Posted on 05/17/2013 1:01:42 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.
It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread ... there is no telling where it will go and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!
I had that problem last year with the 'matoes--tall but the blossoms fell off. Maybe they need more calcium or potassium and not as much nitrogen. If you have a calcium mineral tab crush a few and add in around the soil. Epsom salt is good too. I also didnt cultivate deep enough last year either... add some eggshells to the garden after harvest.
bgill, is giving you the correct way to do this. However, red devil alerted us to a simpler way that worked well for me.
Basically used some oxy clean to spray on the seeds and let sit for a bit. Then rinsed and let dry on a paper towel. Then I put them in a paper plate, labeled, covered with another paper plate with hole punched in it on top of refrigerator. Eventually put into a medicine bottle labeled and stored in extra fridge till next year.
Congratulations on your first harvest!
When you take up something new, you really jump in with both feet! Your post are always interesting and often quite humorous. I think you will do well at this gardening stuff.
You may want to consider this:
http://www.mcmga.com/becoming-a-master-gardener/
Planted another bed if leaf lettuce and turnips this week and it is already coming up. The older leaf lettuce is ready for eating.
I have several clusters of yellow cherry tomatoes that are ready to pick. May have some tonight with the leaf lettuce.
Our neighbor gave us half a dozen of yellow onions. They sure are sweet. I gave him some shallots in return for his omelets.
If the tomato plant variety is a hybrid is it not recommended to use its seeds from cross-pollination that can produce an unwanted variety for next season?
Oak leaves are great for compost. Acorns are great forage food. If you are not going to eat them or make flour out of them, use them in the compost heap-you could smash them first if you want.
Weeds are fine for compost before thay develop seeds is best.
Have you ever eaten rose petals and if so, how were they prepared?
TO EVERYONE ABOUT THE COMPOSTER UNIT:
This thing is a big ball that holds 71 gallons of “stuff”. It closes tight so no smell should be coming out of it. It sits on a base that has ball bearings and after loading it, you roll it around on the ball bearings to mix the stuff up so you don’t layer anything as it all gets tumbled together.
Does that change any advice you all have given me? Say I had veggie scraps left over - toss that in, right? See, that would start smelling but I don’t think that will matter with this closed ball.
And I should dump the rose limbs and other limbs in actual trash and put the leaves and weeds in the unit. I was afraid the weeds would leave the weed seed in there and when I used the mulch, the weeds would grow. Is that true or not?
My grandma used to save those yellow squash flowers and then flour them up and fry in light olive oil. Awesome-—try it.
I’d use the rose branches too. You could even just rake them all into a pile and add some stuff on top if you didn’t want to move them all to the compost container.
I battled the hot sun with shade cloth last year. The tomatoes didn’t set fruit till the heat went down, but they survived and gave me a good fall crop.
If anyone else likes the Campari tomatoes from the grocery store, I save those seeds and plant new plants every year. they stay true to type and bear heavy. My dad always squished his tomato seeds out onto a paper towel and let them dry. Then in the spring he would plant the paper towel with the seeds stuck on it flat in a starter bed. I just write the variety name on the paper towel and tear off a seed or 2 and put them in starter pots.
The way I look at it, if I save seed from something, and it doesn't work out, I haven't lost anything, and if it does work out, I've gained.
/johnny
If it grew in the ground, it can be used for compost. I'd put limbs and stems in a pile for a couple of years to break them down for use. No bread or other processed foods. I take my lawn clippings to an unused cul-de-sac and leave them there for about two years, and retrieve them for my compost pile.
You can save seeds from hybrids too. Just understand that they *likely* will not come true.
That’s not always the case. The ‘Campari’ tomatoes you see for sale in the little plastic clamshells at the grocery store will come true something like 97 or 99 times out of 100.
Other stuff, like the Sungold variety of cherry tomatoes are notorious for not coming true. YMMV. They will all be tomatoes though. And they will all ‘eat’. Just not necessarily what you expected. If TSHTF grocery store tomatoes could be used for seeds if you didn’t have any other seeds on hand or your neighbors wanted to grow tomatoes too.
Lazy daisy gal here doesn’t mow anything either. Just throw them in by the handful.LOL It’s all good.
Don’t discard the Lowes tomato seeds because they’ll likely grow. Great if they do but nothing lost if they don’t. Lol, next you’ll be playing music for them.
Well, another week and another gully washer. Enough already! I was going to post a video of the hail storm from friends in San Saba but the site is down. Anyway, their main street was flooded with solid hail washing down the road up to the car bumpers. Here, we got 4” in just a few minutes which washed rivers down both sides of the house, down the yard and out the gate leaving debris all in the yard and branches in the garden. Had to reset the veg cages.
Finally got the last of the tomato and pepper seedlings in the ground but it’s already 96 and supposed to hit 98 today. Ain’t Texas weather grand? Replanting the garden 4 times already is enough. Whatever Mother Nature throws at me next, I give up and she wins.
Planted another row of corn. The last corn seeds got washed all together so need thinning. The sweet and white onions aren’t doing and neither did the brussels sprouts but everything else is coming along slowly after having to recoup from weekly weather disasters. I’m leaving the volunteer tomatoes where they’re growing since they’re happy but they haven’t put on any blossoms yet. The squashes have blossoms and I’m looking forward to seeing how the old seeds from grocery store veggies do. The lettuces are already bolting. The second planting of okra is doing fine as are the 2nd plantings of cauliflower, broccoli and kohl rabi and the 3rd planting of cukes. It’s now getting hot for the coles so they better hurry up. I planted a couple of herb containers but still need to replant the beds since they got washed out. Their rock edging keeps getting washed out too so I’m done and it’s all coming out. Really, Mother Nature, it’s rock! The carrots and mustard are doing great (knock on wood).
Do you have any bees or other pollinating insects in your garden? We have honey bees all over the tree blooms and in the garden. They were ticked off when I pulled up the blooming broccoli plants.
If you’re patient, you don’t need to buy many blackberries (you will however want at least two varieties that cross pollinate). Blackberries grow long like vines, and if you take a branch and bend it over and bury part of the middle, it will put out new roots. You can also dig up the roots, cut off ones that are a few inches long and about pencil width, and grow new plants from those.
In the SE, we have a lot of disease issues with tomatoes, so I don’t compost my old tomato plants.
We lots of birds and squirrels also, and have no problem with any critters eating from our garden. My wife has 3 feeders about 20ft from the garden, just outside of our dining area windows. They stay well fed at the feeders and leave the garden alone. At least so far for three years.
I don’t compost any tomatoes, peppers or eggplants. I burn those, thorougly, and then add the ashes to the compost.
I’m not brave enough to put weeds in my compost either. Even runnded over with the lawnmower weeds. I’m afraid I’ll start some sort of weed horror movie that way.
This is what I want though. No space for them at the moment as our current lot is too small. That, and they cost FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS. LOL.
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/assorted_rare_peafowl.html
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