Weekly Gardening Thread – 2010 (Vol. 22) July 02

Free Republic | 7-02-2010 | Red_Devil 232

[Red_Devil 232]

Good morning gardeners. I hope all FReepers have a safe and Happy 4th of July weekend!

If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.

[handmade]

getting rid of suckers—(not tomatoes)
The Nebraska Extension Master Gardeners are taught if possible to yank suckers off of trees etc that you do not want. If you snip them, that stimulates them to regrow. If you yank, it causes a wound the tree then scabs over to heal, and that particular sucker sprout will not grow again. Sometimes it is difficult to yank a sucker though.

Suckers on tomatoes grow at the node of a main stem and a lateral stem, in the Y. Those you just pinch off-some people do and some people do not. Personally when I did it one year it did not seem to matter, and it did cause extra work. However others swear by it. Sometimes you just try it out and see what you think.

[goodwithagun]

Interesting. Could you explain the garbage can potatoe method please?

[afraidfortherepublic]

My husband knows better too — he just didn’t care and din’t mention it to me. This was my project; and he thought it was stupid, and he let me know that at every chance. He didn’t really get into it until I let him plant his baby Arbor Day trees along the perimeter and some Okra. Now he takes full credit for the whole plan and shows off the garden every chance he gets.

But, that’s OK. LOL

[Red_Devil 232]

An old used 4 foot - one or two tube flourecent light fixture will do nicely! Or you can buy a cheap version at Wal-Mart. I know they sell a 2 foot plastic all in one version you can just plug in. It does not have to be the special expensive grow light type of bulb, a regular flourecenct bulb will do.

[Red_Devil 232]

Here is a link to the clasic instructions for growing potatoes in a container posted by HiramQuick last year. He was using 5 gallon buckets but you can use anything that you can put drain holes in.

Growing Potatoes In a Container

[Tatze]

I had to pick and toss several tomatoes that had bug damage. The first few I picked that looked good, in fact had some kind of rot on the bottom. And then there is this one:

I picked another 5 or so that had started to turn red, but were still quite green. They sat inside for two days and are now fully red. I think I'll go this route from now on.

Still picking cucumbers. The last batch of 3 were sliced and put in an empty jar of pickle juice. I've pickled and canned 3 batches now, a total of 9 or 10 jars. I gave 2 away to neighbors.

I've picked several red serrano peppers, and another 4 or so about ready to pick. And several cayenne peppers looking really nice, but still green. No jalapeno ready to pick just yet.

Sweet potatoes are looking great, and you guys tell me my regular potatoes that are falling over are supposed to do that, so I guess they are doing well too.

And finally, the pineapple crowns I planted are growing, so I must be doing something right with them as well. I need to come up with a plan to bring them inside this fall, i.e., I have nowhere inside to put them at the moment.

[Tatze]

I never knew about that when I lived in Alpharetta! Of course, I wasn’t gardening back then either, so that’s probably why I didn’t know about it.

[rightly_dividing]

If you are looking for ways to make extra cash, then your sewing skills are just the ticket. I know a lady that is an excellent seamstress that makes plenty of extra $$$$. She makes wedding dresses, the bride and all the maid's dresses. Beside making costumes for a movie that was filmed locally, she makes children's dresses to sell, along with outfits for American Girl dolls, which sell very good because American Girl dolls a major hit with young girls, and they bring good prices on EBay. It is something that you can do in spare time, for the most part, and with the doll clothes, doesn't take much materials, either. She is handicapped and works at her own pace, and makes a fair sum selling on EBay. Just a thought :)

[afraidfortherepublic]

Go to your St. Vincent de Paul Society thrift store, or similar, and look for old flourescent, hanging, shop light fixtures. These will be open. Even at a big box home improvement store they will be cheap. The most expensive parts are the bulbs, or grow lights. You want “full spectrum” bulbs that mimic daylight. I can’t remember what I paid for mine, but they were a lot less expensive than the prices I see quoted here. You will also need adjustible chains to hang this apparatus from the ceiling because you need to raise and lower these lights as the plants grow. When the seedlings are tiny your light needs to be only inches above the surface of the soil.

I have 4 two bulb fixtures. You also need a spray bottle to mist your plants and probably a seed heating pad, if your basement is cold. The seeds need heat from underneath and need to be kept around 70 degrees to sprout. I know someone who just sprouts all her seeds next to the wood stove and then puts them in a window.

The garden suppliers make fancy racks with built in light fixtures that are pretty expensive. You can view these on line. A clever grad student, like you, could probably make his own with a salvaged warehouse rack and recycled light fixtures. Hmmmm. I wonder if the police department ever puts grow lights that they have confiscated in their auctions?

A lot of people on this forum do not like peat pots. When it is time (after you have your lights set up) ask about that. I used 2 kinds of peat pots last year somewhat successfully. But, I lost a lot of seedlings along the way. The PP I liked the best looked almost like egg cartons with the planting medium already included.

The problematic ones were the kind that you watered and they puffed up from a flat disc into a pot full of medium. Those had sheer cloth of some sort on the inside holding all of the peat in place. They left NO ROOM for my fingers to get a seed in there. And they were still tight, tight, tight when I transferred the seedling into a larger pot and later from the pot into the ground. I found that they worked pretty good once I learned to snip the openings with scissors and to actually cut down the side of this bundle with scissors once it got into the bigger pot.

There is a video of a man on the web planting en masse in Pro-Mix and producing hundreds of seedlings. Maybe RD has a link to that Tomatoville video. You should watch that and perhaps you’ll re-think the peat pots. Diana in Wisconsin and tubebender are also a good sources for seedling lore.

[Tatze]

Oh, because it was just started last Spring... I left Alpharetta in 2006.

There has been some talk of trying a neighborhood garden here on one of the empty lots. I need to bring it up again and try it for next year.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Do dead worms make good fertilizer? I walk around the neighborhood for exercise and I see them plastered to the sidewalk, they die and the sun dries them out. The last time I walked I picked a dozen or so up, broke them into pieces, put them in the pot my Ghost Chile is in and covered them with some potting soil. I figured it couldn’t hurt but will it help?

[doodad]

All started last year. There are three of them now. Wills Park (ours), Cogburn and Alpha High School.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

We’re practically neighbors. We live in Cumming. We don’t have much of a garden because we live in a condo so everything we do is in containers. We have tomatoes (Mr. Stripey, Better Boy, Patio) Tabasco peppers, habaneros and our newest addition is a Ghost Chile. We also grow some herbs, flowers and a boogen vilia (sp?). We winter over the pepper plants so they start producing fruit as soon as the weather gets nice enough for them to stay outdoors. I wish our subdivision had a space for a community garden.

[sneakers]

Scrub out a 33 gallon garbage can. Drill holes in the bottom and around the bottom sides - for drainage. Put your garbage can where you don’t have to move it (they get heavy!) Place 6 to 8 inches of soil in the bottom and then bury about four pepared potatoes* in the soil. When they start to grow, wait until they are about 8 inches high. Add more dirt. Don’t bury them completely. I’ve added soil to most of the way up. As they grow, keep adding soil until the garbage can is almost full.

*Get certified seed potatoes. I got mine from Lowes. Cut them so there are several eyes on each one. Let them dry for a few days until a ‘scab’ forms where it was cut.

My plants are over two feet tall and have blossoms. It’s my first time trying it, so whether or not I get potatoes is a ‘wait and see’! Just type in “garbage can potatoes” or “container potatoes” and you’ll get lots of websites. If I can, I’ll post pics. You can plant also them in bags, bushel-baskets, tires, or other containers.

[fanfan]

It looks like poison ivy.

[Tatze]

Close to my old area there as well. I was just off 9, south of McFarland, Alpharetta address, but in Forsyth County.

[sneakers]

There are two huge black walnut trees near our property, so I had to plant my tomatoes in pots. I poured bags of cheap topsoil, peat moss, miracle Gro vegetable mix, mushroom compost and compost from my compost pile. I filled five-gallon buckets (the $2.34 buckets from Lowes) and I put a few tablespoons of Miracle-Gro Tomato fertilizer in every week. Now, the tomatoes are really small yet - and there’s lots of blossoms still, so I hope the whole project doesn’t go ‘splat!’ on me! LOL! I couldn’t stand to throw out the many seedlings I grew, so I’ve got tomatoes planted in a couple of raised gardens as well! fingers crossed!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Just for you: From Tokyo

[greeneyes]

Hubby was glad I was taking an interest. Like I said, he just wasn’t thinking. Well when I watered this morning I had several green tomatoes. Now, three are missing- gone-gone-gone.

I guess the squirrel got them. Hubby has set the trap and baited it with a piece of ripe tomato we bought from the roadside stand. Hope he gets caught before the rest of my tomatoes disappear.

[sneakers]

I can’t remember what kind it is. Mr sneakers picked it up at Lowes. It’s not really a crisp lettuce, but a bit more firm than regular leaf-lettuce. And the smaller leaves are better than the bigger leaves. Once they get larger, they get a little bitter.