Posted on 04/08/2017 12:16:55 PM PDT by greeneyes
Thanks! And, yes, raised beds are better for a northern climate, as they warm UP faster. :)
I like them for ease of weeding, and I find them much more productive than gardening right in the ground. (I’ve done both!)
Has anyone used Valestone Harvest blocks (available only at Home Depot) as edging and then planted them with annuals?
I have spinach seedlings ready to plant but it’s too windy and cold. The wind ripped out one of my zucchini plants today. The wind is sucking the moisture out of everything.
If that’s all I can do that!
Yeah I need another one - got Early Girl Tomato seeds and one Early Girl plant tonight (last night).
52 days until harvest. Gonna get an early jump. Last year, Early Girl was my best producer. I think I got 3 out of the Better Boy while Early Girl would have like 15 on the vine.
Yeah, I tear the little bags so it will be easier for it to get out. I do this once the roots are getting strong.
I rip them about halfway down and (sometimes) alternate halfway up. Try to give the little fellas some room to reach out.
s/b vine(s)
Cure for those summer dry-outs for any potted plant:
Adult diapers. You can get unused ones cheap at thrift stores and to use them, soak them in a bucket of Miracle Grow until the powder inside them swells up into large blobs of gel. Then rip them open and mix the blobs into your potting soil.
Put coffee filters over the drain holes of your pot and fill the pot. Plant your stuff... you’ll be surprised how much less often you need to water.
Easy way to grow green onions is to buy them at the grocery store, chop off the roots with about a quarter to a half inch of the onion, then use the tops for supper.
Take the root ends and plant them barely under the soil. You can plant some seed with them if there’s enough space between them. They’ll start growing again immediately. You’ll have green onions much quicker than by seed...by the time you have used the new growth on the root ends you planted, the seeds you sowed will have sprouted and grown big enough to use, and your original root-end stock will probably have sent up stalks to flower and seed; ...
Celery works great this way too.
I have two pairs of Okabashi flip flops & love them!
Yesterday, I paid the price for supreme laziness this past fall, plus another mistake I made with two new raised beds. I really did not put the beds ‘to bed’ for the winter & they were all grown up with weeds big time, more than I’ve ever had before. With the exception of about an hour, I was working on beds from lunch time until sunset yesterday (gorgeous day to be out & about). The mistake was where I got dirt for the new beds - evidently it was infested with wild onion bulbs. I saw a few when I was getting the dirt & picked them out - missed a lot more. The 2 inches of rain over the last week enabled me to pull probably 80% or more out (got the entire bulb) & I dug out quite a few more. I looked up how to possibly kill them - no preemergents work, & anything to put on them to kill the plant is stuff I don’t want in a garden where I’m going to be consuming the veggies. I’ll be pulling wild onions for a long time until I eventually get the beds clean.
Friday, I got my straw bales for the straw bale gardening experiment. I was able to fit two bales lengthwise & one bale sideways in each of my 8 foot beds. I’m using pine needles for mulch to keep the weeds down & for the bales to sit on. Today I need to get my metal posts & wire to make the trellis & “greenhouse” for each bed. Around the 18th, I’ll start conditioning so I should be able to plant May 1.
The hour I “took off” from the garden was to help next door - my brother got his tractor stuck - the left side tires were halfway up in really goopy mud. The ground looked ok - he was good pulling over it, but when he backed up, the surface gave way to a mud pit lurking underneath. Our old tractor could not pull him out so all the wheels had to be dug free of the mud which had established quite a “suction” hold. Fortunately, he had a gravel pile nearby so I was hauling gravel in 5 gal buckets & we dumped that in behind the wheels. Once that all happened, I drove the old tractor keeping tension with a chain & he was in reverse (couldn’t pull it out in neutral) - it worked very well, to much cheering by the 3 of us who were working on the problem. Always something ‘exciting’ going on around here!
Wow! Well done!
Early Girl IS a good cultivar, but I favor a bigger tomato. A new favorite is, ‘Chef’s Orange’ which is a perfect slicer for BLTs with less acidity, and I always grow paste-types for salsa and sauces, and a smaller, ‘Juliet’ for drying.
I have room for 24 tomato plants this season, after not having much of a garden last year, as we were in the middle of selling two homes and moving. ‘Happy’ doesn’t even BEGIN to describe my outlook this season! Now, if the weather will cooperate, I’ll be up to my butt in tomatoes this harvest season! :)
Looks like you’ll be off to a late start this season, but knowing you, you’ll catch up on the backside of things. :)
I need to get in the habit of wearing sunscreen again...I’m a little ‘pink’ in some places today, LOL! I forget to, ‘slather-up’ so early in the season when I’m just HAPPY to be outside in decent weather.
But, again, it still could snow on us; we’ve had some terrific snowstorms in April up here on The Frozen Tundra. ;)
This is a wonderful time of year! :)
“Tilted Irish Kilt” posted a good recipe for roasted
asparagus (on this thread).
I hear you on the “decrepit” idea. It hits you
unexpectedly. :o(
I follow a guy named David the Good, who’s got some nice non-intimidating gardening books up on Kindle. If you don’t have snooty neighbors looking at your yard, his composting advice is *awesome*. Basically, put stuff on the ground and leave it alone; anything else is grand, but at least put stuff on the ground. (Bonus: he’s published by Castalia House, so every book of his you buy makes a liberal cry.)
Busy week coming up for me; I’m getting last-minute soil amendments in before I transplant my veggie starts. I came up with a tasty butternut squash recipe and promptly doubled my planned butternut planting. :) Got purple tomatoes, peach tomatoes, Sungold cherries and red cherries ready to go, as well as numerous lesser vegetables (NOTHING is more important than tomatoes at my house.)
I tried making a laundry-basket planter for strawberries and have them transplanted, covered, and watered, so I’ll see how they do this week. Cornelian cherries and honeyberries planted, plus one of the apple saplings that I thought I’d lost to bored Small Obnoxious Dog has sprouted leaves all over its little stub of a stem. Fingers crossed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.