Posted on 02/16/2018 3:54:01 PM PST by greeneyes
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I’m going to try a vertical pallet garden this year - I saw a DIY one where they had cut 2-liter bottles in half, punched drainage holes as needed, nailed ‘em to the pallet, and filled them with potting soil. It seems like a great way to grow strawberries, and I have a sunny south-facing wall to mount them on. I’m also planning to run bird netting over a shower curtain rod and hang that above said pallets to keep the )(*&$^%)$W%# mockingbirds away. Fingers crossed...
Kudzu is actually edible, although there’s not much sellable you can do with it. But the vine tips, leaves, and flowers are all perfectly safe and reasonably tasty, and the roots are edible and darn good for you if you dry and grind them. I want to try my hand at kudzu jelly this year, and see if it tastes as good as the flowers smell.
Tubebender:
Thank you, Tubebender, for picking up my photos.
I’ll send some gardening pix from last year.
They might be helpful for gardener wantabees...
Eric
I can personally attest to the tastiness of dandelion wine!
An old black man used to make several gallons each year.
The potency could be a mite touchy but I remember it fondly....I think. :-P
Kudzu, the vine that ate the south!
I hate the stuff, I would have to be in dire straits to eat kudzu.
But it beats starving I guess.
O.K. picked up 5 new packages of seeds this past week. Mostly what I already have, some squash (barely produced last year but nice plants) some more radish and a couple of packages of watermelon.
I’m thinking of using the watermelon in a small area of the ground - maybe 2.5 x 6 feet. So not very big.
BUT my question is this:
I’ve been sowing egg shells, bits and pieces of vegetables, etc. into the thing trying to make natural fertilizer. I do have other stuff. The pepper plants in there last year didn’t have enough time and produced very little. BUT the leaves on the plants had a lot of holes.
Is it diseased from the tomato pieces, egg shells, etc. I haven’t put much into it for months to let it settle down. It’s been covered in snow and has been hit by rain.
I hoped to cover it with chicken wire in a cage of some sort to keep out rabbits and squirrels.
Some say you have to let it sit fo a year when you sow organic leftovrs in there (all vegetables, very little fruit and a fair amount of egg shells). It got the majority of stuff in it by October and November.
IS THIS going to be a reasonably-safe soil for growing watermelons? I’m hoping the thick skin helps ward off pests.
I grow most everything in buckets on the deck and the insects are almost never a problem. A few tomato cornworms last year (3-4).
Will it help if I soak with water prior to planting?
I sowed the egg shells because I got blossom end-rot on a few tomatoes a couple of years ago. I DO put the eggshells into my tomatoes and those have been just fine.
Thanks
Thanks for all the great pics. Makes for a cheerful evening.
I simply admire your grit to live in a place like that. LOL
That sounds like a good plan.
LOL. I’ve never tried it - not much of a wine drinker-but I really like those margaritas. LOL
Well, I have added banana peels and eggshells mixed with water and blenderized directly to my garden with no problems.
In general for all the kitchen waste and stuff. I leave it till it smells good. It will smell like rich loamy dirt.
Any other stink and it’s not ready. My composter looks like a large square trash can and has a swinging door top. I just dump stuff in. It has lots of air holes on all sides.
At the bottom, it has a door that raises up to get to the finished compost. So I dig it out, and throw any thing recognizable - like an egg shell back on top. Scoop it up with gloved hands and smell it. LOL
Depending on temperature etc. you can have compost within a few weeks to a year. So it’s variable.
The Indians used to put a fish head in with their planting IIRC. In the spring, turning under green stuff usually happens at least a month before planting. Rye can hinder germination.
“LOL. I’ve never tried it - not much of a wine drinker-but I really like those margaritas. LOL”
When you’re 15 and it’s free, you’ll take anything!
I like knowing about wild edibles in case I ever need them. I may try making kudzu wine for Christmas presents this year, though. Still pondering.
My mother used to be in an arts program to learn all the Foxfire-stuff type from the old folks in the Appalachians. One of them taught her about kudzu-vine baskets and left her with the warning “Never put one of them down on bare ground. It’ll grow roots.” We STILL don’t know if he was joking or not...
No, he wasn’t joking.
Kudzu likes to root everywhere it touches soil.
Its what made the idiots so sure it was the answer to soil erosion, the reason it was imported from Japan.
Not sure if I can tell. But I only spent 40 cents on two packages of watermelon seeds. I’m not going to try peppers down there again. Either watermelon, or carrots.
Yeah, I’ve tossed pepper parts into it, stems too. But it’s all had several months and I won’t be doing anything there before March or April. If I hit it by April, I should be able to get 2 rounds out of it this year.
It got Miracle Gro and Bone Meal last year, just like all my other dirt (in buckets). So we’ll see.
Lots for different ways people compost. We have a black compost bin with a lid. When we take out the compost in the spring I start up the bin again with some straw and leftover leaves. We add all scraps from the garden, and store, egg shells. I add sweet corn husks but not the cobs. Probably 4 times during the season it gets turned over and watered. When fall sets in I don’t add anything all winter. By April we open the lid and it looks just like nice black and brown broken down soil. A we get older the easiest way to spread it is to set a tarp on the ground in front of the bin. I pull it all out and then drag the tarp onto the top of the garden. Then I drag it down the length of it, raking off a little at a time takes about 15 minutes.
That reminds me. I grilled several ears of corn over 2 separate times last year. I soaked them for over 45 minutes plus.
Kinda hilarious when they burst into flame on the grill. Then I know they’re done, LOL. Usually I could just roll them over or dunk in the bowl of water. Quite tasty with some add’l butter and salt and pepper.
But they all go up at once - guess one gets them all started.
I tossed all the burned husks into that area for compost, too.
Just try a grill that is not so hot. If we do grill corn we leave the inner layer of husk on. A neat corn tip for a big crowd - Clean all your corn, put in a cooler and cover with boiling water, close the lid. 20 minutes later you can start eating and the rest stay warm.
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