Posted on 03/18/2016 7:45:27 AM PDT by ApplegateRanch
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. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no telling where it will go and... that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!
NOTE: This is a once a week ping list. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest are welcomed, so feel free to post them at any time.
Pinging the list
Good morning Gardeners, from sunny South Dakota!
I’ll be getting ready & leaving for work shortly, so will not be monitoring & replying this morning, but the thread is here for your use and enjoyment.
The beautiful weather we’ve been having is turning back to hard freezes, so my only activity this week has been heavily mulching and covering what I could of the perennials that were fooled into breaking dormancy.
Greeneyes could still use some prayers, but plans to being back in charge next week, or maybe the week after.
After a few nice days, it is COLD here in KS today! Where are you, Spring?
In Georgia the beans, and squash seeds I planted 2-3 weeks ago came up this week. Some are 3-4 inches tall after 2 days.
And I planted the tomato and peppers that started indoors in January.
Looks like a good year unless we get a huge rain in the next few weeks. I have had an early April storm wipe everything out before.
Question on dealing with squirrels, I was thinking about trying some container gardening on the deck with a couple tomato plants. I have a big walnut tree nearby and am wondering how much the squirrels would mess up things in my pots, would I need some chicken wire or something?
Glad to know greeneyes is doing somewhat better.
She is missed.
So happy you’ve pinged the list this week!
We’ll probably have a freeze Sunday night. Lots of stuff will be gotten by that here too. We’ll be busy covering stuff with frost cloth Sunday evening.
So far I’ve got a bunch of tomatoes, some tomatillos and some squash seedlings coming up.
The tomato stuff is in a regular seed starting tray but this year I’ve used the drink container carriers (you know, the cardboard ones with 4 spots to put drinks) as ‘peat pots’. I put a couple cupcake papers in the bottom of each depression and filled them with soil. I cut them with sharp scissors into singles. Worked perfectly (and pretty much free! which I love) for my chinese cabbages last fall and chinese cabbages are picky about transplant shock. Hopefully my cucurbits will be just as happy. Peat pots are expensive to use a lot of and hubby can get the drink carriers from the break room at work.
Lots of ginger and turmeric coming up under the plant lights in my garage now. AND, all the citrus is blooming. I tried some of the ‘apples and oranges’ food from theurbanfarm and wow. Just wow. One of my lemon trees has a bloom at every single node it could possibly bloom. Smells wonderful in the garage right now. Won’t be moving that stuff outside till after the freeze Sunday night. Should be our last one of the season tho, we don’t freeze after Easter as a rule.
Bunches of raspberry plants to dig up and give away. They’ve naturalized on a hill next to my house now. And we’re mulching the garden early this year. So we aren’t having to do that when it’s 85 or 90F later on. Hopefully will be done with that by the time the seedlings are all ready to set out and before my sweet potato slips arrive.
Wouldn’t hurt to use chicken wire.
You’d have to totally enclose it top to bottom though. Our experience chicken wire is like a chipmunk/squirrel jungle gym unless it closes around whatever totally.
Prayers up for greeneyes!
Anybody use nursery cloth to cut back on weeding? I am curious if it becomes a bug Haven.
It’s only 48 degrees here in Massachusetts, but with some days recently in the high 50s and low 60s, we have tiny leaves opening on our crabapple tree in the back yard. My seedlings are coming along, although some better than others.
Unfortunately, we are expecting 6-12 inches of snow Sunday night, but that won’t slow us down for long!
Prayers for Greeneyes are on the way.
Spring has been in TX since September but I’ve been afraid to put anything into to the garden because we always get a freeze on Tax Day. But the 17 tomato plants are starting to put on blooms so they got planted this week along with 25 feet of green beans, 15 feet of black beans, three lettuce varieties, two table cuke varieties and a pickle variety. More seedlings like tomatillo, pepper, etc. are ready to go to the garden but waiting until after the incoming storms.
Found a turnip out there that I never planted and a buttercup squash that had been varmint chewed so saved the seeds.
Of course, I have the four legged helpers. One still hasn’t learned to follow everyone around the house to where mama is in the garden so cries his little heart out at the door. He was so miserable that one day hubby had to carry him out to me. The dogs aren’t allowed in the gate so they supervise and snack on pecans. The cats climb in and help with the digging and fertilizing and snake hunting. What’s not so helpful is them laying on the plants or scooping the pecans out of the bucket I just filled.
TIP - Accidentally left some late fall tomato seeds in a glass of water to do the whole seed saving thing. Some had started to sprout so potted them. Best thing ever. They popped right up whereas planting the dry seed potted ones took forever or didn’t come up at all. So, did the same with the tomatillos and it worked like a charm. Of course, they’re wet so stick together resulting in the need to thin when they come up but it’s much better than wasting weeks and nothing germinates which puts you behind.
We have tons of squirrels but they’ve never bothered anything.
Wow! That sounds great! We had strawberries on a hill at our old house, and I really miss them. We just don’t have a suitable place for them here.
Has anyone grown the dianthus variety Starburst? I’d love to get a few of those plants.
Anyone in the southern Wi area:
There is a used freeze-dryer for sale on the UW Surplus auction site:
http://swapauction.wisc.edu/Listing/Details/1619158/Freeze-Dryer-40553
Previous freeze-dryers have sold through that site at around $500. The price of a new “homesteader’s” freeze-dryer is $4,000+. This could be an amazing deal, but there’s a catch: This model weighs over 700 pounds.
(Previous models I’ve seen sold through this site were in the 120-250Lb range.)
If you have space and equipment that can handle something that large, go for it! The dryer is at their outlet store near Verona.
Expecting goji berry bushes to arrive sometime after the 20th.
A whole hillside of naturalized strawberries sounds wonderfully delicious.
I’m planning on using them as groundcover when we ‘do’ our front yard this year. Right now it’s kind of country. Nothing landscaped really near the house. A few fruit trees I’ve set out further away from the house for interest. But this year I hope to do a flowerbed type edible bed adjacent to the house next to a sidewalk. Have to put in the sidewalk first though, right now it’s just a path through the grass. I did mention we were countryfied.
I had a flowerbed with strawberries in our backyard and then we acquired a dog. Strawberries are no more! *grin*. But she’s a great dog so I don’t mind the trade.
That’s interesting. Thanks!
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