Gardening questions

For thinning seedlings and shaping thin stemmed plants like thyme or basil a sharp narrow bladed pointed scissors is great. You can cut off seedlings that are right next to ones you want undisturbed. be sure to thin out your seedlings when needed or you’ll have small spindly plants.

Plastic tarps, boards and blocks are the way to kill off large areas of ground you want dead, without having to use an herbicide. During the summer this can even kill seeds in the soil if done correctly.

Plant all mints in a barrier that has no break in it’s wall and goes at least a foot deep into the ground. Each spring remove the root ball from the container. Cut off a 4 to 6 inch diameter plug from the root mass, and plant it back in the contained area. Throw the mint root mass into a trash can so it doesn’t grow where you don’t want it.

That rose is likely root stock so just get rid of it and buy one you like.

Winter prep is researching all the varieties in catalogs.

Some suggestions:

Don’t start seed too early (a common mistake among even more experienced gardeners who get cabin fever); seedlings will be spindly and unhealthy without good light; warm conditions indoors also promote gangly growth). You can try a couple things from seed (such as tomatoes and peppers) if you have a window with southern exposure or a couple of shop lights; tomatoes and peppers are best sown no more than 6 weeks before the safe set-out date.

The recommendation to start small is good. An oversized plot with weeds that get ahead of you is a good way to kill interest in gardening. One thing I’d definitely plan on is working organic material into the soil to improve texture for optimum root growth and drainage. Reading up on that is recommended.

You can grow corn in a fairly small area if you plant in blocks and not a long row. I had a nice little crop in a ten by three foot area last year.

Tomatoes, peppers and squash are especially rewarding crops for new vegetable gardeners - you’re bound to get a good yield (with squash, maybe too good). Melons tend to take up a lot of room and you need full sun; unless you’re crazy about watermelon it may not be the best use of your resources. Eggplant is susceptible to pests like flea beetles and can also be more trouble than it’s worth. One kale variety to look up is Redbor (beautiful purple plants that I’ve grown as an ornamental).
Consider a simple wire fence if there are pests like rabbits and woodchucks in the area.

In this thread I put in links for many reputable mail order seed companies. You can browse online or have them mail you a catalog. I don’t ask for the catalogs any longer and just search online.

Maybe I’ll have lots of refreshing mint juleps to cool me down while I’m out there weeding in the hot sun. :smiley:

Karyn, did you have to get rid of a lot of the plants? I’d hate to lose the rose bushes, but they’re sooo scraggly.

Thinning means getting rid of the unhealthy plants, right?

What’s “root stock”? My mother in law was adamant that I try to save most of the roses, she said they’ve probably been there for a long time because the blooms are fragrant and that new roses won’t be. Not true? I also like that they’re hardy enough to come back from being cut down to stumps, harder for a newbie to kill. I always thought of roses as finicky plants.

Checking out your seed link now!

Are safe set-out dates printed on the back of seed packages?

Sorry for the double post, should have previewed!

I’m not Dinsdale, but allow me to suggest a possible solution:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you theFiskars Weed Puller, the super-duper, fancy-shmancy, Cadillac of dandelion-removing doohickeys.

It works best if the soil is moderately moist (like a day or so after the lawn has gotten a good watering), but I’ve managed to yank out some dandelions with roots so long they were probably poking out someplace in China. Easier on the back and the knees too.

Mint’s great for mojitos, too. :slight_smile: (we have an out-of-control mint patch… I’ve given up trying to control it so long as it agrees to keep out of the lawn)

Put simply, just about every rose you’ll find these days has a cultivar grafted onto hardy root stock. If you look closely, you can see the graft. Trim it down too far, and all that’s left is the root stock.

The root stock might still flower, but will likely resemble a wild or heirloom rose, with sparser, less complex blooms.

Most of what I had to rip out were 10’ cacti that covered an entire area of the front of the property. Some tenants in the 90s had decided to plant every psychedelic thing that they could think of and got busted for growing mushrooms in the basement, and the property was covered in all sorts of things that could supposedly get you high. At least the morning glories and salvia are pretty now that I’ve reigned them in a bit. There were about 15 rosebushes here that were covered in mildew but after cutting them all back hard I only ended up ripping out 3 of them. Mostly I had to thin things out and rescue what was buried in weeds. There’s a jungle of canna lillies that grow to be 15 feet tall and you could barely get through it. They don’t die back on their own here and no one had cut them back in 20 years. Underneath another field of weeds was a beautiful carpet of St. John’s Wort. There was a small succulent garden buried under the weeds too and some pineapple sage was taking over but has beautiful scarlet flowers. All in all there is about 3/4 of an acre in separate garden areas, borders and beds and I found little treasures all over the place.

One day an older couple showed up at the gate and told us that they were the original owners who had planted all of the gardens and had heard from a neighbor that I had restored them and hoped that I would let them see it. She was so happy to see it turned back into gardens that she was in tears. She has an open invitation to come visit for coffee and wander around whenever she wants to. I love it.

ETA: I forgot the chinese forget-me-nots. They’re everywhere here but they’re pretty so I just try to keep them from taking over the flowerbeds. The only downside is that the seeds stick to everything.

Not much to add to the general gardening advice, but a note about corn: it can self-pollinate and I have in the past grown a single stalk of corn and had it produce ears just fine. If you just want to grow a few stalks for the fun of it, and not feed the neighborhood, they’ll probably grow just fine. You don’t need to grow some minimum-sized patch. I’ve been hearing that you do my whole life but it ain’t true.

Okay, another note. I you want to grow peppers from seed, start early! Earlier than most plants. Two months earlier if you can. The seeds can be finicky. Some might pop right up, some might be shy for two-three months. IMHE, February is not too early to start peppers indoors, assuming you’ve got a warm sunny spot for the seedlings.

Example for thinning:

  1. You plant one seed every inch like the packet tells you. They have you plant extras to account for bad seeds and damaged seedlings.

  2. The plants are to be spaced 3 inches apart when growing healthy plants.

  3. You remove extra seedlings when they reach a certain size to achieve the proper spacing for plants to grow. This is thinning. You should keep the healthiest seedling if you have a choice between two seedlings.

Root Stock:
Rose root stock is a hardy less desirable rose that nurseries graft desirable roses to that they wish to multiple for sale… The less hardy grafted rose often dies and the plant sprouting from the ground is the less desirable variety.

I see you say they flowered nicely last year so they are not the root stock left after grafted ones were cut off by a mower.

Find out which USDA hardiness zone you’re in. (Some gardening catalogs will include this information for you.) If something isn’t hardy to at least one zone below yours, it probably won’t survive the winter. You can still grow it, but only as an annual in the warmer months. We do that with basil.