Gardening Questions

Factual Questions
121

I may have solved the cat problem without bloodshed. I took sticks about 8 inches long and sunk them into the garden between the plants. I reasoned that I wouldn’t want to sit on a toilet with sharp pointy things in it stabbing at my buttocks and assumed Cat would feel the same.

So far, it seems to have worked. I found a non-spiked area pooed in, but not the garden area.

Meanwhile, I broke up another 9 square feet of sod, expanding the garden, While wrestling with stubborn roots and muttering to myself that I hoped the vegetables thrived as well as these dandelion it suddenly hit me:

Dandelions are EDIBLE!

First harvest of 2008 is a 5 gallon bucket of dandelion greens. Now on tomorrow’s to-do list is procurement of cheesecloth to aid in prepping this abundance for freezing.

Meanwhile, the spinach, radishes, and turnips seem to be progressing. Three beets survived from the first planting of four (I’m the only one who eats beets, other than the green part, so I didn’t plant much). I thought we lost the onions entirely but I found them today. I think our bouts of cold weather may have inhibited their germination but they are here. The second planting is starting to peep above the ground, although I fear I lost all of the second spinach planting to Cat’s latrine habits. Third planting of all that went in today, and I’m now out of spinach seeds.

I had contemplated putting in the beans, peppers, and so on, but we’ve had one light snowfall and yet another light freeze since I started and I think it may still be just a bit early for the plants that aren’t cold-tolerant.

122

Erm…Not to rain on yer parade or anything, but…dandelions IMO taste really bad. Taste some before you happily blanch and freeze a metric ton of 'em, thinking you’ve socked away food for the winter. 'Cause you may not have.

It’s possible to eat dandelions IF:

  1. You pick them right after they’ve emerged in the spring, while they’re still itty-bitty. And…

  2. You blanch them in multiple waters, and even then resign yourself to them being interestingly bitter.

YMMV, of course, and I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that will disagree with me. But personally, I found dandelions vastly overrated as edible.

ETA: the best rule of thumb–actually a rule of bottom–that I ever found for “when to plant Warmies like peppers, corn, and beans” is, “Plant them when the soil is warm enough for you to be comfortable sitting on it bare-bottom.” Worked for me. (Not that I ever actually, you know, dropped trou and checked. But you can use your hand to feel.)

Around these h’yar parts, that’s generally not until the middle of May, so yeah, I’d expect you, 200 miles further north, to be way ahead of the schedule if you’re hoping to get your peppers out this weekend. I’d say, “Nuh-uh.”

123

I’ve been eating dandelions for years. Trust me, I know what I have.

Check. Specifically, pick the leaves before the plants bloom.

I normally mix them in with other, sweeter greens. You wouldn’t eat a spoonful of straight black pepper, either, but most people like it in small amounts.

For that matter, I eat radish greens and parsley in large quantities, and both of those are known for strong taste, too (radish for being “peppery”/hot and parsley is also bitter in large quantities.

Yeah, I know that. Mid-May at earliest, and not entirely safe until Memorial Day. I’m just anxious to get going, hence my venting of frustration by ripping up sod for more garden space.

124

Well, chacun a son gout, baby. :smiley:

I thought perhaps you were one of these garden n00bs who reads Euell Gibbons cover to cover, then rushes out and starts stowing random weeds in the deep freeze. [snerk]

125

I haven’t mentioned this to you before, but I’m sure you’d like them. Nasturtiums are a peppery plant you can eat the leaves and flowers. The ones I planted in wet spots actual had leaf stems a couple feet long and 6 inch leaves. that is larger than any I’d ever grown and I didn’t think there was anyway for them to attain that size. They flowered all the time too. I normally have large plants, but they never were that big before. I plant them in the cuke and squash hill to screen the base of the squash from the adult squash bore. It cuts way down on the infestations. I know you’re not grown squash, but the nasturtiums are a nice edible plant. After flowering the flower stem curls down to ground level like a peanut plant so you don’t even see the seed pods unless you look near the base.

126

Bumping this instead of starting a new thread since my questions are gardening related.

I have decided that I would like to plant purslane around my Bird of Paradise in the front yard. I wanted something for ground cover around the BoP so that I can keep the weeds and grass away from it so I don’t have to damage it with my mower or weed-whacker or get down and weed by hand all the time. I like purslane because I think it’s pretty, it usually sticks close to the ground and I recently learned it was edible and very nutritious.

I know it is considered a weed because it can grow fast and cover a lot of ground. I was planning on putting an artificial mulch ring around the BoP to contain the purslane and to keep the grass from encroaching in the area. It is a pretty sunny area but there is a small camphor tree nearby and it does provide some shade when the sun is at it’s highest, however it gets pretty sunny for most of the afternoon when the sun hits the area from another angle. The BoP has survived for years but it has not thrived and has not bloomed for a while. So my main goal is to protect the BoP from weeds and get it healthy so it will bloom again. I don’t want a ground cover around it that will compete and possibly kill it.

So is purslane a good idea for this? Will it get enough sun in this spot or does it need constant sun? I live in Florida, I think it’s zone 11, so the summers get pretty hot so I need something hardy and drought resistant. Do I need to get a special variety of purslane if I want to eat it, too?
Should I get the tree trimmed? It’s much bigger than it was 10 years ago when I bought this place, it was still pretty much a sapling then, so there is more shade than there once was. Could that be another factor with the BoP not blooming? Also the tree is looking like it has a fungus or mold growing on the trunk, I don’t have a picture but it’s greenish and it’s all over the trunk and branches. The tree is still green and growing but I don’t know if this is a problem I need to treat. I really don’t want to kill or remove the tree but I want to keep it from getting as big as the one in the backyard that is humongous and could probably house a family.

127

I’d call the Miami-Dade Extension service.

128

First harvest!

The first batch of radishes came out of the ground today - 8 in total, which is really just about right for my intentions. My husband has decreed the red round bits to be Snack Food, so they’re in a bowl along with some carrot chunks for him to munch on. The greens will be used for dinner tonight (probably augmented with some of my frozen spinach and other greens). The trimmings are going into the compost heap.

I think the spinach is ready, too, but I already have a batch of greens for tonight and it won’t hurt them to grow a couple days more until I’m ready to use them.

So far, the best deterrent for the [expletive deleted] feral cat has been the branches I trim off the rose bushes. It hasn’t stopped all losses, but it HAS slowed it down significantly. Still trying to score a trap.

I have discovered beets do not do well where I planted them. Also, the cat dug up about half of them. Oh, well, live and learn. The onions don’t look so good, either, but there’s time for them to perk up and get growing. I’m very happy with the radishes and spinach, and the turnips look OK, too. At least their tops are doing OK, so I assume the bottoms are, too (I eat both parts, so if all I get is greens and the roots are meh I"m still OK with that)

I plan to turn over the compost pile next week to see what’s cooking. Judging from what was running over and around it that includes lots of worms, centipedes, and pillbugs. I assume this is a good sign, yes?

Debating on whether or not to start planting the beans and peppers today or wait one more week. I am getting more work (although still not as much as I’d like) so I now have to fit the gardening in amongst working. Which is good. But requires some planning.

My gardening gloves, which were about 6 years old, were worn out. Worn out as in there are holes worn through a couple of the leather fingertips. So I bought new ones. Because I found some on sale, and because they were in my size, I bought TWO pairs for the extravagant price of $14 altogether, once pair general leather work gloves, the other are rubberized and intended for working in wet areas and also for weed pulling. Which I do a lot of. Given that I now sell food for a living part of the time I really can’t risk getting my hands torn up working in the garden, so I view them as a good investment all around.

Oh, wait - there are supposed to be actual questions here. OK:

  1. When do I know spinach is “done”? I realize, of course, that there is considerable leeway here, in that you can pretty much eat it from sprouts onwards, but there must be an optimum somewhere. The plants are about 6 inches high.

  2. How often should I turn over the compost heap? I took the cheap way out - there’s no “system” of frames or anything elegant. It’s a heap o’ stuff in the yard turning into compost. That’s it. Obviously, what’s on top is newest. I’m expecting it to “cook” until next year, as the soil I’m currently working with is quite fertile as it is. I’m viewing it as a means of maintaining fertility.

  3. How much grassy stuff should be going into the compost heap? I’m recycling all the kitchen vegetable and fruit waste through the heap, but a lot of it consists of lawn trimmings and pulled up weeds. Is it possible to over do the grass part of this exercise?

129

>bump<

I think this fell off the page before anyone saw my questions

130

I didn’t post because I wanted to give others a chance, and I didn’t want you do feel stalked. I’ve been doing garden stuff.

  1. Pick it any time you want. The more leaves on the plant the more energy it has to put into growth, so never pick off most of the leaves. Pick it before it bolts. Cut the whole plant at the first sign of bolting. You’ll have to figure out what a plant bolting looks like by yourself, and remember for the future.

  2. & 3. A fast high heat compost is one layer high cellulose like fallen leaves. One layer of high nitrogen material like green grass clippings. One layer of top soil. These layers are repeated until a large pile is formed. This large pile is made at one time. It needs frequent turning. For what your doing the proportion doesn’t have to be exact. Remember not to put diseased garden plants or weed seeds into your pile. The pile won’t get hot enough to kill stuff. You should turn the pile when you add the grass clippings. Grass clippings will mold and give off ammonia smell when left in a pile.

131

Yes. The worms and the pillbugs are eating the dead matter and pooping it out beneficially; the centipedes are predators on the pillbugs. Do not mess with them, they bite.

If you don’t have enough “brown” matter for your compost pile (dried leaves, etc.) you can use shredded newspaper. If you don’t own a cheapo Office Depot shredder, you can tear it into strips by hand–the thinner the strips, the faster the newspaper will break down. Do not make the same mistake I did once and toss it in as big 1/8 page chunks–it will take FOREVER to break down. I finally ended up just going ahead and adding the compost, what there was of it, to the garden “as is” and rather crossly pulling out all the big hunks of semi-decomposed newspaper as I went.