Posted on 01/24/2008 10:53:49 AM PST by Gabz
Howdy folks!!!
I originally planned to wait until tomorrow (Friday) to get this going, but it is such a damp, dreary, plain old yucky day here on Virginia's Eastern Shore I decided to do it now --dreaming of spring, so to speak!
One of the major topics that seemed to arise last week dealt with "zones" and how even people living in the same "zone" will have different growing conditions based upon location. Also because we are all so spread out the different zones do matter when it comes to planting times and plants.
GardenGirl and Diana in Wisconsin are among our resident experts, but I am sure they are not the only ones and so we would all like to hear from others both amateur and professional, food growers and flower gardeners, folks that deal with trees and shrubs, I hope you get the idea!
Exchanging ideas and getting help on garden problems weere among the reasons for starting this thread, and I would like to expand on that and ask you all to help me come up with ideas of specific topics we can delve into.
Let's have fun --- and wish for spring!!!!!!
Nope. I just tip them over, stir them around, then sift it through a medium mesh screen into the wheel barrow and it goes out to the garden, or into pots and planters by the back door for herbs or flowers. Black Gold.
Any “chunks” go back into the new pile as a starter, because sometimes leaves don’t break all the way down, or there’s a stray potato or avocado pit in there.
It’s like making Amish Friendship Bread, LOL!
amazing garden... going to look into landscape fabric
“I invite your suggestions and comments.”
Absolutely brilliant. I plan on doing something similar this season, too. Since I had to go back to work full-time (for a Garden Center) I have little time to devote to my own garden, but I will never give up fresh tomatoes, peppers, cukes and beans in season, let alone my love for buckets of cutting flowers.
I’m cutting my gardening space down to a 40’ X 100’ patch, versus the 1/4 acre I’ve had some seasons when I had the time to maintain it.
Thanks for the pictures. They were very, very inspiring! :)
The only thing I would do is cover the plastic with straw. I have access to cheap straw, so that’s do-able for me. And then, at the end of the season, or the beginning of the next, I’ll till it in after pulling back the landscape fabric. Well, HUSBAND will! :)
I did what you said crows decimated my entire cucumber field. Drat You!
Wow! That’s incredible.
Gabz is right about the weather. Nasty here, too, and I’m sick to boot. I hate being sick!!!! Some kind of sinus/viral/bacterial thing that makes me just want to bawl.
I’ll try to answer some of the questions as I remember them, but if any of my answers don’t make sense, I’ll redo next week when I’m not on so many good herbs!!!
Figs—they do great in a coastal climate. Not sure how far inland or north they will survive. Figs are very easy to start from cuttings. They are parthenocarpic—don’t you just love throwing around big words?!—it just means they don’t have to be pollinated! Just take cuttings from branches that are about the thickness of your thumb. Now is a good time to take cuttings because figs have a white sticky sap like latex, and the leaves are itchy like okra. We usually make ours about 12” long. Stick 10-12 in a 10” planter. Keep moist. The ones that leaf out in 2-3 months have rooted. Leave them in those containers another month or two and then gently seperate into individual containers or into the ground. Containers are easier to keep watered. :)
Muscadines and scuppernongs are the same thing, but different if that makes any sense. If you’re planting, make sure to get self fertile varieties, or you have to get 2. Check your local ext service for tips on pruning—too involved to go into here. Grapes grow on new wood, so pruning is vital. Now is the time to be trying to root grape cuttings.
Di—your ideas are great!!
Tiera—you should write that book!!
The garden with the landscape fabric looks fantastic!!! Landscape fabric works better than plastic because it lets the soil breathe and water can go up and down. It will last longer if mulched. We have a lot of trouble here with nutgrass. For those of you who don’t know what it is—nutgrass has a nodule at the end of the leaves, underground. A lot of hunters spend a lot of time planting it for turkeys and such. I offered to give them as much as they wanted, but so far no takers!!!
When you pull nutgrass, if you don’t get all the nut, and it can be as much as a foot or more down in the soil, it jsut comes back up. The only things I know for sure will kill it are 1) shade, or, 2) putting hogs or turkeys on it and letting them root out the nuts.
Don’t know about the compost heap gettng too cold! The worst problem we have here is fireants. Lime your compost and voila! It burns their little feetsies off!
Squash vine borers are larva laid by a moth. The moth flies by, lays her eggs, they hatch out and bore into the squash. They run in cycles—worse around a full moon and about the middle of June and then Aug. if you can get your plants up big enough so that the stalks are tougher, thevb’s will have a harder time. Also, as soon as your seeds emerge from the soil or you plant your plants, dust the stems with rotenone or sevin. i prefer rotenone because it’s easier on bees.
Please add me to ping list
You might be interested in purchasing larger rolls. Check with your local garden center and see if they can order it for you. We get some in 6’ and 12’ widths. comes about 100-150’ per roll.
My boss puts a big pot in a child’s wagon. Plants his cukes in it and throws some circled hog wire around it. This makes a great close to the house salad topper and plus it’s moveable when you have to mow.
We always lose cukes in the fall here to mildew and blight and pickle worms. I’ve tried everything. Any ideas?
So sorry you’re not feeling well.
That’s very interesting about figs, I love figs and I live near the coast, I’ll have to look into whether I am far too north or not.
I have never had any luck trying to promulgate/propogate? anything from cuttings.
Thanks. I hate—hate being this whiny. I never take time off work, and I left early Sat, called in sick Mon, went in Tues long enough to do the paperwork, went in yest and came home. Broke down and went to the dr. today. I hate going to the dr. more than I hate being sick!
With figs, the success rate is 75-80%, so plant more than you want to start. There’s no rhyme or reason. They either do or they don’t. They seem to eall like our sandy soil. The trick with figs is to plant them in full sun, away from big trees. The trees will steal all the moisture and nutrients. About the only other thing that bothers figs is nematodes. it will stunt them. Figs like plenty of water. It’s not unusual for 1 year cuttings to bear figs all summer—but we water out stuff every day.
I compost on the very north west coast of Cal and we have very wet winters so my piles always turn cold and soggy. My bins are 4X4X4 and I have plywood covers for them to deflect some of the water. I don't worry about them until spring when I uncover them. If they are smelly I turn them and add fresh horse bedding from the public stables nearby and I may add some straw that I keep on hand.
I had the bins built of 1"x1" square tubing at a muffler shop and I wrapped them with 1"x1" mesh wire. We have a large yard and I take my composting serious. My First Wife mows about 15,000 sf of lawn that produces lots of clippings, plus I get 3 or 4 pickup loads of bedding and several bales of stray for 2 to 4 bins here and 2 bins at the Church where I am the chairman of the compose management one man team. Not much else I want to do at 74.
I used to fret about the coarseness of the compost as I uncovered it in the spring but I find once it gets oxygen it finishes in the soil in a couple of weeks after applying.
My compost piles are just free standing, no bins, and about 6'X4' long and wide and about 3 ft. high now. Once the weather warms up in about 2-3 weeks I was thinking of adding some cow manure and let it age in the compost. Is adding the manure a good idea? I can get all the fresh manure I need from a cattle auction site down the road for free but I know it needs to be aged some way before I can use it on my garden.
When we had a summer place I found some cheap rusted 6” X 6” X 5’ concrete reinforcing wire and made tomato cages about 3 feet in diameter. They are a pain to store unless you have some extra space going to waste but you save time not tying up the “maters ...
By all means get the cow manure and incorporate it into your pile and if the auction yard uses thin wood shavings for bedding get some of that also. There are some that will say that manure has too many salts etc for the garden but if you use it in the compost it will be fine.
Make sure you get good heat to kill most of the weed seeds. Buy a compost thermometer if you can. It makes a job fun to see the temps rise to 160 plus when things are right and it can tell you when you need to turn the pile and add some “heat”
One other question for now, can I use pine straw in the compost? I have been excluding it.
We don’t have pine straw here but I have read it is great mulch for strawberries. If I remember correctly the needles are very long and I would run a lawn mower over it to cut it up.
We do have lots and lots of Redwood needles here which go in the compost pile...
I do the same thing, except we grow tomatoes and green beans, bush type and pole type. I am a landscape contractor and we use the fabric under rock or mulched beds for weed control, and in the greenhouse/garden shop to keep the mud down in the nursey areas. We have gone to a micro irrigation watering system where there is a 1 gallon per hour emitter every 3’ on center for green beans and (2) 1 GPH emitters every 5’ on center for tomatoes, placed on top of fabric where a small circle is cut in the fabric to allow for the plant to grow in the dirt area. Also costs less to amend soil each year as we only amend the 1’ diameter growing circle with composted soils. Last years production included 60 quarts of tomato juice, sauce, and whole blanched tomatoes, and 50 quarts of Kentucky Wonder green beans frozen in ziploc bags.
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