The SDMB 2012 Gardening Thread

Cafe Society
1

Haven’t seen any others yet, so I’ll start.

Last fall, thanks to my lawn-service business, I was able to cover all my garden plot about 3-4 inches deep in grass and leaf mulch. This was a great thing, as now I just have to uncover the part I want to use for planting, sprinkle on some compost, and put the seeds in. I realize obtaining that much mulch is not always practical for people, but it sure worked for me.

About the compost - I’m a very lazy composter. I just dump stuff (kitchen trimmings, lawn trimmings, etc.) in a big pile for a couple months, then leave it for a couple months. shovel off the top six inches and underneath is pure black gold. Cracked open my oldest pile and I’ve gotten the usual 4 or so cubic feet of cheap, recycled plant food.

I attempted to winter over some excess turnips, beets, onions, and carrots by covering them. The turnips did extremely well, the beets were half-eaten by fungus of some sort, one onion survived (half of which went into today’s tuna salad for lunch) and no sign of the carrots. Oh, and nearly all of my kale plants survived and a couple chard. So even before I planted anything my garden has been producing this year. I am impressed. Also, a little freaked out. I can’t ever remember this mild a winter in my part of Indiana. It is very atypical, like the climate bands all moved north a couple hundred miles.

The daffodils are all up, I think the tulips are starting to appear, and at least one of the lilies a friend gave me last fall seems to have taken. The floribunda roses are off and running, although it seems the sickly tea rose has finally succumbed and is gone.

Meanwhile, I’ve planted radishes, lettuce, bok choy, spinach, chard, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts, the latter two being this year’s “new” vegetables for me to try growing. This is a couple weeks earlier than I usually plant, but this spring seems to have sprung so thoroughly I’ll take the chance it’s here to stay. Also, all of the above can tolerate some frost so if we do have a cold snap not all is lost.

I’ve started a third compost heap, as #1 is still being “harvested”, and #2 is still “cooking”. I’ll also need somewhere to put all this used mulch (some of it is going down between the plant rows, but I’ll soon be getting more lawn clippings)

Next up for planting will be the carrots and parsley, both of which seem to take forever to come up. Also planning on some basil. I’m holding off on the warm weather crops like beans, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, and the corn for awhile, it’s still not reliably warm for those yet. As our summer seems like it will be long, and likely hot, I might try bell peppers again.

Also this year I am making honest-to-god trellises for the beans, squash, and cukes with some surplus lumber and probably rabbit wire (as I can now afford to put some money into the garden), which will also help delineate the garden borders and I’ll no longer have to rely on the neighbor’s falling-down chain link fence for support. Also, it will allow me to move the beans to another location.

What’s everyone else doing?

2

I am definitely not a gardener, but I have been cutting the old stalks on the Autumn Joy sedum, and trying to cut the old stalks/branches on the hydrangeas. I know I like seeing the old flower heads in the winter, bt every spring I say to myself, “Why didn’t you do this in the fall!”

I need to get something for the azaleas; they look rather sickly. I love them, but I put them in a small strip between the house and the driveway. They bloom every year, but they are neither growing nor thriving. I would move them but I don’t know where.

3

The azelas might just need some food - try some fertilizer, compost, whatever.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the onions - I started a row of onions this week. Maybe I’m doing too much, if I can’t remember it all? Naw…

4

I’m not much of a gardener either, but I do try to keep some plants and flowers growing so the yard doesn’t look too plain. I go mainly for low-maintenance perennials.

I just put some southern wood fern in the ground the other day, beneath a big cedar tree. And I bought some clematis roots that I’m going to try to grow along my chain-link fence. I’ve got a clematis that I planted last year that is growing quickly up a trellis on my back porch.

We’ve had a very mild winter, so things started sprouting out much earlier this year than usual. I’ve got a flowerbed full of Katie’s Ruellia (aka ‘dwarf Mexican petunia’) that grows back from the roots every year (and also seeds itself like crazy) and blooms all spring and summer long. My flowering quince shrub was in full bloom a few weeks ago. It was here when I bought the place and I love it.

The honeysuckle on my back fence line appears to have died–it probably didn’t get enough water last year. I need to replace it with either another vine or some medium shrubs to act as a screen.

5

It’s been such a non-winter, plus the place where I usually start my seeds is now all about the jewelry making had me itching to do something.

The bed that usually holds garlic for harvesting in early summer did not have any garlic in it because I never got around to planting them last fall. Instead it held a whole lotta dried up weeds. Last week I put in a cold crop of lettuce, onion, radishes and spinach. Since it is just me and I’m old and decrepit, it took more than a day to pull up, turn over, cover with compost from the bin, and mix it up. Then last Sunday my son helped with the actual planting and laying of the landscape fabric so it doesn’t end up a big ass bed of weeds again.

Before.

During

Today.

The Winter That Wasn’t has confused my perennials. This is gardening which my garden has done all by itself. I have two more days to add pictures to that billboard.

6

If you know someone who keeps chickens, you can borrow them to speed up your compost activity. We got some last year, and between the shredding, aeration, and addition of nitrogen, they’ll turn leaves and wood chips into really nice topsoil faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Or you can save some of the stuff you would put in the pile and sell or give it to people who keep them, or trade it for eggs. Chickens lurve kitchen scraps and grass clippings. You could even dry some of the clippings and sell it for winter greens.

So far this year we’ve reworked the chicken fence to keep them from sneaking over the patio walls and demolishing the herb pots, started terracing steps into the hill leading up to the coop (the bare path the dogs and I wore was downright treacherous during the fall and winter), and shoveled a metric butt-load of chicken compost onto the garden. We have plans to build a couple of raised beds, but those are a little way down the road.

We got some peas, chard, and carrots out, and I’m going to put out some beets tomorrow. Indoors we started a few cukes, several varieties of tomatoes, several varieties of hot peppers (our bell peppers never set fruit worth a crap, so we’ve given up on them), three or four types of basil, a little rosemary, and some parsley. Tonight I’m going to start some nasturtiums, wormwood, and borage. Later in the season we’ll put out beans both in the garden and along the chicken fence.

Oh, and I forgot all about the garlic I planted last fall. It was up almost a month ago.

7

You plant garlic in the fall? Can someone give me a quick run down on that? (Yes, I plan months ahead)

8

I’m in NYC and I plant as late as I can. The garlic will sometimes sprout before winter sets in. No matter. In fact, I think they like the cold. They get harvested late spring, early summer-- depends on how late I put them in-- when their stalks are brown about 2/3rds up.

I have purchased especially for growing bulbs from Burpees but I do not see any difference between them and store bought garlic in the end product. Well, except for the 50X mark up. I have been told that the store bought (for cooking) garlic bulbs are susceptible to disease but I haven’t run into that yet.

Not like any squash I ever try to grow. Three years I tried with squash and three years I got nice plants with plenty blossoms and then one day. . . dead. They seem to just shrivel up and die in, like two days flat.

9

I’m so jealous! I have a teeny tiny garden that consists of a flowerbed. The daffies are happily dilling and the tulips are already coming up (it’s been very mild).

I was just putting some little shrubs at the back, when I saw little baby rhubarb bravely poking up. I know I planted a huuge box of mixed herbs right next to the rhubarb, so I was confused because I hadn’t found it & nothing seemed to be coming up. So I looked around a little, poking here and there. And… it’s gone. Disappeared. :eek:

It’s the kind you buy in a cardboard box that you put in in its entirety. It was pretty big too. I’m so confused…

10

Ah, after reading around a bit I see that some commercially grown garlic is treated with sprout inhibitors so that the garlic can store longer. For sure that’s not the case with my grocery garlic. This is because a lot of our veggies are grown right here on Long Island-- locally grown is a thing around here. So the garlic goes from the ground into somebody’s mouth pretty quickly, no need to inhibit sprouting.

That is all a guess from me, btw. Pulled right out of that fertilizer maker at the end of my colon.

11

It’s way too early to plant anything in the ground here, but I’ve got dozens of wee little pansy seedlings inside. I’ve never successfully grown pansies from seed all the way to flowering, but this winter I read that it’s best to start them inside 12-16 weeks ahead of time (since they took nearly 3 weeks to sprout, I can see why this might be wise), so I thought I’d give that a shot this year.

Does anyone know where you’re supposed to plant sunflower seeds in zone 5 (5b, specifically according to the new zone maps)? I’m pretty allergic to sunflowers if they’re inside so I have had nothing to do with them, but if I plant some way away from the house, maybe I’ll end up with seeds for the birds in the fall.

12

Sunflowers are usually sowed directly into the ground because they do not transfer well due to their shallow roots. That being said, Isuccessfully transplanted a Giant two years ago. it towered over the ones I directly sowed.

You can plant sunflower seeds just as soon as the threat of frost has passed. On line charts say last frost date for zone 5 is April 15th.

13

It’s pretty straightforward. You either buy seed garlic or bust apart a nice head of cooking garlic, pick out the nice fat cloves, and plant each one about a finger deep and about a spread hand’s width apart. Standard recommendation is to do it about 3 weeks before your ground usually freezes, so that the cloves put down good roots but don’t sprout enough to break ground before it gets truly cold. Then in early spring, about the time the wild onions start coming back up, you see the little green sprouts coming up. Then you dig them up in the summer and set them to dry for storage.

This is our first year trying garlic, so I don’t know how well it will ultimately do. The wild onions grow like a sumbitch here, so I’m guessing we should get a decent crop. I used some heads we had gotten from these fine folks at the farmer’s market because, well, I didn’t think about getting seed garlic till everybody was sold out. Standard wisdom is plant it in October here, but that’s always an insane month for us, so I put it out around mid-November (which is when Blue Moon puts theirs out, because their Octobers are just as crazy.)

14

Any southwest container gardening tips? I live near Las Vegas, my patio gets morning sun until about 11 am then is shaded. Last year, I tried patio tomatoes (fail), cherry peppers (win but the plant didn’t make it through the winter), strawberries (alive, no fruit yet- planted early fall so didn’t expect any), jalapeno peppers (win!! and it’s alive!!) and mint (struggling but seems to be happier then it was). Plus a succulent dish garden that is doing fantastic so far. Have a Basil plant inside next to a window that is green but doesn’t really grow enough to use (move it outside?)

I’d like to try tomatoes again but probably cherry tomatoes since I prefer those anyways. I’d like to make chili verde, counting on the jalapenos and so will need some anaheims. I’ve been using a lot of thyme lately and so I’d like to give that a go.

I don’t have any direct questions except I don’t really “get” when to feed/fertilize my plants. When do you do that?

15

Dunno about the rest of it, but you could totally move your basil outside. It’s a Mediterranean weed, it thrives in the heat and sun. You’ll want to put it in at least a 14" container and give it plenty of water–maybe use some of those water-retention crystals in your soil. And harvest it heavily, that will stimulate growth. Our potted basils are in a brick courtyard that gets afternoon sun in Ky, and they grow to respectable bushes, yours should be a freaking tree.

16

Thanks, will do!

17

I’ve finally decided to put in a raised bed this year. I priced the materials today. While I was there (Lowes), I bought 2 black pottery planters and 2 red geraniums, for the front porch.

I’m using these instructions for the bed. I have no idea if those are good ones or not. Not only is it my first bed, everyone I know just plants directly in the ground. So any advice would be apreciated.

18

I spent all weekend, and most of the last one, digging out the St. Augustine sod so I can till in and plant a few things: about a half-dozen tomatoes, four or five peppers, and some chives. I also planted beans and stuck some branches into the ground to guide them towards the ugly-ass chain link fence I want to cover. Set out seeds for alyssum, gaillardia, sunflowers, zinnias, and I forget what-all else.

I can barely walk today, but that’s Ok. I have a desk job, and maybe we’ll get some home-grown 'maters this summer.

19

That’s almost how we made our raised beds. Except for the PVC pipe and the stuff that goes into strapping it down. Is that for drainage or will the bed come with its own watering system?

20

So last week I went to turn Compost Pile #2 over onto Compost Pile #1, since they’re both done and I need an empty bin to work with this year. Seems something took root in there, and LOVED the soil. What a giant pain in the ass! Quick question: How much soil nutrition did I lose to the giant root ball that networked throughout the pile?

Also, I need to split and transplant hastas from one area to another. When is the best time to do this?