Topic: Gardeners

[demon78]

Gardeners Ok. People, who gardens out there, what's you're weather like, vegetables, flowers, trees, soil conditions, urban or rural, what works for you etc ?
Bill the demon.

[rhos1355]

Grass

[bender01]

Heres mine this AM. Squash blossoms. Tomatos okra,jalapenos,haberneros,eggplant,basil,tarragon oregano,parsley,thyme,sage chives,cilantro and strawberries.
 Okras not doing well. Potatos got started way to late but are growing. Straberries are light but the kids pick and eat some daily now. Containers work best for us. Im not sure why. My soil might be shot.

[Duke McDukiedook]

Any Humbolt County gardeners out there producing humbolt cologne?

[Gordon]

What works for me is anything low-maintenance.  We always have a squash mixture and tomatoes for our small vegetable garden.  Tried some beans in the front garden last year, but ended up tearing most of them out because they kept strangling the shrubs that I actually paid money for.  We have morning glorys that do really well and almost completely obscure the front porch by the end of the Summer. 

Other than that there are the Daffodils in the front and back that come up every Spring, and some gigantic Lillies that are just now starting to make their appearance.  Also some purple Iris in the back and a patch of poppies. 

Basically all stuff that needs little to no attention throughout the growing season other than watering and the occasional harvest.  Best part about the squash is all the zucchini bread my wife makes.  

[domer]

my indoor garden... trying to put it back together, but plants in micro form are kinda hard to come by


humboldt esk garden.... not mine! i just set it up, this was in feb. this one has since been taken it down in favor of a new location. oh and it is 100% legal... mmmmmm legal...

[demon78]

Bender and Gordon when do you guys plant, around here it's the 24 of May or 1st June, this year we've pushed the season by a month. not sure how that'll work.
Bill the demon.

[ryder60]

Planting anything before the May long week-end is wasting your time.

[demon78]

Dunno Ryder we've got peas about 1 1/2- 2" high and they seem to be trucking along.
Bill the demon.

[Gordon]

Bender and Gordon when do you guys plant, around here it's the 24 of May or 1st June, this year we've pushed the season by a month. not sure how that'll work.
Bill the demon.

Mid May is usually pretty safe to plant around here. 

[Duke McDukiedook]

I like your garden in pic 2 best Domer. Very green. 

[bender01]

Early April here.

[bucky katt]

suburban, more urban than sub. decent soil, a bit sandy so i bring in a couple of tons of horse manure every winter and till it in (free manure is the best kind of course) i have been eating tomatoes off of my cherry and grape tomoato plants for about 3 or 4 weeks now, we have a REALLY long growing season here with the last tomatoes in mid october. i grow 20-30 big boy tomato plants every year (i can pasta sauce every year) anaheim chilis, habaneros, jalapenos, cayenne, sweet bananna, hot bananna, red sweet and green and yellow bell peppers, eggplant, yellow squash, zuchini and japanese eggplant. the herb garden has 2 different basils, italian oregano, rosemary (rosemary bush is around 6 feet in diameter and 5 or 5 1/2 feet tall) thyme, marjoram and dill.   spearmint, apple mint and peppermint and of course catnip, lots and lots of cat dope.

[demon78]

Well, we'll see how pushing the season works for us this time apparently we could get 5-25 cm of snow today and over night we'll see if there's any peas in the morning And yes Bucky you piss me off, long growing season indeed
Bill the demon.

[cookindaddy]

I have the best dandelions (in the lawn) this year that I have ever had!   Here in Ontario, herbicides are now illegal so pulling them is the only option, but I must have a million of them.

I'm a bit south of you Bill but still in the same Zone 5. I've pushed it about a month this year because of the amazing spring that we have been having. The weather guys have been warning about frost tonight, low of -2C so we'll see how it goes. Funny that I had a dream last night about waking up and finding everything covered with snow.

So far I have lettuce, radishes, peas (about 3-4" high now), onions (three types), potatos (two types), garlic, spinach and leeks. All the cold weather stuff. Oh yes, and I did put in a couple kinds of tomatos last weekend and they seem to be doing ok but we'll see if they are still alive Sunday morning?

And I have one kinda neat experiment that I am working on this year, some acorns that I brought back from the family cottage that I planted around last fall, some of those are coming up. I don't have oak trees around here so I hope that they like it here. I cover this guy at night to keep the rabbits away from him.

[the technological J]

i was reading that with the enormus amounts of weed killers and round up plants are becoming immune to it.... they are having the same problem with antibiotics so u can prob expect to see them getting restriced as well

[Glenn Stauffer]

We did a real garden for the first time this year - we've planted tomatoes and peppers and various herbs in a small plot in the past, but the past two years most of our time was spent getting started with chickens.  The land here is rocky shale/clay soil.  We're on the north side of a hill with lots of trees, so winter seems to last a few weeks longer here and sun is at the margins of good gardening conditions.

This year, I bought a tiller for my BCS tractor and we tilled up an area about 2000 square feet and built up planting mounds in a sort-of permaculture fashion.  We didn't do much soil amendment, so yields won't be great this year, but I expect things to steadily improve year-on-year.  We're planting a wide variety - broccoli, corn, beans, squash, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and a slew of other things.  I'm working on getting the corn in using a 'three sisters' technique with corn, beans, and squash planted together on mounds in a 100 sq ft plot.

This has taken up a lot of my free time this spring.

[demon78]

C-indad try 1 quart vinegar, 1/4 cup salt, 2 tsp liquid soap (D/W detergent) probably cut back on salt and spray the piss out of your weeds, wait a couple of days and respray with vinegar and detergent. Try inverting large planting pots or kitty litter containers over the tomatoes and see, good luck. Glenn thats sounds like "Stony Keppel" ground except we may have more rock. By the way guy's, if you need rock 25c and up, every thing from 20 oz to 20 ton let me know how your three sisters work out I-we've been thinking about that for a while. My wife is busy replanting- up potting tomatoes right now, I'll go into Wiarton in a while and pick up a two four so that after the 400 or so tomatoes she can sit down and relax with some suds and I guess I'm making dinner tonight. Now back to installing the Kitchen sink.
Bill the demon.

[74cb750]

I put in raised beds last year. Had a great season for squash, cucumbers onions,
but the tomatoes were hit with a fungus. Actually all of New England was.

Hope to do better this year. Still to cold nights to plant anything.

an aside: last week local Fish and Game people were informed someone was poaching turkeys.
The 2 F & G guys saw a car parked on the side of a backroad and investigated.
They caught 2 people planting pot. Opps! not hunting turkeys. 

[demon78]

We had frost here last night, and the unfinished floor in our place has roughly 600 plants sitting on it, Christ on a crutch, I hope it warms so I can walk through the place instead of around every thing. I got another cold frame built and a kitchen sink installed, so I guess it's back to building cold frames for the next few days. I'll have to hobble out and check on the peas to see how they handled the cold, goddam body is not helping. Grumble, Grumble.
bill the demon.

[cookindaddy]

We had snow Saturday night and some on the ground Sunday. It warmed up later in the day, enough to dry things out so I could cut the grass. I wandered out to the garden and everything looks fine! The peas are about 6 inches high now and the tomatoes look like they came through the cold and snow just fine!

[Franken750]

Garden? What garden? In fact - wotsa 'garden'? 

Here in BrisVegas (Brisbane, Australia), we've had a drought for the better part of 10 years.

A couple of years ago our supply dams got to 16%, or about 6 months supply (gov't stupidity). We had been living on 28 gal. per person per day for EVERYTHING for the previous couple of years.

Gardens died. Lawns died (or so we thought). I was hand-feeding flocks of local birds (had to prove they were local .

Mass evac plans in place for 2M ppl. No joke.


Everyone adopted the Darwinian Theory of Gardening.    This was not new though, as this place has been running this way for millenia. And I'd been doing it for even longer, according to my kids. 

And so had lawn grubs.

For the last 18 months the rain has been sheeting down Senor. The grass has grown over the mower I left in the middle of the yard in 2007. (That's how we know the lawn needs mowing).

Then suddenly all the grass died. Everywhere. Lawn grub population exploded. Birds all well fed elsewhere.

Now all lawns, footpaths, playing fields, golf courses blah blah blah all dead! Worse than in the drought. And we're heading into winter.

As we say here: "why would ya want any rain? Buggers up a perfectly good drought!"


/Franken

[bucky katt]

the damn jalapenos are already coming in. theyre producing about 4x as much as last year already. i planted 8 of the things based on last years yield. can i dry the things or maybe freeze em? looks like i'm going to have bushels of em this year. cherry tomatoes from my garden are on the grill on the kebabs i made as well.  i mixed a little fresh manure from the paddocks this year along with seasoned shavings/manure/horsepee from the compost heap as well. the tomatoes are looking like prehistoric mutant giant plants and dozens of blooms on each of the 18 big boy tomatoes, white cherry, yellow cherry and small olive tomatoes.

[demon78]

Yeah Bucky we freeze peppers all the time, well people it looks like the last of the really cool overnight temperatures are finally going here, so I get to put the rest of the tomato seedlings out today I refuse to count them but I'd say in the neighborhood of 500-600 plants, 40+ varieties then every thing else, I hope to christ, that my wife's idea to sell some of the seedlings to re-coup some of costs works other wise I'm going to have a lot of processing to do and we'll have to buy a few more freezers, my 2 kids and their families are coming up next weekend for a planting party and maybe that means the next couple of weeks after I can get some time in for the Bike-s also on the weekend I get to bring home the KZ 750, the KE 175, and the cl 77, now will I get time to work on them not until I get the shop built in the garage but maybe a little time on the cb 650 to do a little "Green Laneing". Who knew that the young mysterious urbanite that could slip through a city leaving no mark, no sign of his passage except with certain well chosen bartenders, would wind up being a dirt farmer in his "Golden Years" ( #$%*, how I hate that phrase) anchored to land in one spot for spring, summer and fall?

[Sam Green Racing]

In the UK, I would say we are 3 to 4 weeks behind in the season.
lots of plants very slow to come to life.
The heavy snow and freezing Arctic conditions have left a lot of gardens looking very sad.
My lawn looks a mess and the pond looks like it took a hit from the snow and ice as well.
Bird migration seems on time but we are still getting early morning frosts on a regular basis and it's almost June. I know you can get the odd frost late in May, but every morning

Sam.