Gardening: 2015-2016

[Martin Fisher]

1 hour ago, Paul Bacino said:

Shishito peppers...

What do I need to do for the seeds.. to start growing them ?

 

 

 

First, are the fruits fully ripe?

If they're not, you're likely flirting with frustration. 

Seeds from immature chiles tend to lack vigor and germinate poorly, if at all.

 

Second, optimum soil temperature (touching the seed) for chile germination is between 80° and 85°.

So be mindful of evaporative cooling which can lower the soil temperature in the seed zone.

 

Both are common issues that can lead to headaches or failure when starting chile seeds.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2016 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

[Paul Bacino]

Double D --  no they are green and young..I can see the problem

 

Thanks!!  Doc

[kayb]

Well, it's begun.

 

Today I bought tomato plants, and herbs, and seeds for yellow squash, zucchini, pole beans and cucumbers, along with the plants for my annual herb garden. Yesterday, I'd gotten the garden plots tilled up, so I was anxious to get moving.

 

I was stymied by the fact Lowe's is out of manure-based compost, so I will likely delay the planting of seeds and tomatoes a day or two, to let them get some in or let me get some elsewhere. I have to go in search of tarragon, anyway; had problems finding that last year, too. But at least the herbs are in, and the front flower bed is ready for the squashes and cucumbers (hey, I'm calling it ground cover and letting it go; besides, if it's good enough in Japan, it's good enough here). I'm late enough as it is it won't hurt to be a little later.

 

I'm hoping the pole beans do well. I hadn't planned on them, but they had Kentucky Wonder seeds, and I just had to. If this year goes well, I may expand things next year.

 

 

Garden plot 1, with another just to the left of it.

 

Front flower bed, aka squash  and cucumber bed.

 

Herb garden, planted. Basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro, parsley, sage; mint, chives and rosemary overwintered/reseeded from last year. Waiting on tarragon.

 

 

Tomatoes awaiting planting. Better Boys and Fuji hybrids; Bradley heirlooms; two kinds of cherry tomatoes, red and yellow; and Romas.

 

[Tere]

I am amazed at how far on your stuff is!

 

I am planning to plant out some seeds this week, so they can take their chances while I am away on holiday. I can always sow more when I get back.

[HungryChris]

16 hours ago, Paul Bacino said:

Quick question..  Just bought some fresh Shishito peppers,,

 

What do I need to do for the seeds.. to start growing them ?

I have found with most peppers, Shishito included, that one of those heating pads for seed starting makes a big difference in their viability.

HC

[Wayne]

We've had some real spring weather for the first time this season and things are moving along:

One of the garlic beds:

 

Asparagus just starting to poke through:

 

Chives coming up:

 

Time to get lettuces, beets, peas, kale, collards, spring radishes and onion sets in.

 

 

[Okanagancook]

Pictures of the greenhouse with my tomato seedling, basil, lettuce, zucs, cucs, and some blackberry plants for our neighbours.  They are little runners off our plants.  $16 each at the local garden store.  The vineyards are waking up.  The earliest bud break EVER according to our local farmers.  Feels like May long weekend.  Going to 29 degrees F today.  I was also told to mix up some miracle grow and spray it on our seedlings a couple of times a week to help them grow.  So, we'll see how that works.

[Okanagancook]

Pictures of my square foot gardening plot.  The onions are doing well are my lettuces.  Potatoes were planted this week.  Should be picking some arugula next week.  The humming birds are here too.

[rotuts]

the are of course lots of things id like in this life  .....

 

but at the very top would be a greenhouse.   not necessarily so big, but w good insulation and excellent  light.

 

and a bit better back to enjoy its fruits.

 

back in the day  I used to pick up 200 - 300  'leaf- bags' from my neighbors each year and compost.

 

some asked about this and i told them it was far more effective and cheaper than psychoanalysis  

 

eventually some just brought the bags around and reused the bags.  guess they wanted some of those bennies for themselves.

 

I still have a large troy-built tiller and a small mantis.  loved it.  My cats used to wait for the final tilling to finish  to make immediate use of the

 

freshly tilled soil.  eventually I had at least 2 feet of home made top soil.  over the years.

Edited April 19, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[Tere]

Planted some oka that I snaffled from the community garden when digging last week, since we've decided we like the flavour. Also planted a very leggy sage nice and deep so it bushes out and is less leggy. Need to pick it more!

 

I am going on holiday on Thursday (safari to Botswana and Zambia, I may travelblog the food in the camps if it's interesting enough) so having dealt with planting the numerous things I had in pots I need to plant All The Things in the veg and cut flower beds beforehand. They will have to take their chances on a late frost. I have plenty of seeds if they don't take.

 

Also weeded my new asparagus bed, as well as raking and sowing the bare patch where the soil was brought in for the beds with grass seed. The shoots on the asparagus are just starting to show. All the fruit trees and stuff in the fruit cage are showing signs of life now.

 

Also $16 for blackberry cuttings? *faints* I, of course, could have all the wild ones in the world and get more than enough from the hedgerow, but even the commercial stuff was 3 for £5 in our local supermarket at the start of the season.

[kayb]

Y'all, don't laugh at my sad little tomato garden.

 

My father, whose gardens were always immaculate, would be horrified. But this garden spot was a Bermuda lawn of some 60 years' tenure, this time last week. It needed to be turned with a turning plow, then disked, then tilled. It got tilled. I pulled out the biggest of the clumps of Bermuda and chunked them over against the fence.

 

As I am newly back in the gardening business after many years, my collection of garden tools is minimal; a hand fork/mattock and a hand spade, both of which I've used for planting herbs in pots, and a cheap hoe I bought Sunday at Lowe's. So the planting of the tomatoes was accomplished by me sitting on the wet ground (we had had a light rain this morning and are supposed to have more tonight) breaking up clods and working in compost with a hand fork, and carefully planting and hilling up around each tomato plant by hand. I have 2 each of 2 different hybrids; about 8 Bradley heirlooms; a yellow cherry tomato, a red grape tomato, and eight Romas in this bed and the one next to it. 

 

A friend who no longer gardens offered to let me pillage her shed for hand tools I needed. Be assured I'll be doing so. Growing up with them, I didn't think about how hard it is to garden without them.

 

Next to come: cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini and pole beans. The pole beans need to wait until it's a bit warmer. I ran out of time and energy to plant the squash and cucumbers.

[Tere]

I feel for you - much of my land is compacted clay loam with couch grass in it, so digging it is hard hard work. It's a luxury to go to the community garden and be able to dig so easily. We harvested kale and salad greens for the community shop and planted early and maincrop potatoes today. The "course" leader (it's structured as a course for some arcane funding reason) is into her biodynamics. Apparently it's a root day today. So there you go. I reckon it's probably all a lot of woo

[ElainaA]

I don't have to deal with clay but our so called soil is largely rock. After 25 years of adding huge amounts of compost and manure, the level of my garden is at least 6-8" below the surrounding area due to the amount of rocks i have pulled out. If I had had the forethought - and skill - I probably could have saved them and built a lovely stone garden shed. 

 

I spent today digging out my compost heap and carting it into the garden. It's ready for tilling - however the weather people are predicting rain for the next few days so I am not sure when it will actually happen. It also depends on the work schedule of my neighbor with the rototiller. All the locals who advertise tilling services use tractor mounted tillers - which will are much to large for my garden, which is fenced. They wouldn't be able to turn around even if they could get through the gate. When I hit 65, several years ago, I decided I was through digging it by hand. It's so much easier to watch someone else with a machine. 

 

My husband and a friend spent Sunday working on the new greenhouse. If the weather permits, we hope to finish it next weekend. !!!!!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

9 hours ago, ElainaA said:

I don't have to deal with clay but our so called soil is largely rock.

 

Man, oh man, ElainaA, I sure know what you're talking about when you say rocky soil. There were stone fences and structures all over the place. We once salvaged some large fieldstone from an old barn basement down the road from us and built a rock fence along both sides of the driveway. Ours was mortared, unlike the traditional old farm fences which were just expertly fitted together without mortar, and stood for many years. As far as I know, some are still standing.

 

I lived about 5 or 6 hours away from where you live now in Jericho Vt. My dad was a real Type A, and built a wooden frame out of two by fours with four legs and a gently

inclined top that had a sturdy wire mesh screen that had about 1/2" open squares between the wires. I dug the dirt with a spade (hardest job), my younger sister used the back of a garden garden rake to sift the soil back into the garden plot and roll the rocks down into a wheelbarrow at the lower end of the frame. My younger brother would empty the wheelbarrow of rock when it got full. This was the easiest job because he stood around watching the rest of us sweat most of the time. It was the most rock-free garden in the glacial rock drop area of New England, probably, and made me swear that I would never garden again after I escaped. I have had other gardens anyway, but never worked as hard. 

[Martin Fisher]

My grandfather used to say, "There isn't a single rock on this farm—they're all married and have big families." 

[dcarch]

58 minutes ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

My grandfather used to say, "There isn't a single rock on this farm—they're all married and have big families." 

 

Your Grandfather rocks.

 

dcarch

[Okanagancook]

We are on moraine outcroppings too.  When we dug the garden square pictured above we dug down about three feet getting all the rocks out.  (Our whole 1.7 acres property perimeter is lined with rocks that were taken out of the garden and lawn area.  Sheesh.) We had to add a lot of top soil to get the soil level in the boxes to a decent level.  Ten years later after loads of compost additions, the soil is really, really good.  I do fertilize every two weeks during the growing season because things really move along here quickly.  

 

My second planting of arugula is poking up and the stuff I planted in late February is almost ready to harvest.  It was 30 degrees yesterday and today will be hot as well then we are in for some wet/cooler weather.  Yesterday the buds on the grape vines must have grown two inches!

[KennethT]

Please cross your fingers for me....  after 4+ weeks, my sawtooth coriander finally sprouted and is in my bucket nursery!  Unfortunately, my daylight CFL died in the middle of the night last night, but I think it'll do fine in the ambient light for a few hours until I can pick up another one.

Edited April 23, 2016 by KennethT (log)

[Deryn]

Here, only a few days after the last snow, the grass is greening finally (here comes mowing season!). The only other thing stirring in the garden so far though is the rhubarb. Its rosy 'blossoms' are emerging quickly. I am leaving here in a day or two to go down south (where the guy who mows for me tells me he has already done my yard 6 times!) so I won't even get to harvest any spring rhubarb this year. It will get cut down when I get back and will probably produce another fall crop however.

 

On this trip south, if there is any way to cram my tiller into the truck (other things have a higher priority though and it is a bit bulky/awkward to fold around the other junk in the trunk) I will. So many things I want to plant but this being away spring and fall at the best times for working in the garden have really put the kibosh on that to date. Till I get to stay here year round, I am living vicariously through everyone else's glorious garden achievements .. so thank you all.  

[lesliec]

I collected the first feijoas of the season today:

 

 

If you're not familiar with these guys, they're a Brazillian native (Acca sellowiana, sometimes called pineapple guava), which New Zealand has adopted as its own.  Many suburban gardens have a tree, or a hedge, and now the season has started we'll see them everywhere.  They're in the supermarkets too, but with the number of trees around and the subsequent dumping of people's excess in various workplaces, I don't know who'd really need to buy them.

 

We have two trees.  One is generally a little earlier and produces larger fruit - no doubt due to being fertilised, the previous owner of the house informed me, with his daughter's placenta!

 

They're very perfumed, and the flesh is slightly gritty - like pears can be, but more so.  They're good raw (everything's edible, skin and all), but our favourite is a feijoa and apple pie.  This year's first (of many) is just about to go into the oven:

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

14 hours ago, Deryn said:

Here, only a few days after the last snow, the grass is greening finally (here comes mowing season!). The only other thing stirring in the garden so far though is the rhubarb. Its rosy 'blossoms' are emerging quickly. I am leaving here in a day or two to go down south (where the guy who mows for me tells me he has already done my yard 6 times!) so I won't even get to harvest any spring rhubarb this year. It will get cut down when I get back and will probably produce another fall crop however.

 

On this trip south, if there is any way to cram my tiller into the truck (other things have a higher priority though and it is a bit bulky/awkward to fold around the other junk in the trunk) I will. So many things I want to plant but this being away spring and fall at the best times for working in the garden have really put the kibosh on that to date. Till I get to stay here year round, I am living vicariously through everyone else's glorious garden achievements .. so thank you all.  

 

Deryn,

 

Do any of your neighbors have an interest in your rhubarb so it doesn't go to waste? I sure would if I lived near you. It could be a way to get to know them better, and perhaps get food discussions going. It's always a good thing to know your neighbors.

 

A neighbor of mine, actually about a fifteen minute walk round trip, let's me take rosemary from her massive shrub because she has way more than she can use. I really appreciate it. Rosemary I can get in the store is just sad in comparison, expensive, and sold in quantities I can't use without waste.

[Deryn]

Along this particular road, everyone who likes rhubarb has a patch. Most of us spend spring trying to enlist 'takers' but there are few.

 

These rhubarb plants are possibly over 100 years old and descend from plants in Britain. They were brought over from there I am told for the houses (like mine) that were built around 1900 or so for the British engineers who built and manned the Commercial Cable company here - an early communication link between North America and Europe. A bit of home for the English away from home for years at a time.

 

I have only 4 distinct plants but they are huge. I was going to give at least part of one to a Jamaican lady who works where I shop in Antigonish (and who owns a small farm on Cape Breton Island) but now is probably the best time to do it and with me leaving, we were just unable to coordinate a meet up this spring. But believe me I have told anyone and everyone whether I know them or not to please just drop by and plunder the patch if they want to. Down the road a mile in the town proper, people don't have rhubarb plants at all but they also don't seem much interested in rhubarb either. Can't win .. those who like it, have their own and those who don't, won't take it.

 

Interestingly, my house (like the several others still remaining) was a 'kit house' designed for the Azores and erroneously delivered here. It is not a small house (4 bedroom - now 5 - foursquare design), 2 storeys. I can imagine that shipping was not cheap even back then. I am told the house came with a flat roof (and now has a very high hat one) because the weather in the Azores is quite unlike that of this windy cool coast in Canada. Quite the difference in climate but since the housing was needed and the foundations - HUGE pieces of granite stone - were already laid, they were not returned but were put together and adapted to this climate.

 

I had what ended up as a wonderful rosemary 'almost' tree in my yard in NC. I grew it from a 'Christmas' pruned rosemary plant (cut to look like a Christmas tree and marketed as 'temporary' decorations - but I stuck it in the ground down there and it grew and grew and got beautiful woody stems which I used for barbequing chicken and other meats - as the skewer). I put some in here but though it is certainly a windy rocky area (which Mediterranean herbs profess to love), and the winters are not usually dreadfully cold (well below zero at times mind you) even with protection I still haven't managed to get a plant through one. You are correct - the rosemary one buys in a store is weak and insipid compared to that picked from an 'adapted native' bush.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Deryn (log)

[shain]

 

@lesliec Our tree is only just flowering. Never liked the fruits much, to be honest...
I never tried cooking with it, I sure will try to bake with the fruits once it will ripen. Perhaps a feijoa crumble.

[ElainaA]

I have a greenhouse! We bought the kit last fall and spent all this weekend putting it up. The directions say 2 people = 2 hours. To which I say HA! Maybe Superman and Wonder Woman but not Barney and I. It is the cheapest kit on the market and kind of looks it but I have a friend who has had one up for 3 years and it is still in perfect shape. It is, I think, more properly called a hoop house since it has no heat and no lights. I have parts to extend the drip irrigation system, using individual emitters for each plant, into the structure. I've never gardened with a green house so it will be a learning experience.  The plan is to use it primarily for tomatoes - partly as some degree of protection from the air-bourne blight that is endemic here. 

 

[Okanagancook]

Nice 'hoop house'!  You'll have fun with it.  

Is Superman still talking to Wonder Woman after all that assembly?