Garden Log

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

Alphaville wrote:
Sun Apr 19, 2020 11:15 am
eta: i think i’ll just bite the bullet and order the pricey stuff... fox farm or black gold or one of those.
Oh, yes, the Fox Farm sea & forest is good stuff.

theanimal
Posts: 2627
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:05 pm
Location: AK
Contact:

Re: Garden Log

Post by theanimal »

George the original one wrote:
Sun Apr 19, 2020 11:57 am
Potatoes don't care much about the soil or moisture when planting. Plant the seed potatoes above potential standing water so they won't rot before growing and just keep mounding them with rich soil.
A neighbor of mine when I lived in the Arctic was very adamant about using the inverse of that method. He would plant his potatoes in trenches. His claim was that all runoff and rain would funnel all the nutrients and moisture to the potato's roots below and he wouldn't water them at all throughout the growing season. It seems to work as he annually gets 500-600 lbs of spuds out of ~400-500 sq ft of beds.

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

theanimal wrote:
Sun Apr 19, 2020 12:36 pm
A neighbor of mine when I lived in the Arctic was very adamant about using the inverse of that method.
Land of the midnight sun is always a different gardening case :D

User avatar
Alphaville
Posts: 3611
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2019 10:50 am
Location: Quarantined

Re: Garden Log

Post by Alphaville »

@sky unfortunately i have no compost going, so i need to start with a rich soil

per @jennypenny and @george and 420 😂 i’ll mix the ocean forest with at least 33% perlite:

https://www.420magazine.com/community/t ... og.111191/

[eta: and/or vermiculite]

(that’s the first thread that turned up when i searched for a product comparison)

thanks guys!

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

My onion seedlings were yellowing. Figured they had enough water (and not too much), so gave them a shot of balanced fertilizer. A few days later and they're looking much better. Note to self, I need to watch that!

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

Territorial Seed is taking orders again as of last night. They're out of Tufflight greenhouse film, but do have 10' long fleece tunnels.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING BEFORE YOU ORDER:
  • As we move forward, it’s unknown to us what the order volume will be. If we find ourselves getting uncomfortably behind in shipping, we may need to cease taking new orders again for short periods to focus solely on shipping existing orders. We will not accept new orders unless we think we can fulfill them.
  • Please know our raw seed inventories are good, with some exceptions. If an item becomes unavailable, we will do our best to substitute it with an item of equal or greater value. If a replacement is unavailable, we will issue a refund.
  • Orders are currently taking approximately 10-14 days to ship, though at this time we cannot guarantee a time frame. We are doing everything in our power to ship as quickly as we can while maintaining the safety of our staff.
  • Orders are generally processed in the order which they are received. Due to increased call and email volume, please do not call or email to check on the status of your order unless it has been longer than the expected 10-14 day turnaround period.
  • When your order is submitted, it’s instantly flowing into our order fulfillment system and it cannot be easily changed—even under normal circumstances. For the time being, once your order is placed, we will not be able to edit it. If you find that you need additional items, please place another order.
  • We are currently running low on a few individual seed variety envelopes and thus will be substituting backup generic seed envelopes to expedite your order. These generic seed packet envelopes will have the correct specific variety information printed on the front of the packets, but the backs of the packets will be blank without our normal seeding and cultural material. Please refer to your catalog or our site for specific planting culture.

Gilberto de Piento
Posts: 1942
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:23 pm

Re: Garden Log

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I've got a lot of seedlings coming up, mostly herbs but also some tomatoes, kale, and chard. Waiting on peppers and some others to come up since they haven't been planted that long and it is still cold. They are in a warm window with no electric light or heat, upper Midwest US, so doing better than I expected. I may invest in some lights etc next year.

User avatar
TheWanderingScholar
Posts: 650
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:04 am

Re: Garden Log

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Harvested the first couple of banana peppers of this season, which have already been used in the kitchen by other people :lol:. Now I am waiting for the rest of my garden to start producing, mostly tomatoes, squash, and okra. Our corn row is growing like wild fire, even though we just planted a month ago. So I might be harvesting sweetcorn by July 4th. Honestly should have cleared out more space for the corn.

The only adjustments I might have might to do to my garden at the moment is pull out the summer squash plants in my raised beds as they seem sickly and won't be growing any fruit. However the tomato seedlings from when my mom just tossed a rotten tomato into the garden is doing well. Which in that case, I might get some five-gallon jugs, drill some holes, and transplant seedlings in them. Will help to have tomato plants that have grown from seedling that are adapted to the area to harvest seeds from. Also I last minute decided to plant some onion seeds into the ground, see how they do in the Texas weather. They are in shaded areas under a tree so they might be able to survive. Dug three trenches for them.

The pepper plants from seeds are sadly not growing. Might need to thin them other, however I imagine that plants have drowned under immense amount of rain we got in late March and most of April. It sucks but that is life. I can probably reuse the dirt for the compost pile alongside other dead leaf litter.

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

Today's minor gardening effort, apart from keeping the raspberries in their patch and eliminating a few weeds, was to transplant baby Walla Walla onions. See, I've threw the seeds in a small area to sprout and that they did, so now I'm moving some out of the patch and into rows. Figure I'll wait to see that these first 20 have a decent survival rate before I do any more as they're still small, smaller than the onion starts you get when ordering online.

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

Light frost this morning due to clear sky last night (very bright moon!). All the sensitive plants (lettuce, tomato, bok choi, pak choy) seem to have weathered it. Probably the same thing tomorrow morning since there's no cloud cover again tonight.

Second attempt at starting squash plants will hopefully end better than the first, where I let the thing cook in the sun without water (sigh). One of the seedlings is beginning to pop up, so I brought them inside to avoid freezing them.

From light frost this morning, we reached 68F and tomorrow is supposed to be warmer by 4F. Have had a few good moments of sitting in the garden and reading books yesterday and today.

mooretrees
Posts: 762
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 1:21 pm

Re: Garden Log

Post by mooretrees »

I'm hoping to plant my pumpkin, cucumber and squash starts in the next few days. They've gotten really leggy inside as I didn't realize I needed the light to be much closer. Learned something already. Going to plant squash seeds too and see if there is any difference in growth and harvest between seeds and starts. The basil and tomatoes are still too small to plant outside, but I'll get beans planted this weekend too. I've got good looking lettuce and arugula that I'll be picking in a week or two. The beets are tiny and I haven't seen any carrots popping through yet. So far I've done better than every previous year with gardening, though it's early enough I still have plenty of time to lose interest.

User avatar
TheWanderingScholar
Posts: 650
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:04 am

Re: Garden Log

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Moved my pepper seedlings to a place with more sunlight to help them grow; if I can get the plants to grow by the end of this season I would be proud of myself by growing peppers from seeds harvested from common produce.

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Garden Log

Post by jennypenny »

Everything is planted. Unfortunately it's supposed to get very cold this weekend. Fingers crossed that covering everything (haphazardly) will be enough. Normally, losing some plants would be an annoyance. This year is could mean more than that.

sky
Posts: 1726
Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Garden Log

Post by sky »

Spring, 2020 Garden Pics:

https://imgur.com/a/pjQ3zPv
Sorry, the image upload failed, I will try again.

Hopefully this one works:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/w6zMCnV

User avatar
Lemur
Posts: 1612
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 1:40 am
Location: USA

Re: Garden Log

Post by Lemur »

The unusual cold weather in May has stunted growth. Its like all my vegetables this May are not dying...but they're not growing either. And I'm having trouble getting some things to sprout.

sky
Posts: 1726
Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Garden Log

Post by sky »

The Johnson-Su Bioreactor looks like an excellent way to make fungal-rich compost. However, I don't have enough material to fill the large size compost bin. I wonder if there is a smaller version.
https://regenerationinternational.org/bioreactor/

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Garden Log

Post by George the original one »

Grazed on pea pods (finally!) and plucked a handful of early potatoes that were boiled. I know I'm not planting potatoes on purpose, but these were some volunteers I moved out of the way and crossed my fingers that the little bugs wouldn't worm their way into. Several green tomatoes are just waiting for warmth, but I think nothing will turn red before July.

Gilberto de Piento
Posts: 1942
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:23 pm

Re: Garden Log

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

sky wrote:
Sat May 30, 2020 7:51 pm
The Johnson-Su Bioreactor looks like an excellent way to...
The PDF instructions on the site say you can scale it down but don't give any more detail other than the materials should never be more than a foot from air. Maybe a 55 gallon drum sized version with one pvc tube in the center? Composting seems to work better with more mass though.

A few things concern me about this design. One is that it says it still takes a year to process materials. Another is that the instructions don't show how to get the compost out. I'm guessing you disassemble it and then have to rebuild it.

I'd like to get a drum composter so I can spin the compost instead of turning it. My current set up is a struggle to use.

sky
Posts: 1726
Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Garden Log

Post by sky »

The good news: I now have a pet groundhog!
The bad news: He has eaten the leaves off of all my kale plants, every one.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15906
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Garden Log

Post by jacob »

Ha! Now that the hawks are gone, we have three rabbits (or one rabbit in three different sizes) who really like swiss chard and peas. I hope they're paying food and rent back in fertilizer.

I finished 80% of two beds with trenches. That only leaves 312% more to do but the work is waiting for the existing system to turn over. I should have thought of this before rather than a few weeks after planting.

So far we've harvested 21lbs of mostly greens this year.
(I only weigh the edible parts.)

Post Reply