Garden thread

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  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    We started planting our garden yesterday, got 1/2 # of onion sets in. I got to check everything this morning and about a dozen of them are just sitting on top of the soil. DH googled and said maybe a squirrel dug some up. They didn't eat them, just dug them out. Hope they don't make a habit of that. :)
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    We started planting our garden yesterday, got 1/2 # of onion sets in. I got to check everything this morning and about a dozen of them are just sitting on top of the soil. DH googled and said maybe a squirrel dug some up. They didn't eat them, just dug them out. Hope they don't make a habit of that. :)

    What kind of onions? I'm only asking because we eat onions more than anything else and I've recently been stalking Etsy for onions.
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    edited May 2022
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    We started planting our garden yesterday, got 1/2 # of onion sets in. I got to check everything this morning and about a dozen of them are just sitting on top of the soil. DH googled and said maybe a squirrel dug some up. They didn't eat them, just dug them out. Hope they don't make a habit of that. :)

    And, I'm sorry because I know it's frustrating. We had mice eating our tomato plants two years ago. We've since torn down the deck they were living under, so they are gone now. But I had cherry tomatoes and tomatoes on the vine and they ate them as soon as they started turning red, so we never had a chance.
  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    LoveyChar wrote: »
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    We started planting our garden yesterday, got 1/2 # of onion sets in. I got to check everything this morning and about a dozen of them are just sitting on top of the soil. DH googled and said maybe a squirrel dug some up. They didn't eat them, just dug them out. Hope they don't make a habit of that. :)

    What kind of onions? I'm only asking because we eat onions more than anything else and I've recently been stalking Etsy for onions.

    Ya had to ask what kind didn't you? :) My memory isn't what it used to be and we must've looked at 8 kinds. I *think* we ended up with Stuttgarter onions? If they are such a thing. :/ I never knew mice ate tomatoes. :( We have mice and squirrels all over the place and this is the first time anything's been touched. Hopefully your veggies will prosper this year!!

    Nothing has bothered our onions since then so that's good.

    Everything else got planted yesterday. Fingers crossed there aren't any unexpected frosts coming in the next 2-3 weeks. Usually we don't plant until Memorial Day weekend, that's the recommendation for our area, but it's been 70-80's here and no frost predicted in the next 10 days, so.......

    It all looks so nice when freshly planted.
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 460 Member
    edited May 2022
    I wish I could plant onions! But we're trying to get the back yard fenced this year, which would mean the dogs will move from hanging out in the front yard to the back at some point and onions are toxic. Can't plant them in the front or the back until the dogs have a consistent spot.

    I didn't get most of my carrots out before the ground froze last fall, and they're sprouting. I knew carrots are biennial, but I didn't think they'd survive the -40s C we had last winter!

    Tiny zucchini has already doubled in size!

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  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    @SuzanneC1l9zz
    Yeh, I have to keep an eye on my 2 dogs. We have our garden all fenced in but one of our dogs is a Houdini. Last summer, I'd see paw prints in my strawberry beds even though she'd be laying in the backyard looking so innocent. We've doubled our fence up in spots, laid boards around the bottom, large stones, whatever it takes. :) Now I'm catching her digging underneath trying to break in, she's worse than rabbits. :)
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    SuzanneC1l9zz wrote: »
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    I love this, your pots look so nice!
  • Fuzzipeg
    Fuzzipeg Posts: 2,301 Member
    edited May 2022
    Does anyone have a dog or had a dog who picks their own peas to eat and loved gooseberries so much she ate the plant prickles and all but that was a very long long time ago. I forgot none of the fur family ever went for onions, they were never separated off, sounds as if we were fortunate.
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    I bought red and yellow onion seeds off of Etsy, Matador spinach, and black beauty zucchini seeds.

    I'm in Texas and spinach is a colder weather plant, preferring 50-60 degrees. So this one I'll probably just pot one seed and see how that goes and then wait until late December if it even gets that cold. I'm going to get 30 seeds.

    I have three five gallon buckets and many other pots I'm going to put the onions and zucchini in. After my three jalapeno plants get big enough, they'll go in the raised garden bed so no room there.

    I think we're going to buy two garden beds (they look like horse troughs to me but without bottoms), one for me and one for husband since we both like different things and have somewhat made this a bit of a competition. Funny...

  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    And yes, I'm very, very late...
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    edited May 2022
    See the little baby Dark Leaf Italian parsley sprouts?

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  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    The third leaf is growing nicely.

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  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    Seed storage questions:

    1) What is the longest your seeds have ever lasted?

    2) How do you store them?

    I had seeds, store bought, that I purchased in 2020. I stored them in an airtight Mason jar in the refrigerator and they're still good. I'm just wondering what's the longest period of time for y'all.
    There's no way I can use all the seeds I bought so I'll store them. I didn't realize until now that I actually bought 60 spinach seeds and 40 of each onion.
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 460 Member
    @ReenieHJ I'm worried about the strawberries too. We're turning the front flower bed into a strawberry patch and I'd need a 4' fence around it to keep the dogs (well, one in particular) out right now. For now the baby strawberry plants are hanging out in grow bags in the back yard with everything else.

    @LoveyChar thank you! Excuse the surrounding chaos lol.

    It looks like we're not going to get the raised bed done in any kind of timely fashion. Combined with the fact that the carrots are sprouting I've decided to just garden in the ground again this year and we'll keep the dogs in the front. I'm considering trying some kind of no-till, considering the carrots. The other thing Mom suggested is to carefully dig them out with a fair amount of dirt around each, temporarily transfer them to pots or grow bags while I dig the beds, and then re-plant them. That sounds like a lot more work though, if just weeding and loosening the soil where I want to plant everything else would also work as well. I'm hoping to get the rest planted this week (as much as possible today) so I'm going to have to do some reading this morning.

    I'm not making many changes to what's going in the ground this year. As well as the carrots there will be beets, beans, kale and Swiss chard. The kale was far too prolific last year, so I'm only planting half a row this year and I'm going to try pak choy in the other half. I have no idea how it does here or if it needs any special treatment (which it likely won't get, realistically) but the fact that the seeds were available at the garden centre implies that it's possible.

    In light of the dogs staying put I might invest in onion sets.
  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    edited May 2022
    @lovelychar
    My sister has peas coming up from seeds she found dated 2015. :) She just keeps seeds stored in glass jars in her basement.

    Had to buy more cucumbers today, our other ones just died, have no idea why. We haven't had a frost but it did get down to 34 one night so maybe they were just too fragile. :(

    I've got to google this but was wondering if anyone knows why leaves would turn yellow, such as on romaine plants and 1 of my tomato plants, and it's just the bottom leaves. They're planted in different areas of the garden. Is it weather related, hot one day, cool/rainy the next, you know Mother Nature. :/ And can the plant still flourish?
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 460 Member
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    Forgot I had that hand tiller - haven't used it in years. I'm beat!
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    @RheenieHJ I'm in Texas and the bottom of our tomato plant gets yellow leaves sometimes. One theory is it's the lack of sun on the bottom. Husband trims those ones off, though, and it does fine. I'm not sure exactly why it does that sometimes.

    @SuzanneC1l9zz I love that gardening space, also!
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,966 Member
    Does anyone grow lettuce in the heat of summer? I know they don't like heat, but I've seen people do it. I planted them in a corner and behind some bigger plants so hopefully they will be shaded, I dont know what I'm doing.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,600 Member
    hesn92 wrote: »
    Does anyone grow lettuce in the heat of summer? I know they don't like heat, but I've seen people do it. I planted them in a corner and behind some bigger plants so hopefully they will be shaded, I dont know what I'm doing.

    Successfully? No, not me. Maybe part of my problem is that the slugs love lettuce, and love shade.

    Romaine holds longer in warmer weather for me than leaf-lettuce types. Some varieties are marketed as slower to bolt. The leaf types usually bolt quickly in the heat, here.
  • Kiwi2mfp
    Kiwi2mfp Posts: 166 Member
    hesn92 wrote: »
    Does anyone grow lettuce in the heat of summer? I know they don't like heat, but I've seen people do it. I planted them in a corner and behind some bigger plants so hopefully they will be shaded, I dont know what I'm doing.

    For some reason, our lettuce did not come up this spring. We tried planting twice outside. Only two plants popped up. But then I tried growing some in a pot in the house and it's doing really good. We have a small walk in greenhouse set up in a corner of our livingroom that we used to start pepper plants in. We were going to take it down but not now. I am going to grown lettuce under lights in it this year. I hope we can have lettuce all year long now. Might have a slightly higher electric bill but I am guessing we will save that much by not having to buy salad blends once or twice a week.
  • Kiwi2mfp
    Kiwi2mfp Posts: 166 Member
    We still need to get beans in! But it's raining bad now here in MD. I also need to get potatoes in and onion sets. I always think we have hardly anything going but then I start counting off what we do have in and I realize it's not that bad. We do also have wild fruit trees and shrubs all over the property...cherry, pawpaw, persimmon, mulberry, wineberries,wine berries, and black walnut trees (if I can only find an easy way to shell them). All the plants we do have in the ground seem to be doing well so far. We had a bit of a scare when the weather report said we might be getting hail! But that didn't pan out. We can buy a lot of our plants again even though they are expensive this year but our specialty peppers can not be bought around here....they have to be started from seed. Our mint is going crazy! I need to start dehydrating some now while I have time...once everything else comes in, I likely won't get mint tea put up for the year. With prices going sky high, having flavorings from drinks growing readily in the yard is a huge blessing. We also got two lemon verbena plants again this year. We usually put up a lot of lemon verbena tea too. Mulberry leaf tea and raspberry leaf tea would be nice also. My pastors wife looks forward to pastors appreciation day because she gets a couple bags of loose lemon verbena tea from us. Turns out she loves it! We also have catnip and mullein growing around here wild. Now, if I could only grown coffee lol...hmmm, it might benefit us to have a couple Stevia plants 🤔
  • Kiwi2mfp
    Kiwi2mfp Posts: 166 Member
    One more thing. We have chickens so we have a lot of eggs. This year we have been saving the shells, drying them thoroughly, and then grind them in a blender until almost powdery. We saved the ground up shells in a half gallon mason jar and used two or three tablespoons(while it lasted) into each hole while planting our tomato and pepper plants. I hear this can help stop blossom end rot. We have more egg shells ready to grind and will be sprinkling them at the base of the plants as we can. But I don't plan on throwing egg shells out anymore. If my plants can't use them, my chickens could benefit from them.
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    Exhilarating! Best word I could think of to explain the feeling I get when I see a little baby sprout that pops up! Not a fantastic picture, but can you see the three tiny lavender sprouts?!?

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  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    I ordered spaghetti squash seeds this morning! I'm excited, one of my favorite foods!
  • LoveyChar
    LoveyChar Posts: 4,336 Member
    Bought the lavender seeds in 2020 because when I asked my, then, 13 year-old daughter what she wanted to plant, she said lavender because it's pretty and smells nice. I agree but I read that it repels alot of bugs and other pests so that's a bonus! I might put a couple of pots of it in the garden, if I'm successful with what I've already got.
  • Fuzzipeg
    Fuzzipeg Posts: 2,301 Member
    I think lavender attracts bees. they have to be beneficial. Some butterflies like it and so do hoverflies they feed on white flies and the like. I'm sure there will be more where you are, climate can be so ver different. Hopes that helps.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,966 Member
    edited May 2022
    I am attempting to grow zucchini vertically this year in a tomato cage lol. I guess we'll see how that goes. I don't love zucchini so I only planted one.

    I'm also trying out cucumber in a grow bag... they sprouted and are growing so well, much better than the ones I have in the ground. I hope they work out, I am really bad at growing cucumbers.

    I also have tomatoes, peppers, green beans, chard, cantaloupes, rosemary, dill, sage, thyme, oregano, chives, green onions, different varieties of lettuce (which I doubt will work out since it's going to get hot). cilantro, potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries... I also started some dwarf tomato plants and they are adorable. I hope they produce well. If so I will bring those inside and grow them year round! Oh and nasturtium... I don't know why I'm growing that, I had written it down in my notes last year to grow so I did :D It must be good for something.

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