Weekly Garden Thread - March 5-11, 2022 [Budget-Friendly Gardening Edition]

March 5, 2022 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memorium

[Diana in Wisconsin]

So, back to the topic at hand! Some of the things I do/have done to make and keep a Budget Friendly Garden:

Compost Piles for fertilizer and Compost Tea.

Rain Barrels made from plastic 55 gallon drums I salvaged.

Traded perennials with friends.

Sold extra seedlings at my farm stand.

Buy second-hand tools and decorative pots at yard sales or thrift stores. IMHO - anything can be a ‘planter’ if it has drainage. I LOVE planting in old coffee pots, colanders, pretty coffee cans, etc. I also grab cotton string, twine, anything I find in the way of gardening ‘supplies’ on the second hand market.

Save my eggshells, let them dry and crunch them up. I add a scoop to planting holes for tomatoes, zukes, cukes and peppers. No more Blossom End Rot. (Calcium!)

Chop up fallen leaves with the mower to add to compost pile or use as winter mulch.

Just about anything can be a seedling starting pot: Yogurt cups, deli containers, paper towel and TP tubes cut down.

I switched to Jiffy Pellets for seedling starts - less soil I have to buy and they work great. Starting from seed saves a lot, too. Of course, I WILL buy started plants when I just need a few of something, like ONE Jalapeno plant or Petunias for hanging baskets. I mean, I’m only human! I can’t resist the lure of a Garden Center any more than anyone else can, LOL!

Dirt! I see that the price of my favorite Miracle Grow Potting Mix is UP this year, so I will be ‘cutting it’ with dirt from right here on the farm. Luckily, Beau has a number of dirt piles around here from previous projects. Also, if you’re filling a rather large pot, through some plastic water bottles or pretty much anything from the recycle bin in the bottom to take up space. You won’t need as much potting soil in the pot and if you’re watering and fertilizing correctly, the plants won’t care. Most plants we grow in pots (aside from root crops) are rather shallow rooted, anyway.

DIY Potting Soil recipes, here: https://savvygardening.com/diy-potting-soil/

Overwinter herbs. Had GREAT luck with three Rosemary plants this past winter. Now, I won’t need to buy any Rosemary plants this year because I can pop these three back into the garden!

Are your family and friends aware of your gardening needs? Put the word out if there’s something rather pricey that you’re in need of such as a wheelbarrow or a specific tool. Maybe Dear Old Mom no longer uses her wheel barrow. Ask if you can have it or buy it from her CHEAP. Christmas or your birthday is a great time to ask for a garden-related gift. My Mom bought me a HUGE supply of Bungee Cords one Christmas! (I use them to strap together my tomato cages so they support one another.) Also, I love nothing more than a gift card to a local Garden Center. My birthday is in July, so I have gotten some amazing end-of-season prices on perennials and shrubs through the years with gift cards paying all or most of the cost.

I’m sure I’ll have other ideas to add as the week progresses! :)

[ApplegateRanch]

We had Perfume Delight (bought it at Harry & David’s/Jackson & Perkins) when we lived in Oregon, and loved it.

H&D’s was about 25 miles from us at the time, and the 2 shared a campus...then they got bought out & split up. :-(

Not long after that, we sold & came to South Dakota. Most of the J&P iris we brought here have died out, except for some very hardy types.

As for roses, we have some huge, decades old, yellow Pioneer Roses, and lots of small, indigenous, wild roses; some white, but mostly pinks & reds.

[ApplegateRanch]

“We grow what we can, and eat what we can, and what we can’t, we can.”

[ApplegateRanch]

This is upland rice, grown like wheat, unlike lowland rice, which is grown in the flooded fields.

Sow inside in late April (here) the set out in late May; Harvest late August.

One pkt from this guy is about 250 seeds.

A 10’ X 10’ plot (4 X 25 makes it easier to work; and is easy to bird-net) holds 100 transplants.

Depending on variety, that should yield 6-9 pounds of “paddy rice” i.e. unthreshed rice, which yields 80% post threshing of brown rice; or 70% of threshed & milled white rice.

5 plots would give about 30-32 pounds brown, or 27-28 pounds (about 70 cups) raw white rice, and a sore back. 🙂

Not this year; won’t have room for it.

This links to his rice hulling tutorial & photos.
https://www.facebook.com/sherckseeds/posts/4490847861021113

This is his seed sales page link; also his blog. He specializes in rice.
https://www.sherckseeds.com/

[Bon of Babble]

Some roses do better in certain climates over others.

I wanted a Princess Diana rose for my garden - I’m able to grow beautiful roses in California - but that one never performed - it produced very few flowers and never grew much even though I pampered it as I do my other roses.

I finally figured it was developed for a wet English climate and not the dry California climate I live in. A gopher finally got it and I wasn’t sorry to see it go.

My Queen Elizabeth rose, however, does beautifully - so much so I planted two. My relatives in Santa Barbara love that one too.

[Bon of Babble]

Lavender is blooming everywhere right now!

People around me have ripped up their lawns and median strips (yours truly included, husband actually ripped them out after the final water bill) - and are planting all kinds of lavender, which attracts a lot of bees.

I have had no luck with them! I see them everywhere but they do not perform for me for some reason - I’ve lost all of mine except for one that is in a pot and it is not doing well. Have no idea what I am doing wrong - it is one of the few plants I struggle with - and I love lavender!

Will have to research it further as to growing conditions - my neighbors seem to have no problem growing it.

[MomwithHope]

Getting advice from neighbors is a great idea. Also we learned last year there are about 8 varieties of lavendar. I would find out which variety they have or ask a local nursery. We liked the English lavender and had just a couple of spots where it would get enough sun and not too wet. They did great last year and we had tons of flowers for a first year. We cut both areas back yesterday.

[Pollard]

Checked my seed tray this morning and half the lettuce, all six komatsuma and half the peas have germinated. Cabbage already takes a couple more days and also likes the soil a little warmer than the 73 degrees I have it at but everything else likes 73. I think I started seeds 3 days ago. I'll be eating baby komatsuma & leaf lettuce salads in no time.

I'm thinking I'll trim enough 4-5 inch leaves off several plants to make a salad and transplant those. Thinking with less leaves, they'll put more effort into roots just when transplanted.

Sound right?

I put black plastic over a spot I tilled out in front of the house last year in late Summer/early Fall and also laid a bunch of goat manure over it. Need to get out there and rake in the manure and put something up for the peas to climb on. Don't want to till it and bring up weed/grass seeds. I'm hoping the black plastic got it hot enough to kill any near the top. Looks like marigold is a good companion plant for cabbage and most things.

lettuce, cabbage and peas all good together

Cabbage

Lettuce

Peas

Gonna have to pick up some radish and celery seeds and maybe some of the above mentioned herbs. Sage and rosemary at least. Rosemary was good with the lamb chops we had a while back so it ought to be good with goat and we got meat goats. I think I've used sage once in my life when I made homemade bratwurst. I can get some mint from a neighbor. Need to get some DE too.

I was planning on planting carrots in a raised bed out front. Baker creek sent me dill as free seeds. I have one companion planting guide that says carrots+dill is bad and one that says good. Another one says bad when dill is flowering. Carrots might be done by that time.

Carrots about 70 days and TX A&M says dill matures in 90 days. Dill hates cold and carrots like cold so I wouldn't be planting dill for a while but carrots soon.

All other literature says dill is good with everything else I'm putting out front. TX A&M says dill does well in containers indoors or out. Guess I'll do dill in a container or two and I can time my starting it so when carrots are done, the dill still a ways off from flowering.

This gardening stuff is tricky. All the timings, good plant, bad plant, bugs, bugs and more bugs. The house faces SE so it gets late afternoon shade. That should keep me going for a while with leaf lettuce, komatsuma and peas.

I've played around with gardening many times and at least grow potatoes pretty much every year but this will be the first year taking it seriously and going all out.

[Pollard]

https://thenutrientcompany.com/blogs/horticulture/npk-value-of-everything-organic-database

I’ve got the Attra organic potting mix pdf here; https://permasteader.com/cloud/index.php/s/FWMeE2tz2LGf6Zf

Has recipes for seed starting and potting soil mixes. Some are for making a mix way better than anything you can buy but may not save you money. Some are special purpose like soil block mixes and some are pretty basic with less than 6 ingredients. They mention how the old timers used leaf mold in lieu of peat moss before peat moss was a thing. Takes 6 months to a year to make leaf mold so start now for next year or start this Fall when you rake the lawn and use it two Springs later.

Bone meal for phosphorus can be made. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+to+Make+Bone+Meal

For Potassium
Ground charred corncobs are 0, 0. 2
Comfrey is 1.8, 0.5, 5.3
Any kind of ash is super high and fast acting and will also raise the soil pH. Doesn’t last a long time. Various rock and granite dust are high in K and very slow acting.

Nitrogen from manure and many other things. Coffee/tea grounds. Fish.

As I clear land here, I burn off the leaves and then scrape the remaining leaf mold/humus to the garden area and till it in a little. Best potatoes ever on those years. Baseball sized Yukon Gold and cleaner and more uniform in shape than anything from the store. Everything else did good those years and it made the clayey loam into loam for two years. Also made grass some up faster where I had scraped. I had noticed where I had dragged brush and it scraped leaves, leaf mold and humus off and left bare soil, I had grass come up quick so that’s when I decided to scrape the rest off with the riding mower with a grader blade.

[Pollard]

That second recipe for potting mix is a cheap/free one though it would have no nutrients is using leaf mold instead of compost. I really need to start composting. I drove 100 miles round trip and bought some last year. With the price of fuel these days, gas would cost as much as a yard of compost.

The first recipe below would be very cheap to make with peat being 1/11th of the recipe and builder's sand is very cheap and usually sold by the yard. If you wanted a small bucket full, they'd probably charge $5 or just tell you to go grab yourself some, no charge. I also read recently that you can keep and reuse sowing/potting soil. Might need a bit of nutrients added back in. Lots of search results, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reuse+sowing%2Fpotting+soil

With fertilizer and all prices going up, the prepper in me has been looking into making my own sowing/potting mixes from whatever I can obtain free or buy cheap. No luck on my first batch but I know some compost would have cured that lack of ability to wick up the water when bottom watering. Speaking of; noticed some white fuzzy stuff on the soil mix in my seedling tray which I think means it's headed for damping off. I pulled the cover off, wiped the condensation off the inside and left it off. White fuzz went away and I'll leave it off until later on tonight. Even though I bottom watered, the nix got too wet. It was shiny. BootsrapFarmer article says to learn how to go by weight of cell tray when bottom watering for best results.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

If you’ve got the land and the tools and the smarts and the strong back, there’s plenty all around us in Nature to use to our advantage.

Why, it’s almost as if it were ‘designed’ that way! Go figger! ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Those soil mixes look delicious!

I broke down and bought 2 of the 1-cubic food bags of the Miracle Grow mix today, while it was on sale. ($9.37)

In the future I’ll buy the less expensive ‘Expert Gardener’ brand they have at Walmart. ($7.48 for the 1 CF size)

I do three hanging pots on my porch, so I want the Miracle Grow mix for those, as experience shows that stuff works GREAT in my hanging baskets, but I will mix whatever leftovers I have of MG and the Exp Gardener brand with clean soil that Beau is letting me have from his stash.

Other pots are just growing herbs and the tea garden plants I want and are less fussy than my hanging baskets can be.

Using those Jiffy Pellets for seed starting saves me a lot on soil, too.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Ping to Post #44.

Ellendra: Are you trying rice this season, or have you in the past?

[Ladysforest]

What are the better seed sources for heirloom seeds? I forget at the moment where I ordered from last year - they were supposed to be good, but I didn’t have good results. Thankfully I only put in a teeny corner or the garden - so not a giant disappointment.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Peppers I am starting from seed, tomorrow, inside, in my grow light rack:

'Gourmet.' Green to orange, sweet bell:

'Pretty N Sweet' decorative type, but produces nice peppers. Sweet.

'Mellow Star Shishito.' My first try with t his type, but so many here rave about it, I had to give it a go. Not too hot, though can have a rouge hot one in the mix at times.

Big Red. Got this last year as a 'freebie' from Jung's and it was a HUGE producer with really big, thick-walled peppers and as sweet as your Grandma. ;)

'Baron.' This will be my third year growing this pepper and production was amazing. Sweet bell.

The reds can all be harvested at the green stage too, so I'll have both to use in my Salsa and V-8 Juice, etc. I will also be buying ONE Jalapeno-type. Not worth it for me to buy seed for just one plant. We don't like things hot, but I do like to make Poppers, and I do sneak one into each batch of Bloody Mary Mix ;)

[Pollard]

I bought one of these for $4.89 at Menard's and it's plenty for me just as starting mix. I've got some heavier, chunkier stuff from last year for potting soil.

Now that I'm getting a grip on the different mixes, I think I'll be able to do my own next year or this Fall. Must Make Compost.

I don't do walmart or at least as little as possible.

[Pollard]

https://rareseeds.com aka Baker Creek is my favorite but part of the reason is that they’re in the same State as me, Missouri, so I’m helping to keep some Missourians employed.
https://highmowingseeds.com has been around a long time and has a good reputation regardless of the funny name. Vermont
https://www.edenbrothers.com is one I stumbled across today and they’ve got a lot of info on the individual seed pages. NC

[Pollard]

The reds can all be harvested at the green stage too, so I'll have both to use in my Salsa and V-8 Juice, etc. I will also be buying ONE Jalapeno-type. Not worth it for me to buy seed for just one plant. We don't like things hot, but I do like to make Poppers, and I do sneak one into each batch of Bloody Mary Mix ;)

Well we simply must have the recipes now!

[Pollard]

Not that Menard’s is any better. They’re basically the walmart of home improvement stores. In either case, I never buy their brands. Only name brands, even though I know some of those name brands are building things to fit what walmart tells them they will pay for a product if they want to sell millions of them. Hate it. It’s been bringing down the quality of everything ever since the Walton kids took over and went big.

[Ladysforest]

Thank you. Have you heard of these people? https://heritageharvestseed.com