheaper than using wood but I honestly dont know if it is now. Tools needed: bolt cutters AND wire cutters, shovel and wheel barrow. You will need a large truck or a trailer to transport the cattle panels OR you will have to cut them down to the size you want at the store.
Thank you for this extremely thorough answer anon! I've got a pickup and a full workshop (incl mig welding) so I'm certainly able to manipulate harder materials like wood or masonry or wire. Gonna look into starting with cattle panels.
(continued)
if you have access to large stones, you can pile them into a wall to make raised beds. Same with cinder blocks or some other masonry.
cheapest ghetto raised beds that probably wont last very long:
chicken wire and cardboard boxes. Wrap box with wire, fill with dirt. When cardboard wears away, the wire helps it maintain its shape. But chicken wire willeventually fall apart too. if you are doing no dig no till these lumps of ghetto beds can last a pretty long time in a relatively sheltered area.
straw bales and potting soil. the original meme boomer raised bed. Drop a straw bale down, put some soil in the middle of it. Grow plants in the soil. These will probably only last a season or two before it breaks down into a half composted mess. Probably not cost effective anymore with raised prices but your mileage may vary.
Wanting something cheap and long lasting is kind of a naive desire at this time in the game and usually is a big time waster for most people. Whether you just want to garden for fun, or are concerned about long term food security, the most important thing is to just get experience gardening. Go out and do it. It certainly is a good idea to plan your garden out, but dont let a lack of funds or inability to fill your entire planned area out stopping you from starting.
>Chicken wire or concrete mesh/reo
>posts
>weedcloth or shadecloth, good amount of cardboard
>other odds and ends, hand tools
>shit to fill the bed with
Put posts in to mark out the shape.
Attach mesh.
Line mesh with weed cloth, fold any excess at the bottom. Should look like a big fabric pot when you're done. Drop cardboard on the bottom.
Easy 2 or 3 foot garden bed. Keep in mind vegetables are only going to drop roots 12-15 inches at most, with ordinary seasonal plans dropping roots 6-9 inches or so.
Go hugelkulture and fill up half your bed with dead wood, branches, leaf litter and so on. Fill up space, drop some compost or garden soil and leave the last foot and a half for 'good' soil and mulch.
Water it in a bit, because it will sink. As all your material at the base rots it will continue to sink, but that will take years. Just pile more shit on top of it next year.
Or just build a garden bed to your preferences and local conditions. Whatever.
Blackberries are bussin to the point where I'm worried for the surrounding plants.
Yellow raspberries, shad bush and blueberries seem to be doing fine.
Haskap's leaves are looking kinda weird but I think they're just reacting to the recent heat and they're adapted to extreme cold.
Black cherry trees are bussin
Oak saplings aren't doing shit but I think that's normal.
Gonna tap my big maple trees and may plant pear/apple trees next year.
I now have a freshly tilled decently big soil terrace available and contemplating my next move.
I wish there was an easy way to contain blackberries. The amount of runners is absurd.
Anyone have any idea what these black marks are on my monsteras stem?
It got too much sun. My wife has one of these and insists that indoor plants like to go outside. She brilliantly left her outside for a few hours and the entire plant turned that black color. Prune the infect spots off and the plant should be fine.
We don't know when your last frost date was, but zucchini plants only live for about 120 days.
I bought a property (about 1 acre) that is filled with wild blackberries. The problem is the plants produce very few fruit and the fruit that is produced taste awful. From what I've found, the easiest (though it isn't easy) way to get rid of the runners is to constantly pull them or get an animal like a goat to eat them before they can develop.
when you plant zucchini a few weeks after the frost, how long should it go on for? mine keep dying around mid July after they bore some fruit. Are mine dying prematurely or do they die off pretty quick?
What the frick is that image and what does it have to do with zuccini?
Why did you attach a picture you last posted 2 months ago in a completely unrelated thread about needing a drain pump for your dishwasher?
Do you add fertilizer to your plants?
>What the frick is that image and what does it have to do with zuccini?
>He doesn't know about the zucchini glory hole.
Free tetanus with your purchase
>pic
it is a pic of an espo tag, you wont see it anywhere else. The pump issue is resolved too, I replaced the circ pump and it seems to work 4 out of 5 cycles.
>do you fert
yea i put in a good amount this time. dr earth, 2tbs per gallon @ 10gallons. another was in 15 and died around the same time so i dont think im having a nute issue.
😉
last frost is early april. I am planting mi may and they are dying around the end of July. Is there such thing as giving them too much light?
>it is a pic of an espo tag
The OG penis man.
What variety are they? Some only last for 90 days I grow 90, 120, and 150 day varieties so I said about 120 days, but you could have a 90 day strain. I've never had a problem with too much sun. What do the dying/dead plants look like?
they are dead now, its like they produce about like they each produce about 7 squash and then they fricking just start to croak, the first sign is the leaves get a little yellow. Im pretty sure it is not a nute thing
didnt know there were they varied in time they live either, I get pre-started plants in the plastic 4 pack from the nursery, not sure the exact strain now..do you do anything to yours? or do you let them go? do you prune besides the dead leaves? do you use containers or in the ground?
I bet they're 90 days. That would explain why they all died around the same time and the same way. I do the same thing to nearly all of my plants. I apply compost and heavy mulch and that's it. Yeah, I remove my older leaves before they turn yellow. When the edges start turning colors, I generally remove them. Those dying leaves are wasting energy and nutrients so I don't let them get to that point. I have some directly in the ground and others in raised beds. Yellowing could be a sign of watering issues. A lot of people don't know this. To properly check if a plant needs water, insert your finger about an inch or two into the soil. If you cannot feel moisture, the plant needs water. If you feel even the slightest bit of water, I wouldn't water. It's really trial and error though. Some plants grow better in different environments. For example, one of my professors grows peaches like me. He lives about 30 minutes away from me but receives nearly 100 less chill hours than me. He can't grow the same varieties of peach that I do as a result.
when you say 90 days do you mean 90 day bloom period or 90 day start to finish? As far as not watering them until the soil is dry, it gets hot in the summer and it is somewhat hard to pick that perfect point, it is such a gamble, the heat can wilt it easily
>even the slightest bit of water
are they that easy to overwater then? how do you water them? driipers? watering can? I actually went a little heavier on water when they started to get really big and look great, figured they were bigger and needed more water, maybe that was the wrong idea in retrospect.
>100 less chill hours
I think am going to not put them in the full sun anymore get a more chill spot for them
usually people mean days til maturity, at which point you can start harvesting
tomato plants get worn out easily tho, so earlier harvest could mean earlier death, but it really depends on the strain and conditions
it's shit. 20 by 50 meters i think, unfinished house in the middle, everything else is covered in tall grass, and heracleum, you know bushes that spit acid? Oh and the ones that stick to your clothes too, those are fun. Anyway i'm just going at it with a trimmer and a chainsaw, trying to get to the apple trees and clear all that shit out since nobody else is gonna do it.
whats the consensus on better boy v beefmaster? I have to get some for my garden and I do not know which to get ( I cannot get both ). does one yield better than the other in the long term? does one go longer than the other? just trying to pick the best yielder
Pumpkins i cared for like a newborn got all fricked up because of the sun. Meanwhile, the ones which seeds i just tossed into dirt, pissed in them, said "may god help you frickers for i will not", spat on them, covered them with dirt - they've grown into a prime examples with vines over 6m long trying to enter my house. Still no pumpkins, lots of flowers though.
My garden is out of control. Compared to how it started. It was fun building the beds, planting the stuff, but the constant maintenance, weeding, harvesting...its more food than I can eat, I can't give this crap away fast enough. I was even planning a 3rd bed, but...what to even plant?
Bush beans are rocking it, its the only thing I'm not sick of eating at this point.
might be time to consider expanding your hobby to include animal husbandry and raise chickens. You can use excess food to suppliment the diet of livestock. Then you can use the chicken manure as compost for next year.
Traditionally, farmers would sometimes leave some areas empty each season/year to allow the soil to 'rest'. Then use that area next season. So you dont necesarily have to fill out your entire garden if you dont want to. Alternatively you could invest in perennial plants to fill out space. There are many plants that are basically set and forget, but it will depend on your particular climate. I once planted some sage in a bed and after it was established, I ignored it. The entire bed now produces sage and will continue to produce sage until the end of time.
Back to animals: ducks are also really good at trampling down garden rows. As long as your beds are high enough to keep the ducks out of them, the little bastards willjust wander around and pull up the path weeds for you. You can get flightless runner ducks to make sure they dont get in the beds, they walk around like penguins and are pretty cute.
Just dont get the puff ball ones. People like them as pets because the puffy hair looks cute, but that puff ball hair is created by what is essentially a genetic defect that puts a hole in their skulls, which makes the birds extremely fragile. So fragile that they often kill themselves if they stumble or fall and hit their heads.
But anyways, now you can see why farmers would always have lots of kids. It's a lot of work to maintain a garden all on your own. And a lot of the tedious work doesnt really require any intellegence or skills. But its the perfect kind of work for a small child to do.
"Resting" land is unnecessary on a garden or even hobby farm scale with a vigorous composting technique. I will agree though that ducks are good starter animals and imo superior to chickens.
> its more food than I can eat, I can't give this crap away fast enough.
Had this problem, got into food preservation more or less. Juicing fruits, some for alcohol, drying herbs, make chillies into sauce, tomato ketchup, herb oil, pickled cucumber etc.
Also maybe just lose a few or grow some harder-to-grow varieties maybe? If you replace a bed of lettuce by a bed of strawberries you’ll have much lower but tastier yield. It’s mostly the green vegetables that will grow too fast at some point.
Or try potatoes they’re pretty slow and last a while.
First year of having a back yard. zucchini did well but deer ate most everything else apart from this herb spiral I made. Lot of plans for next season but we need to be patient
Deer eat the shit out of pretty much any new growth. You gotta protect young plants using any sort of enclosure you can think of, chicken wire or whatnot, while the plants are putting out tender leaves. Older, more woody growth, is not as interesting to them.
My Tomato plants in lower NY are mostly decimated by some sort of disease and/or idk maybe neighbors used roundup or something.
The plants started with a few yellow leaves and then stems and leaves died. Even directly on top. In past years new growth on top never had a problem. Only got one crop this year for the first time, no second set of flowers and have been pulling the plants out already. Usually I do not do that until end of Sept.
But it is has been ridiculously hot here. Never been this hot and dry for so long but I did keep watering. It almost seems like the sun is way too strong this year on everything even outside the garden. IDK, weird.
I know what you mean. I'm not in NY but further south and I've had a couple total failures this year. I don't use any pesticides or herbicides so that's been more of a problem this year over previous years. The only new thing that's done well for me is peppers from seed. They like a lot of sun and heat, and can tolerate more dry conditions.
second crop of corn isn't even waist high and there's already homosexual little aphids all over it
i hope they like the taste of neem oil
>red oak sapling finally decided to grow some leaves
>some fricking thing came by and ate them
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I'm looking for an indoor raised bed that already has grow lights, or at least a place to.hang them from. So I have a place for my potted plants this winter.
are you looking for an actual raised garden bed like pic rel? If you just have potted plants I feel like you're more looking for a grow shelf or a rack with grow lights on it, you can probably find alright ones just searching up "grow shelf" online. Personally I'd just buy a 100w led light with a timer and just find a spot you can mount the hanging fixture to over your plants if they're potted.
Can get a reflective grow box if you're autistic about it for less light loss. Put a tray under your plants to catch excess water, can reuse it for later. I went autistic and got a PAR quantum flux meter, apogee is the standard but spot on sells one for $300 which works just as well, but obviously probably dont have the money for it, you can use a lumens to PPF converter online to estimate photoactive light instead or w/e based off lumens. https://www.waveformlighting.com/horticulture/convert-lumens-to-ppf-online-calculator
Then just use PPF to PPFD converter (https://horticulturelightinggroup.com/blogs/calculators/ppfd-calculator) to give you how much light is actually reaching your plants, then take that and time how long your lights are on for, and get DLI. After that theres some ok guides for shit like tomatos on how much DLI they should get. Can't find shit for cactuses, one resource says 20-25dli, another says succulents need only 70-150PPF, which is like fricking 6dli, but this other source says 15-25.
If you don't know what that shit means, PAR is just photosynthetic light, basically the "useful" light to plants, lumens is how bright it appears to humans, while PAR is how much light a plant can use, so fluorescents are really bright, yellow/green light appears brighter to us, but plants use yellow, green, blue, red, etc. pretty equally. PPF is just how much PAR is emmmited per second, PPFD is how much of that emmited light reaches a given area, ie 2 square foot 12" away from the light. DLI is how much light hits a plant in a given area within a given time.
Do you guys grow shit inside at all? I gave up growing outside, root grubs, spider mites, hell, wasps making nests on plants. I've been trying to find good sources for DLI requirements of plants, which is easy enough for vegetative plants or cannabis, but cant find anything on cactuses. Right now my lights are at 400PPFD but I wanna make sure I'm not going to damage seedlings going up to 600-800PPFD for 16 hours a day.
I'm growing some plants that do best in full sun but only using about 200 ppfd. It's fine, they just don't grow very fast, but I haven't tried getting fruit bearing stuff to work. I imagine you don't really need full DLI anyway, but sounds like your setup will work well as long as you dont fry your seedlings which can handle higher DLIs but may need time to adjust.
Can I have a little stream with plants to the side of it (i.e dirt/moss/etc, with plants planted, getting most from being next to the stream)
Thinking of doing this with a tiny pump on my desk so I can hear water trickle and see plants grow too.
I don't like vanity too much so when I gain a luxury (I.E a power consuming pump) I like it to have some practical uses besides my immediate satisfaction (helping grow plants)
Sorry this is slightly off the thread theme -- but it seems like you all enjoy plants a lot, as well as thinking about/discussing plants. I'm unsure if this would drown the plants or be great for them. Thinking of using boggy plants.
What the hell is this stuff growing through the slats from my neighbors yard? He is Cambodian and his accent is nearly incomprehensible to me, which is to say, really bad, because I'm quite good with accents, otherwise I'd ask him directly.
Wider view of the entire plant.
Looks like Bitter Melon to me.
Yeah I did some image searches on Yandex and it appears to be it. Plus the guy is from Southeast Asia where they're common.
It tastes horrable, anon. I told some cambos just put salt on it and it won't be bitter. They told me that was crazy and will take away the healing properties.
I don't know when to harvest them, I think its close though. One is the length of my hand and about the width of a bundle of 20 pencils.
>tfw aphid Black folk showed up this week
Reasonably, my coriander went to seed which tasted like soap, my chrysanthemum are coming along to seed well and I've harvested a ton of king mustard seed. Main attraction of my garden is my five kiwiberries, three of which are growing very well during this European heatwave, two having reached about 1.70 meters high now (aiming for 2 meters). A lot of empty space where i removed the mustards though.
Looks comfy anon. Glad something is doing well due to the heat for you, it killed my laurel this year sadly and the rest of the plants are struggling, only plant that seems to enjoy it is the tomato.
picrel
Indeterminate cherry tomatoes are doing well and are still growing new fruit. After losing all of my first crop of zucchini plants to vine borers, I started a second planting for the late season that is starting to take off. No signs of vine borers on these ones yet. I have two sets of eggplants, one that I grew in containers and one in a raised bed. Both are fruiting now, though the plants in the raised bed are unsurprisingly larger. The fruits from the containered eggplants seem like they won't get very big. I have tried starting arugula and kale for the late season. The seems germinated well but when I tried to move them outside to get acclimated they have taken a real beating. I've tried keeping them out of direct sun so they have an easier time, but no luck.
I planted something called 'jerusalem artichoke' this spring and I'm quite satisfied. It's grows even easier than potatoes in my region. It has edible tubers which have a taste unlike anything I've had before which makes it good for growing as I can't buy that stuff in the market. I say you anons give it a try if you come across it- it's very low maintenance and is unique in its flavour
Speaking of which- can you anons recommend any other non-commercial/lesser known edible plants? I'm kinda down a rabbit hole here
Huge fan of Jerusalem Artichoke (aka Sunchokes) but a word of warning to you and other anons: once established they are very difficult to get rid of. Just plan ahead!
They're alright tasting IMO but they turn me into a walking chemical weapon.
I'm growing sunchokes in raised beds to keep them contained, and I'll try fermenting/pickling them to reduce some of the more noxious effects.
I'd recommend trying oca. Depending on your zone and soil, they can be finicky, and only put out tubers right before it gets cold, but they are a cool alternative to yams or potatoes and have a lemony flavor.
Forgot pic
They all look like parasitic worms pulled out of someone's gut.
Hence the name jerusalum
First of my tomatos came in, green zebra! I almost wish I hadnt grown a green variety, its hard to tell when its ripe.
I'm new to gardening so maybe this is a moronic question but do you mainly plant heirloom or hybrid plants? I heard heirlooms typically taste much better but are harder to grow
How do I grow less lgbt sweet potatoes? I harvested some from my garden but they're hella gay so I have to throw them out. Is it genetics, growing environment, peer pressure from companion crops?
Here's another angle.
Stop touching the sweet potatoes inappropriately and they wont turn out gays.
carolina reaper finally maturing
>nice tomatoes you got there, anon, sure would be a shame if somebody ate them...
Me and my mom grew these last year. My plant did okay until it just randomly died. Hers did awesome and made a ton of peppers but we were too afraid to try any. I kept a handful in the kitchen and they're all dried up now.
If I wanted to save seeds from my beefsteak tomatoes, can I? or is it weird hybrid that would produce weird plants?
yeah they're heirloom.
they could be under the ground. have you seen any caterpillars? this damage to my tobacco plants was caused by Manduca sexta..it's too hot for me to grow lettuce now but mine looked like that from caterpillars. if it is snails, break up egg shells and heat around 120 degrees fahrenheit for about 30 minutes and put them around your plants. the plants will eat the shells and the shells will kill the snails. you don't have to heat the shells by the way but it will take much longer to break down if you don't
hornworms got some of my tobacco too. They blend it pretty fricking well to the stem/leaf, I could see something was eating it but couldn't find what. Then I saw like 5 of the frickers on one plant.
Yes but check how to do it because afaik if you pick tomatos before they are like 110% ripe the seeds won’t grow
Snails seem to be eating my lettuce. The weird part is I don’t see snails anywhere, its a raised bed btw
gotcha, i thought they might be hybrid for some reason . What about the big/better boys, same dea?
that works actually, I had been making them from the tomatoes I could not harvest in time. Thanks for the tip!
>Snails seem to be eating my lettuce
Iron phosphate is your cure. It's safe for all other critters except snails and it breaks down into fertilizer so you aren't contaminating your soil.
Frick snails.
Tomorrow I find out whether I've been approved for this incredible house and gardens. These pics are from before the previous owner cleared out their potted plants, beds, etc, so there's a lot of work to be done.
howd it go?
Got it! Moving in just under two weeks. This is an opportunity that I thought I'd never have, so I'm pretty frickin' excited. After I clean it up and prep the beds I'm planning
>Small dwarf fruiting orchard at the back - Mandarins, mangoes, cherries, mulberries.
>Melon and strawberry beds.
>Leveling the closed-off area in 3rd pic, filling it out with clover and edging with sub-tropical cottage flowers.
Looks like a paradise anon, a lot of potential. I am sure it'll need a lot of work too, but that's just part of it.
Did you buy it or are you renting?
Only renting, unfortunately.. I'll suss out the long-term situation (they'll probably want to knock it down for apartments within the decade) but anything that I put significant money into, I'll be digging out or taking cuttings from when I have to move again. For now the fun of being able to work on it outweighs the negatives haha.
Still sounds great, even if it's not oing to last forever. Enjoy your new garden, I'd love to have this much space for plants
Where can I buy a good wooden planter for vegetables that won't be too expensive?
Build it moron. How hard is it to nail 4-5 pieces of wood together?
I don't have tools,
But a hammer and a hand saw. Maybe 25$ in tools. That's all youll need to make raised beds.
Slap your thick fricking head against the nail so you finally find a purpose for your pathetic excuse for a life. A fricking caveman could figure out if you slap something with a rock it will transfer downward energy into another object but my goy over here more useless that a child fighting its own blood libel ritual.
Calm down, anon. Go look at a nice tree for 30 seconds. In a lot of places, decent wood for a respectably-sized planter is going to cost 3x as much as buying a premade.
You're probably better off asking PrepHole. This is, literally, do-it-yourself.
go to a dead boomer's estate/yard sale and buy a 50$ hammer for 1 $.
Been a weird year, we just started out a couple of different vegetable gardens with the help of a greenhouse built last year but the late frosts and long wet spring in the PNW put a damper on some things.
We have a cherry tomato plant that has absolutely exploded since early August, should the plant be trimmed back or moved inside to survive the fall and winter?
def prune back the tomato plant if you are going to dig it up and pot it.
Hi garden bros,
what kind of vegetation is this? Is it invasive?
Seems to be taking over my lawn, but some fertilizer with anti weed stuff in it didn't stop it.
At least there aren't any bald spots lol
thanks
bigger pic
what kinda shrubs are those? very interested...
dollar weed, kill it with fire.
hmmm, interesting, thanks!
seems that c**t of a weed loves humidity and it did a x2 after setting up my irrigation (my post is still somewhere above). I guess I will dial it down a bit
Anyway, recommended herbicide ideally found in europe/amazon.de?
Dichondra, looks very similar to dollarweed but likes it a bit more damp and shady.
Dichondra is a lot less likely to overwhelm your garden or beds than the other two lookalikes, and if it's just in your lawn, it's an indicator that your topsoil is wet and shaded for most of the year.
It is only fast growing in the spring, which is when typical weed killers will be most effective, so either wait until then or leave it be and try to outcompete with shade tolerant grasses.
oh nice, was just thinking the shape of the leaf doesn't quite look the same, this is spot on
also yes, I think I over did it with the irrigation (every morning ~0400 for 30 mins) and yes, it is mostly shadow. Was thinking about getting shadow grass and spread it soon. Or wait for the spring and combine with weed killer. Would a generic "weed be gone" one work with dichondra? Or should I aim for something specific?
>shrubs
some kind of laurel, was told it was cherry laurel, but never saw the little cherries. They do attract a shit load of bees and similar
Can anyone recommend a complete beginner book to homestead gardening? An encyclopedia would be great as well.
My family plans on purchasing some land soon and would love to start a sustainable garden. We aren't going extreme off-the-grid or anything. Just want some fresh vegetables for main dishes and some fruit.
Check PrepHoleHGM/
That's where most folks on this hellsite discuss the topic and the OP typically links valuable search terms and links
Check out the foxfire books or watch some YouTube videos.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/C84/foxfire-series#:~:text=Since%20the%20first%20volume%20published,has%20become%20an%20American%20institution.
The cabbage worms have won. I have given up on growing radishes (except for this one kind that makes softball-sized roots; for some reason the caterpillars don't like eating the leaves on those).
>have a small patch where garden used to be 30 years ago
>make a compost pile mainly which consists of potato peels and cut grass from lawn mowing
>add California earth worms long ago
>put any food that went bad in there
>mush it good
>collecting for years
>decide to plant something
>bust up the patch and pour all of compost when it was black with no traces of anything
>buy pic related from supermarket
>decide to collect the seeds
>sprout them and put them in the ground
>it grows like a bush faster than nettles
>it grows really fast and really big
>the tomatoes come and there are thousands of them on 10 plants
>they are pear shaped for some reason
>pick them every day
>cant eat them all
>more come
>have 300 kg of pear shaped cherry tomatoes
>panic what to do with them
>if i eat any more ill die of poisoning
>grind them all and cook the mush
>put them in glass jars to use for 3 years in cooking
>had to get my mom to help me
I was overwhelmed the first time i tried gardening, i have to plant less next time and plan on what to do with it.
It was either the ground itself (it is full of unknown creatures and is almost pitch black) or the compost that made the tomatoes insane.
I had nettles around the garden so they keep the bugs away
I will try onions and garlic next.
Not too bad this year.
the kale always gets fricked though
I think that my jalapeno plant is gonna die from the cold before the peppers turn red
Not good!
Coming along nicely.
looks fun. hope flowering stage goes well.
Planted a bunch of different shit in the early summer to the best of my knowledge and ability and everything except the blackberries (which are on fricking fire) seems either sick or failing to thrive. Seriously considering uprooting everything and turning my place into blackberryland
Do it. Plant some razz in among them.
Some of the garlic in my fridge has begun to sprout, so I'm thinking about planting the cloves, just to see what happens. I was told garlic needs cold weather to grow - if I plant them now, in a deep pot, in zone 7a, do I need to take any precautions, or is it fire and forget? I assume if it's heavy snow I need to take it inside, of course. No loss if I don't get anything, I'm just curious at this point.
>Hows your garden getting along
COMPLETELY FRICKED
The weather here has been horrible, rain and more rain, barely any sunny days, so most things have grown very slowly and are far smaller than they should be.
My bok choy have all bolted while still very small, my broccoli has started forming heads while it is still far too small, my turnips have also bolted.
Beetroot is doing real good though.
My sunflowers toppled over. I strung them back up to the fence, but one was snapped halfway through the stem, and the seeds aren't close to being ripe yet.
That big one still standing has a head full of half-ripe seeds and weighs close to 15 pounds.
FRICK EARWIGS.
ALL MY HOMIES HATE EARWIGS.
im clearing out about 1k sq feet in my yard for some winter wheat, don't want to shovel all that lawn grass out manually if I dont have to, I've heard tilling it back into the dirt doesn't really help as the grass just grows back, but is this a big deal when planting wheat?
will the wheat actually be negatively effected by some regular lawn grass around it?
What kind of grass and what's your soil like?
If it's a topical Kentucky blue or single-season wheatgrass, you might be able to burn it and then till it in to keep it down until your wheat germinates.
Use some alcohol as an accelerant.
If it's loose and sandy soil, till down a little deeper to keep it from coming back. I cut my grass like sod and flipped it in patches until it was dead then tilled it in.
soil is pretty packed, almost clayish but not enough to stop stuff from growing.
dont know enough about grass types to say but it grows like a motherfricker.
>weather finally cooling off
>peppers making peppers, tomatoes making tomatoes
>suddenly these fricking things are everywhere in every tree and literally falling from the sky
wtf bros what are these fricking things?
i dont know but that's really fricked up and you should put them in a bucket or something and kill them
moths and butterflies are known to bias the same kind of plant they were born on to lay eggs
Can you post a close up on them? That plant looks like a tomato and those bugs look like hornworms. You can mix some dish soap and water and spray the plants to kill the bugs, gets some bt, buy/attract ladybugs or lacewings, or just pick them off. Not sure if this applies, but I tried to get my chickens to control them and found out that when hornworms eat tomato/tobacco plants, they produce a chemical that will kill your chickens.
Yeah it's a tomato plant. They're definitely not hornworms though, idk what they are. They're all over the trees in my yard, my fence, and this garden which is under the trees. Luckily the chickens will eat as many as they can so that's helping a little bit. I brush them on the ground and they take care of em. But there's so many of these little shits.
Looks like some kind of inchworm, which I know to make some silk, though I've never seen them swarm quite like this.
Maybe armyworms?
Spray with live Bt, neem oil, or both. Bt to make sure it spreads enough to kill all of them, neem to pick off any stragglers and eggs that haven't hatched. Bt can be 'organic,' depending on your source
I have neem oil, doesn't seem to be doing much. They also are on my tobacco plants and don't seem to just be keeling over dead like most other bugs do when they get on the tobacco.
They're mostly in the trees and seem to hang down on threads to get on the fence/plants. Then they swarm together and make even more webs.
I'm in north texas if it helps.
It took like three hours to remove 30+ litres of shitty compacted silty soil, turn through some compost and replant. I'll probably have to fill out the alyssum more, but I'll wait and see how they do.