Gardening

[geargrrl]

My gardens would look a whole lot better if I wasn't riding my bike all the time.

 

[bounceswoosh]

My gardens would look a whole lot better if I wasn't riding my bike all the time.

Sounds like you have your priorities straight!

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Lookin good there @bounceswoosh

 

[bounceswoosh]

Update!

By last evening, this is what I had accomplished with my veggie beds:



Well, a little more than that, but that's the only part that was actually watering a plant. DH got me started with some basics, and then he and I installed several manifolds (brilliant suggestion from a friend). And then I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Another friend suggested that even though I have the boxes, I might want to keep the tomatoes in pots - they grow well there, and it leaves room for less space-hoggy plants. Anyway, I do already have them in pots and didn't want to replant them, so - the first drip line I ran was into an existing tomato pot. The smallest one.

I went outside during this afternoon's run to check the water level, and that's how I found out one of my plugs wasn't working and there was water spraying everywhere. I figured out what was going on, I think, snipped the offending length of tubing and shoved a new plug in. Fingers crossed that it doesn't spit the plug out again.

I can't do a lot of physical stuff, so I had to ask DH to move the remaining two tomato plants, in much larger pots. He said he'd try. So today, he moved one huge pot with a dolly. It went fine, but he found it awkward. Decided to move the second huge pot by just carrying it. He huffed and he puffed and he managed to get it to the veggie box - and he dropped the pot onto the ledge with the last of his strength - and the bottom of the pot just cracked. Like, a lot. Chunks of terra cotta fell off the side. Suddenly things got serious.

I suggested that we just plant it into the ground with the pot still around it and retrieve the shards next spring, but he didn't want terra cotta pieces in the dirt. Long story short, the tomato plant is in the ground, sans pot, and DH has two big deep slices cut into his fingers. Neither of us thought to use gloves =/ FYI - terra cotta is SHARP.

The plant in the damaged pot was so far our best producer - two tomatoes almost ready to harvest. DH doesn't think it will be too upset at being transplanted since we kept all the soil. I'm not convinced - the bottom of the root ball broke off, at least partially, maybe entirely. We'll see, I guess. Can't time travel.

Good news - I'm getting better at inserting emitters into 1/4" tubing. I figured out that if you tilt the tool so that the emitter is at the bottom instead of the side, it works way better. I had originally installed a 2 gallon per hour emitter for the first tomato plant, but I had somehow overlooked that the half hour program runs three times a day ... 2GPH is way too much. So I installed 1GPH emitters all around for the tomato plants, and we'll see if that's about right.

I've never understood the first thing about our sprinkler system, but it's pretty fun to do this stuff, and after a few basics, fairly intuitive. And messy =) Even without mountain biking, I have the chance to get muddy. Good times!

 

[bounceswoosh]

Photo of the second step, with all three plants attached to drip. So far the transplant seems happy, but I just doubt it's going to stay that way. At least today is relatively cool, so it gets a little reprieve - tomorrow will be hot again. I bought some row cover - I wonder if I should use it tomorrow to protect the tomato plant a little while it's getting used to its new location?

 

[bounceswoosh]

Also, weirdly, the mulch and dirt around the planted tomato plant looks a bit dug up, but nothing looks nibbled on. I thought maybe one of the drip lines popped something and went wild, but that's not it. It could be wind, but then I would expect more dirt to have been blown around. Puzzling.

 

[vickie]

Around here, if you explored just below that dug up spot, you'd likely find a peanut.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Around here, if you explored just below that dug up spot, you'd likely find a peanut.

Hmm. We do have one or two squirrels around. Not sure where they'd get the peanut, though ;-)

 

[Kimmyt]

Every year I find peanuts in my deck pots and the mystery was finally solved when someone posted on a local facebook gardening page about how to keep squirrels away from things and another person responded and said that they give them peanuts to keep them from away from THEIR garden. Its a vicious cycle.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Every year I find peanuts in my deck pots and the mystery was finally solved when someone posted on a local facebook gardening page about how to keep squirrels away from things and another person responded and said that they give them peanuts to keep them from away from THEIR garden. Its a vicious cycle.

LOL. I have a suspicion that the water just welled up a bit around the time of the watering and moved things around. Because it happened again, and it's only right under the tomato plant. It's getting half a gallon ...

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Getting sad with our garden, minimal things so far. This pot planting thing isn't working. Next year i want to try getting everything from a different nursery to see if that helps. Think gardening beds are the way to go.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Getting sad with our garden, minimal things so far. This pot planting thing isn't working. Next year i want to try getting everything from a different nursery to see if that helps. Think gardening beds are the way to go.

Are your pots terra cotta, plastic, other? Terra cotta dries out pretty quickly ... Also, is there a gardening book specific to the NE? That may be helpful.

 

[bounceswoosh]

I just came in from seeding carrots, swiss chard, and lettuce. I meant to do beets, but they should be soaked (I had soaked the swiss chard seeds overnight), so maybe this evening. Realized my dripper allocation was highly inadequate and added some more (thank dog for my friend's suggestion of manifolds!). Found some leaks and recruited DH to help fix them. I did not realize that one tiny grain of sand in the threading could result in a leak - ugh! Covered the whole thing with "row cover" (white fabric) to hopefully keep the beds cooler and the water from evaporating as fast. The guy at my LGS (local garden store) said I should hold off a few weeks on planting this stuff, but all my friends with home gardens said to go for it ... so, what the hey. Might as well try.

I do *not* have room for as much as I wanted to plant. Or quite possibly I am overplanting compared to what we could possibly eat. One of those two.

I'm keeping a close eye on the emergency transplant tomato plant. So far he seems just the tiniest bit more wilty than the potted ones. I thought maybe it needed more water than the potted plants somehow, but the soil is moist. So he may just be reacting to the move. I am checking his two almost-ready tomatoes several times a day, neurotically. They keep getting nicer. One looks very much ready, but I've been holding off because it seems very very attached to the vine ... just not sure if I should pick it or not.

 

[surfsnowgirl]

Are your pots terra cotta, plastic, other? Terra cotta dries out pretty quickly ... Also, is there a gardening book specific to the NE? That may be helpful.

We have couple terra cotta ones but the majority of the garden is in these green plastic troughs (not sure if I spelled that right). Yeah I think a gardening book might be in order.

Your garden looks fabulous and sounds like it's doing great. In the meantime I will live vicariously through others.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Your garden looks fabulous and sounds like it's doing great.

I'm excited and nervous about the seeds I just put down. I've never planted seeds before. The carrot and lettuce seeds are so tiny that when I put them on/in the soil, I couldn't even tell the difference between seed and soil!

Our grass looks terrible after all the slicing and dicing for the new sprinkler system. I question whether the sod we put down will work, as we haven't been giving it the extra watering it wants.

 

[bounceswoosh]

OOPS! Just realized in the shower that in all my excitement, I forgot to leave room for the garlic, which doesn't get planted for another month. I am considering planting them in among the carrot seeds or in pots. I don't think I need *that* much garlic. I like it, but only use one or two cloves at a time, typically. I think it might be fine to put them among the carrots. By the time I'm planting the garlic, I think I'll be seeing the carrots popping up so that I know where to put the garlic.

 

[surfsnowgirl]

What do folks do with the gardening beds in the winter. Come November here we strip down the backyard, put what we can in storage and move everything else up against the house. Do you just leave the beds out and just clean them up come spring?

 

[bounceswoosh]

What do folks do with the gardening beds in the winter. Come November here we strip down the backyard, put what we can in storage and move everything else up against the house. Do you just leave the beds out and just clean them up come spring?

Our beds are fixed in place. I usually just let everything die. This winter I plan to use a crop of buckwheat to help enrich the soil, and then I plan to use mulch or straw to cover the garlic and keep it somewhat protected. I've always just left the pots where they stood ...

 

[Kimmyt]

I pull out all the debris and compost it and then rake the straw mulch into the soil to break down over the winter. I do leave a bit over my garlic like @bounceswoosh but it doesn't need much because the snow usually acts as a nice insulator.

I understand you can leave the garden debris in the soil over the winter and beneficial bugs and things will use it for nests and stuff but I prefer to do a big fall cleanup and then another spring clean up prior to planting.

I'm actually contemplating doing a weed kill on one of my beds this year that has been infested with bindweed. I will get some black heavy duty plastic trashbags and cover the soil and weight with rocks. Theoretically the lack of sun and the heat from the bags should kill off anything growing in the soil, including the bindweed. Of course, that stuff is indestructible, so I might need to let that bed rest for another growing season while covered to truly kill it off. I hate that stuff.

 

[bounceswoosh]

I'm actually contemplating doing a weed kill on one of my beds this year that has been infested with bindweed. I will get some black heavy duty plastic trashbags and cover the soil and weight with rocks. Theoretically the lack of sun and the heat from the bags should kill off anything growing in the soil, including the bindweed. Of course, that stuff is indestructible, so I might need to let that bed rest for another growing season while covered to truly kill it off. I hate that stuff.

I'm slowly coming to grips with the fact that I will likely need to dig out all the soil in my front flower bed in order to get rid of the grass that invaded when the edging fell apart. Losing all of my sedum that has filled in so nicely from 10 tiny plants. On the plus side .. sedum regrows really well if you just dump a bunch of broken stems onto the soil ... hrm ...