Posted on 10/23/2009 10:55:17 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon to all of you gardeners. I apologize for the late post today. Well the last days of October are upon us and the garden is finally tilled for the last time this year. I seeded it with an annual rye grass. I also started rebuilding my compost pile. The oak and pecan trees have yet to drop their leaves so I will have to wait for their contribution to the compost pile until November.
When the leaves finish falling I will use the push mower w/ bagger to collect for adding to the garden and compost next year. Bagged the leaves make a good protection around my blueberry plants. I usually have around 20 large bags of leaves and add them during the gardening season to my composter, mixed with the fresh green clippings I collect around the perimeter of the garden. The composter holds three bags of fresh cut green clippings and one bag of the leaves collected in the fall. In two weeks I have a couple of large wheelbarrows of 'weed' free mulch to put back into the garden.
The ground is so wet today, that collecting the leaves right now would be like pushing around a wet/dry vac.
I freeze a batch of collards, a batch of mustard greens, a batch of spinach and a batch of all 3 mixes together.
I started my own plants in a plastic glass after Christmas last year, planted the slips in a half, plastic barrel when the threat of frost was over. Harvested today.
Mine still has a few - look in a neglected section - maybe by the birdbaths? It took about ten minutes to put together with no tools. Black plastic in a flat pack.
Sprinkled my garden with hairy vetch seed. Wasn’t sure when to plant it, but read somewhere it was a good winter green fertilizer.
Think how much time you'll save on vacuuming - if it looks like dirt to begin with, who's gonna know?
You do have a green thumb. My heirloom tomatoes are FINALLY beginning to produce. They stayed stangnant all summer, just standing and not growing. I left them in place and did nothing but water them...they still, just stood there. We had a bit of a rain...there they stood...while we were gone we had a pretty good rain...they began to move...then we had another rain and they began to spread,,,THEY ARE VINES!...Now I’m beginning to pick some nice green striped tomatoes and they are wonderful. So are the okra that did nothing during the summer HOT months, but with the rain they are popping our fruit like gangbuster, as are the straight neck squash. As you may remember all of my little gardens are raised, 24 inches high and one is 16 feet long, the other 3 are same height, 5 feet long and 36 inches wide. We’ve planted some collards, cabbage and cauflower plants..so far they’re still alive.
What’s a slip?
Take a sweet potatoe that is sprouting and stick toothpicks in the center so that it sits up above a glass. Fill the glass with water. The roots will grow and stem and leaves will grow up out of the potatoe.....Wen it’s about 6-8 inches long, cut it as close to the potatoe as possible and plant that end with hairy roots in dirt.....That cutting is a slip.
Some places carry them in bundles...similar to onions or strawberry plants.
Any recommendations for caring for apple, plum or blueberry plants over winter? I was wondering if I should apply some bone meal or 16-16-16. This is probably zone 4B at 8,500 ft elevation in northern Colorado.
FReepmail me Who is going to win the Nascar race at Martinsville Va Sunday...
Wow! Thank you Diana. My problem is that these iris are in a garden that just developed to mask to cover to my septic sysm — a couple of roses, a bird bath, a few bulbs, miniature irises, an arch — then lengthened with excess soil from a rose garden I planted nearby. It’s on a slight slope so that one side is higher than the other — both ways. To keep weeds out, I finally got my husband to build a low wall around it which left one side without enough dirt.
Everything is still in place, but I need to lift and divide these irises (shown up thread) and backfill planting soil underneath to level out this bed. Also, the miniature irises need to move to the front because they are totally overpowered by the large blue irises.
I know that I have left it too long, BUT, should I do this work immediately next spring? Do I really have to wait until August?
I should add that the blue (many shades and varieties) irises are the repeat blooming type. So they are blooming again in August, which is why I missed my window this year.
Thanks for your answer. I’ve forgotten where you live in WI. Northwest of me, I think. I’m in Mequon, just north of Milwaukee on the border of Cedarburg.
That's sort of what I'm doing, building my Square Foot boxes on top of 2 laysers of thick cardboard right on top of unused (but mowed) pasture. Eventually that cardboard will disintegrate, but hpefully that grass and any weeds will be thoroughly dead by then. I tried to kill it by putting a black tarp (dark brown actuallly) over it and leaving it for a month. Ha! It just became a mini green house. The grass grew just fine underneath, it just was a paler grean. Since we were in a drought at that time, the grass seemed to like having the black tarp over it -- held in the moisture!
I gathered up the tarp and moved the garden to a more convenient location (nearer the gate -- I'm not totally stupid) and tried the cardboard/weed barrier method. Since there is no planting mix in the boxes yet, I may add newspaper at the bottom too. In any case, the grass in my previous location bounced back and, within a week, looked like nothing had been there at all!
I even have cardboard under the "plastic mulch" that will be the aisles. I do not want these beds to be contaminated by grass clippings when I mow, as much as I would like to have grass aisles. That would not be possible for me to maintain.
Irisis in place now. Could I dig and move them next spring, sacrificing (probably) their spring show? They will bloom again in Aug/Sept.
The soil in that end of the bed is quite low -- about 8 - 10 in. Needs to be backfilled and irises need to be repositioned. (I have miniature gold/brown ones behind these huge blues and purples. Need to be reversed.
Your plans for potting tulips sound lovely. I’m trying to do the same thing. I already have several pots planted of red tulips and double daffodils (yellow). I don’t know what to do with them next. A friend gave me a bag of 100 red tulips. All my tulips planting areas are already full, and anyplace else in the yead I plant them will likely become lunch for wandering deer and rabbits.
The garden center here told me to dig a trench and bury the pots and cover them with a thick layer of mulch. Since these are big pots, this will have to be a deep trench — not easy in our thick, Mequon clay. My hubby is not keen on that task. What if I HALF buried the pots and put bags of leaves around them for protection with heavy mult over them?
Or, do you prefer the garage for winter storage? (I’m going to have to really clean the garage to make room for them. Not a bad idea, but probaly harder to help from my husband than digging a trench.) I did print the article you linked and will read it again.
I have 3 outbuildings, but they are impossible for me to reach in the winter, so no watering will get done. The basement is heated. I do have a crawl space under my bedroom — again very inconvenient to reach. I wonder if it is cold enough, however? There is no furnace there anymore — furnace has been moved.
How much watering needs to be done in the winter for potted tulips? I have lots more bulbs to plant and I may just cram them into the ground — rabbits or not.
Just went out and “dug the potatoes”....took less than five minutes, just pulled back the straw and put them in a basket....Nice part about it there were no damaged ones from a spade or shovel. Will use the same technique next year .....only larger. Start saving those papers/cardboard now!
Well, I could be harvesting lettuce now if I had gotten it in at the end of Aug. or beginning of Sept. But, that would be the last hurrah around here. It’s getting colder and rainier by the day. We’ve had 2 light frosts already and a lot of rain. I saw “flurries” two weeks ago on a Sat., but no real snow in sight yet. It’s only a matter of time, however.
Do you mean "first" frost, or "last" frost? Are you plannting potatoes in the spring, or the fall?
What are HiramQuick’s method? I’m going to try potatoes in tire tubes. I didn’t get to the this past summer, but I’ll give it a try. I let my basil go to seed...if anyone wants a lawn of basil..I have basil everywhere. Can it be dried? How? Can it be freeze dried?
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.