gardening

Hi. I'm Bridget and I just found this comm. I've been looking at gardening things on Pinterest and recently bought a basil plant because I want to try out an edible indoor container garden and figured a basil plant would be a good test drive. I bought a starter plant from Home Depot and bought a plant light so it's sitting on a shelf in my room.

Does anyone have any experience with an edible indoor container garden, or some sort of variation on that?

dantesspirit

Technically this covers the last week of June too, but who's counting...

Back in May, I bought a catnip plant. It was subsquently transplanted into a 10" pot and left alone for a few months. This was by the end of June, and after having multiple cuttings taken from it, as well as being rubbed against several times and munched on by Aries. It had quadrupled in size.

This is that same plant as of today. It is now in a 12" pot and it has doubled in size again. Yeah.

The driveway was regraded and recycled asphalt was put down. This neccesitated repairs to the strawberry bed and the iris bed on the side, as those bricks are not mortered together (yet). The front bed along the front of the driveway also has several cracks were the small bulldozer hit it. *sigh* When I pull the irises from it, to replace the dirt, I'll have to see about potentially repairing it.

I had to thoroughly wet the driveway down while watering the front gardens before I could go smooth out the ridges and such left from the tires. Once it all compacts down, it'll be a lot smoother and weeds won't grow in it, so that's a bonus, I guess. Although, they did leave about a foot wide stretch along the strawberry bed that's bare gravel and dirt. Hrm.

( More... )

katemonkey

Because when you grow Salad Blue potatoes, you expect something like maybe two-three inches long, something nice to mash up and enjoy.

( You do not expect this: )

eien_herrison

Haven't been around much, I've been too busy with regular life to really post here, but I have been working on my garden.

Temperatures have skyrocketed here over the past couple of weeks; good news for my tomatoes and peppers, not so good news for my lettuces. We were still digging out last year's potatoes when they started growing again, so we lost a ton of seedlings due to needing to dig them up ( :( ).

However, what's been the real success has been our indoor pepper plants:

( More info here & image under cut )

tis_caitlin

Monday, January 7, 4-5:30 pm:
( Easy-to-Grow Native Plants for California Gardens )

------------

Tuesday, January 8, 7:00 pm:
( Planning a Native Rain Garden )

alexbayleaf

Hi everyone,

I posted here a while ago about a new project to build a social website for food gardeners, something like Ravelry (for those who are knitters/crocheters and know Rav) but with a Dreamwidth-esque ethos and open source development process.

Anyway, this is now progressing well, and is definitely a happening thing \o/ Right now we're coding hard on the site and I'm also working on setting it up as a business. As part of this, I'm doing a very simple market research survey, just to find out a bit about what other gardening websites people use, and whether they'd like to use (and pay for) Growstuff.

If you've got a few minutes (literally 5 mins at most, it's a very quick survey), would you mind heading on over to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GZCNK9K and answering a few questions?

If you have friends who grow food (fruit, vegies, herbs, etc) or would like to, it would also be great if you could signal boost to them.

Thanks so much!

lizcommotion

Hello! I am a secondary gardener in my household, as I live with a Master Gardener who has staked out most of the gardening territory + I have chronic health issues that sometimes get in the way. (And sometimes I ignore them, like today, and plant a camelia, and then my hips hurt. But I wanted my hands in the soil.)

I had a question that is not strictly gardening related, but sort of about a gardening hardscaping project. I wanted to build this rustic garden tuteur as a cool looking structure and thing for vines to grow up. Plus, we have a bunch of extra branches lying around from some serious pruning we had to do when we moved in. (Too many trees close together = not good for trees.)

Here's my question: the garden tuteur instructions call for peeling bark off the logs before making the structure, but I think this might be rather hard on my hands with the chronic pain/inflammation. I think it would look equally cool with the bark still on, but I don't know if that would end up rotting as time went on...or if I would mind. Any thoughts?

Mods - sorry if you decide that hardscaping questions are inappropriate, I'll try posting elsewhere if you deem it necessary.

alexbayleaf

Hi everyone!

sabreuse pointed me over here and I'm glad to have found this community.

I live in Melbourne, Australia and have a container garden for vegies/herbs/etc, which I share with my housemate

aquaprofundanet. We're renting at present, and our landlords aren't keen on us making any real changes to the garden, so we're limited in what we can do. Still, we get some vegies out of it, and seldom have to buy herbs, and we supplement with a bit of urban foraging and some fruit from friends with trees.

My dream is to have a place with enough space for a big vegie garden, fruit trees, and some chickens, but I sometimes despair of ever being able to combine that with my profession and my need to live somewhere with decent internet. Fingers crossed for better rural broadband in the near future, I guess.

The other day I was talking with some friends about how I wished there was a really good online community site for food gardeners, especially the sort of green/sustainable/hippy types who are into organics, permaculture, urban agriculture, self-sufficiency, slow food, heirloom vegies, and that cluster of interests. I was thinking something like Ravelry, but with an explicit Dreamwidth-like ethos and of course all open source. Since people seemed into the idea I've started a community for it at

growstuff so if anyone here would like to join us in building this thing, please come on over.

ketsudan

I know that I am the previous poster as well, but since it's been a few weeks, I hope no one minds...

But basically, my String of Bananas, which had been popping back up with a slight mold problem after I started watering it again and kept it inside... has been starting to fade.

I lightly fertilized it (once, about two weeks ago), and it started growing well with new shoots.

Well, quite a few of those new shoots are now brown, withered, and if they are not dry and hard, they are wet and mushy, including some new leaves. Some of the older tendrils that started growing longer have the same dying ends.

I have been watering it about a cup and a half once a week, not letting the soil dry out too much as some websites have recommended, and it is hanging off to the side from my window, which faces the west. We have the AC on now due to the heat, so it doesn't get above 85 degrees F in my room.

Tonight, I looked through it and cut off a lot of the dead branches from it, left over from when I almost killed it with sun and heat, so I am hoping that will help, as those sites say it likes regular trimming.

Does anyone have any advice for me? What I might be doing to it and how to correct this?

Thank you!

ketsudan

Hello!

My name is Lupin and I am probably going to be spamming this page with questions sooner or later. I always seem to do that when things go wrong with my plants (I have a horrible black thumb and seem to be able to kill off cacti. Cacti.) and the garden in our backyard. Hopefully, I'll become a little more plant savvy like my dad and grandfather.

Anyways, my question is this:

I have a Senecio radicans (better known as String of Bananas) that is better off inside that outside as I discovered when I forgot to water it for a week and most of it became burnt from 90+ degree weather. It's since popped back up in the last few weeks and is doing well now that it's in my room which gets a nice amount of afternoon sun. I have been watering once a week, give or take a day depending upon work and if I remember.

However, in its pot, along the top of the soil, is a bunch of fuzzy patches of white mold.

I know a few techniques for getting rid of mold, but I've also been told you can leave it alone, and if you want to prevent it, don't water it so much.

What do you guys think I should do? With my black thumb, if I tend to leave plants alone, they do better :P

ANOTHER QUESTION:

It has many burned/shriveled leaves on its branches, and a lot of healthy green ones. Should I pull the dead ones off or will they fall off on their own?

dantesspirit

Obligatory Caena photo.}:P She was running around like a mad dog (like usual, in other words) and dug out all the leaves and debris from under the honeysuckle that grows over the old stump. What's funny about this, was Mark had spent early Sat morning cleaning up the back yard after cutting the grass. Heh. I guess Caena thought it was too clean.

So I set the sprinkler up at the top of the hill to water the few plants up there, and found this little guy on the siding by the faucet. He's even tinier than yesterday's, at roughly 1/4" in length.

( More! )

Current Mood: cheerful

dantesspirit

Since it was in the mid 70s, I went outside to do some front garden work. I made a new friend, when I spotted this little guy scrambling across the dirt where I'd just pulled a weed out from under him (whoops). He's only about 1/2" in size.

( More... )

Current Mood: amused

amalnahurriyeh

With the semester over, and it no longer looking like there are going to be overnight freezes (living in upstate New York: gardening is hard), I just put in some plants today. Now, I had intended to put them in last week, but discovered, when trying to dig holes in the front flowerbed that my landlord put in, that our front garden is apparently solid clay. Like, not "gee, we have some clay-y soil." Like, "gee, I can roll the scoop of dirt I just pulled out of the ground into a ball, and then sculpt a pinch-pot with it." I decided it wasn't work digging out the whole thing and replacing with topsoil, so I went out and bought pots and dirt to put in them, and spent my early afternoon happily digging.

( pictures of food plants (and some non-food) )

At the moment, I'm planning on keeping all the herbs on the back step, the tomatoes on the porch edge, and putting the peppers on the front steps. We get morning light in the front, strong mid-day light on the back step, but not for very many hours (it's shady in the morning, and gets shaded pretty fast in the afternoon). I'm not sure about the lettuce. Previous attempts have ended up with bitter, inedible lettuce in June, but I've moved to a cooler climate; should I position them to get less sun, or put them alongside the tomatoes up front? I'd rather get to eat them than not...

eien_herrison

Hi everyone,

I've been relatively busy in my garden and have a lot of things planted up both inside and outside, and am starting to see the first shoots of various plants.

( Description of problem + picture )

I would really like to know what this is, where it's come from (if possible as I suspect the bark might be the culprit), and how to get rid of them (ideally with as little harm to anything else, especially as my cat has taken to eating some of the plants we've got). Thanks for your help :)

Edit: I'm in SE England, just on the outskirts of London city.

Edit 2: They're thrips.

indeliblesasha

It's that time of year again (for those of us patiently waiting for the snow to thaw, anyway) to attempt to grow baby plants from tiny seeds and hope and pray they turn into full grown fruiting plants!

This is the part of gardening I fail at the hardest. Also, knowing what to plant, and how to water it, and where to put them all, and when to plant them...

I'm really bad at gardening. You'd think not, since my earliest memories is of pulling carrots up in our backyard with my daddy when I was very small. My mother puts a stick in the ground and 6 months later has long stem red roses. I should have the gene. But I put flowering rose bushes in the ground and 6 minutes later I have a stick. So. I need all the help I can get.

A very dear friend of mine posted a link on Facebook this week, it has changed my life and I wanted to share it with you all.

Smart Gardener dot com

This wonderful, amazing, super helpful garden planning tool (that suggests plants based on your location and specific growing season!!) came along at the same moment as the other bit of information I was desperately in need of: Jumpstart Your Food Garden: Affordable Resources and Tips to Ensure Summer's Bounty by a blogger local to ME. It was great during Market season because I could go get those exact ingredients! From the same farmer!

And now all my years of pulling my hair out and feeling stupid and knowing I was missing swaths of information that no one seemed able to tell me...everything just went plink plink plink into place this week. All the missing bits have been found.

Oh THAT'S why my seedlings NEVER GROW. Ooooh, I should plant those LATER.

I'm very excited.

I have spent the entire day on garden planning and research, and I am not entirely sold on the Locavore recommended lights because of the wildly varied reviews on Amazon, so I think I might venture into one of our MANY MANY hydroponics stores and see what I can find without breaking the pocketbook before I order. But the under-tray heating mat is a total winner in the reviews department, so I will absolutely be getting one of those.

So! Yay! Anyone else planning? Getting ready to start the seedlings? What are YOU planting to eat this year?

♥ ♥

annoyedwabbit

I hesitate to even call this a tutorial, since it's basically me saying "drill a bunch of holes in a bin!" but I found my inspiration in a similar tutorial, so I'll pass along my improvements on the method.

Without further ado, here's how to turn a plastic storage container (Sterilite or similar) into a compost bin. The whole process takes less than ten minutes.

( Photos under the cut )

moondancer

Landreth Seed Company, founded in 1784 and well-known for heirloom seeds, may go out of business

Here's their website, and here's where to order their 2012 seed catalog for just $5.

They've gotten a lot of support since the first article came out, but they could certainly use more.

(Via

lupagreenwolf )

Current Mood: grateful

eien_herrison

My garden's slowly coming along, and the vegetable patch has been bordered out into a raised bed with some soil in it (the gardeners are using the soil from the garden as they've said it's very fertile, so I suspect our only issue with it was the stones. This does mean there's a load of grass in it, but also the possibility of weeds; I'm going to be keeping an eye on how many weeds grow and if there are too many get some weed control matting). I also got a gardening catalogue through and from the advice of other people I've started to look in to companion/cooperative growing methods.

( Companion Growing Question )

( Overwintering Crops and Seed Sharing )

Cross-posted to

gardening

kake

I have a netting enclosure in my garden for making leafmould. I've never made this before, and was wondering if anyone had any advice. As I understand it, there are a couple of reasons for rotting leaves down separately rather than just chucking them in the compost with everything else:

They rot more slowly than most things you'd put in your compost, so separating them out means they won't be sitting in your general compost pile holding things up.
Leafmould improves soil structure, while general compost provides soil nutrients, so if you make leafmould separately and mix it with compost in different proportions, you can have more control over the resulting brown stuff.
Relatedly, the low level of nutrients in leafmould means that it's more appropriate for starting seedlings, for which compost can be a bit too rich.

Here are some relevant links I found:

I'd appreciate any advice or comments! I also have a specific question: are there any types of leaf that shouldn't go in leafmould? For example, spinach leaves go limp and rot down very quickly, so presumably these aren't suitable for going in leafmould. Is there an easy way to decide which leaves I should put in and which I shouldn't?

iamshadow

Things I know
- it's early spring.
- the flowers start out midblue and fade over time to almost white
- it's probably a bulb or similar, since all my jonquils, snowdrops, daffodils and irises are coming out now too.

Speaking of irises, anyone able to pin down what one in particular I have? It is from a root that looks rather like ginger, not a bulb. The leaves are very flat, point straight up, and are shaped rather like knifeblades.

Current Mood: curious

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Introduction

State of the garden, July edition

I'm showing off this potato everywhere.

Gardening Progress

South SF Bay Area, CA - Native Gardening classes this week

Food gardeners, could you spare a few minutes?

Intro post and a question

Intro and a new project

String Of Bananas

Introduction & Quick Question

Garden porn

Made a temporary new friend today.

Plants in the ground!

Help Me Identify This Insect

Grow, little seedlings! Grow!

Tutorial: Making a Storage Container Compost Bin

Signal Boosting

Companion/Cooperative Plant Growing, Overwinter Crops & Seed Sharing

Leafmould (leafmold/leaf mould/leaf mold)

Name that plant!

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March 2015

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