Posted on 04/05/2013 12:36:13 PM PDT by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.
This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.
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Try it. It’s an experiment. I read that you can’t use garlic from the super market. However, the catalog was out of garlic I had ordered.
So I just took some leftover garlic that had been laying around for a couple of months, and split off the cloves, and planted them one fall. They came up and I put a row cover and some straw over them till spring.
Then I uncovered them and they grew till I harvested them in June. So the experiment worked contrary to advice from such articles.
To me it’s part of the joy of gardening. Just trying these little experiments to see what happens.
And you are right about the stem side goes down too!LOL
I still have a few towels from when we first got married 48 years ago.LOL They are a tad bit raggedy. I used one of them to make ties for the tomato plants, because it wasn’t even good enough for the cleaning rag pile.LOL
Sounds like a great idea. Keep us posted on how it turns out. I use a lot of ground ginger, so I might want to try this too, if it does well for you.
LOL. Love the Rain for soooo many reasons.
No planting done at my house yet, but I have managed to get some outdoor cleanup accomplished. Hooked the pasture drag onto the old Minneapolis-Moline and knocked down the winter accumulation of poo piles in the pastures, then fired up the new-to-me Massey-Ferguson 50E loader tractor and moved all the rotten hay piles from the pasture to the compost heap, all after work yesterday. I moved the hay piles by hand last year and was down in the back for a week after. Didn’t even break a sweat this time. Power tools are wonderful!
The ground might be dried up enough by Sunday to get into the garden with the tiller. The weather guessers are saying rain on Monday, would sure be nice to get it scratched up before then.
Check out tubebenders link (back to eden). No till method very easy gardening. I enjoyed watching it:
www.backtoedenfilm.com
Garlic from the store works just fine. I planted three heads worth of cloves in ‘08, it’s now yielding enough to plant 150 cloves, have enough for the kitchen and therapeutic use, and feed a clove a day to the dogs all year long. I’ve got one little mutt dog that came to us as a stray that has some sort of ear fungus thing going on. Nothing the vet has tried helps with it, but as long as she gets a clove of garlic every day it doesn’t seem to bother her much. Helps keep the fleas and ticks off too.
“... I use old pantyhose for support...”
Wow... we learn so much about our freepers everyday, don’t we? So..... how long have you been wearing pantyhose, Johnny?! LOL!
You’ll want a pole bean variety. Many out there. Most popular are Scarlet Runner, Kentucky Wonder, Kentucky Blue, Kentucky Lake for green beans. The Kentucky Wonder can be found anywhere like Walmart and HEB and Dollar General. A small package will be more than enough for your space and save the dried pods at the end of the season for next year.
Check out the heights of limas and peas but peas can’t take the heat like beans. Cukes, squash, and melons can also be trellised. I’d go with the smaller squash and melons because of the weight. With the cucumbers, go with one that is both a slicer and a pickler but you’d probably just do some refrigerator pickles due to space so maybe just a slicer.
Tomatoes will trellis, too but go with a cherry because a larger one wouldn’t hold up without caging. Walmart usually has a husky red cherry and a yellow pear are both bite sized. The husky red cherry is really tasty and is a pretty plant. The yellow pear tastes good but isn’t as flavorful, is a good producer and will get wide and grow to the roof if you let but don’t let that scare you off because it’s hearty and can take heat. The yellow pear is a staple in my garden. None of the tomatoes did well last year but once the heat broke in the fall, the yellow pear went gun ho. Both of those are heirlooms.
I’m guessing you don’t have much room so maybe just go with one or two vegetables. If your trellises are separate from each other (as opposed to a grid type across the whole wall), have your son string a couple pieces of wire across to connect them at the top to give the plants more growing room. The green beans, by far, are the easiest to grow as they don’t require much more effort than watering.
Yellow Pears are spitters...Yellow Submarine and Sweet Beverly LOOK like Yellow Pears, but both feature something Yellow Pears lack...FLAVOR.
Thank you. I'm copying your post and saving it. I've looked at Terrior Seeds on the web as we bought some seed from them for my husband a few years ago. Their only sell heirloom seed and they had a section for seed that grows well in heat. Kentucky Wonder was in that group.
I have to get rid of the dead rose bushes along that wall. I tried two days ago to cut them with a manual hedge trimmer and have to get too close to the zillions of thorns. I have ordered a 22 inch machete to whack them down from a longer distance. Once I get rid of the thorny branches, I can pull them out of the ground. I need that machete anyway to whack off zombie heads.
http://www.victoryseeds.com/bean_kentucky-wonder.html
These are a bit cheaper (depending on shipping) and they mail out orders lightening fast. But this is so popular you can get it at any store that sells even the minimum of seeds to save on shipping charges. I did like the description mentioning Texas so that’s a plus. ;)
They’ll produce all summer until the first hard freeze gets them. When the temps get 100, they’ll slow down but will get going again when the heat breaks. Just keep them picked every few days so they’ll put on more. There’s a clean up factor at the end of the season. The dead vines will have to be pulled down but it’s no big deal. You can talk on your phone with one hand and clean up the dead vines with the other with not much bending over.
Awesome video. Thank you for that.
I hauled the last of my burned-down compost to the garden today. And tilled it in.
Maybe it’s time to re-think that...
Oh bgill, so sorry to hear about your plants. Stay stubborn the second batch will grow beautifully.
I’m going to put out the word in our little town about carpet ground cover for our Community Garden. All of the rows and raised gardens are taken...isn’t that just GREAT?
Four men today helped the kids plant the veggies and watermelons. The kids were so busy, the men showed them how to dig the hole, put the plants into it, then water the little plants. The “firm” gentleness they showed the kids was heartening to see. The little ones were around 6/7/8 years old, with a couple of older ones and of course their supervisor.
The kids were busy little bees, no running in the garden, walking up and down the paths, just like their instructors. One fellow even began an herb garden and told the 4 children how each herb was used to flavor food. It was nice.
HE HE HE.don’t feel rained on...I’m doing the same thing, and when the squash start “running, I’m going to wind them around the outside of the beans and corn stalks. I’ll put straw around the area before I wind the squash. I’m using straigt necked squash.
Oh NUTS, Teubender, my ‘puter couldn’t pick it up. Lady Tubebender does look like she can work circles around most of us. You did tell us she was your roto tiller, once. Loved her fingernails.
I turn my towels into bath mats, just double the over, sew the sides together and stich a design to keep the towel from sliding on itself. If the towel has some weak spots, I turn the good parts into wash clothes or guest towels.
I have a ginger on the counter, just found it, it was hidden, and it has little round green thingys...should I put it in a moist bag and let the green things grow out a little more? Gads, that would be wonderful...fresh ginger. I love ginger in my tea, and just a plain hot ginger drink.
I didn’t know tumeric was a root plant...when we go to Temple I’ll check the Asian stores and see if they have a root. I use it a lot in cooking.
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