Anyone have any luck with eggplant? I’d love to harvest some, but everything I read emphasizes how tempermental the plants are.
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I just now noticed Broomstick’s 2013 gardening thread.
Perhaps a thread merge is in order.
Mods notified.
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You got it.
I had spotty results before last summer, when the harvest was very good.
One key is to make sure you spray the plants regularly (especially when they’re young) to control the worst pest (flea beetles, which chew a ton of tiny holes in the leaves and can easily debilitate or kill transplants). I use Neem or Neem/horticultural soap mix. Beyond that, if you provide sun and decent soil and keep up with watering during dry spells, there’s no great trick to raising eggplant.
I have several heirloom varieties going this year, including Rosa Bianca which is terrific-tasting and doesn’t need to be peeled (some varieties have tough or bitter skin).
As I’ve said before, all my squash-type plants take off amazingly and then die very suddenly after they’ve flowered but before they’ve set fruit. My problem has been diagnosed as squash borers. They live in my soil and I can just forget about squash.
Today I put in my hybrid corn made for pots and small spaces. I am excitedly anticipating delicious fresh grilled corn in August.
I have planted some pots. Some have seeds (marigolds and zinnias), some seedlings bought from Home Depot (begonia, Gereba daisies and something I’m not quite sure about) and a very special pot with columbine seeds I put in yesterday. Columbines are slow starting little MFers and I won’t know if these old seeds have taken for 30 days. That’s a long time to wait for seedlings. And then I’ve got to wait until NEXT summer for a flower. But they are sure worth the wait.
Also, my tulips keep delivering. Man, they’re gorgeous this time of year. The Bleeding Hearts and Hostos never disappoint. The irises have many, many flower pods and the Asiatic lilies have grown a good foot. I espect flowers soon from them. The established lilies, anyway. The newly planted ones, only time will tell.
Yay!!! Broomstick just very generously sent me MORE MARIGOLD SEEDS THAN HAVE EVER BEEN SEEN TOGETHER AT ANY TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!! Thank you, Broomstick!
I’m always a little bummed that I never seem to get enough marigold seeds out of a packet to make a nice abundant planting along the edge of the garden and fence it off from the grass. But THIS year, whoo boy! 
I’m sowing these babies like salt on movie popcorn and I’ll have enough left over to tuck into some flower borders and maybe some containers too. 
Broomstick, I’m waiting to see if my saved dill seeds from last year sprout properly and if they do I’ll send you a batch of those to return the favor, in addition to whatever I’ve got left over from the packets I ordered. So far that’s some chard and romaine lettuce and creeping thyme, and I should also be getting some interesting flower seeds if Select Seeds ever manages to deliver them—I’ve been waiting over a week now. :dubious:
Today I dug the raised beds (a fancy way of describing a few rather lumpy hogbacks with short trenches in between them, but they do do a pretty good job of keeping the plants drained in my stiff clayey soil) and put in the lettuce and chard, as well as cukes (go cukes! I’m afraid I may have Biggirl’s squash borers because for the past year or so my cukes have suddenly died after vining lavishly but not yet bearing, but I’m going to try once more, so go cukes!) and green beans and edamame. AND all the marigolds, of course. A couple of grape tomato vine seedlings will go in by the fence as soon as I get around to it.
This year’s my first time attempting to grow Swiss chard; I got some of the multicolored stuff so at least it will look pretty even if I don’t eat it as much as I should. (Do chard seeds look like something from another planet or what? They’re these pointy little stellated polyhedra that look as though they might grow into jacks or caltrops or possibly Portal cubes but certainly not leafy greens.)
If you (or anyone else) needs more let me know - I have another two quart jars of seed at home. As I mentioned, I’ve been breeding 'em more for hardiness than anything else but they are prolific. Save seed and reseed next year from it.
Yep, chard seeds look “fake” in a way. You’ll love growing the stuff - it’s hardy. I’ve had mine keep growing after an inch of snowfall, it takes several nights in the mid-20’s or lower to kill it off. For some reason I also get more white and red stem than yellow stem chard, the yellow just doesn’t seem to thrive as well as the other two. Mine is already up.
That’s today’s big news - I have sprouts! In the garden! Yay, spring is HERE!
I got my plants yesterday, Early Girls and Better Boy tomatoes, some sweet red bell peppers, cilantro and chocolate mint. I’m also contemplating some hot peppers. I plant in pots on my deck so the deer don’t eat everything. Can’t wait for tomatoes!
I would like to grow herbs. I had cilantro sprout, and when I put it outside in the tray to toughen up, Something Ate Them. Also ate the potting soil.
Whatever creature, it of course was just trying to make a living, as are you and I.
The best (and only) fig variety I’ve harvested fruit from so far in my figly endeavors is Petite Negra, a semidwarf tree that bears well in pots.
From what I hear from various sources, fruit trees bear most prolifically when their roots are somewhat confined. You can do this in-ground in a restricted space, by root-pruning and by growing the trees in pots/tubs (I just set out a half-dozen potted plants that overwintered in the garage and are now leafing out).
I have two fig clumps in the garden that die back to the ground each winter and send up shoots that top out at about 8 feet during the summer, but no fruit. This year I think I’ll root-prune the bejesus out of them, hoping they’ll think the apocalpyse is nigh and it’s time to reproduce before the end comes.
And I set out a dozen eggplant seedlings this afternoon - three kinds, including an Iraqi variety promoted by this, um, slightly unusual-looking child.
Obligatory link to my garden blog.
Woo-hoo, the dillantro seeds are sprouting! Gonna take me a while to figure out which ones are cilantro and which are dill, though.
Also, my flower seeds arrived, so this weekend should see some more planting!
In other news, the tulips that made such a glorious show in my little median strip planting came back this year with lots of tousled-looking leaves and two, count them, two flowers. Whoop-de-doo.
Moreover, last year I had at least a dozen lupines come up from the seeds I planted, and now in their second year when they’re due to flower for the first time I have one, count it, one that seems to have survived the winter. Oh well, one’s better than zero, but I wanted a nice little bed of lupines in that corner.
I’ve decided that this is the year I’m going to figure out what all the plants and shrubs are in my garden (rental house that I’ve been in for a few years, neither I nor the landlords know what all is growing around here). I’m sure I’ll be back to this thread with photos and requests for ID help!
In the meantime, does anybody recommend a free online site or software for documenting your garden plan? I’m probably just going to sketch things in a notebook but I wouldn’t mind having access to something more systematic.
Finally, is it just me or is this a really good year for dandelions? Some lawns I’m seeing are literally more yellow than green.
And now it looks like it’s going to rain all weekend. Yay for no watering, boo for no gardening.
Petunias are in under the bay window. The lilies I put in earlier have spiked out of the ground and my irises, unlike everybody else’s on my block, have not yet opened. But I think they’re gonna look really great when they do.
Yeah, the bed under the bay window is getting pretty crowded. The newly planted petunias are on either side of the irises.Way over to the right are the established lilies. They’re yellow. The ones I planted around them are a deep purple.
Also, after six years of being tiny, little dwarfs, the Endless Summer hydrangeas behind the irises has decided it wants to grow and be a regular bush.
Not going to be able to put the veggies in the ground today. Which means it won’t happen until next Saturday. I hope they don’t mind their plastic pots for another week.
Unimpressive compared to you guys, but when I moved my houseplants from the fish room to outdoors, I discovered that one of the potted Amorphophallus konjac is growing.
Arisaema outside are beginning to grow. Two are MIA due to the dipsomaniac tree guy dropping a tree in their area.
Today I mostly cleaned up beds - weeding the beds along the south side of the building, and finishing the clean-up of the main plot where things had overgrown by the trellises. Also rebuilt the brick firepit.
Now I’m pooped.
I’ll do some planting tomorrow.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a summer flower that likes bright but indirect light? I had a potted cyclamen growing very well in a corner of my balcony, but now that the weather’s getting hotter it’s gone dormant. Something I could grow in a small or medium sized pot would be nice
I fed my begonia some ground up banana peels and it’s blooming like crazy now. It was such a scrawny thing when I brought it home. I just want to pat it on the head, I’m so proud.
I finally got all my flower seeds in this weekend and now I’m just hoping that the torrential rains of the last 18 hours haven’t washed them all away! I managed to dig up the median-strip flower patch (and throw away the underperforming tulip bulbs), dig in a bunch of soil amendment, edge it with bricks (so the city mower guy won’t keep obliviously mowing it), and plant a bunch of annual seeds in it, all without disturbing the few irises that are leafing out now—I hope.
(By the way: oh, Brooooooooomstick, watch your maaaaaaaailbox! :))
HazelNutCoffee, why not try a nice bleeding-heart plant or Dicentra formosa for your bright-shade balcony? It’s not gonna be very long-blooming at this point, though. Violas? Busy lizzie? Pentas? Primula?
Check out their recommendations for shady balcony sites in general.
Nice website. Looks like petunias might work. Thanks!
I’m so excited to share this salad that I grew in my garden. I planted 3 kinds of lettuce and I’ve been enjoying “free” salad for the last two weeks.
My zucchini and butternut squashes are taking over the yard. Green beans, cucumbers and pumpkins are doing nicely. My chili peppers are not doing so well. They sprouted, but haven’t really grown. Next year I will start them indoors. Red and yellow bell peppers were transplanted out doors today.
Not really garden related, but I transplanted my oldest (10+ yrs old) African violet that was out growing it’s pot and now it’s awfully scrawning and I fear it’s dying. I’m really worried. I did everything the ladies at the African violet society said to do. The others are all doing well.