Garden Geeks thread

[Gurtholfin]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

I've come to the conclusion that I'm a ****ty gardener. A few basic questions -

What do you put on your vegetable/herb garden to prepare it before you plant?

Rotating crops - is this effective for everything? or does it just need to be done with certain ones?

When I move pots inside over the winter and the plants are dormant - I don't need to do anything to them, right? I just realized I still have a blueberry in my garage that I should probably check on. I moved the lemon to my breezeway and it's still very green - haven't watered it at all.

Last year was monumentally unproductive, except for the tomatillo (and annual herbs). Everything was disappointing. I'm apparently OK at flowers, though.

Thinking of trying more root vegetables. Maybe carrots. Any words of wisdom? Do root vegetables do OK in pots? I don't have a lot of space.

The only thing that i do at the start of the season is buy a few bags of manure and spread it before I till.

After planting, I fertilize with fish emulsion.

In addition, during the growing season I use grass clippings as a mulch/weed block. This releases nitrogen as it breaks down and by the following spring, it blends right in during the till.


I don't know about carrots in a pot, but I've had great luck with them in the ground.

[MadTownSioux]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

...
Thinking of trying more root vegetables. Maybe carrots. Any words of wisdom? ...

If there is a Jung's near Milwaukee (or go to their website) they have carrot seed tapes that make planting and spacing carrots a breeze.

[Carter]

We normally buy our plants and seeds from the greenhouse across the road from us, and we also look through the garden catalogs. For the first time this year, we got a Burpee's catalog, and we were really impressed with a lot of the varieties we hadn't seen elsewhere. Does anyone have any experience buying from Burpee's?

[leswp1]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

We normally buy our plants and seeds from the greenhouse across the road from us, and we also look through the garden catalogs. For the first time this year, we got a Burpee's catalog, and we were really impressed with a lot of the varieties we hadn't seen elsewhere. Does anyone have any experience buying from Burpee's?

Yes. They are OK. I prefer Scheepers and Park Seeds. Johnny's Selected Seeds, Winslow, ME is good too.

jen- I do nothing for my herb garden except mulch with shredded leaves in fall and Cocoa mulch in the spring. Cocoa mulch is full of nitrogen and smells like chocolate. YUM! Don't bury the herbe in mulch- light coating on the soil. Too much and the soil stays too wet.

Most herbs do not like a lot of coddling or a lot of water. I have thyme, creeping lemon thyme, oregano, lavender, tarragon, marjoram, chives and lemon balm that I can't seem to kill. The last 2 seed and end up everywhere. Once established too much care will kill stuff. Even in drought I rarely water the herb garden. It is in deep baking sun all day.

[CLS]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

We normally buy our plants and seeds from the greenhouse across the road from us, and we also look through the garden catalogs. For the first time this year, we got a Burpee's catalog, and we were really impressed with a lot of the varieties we hadn't seen elsewhere. Does anyone have any experience buying from Burpee's?

Got seeds this year from Burpee and Parks and started them indoors. The seeds from Parks are doing much better. Part of the problem was some mistakes I made, but I made the same mistakes with both brands, and the Parks are doing better. I have had pretty good success in the past with Burpee seeds that I've sown directly.

[jen]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

thanks for the tips

les: that explains why my perennial herbs usually do very well. I am an expert at doing nothing. I might stick to herbs this year (maybe branch out a little with them) and get all my veggies at the Farmer's market. I'm not sure I want the disappointment of another subpar veggie season.

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

thanks for the tips

les: that explains why my perennial herbs usually do very well. I am an expert at doing nothing. I might stick to herbs this year (maybe branch out a little with them) and get all my veggies at the Farmer's market. I'm not sure I want the disappointment of another subpar veggie season.

You want an herb that is really easy to grow and has a really high yield, I'd recommend two: oregano and basil.

Oregano doubles as ground cover in our rock garden, and in those (now too infrequent) years in which we get a bountiful tomato harvest, provides lots of seasoning for sauce.

Basil, as long as you keep pinching the growing tips before they start to flower, gets bushier and bushier as the growing season progresses. You cannot "do nothing" with basil, however, for if you do ignore it and it starts to flower, it gets bitter.


One plant that has consistently been a top performer for us has been cayenne pepper. We still have dried peppers from two years ago, and we use them once or twice a week. If you have a place sheltered from the wind and exposed to afternoon sun, it can really thrive. For jalapenos I'd recommend the market; they just do not keep....so unless you have lots of friends and neighbors who also want some, we wind up not using over half the jalapenos we grow (you can only make so much guacamole and salsa). We've grown sweet pepper too but it doesn't seem worth the bother. This year we are only growing cayenne peppers, no others.


And as many have said, there are a variety of beans that should do well without much help other than water. We are quite partial to a bush bean called haricot vert (which is french for bean green). I remember a long series of posts from last year earlier in this thread about different bean varieties and growing methods and preservation methods if you have the patience to scroll back to find it.

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Saturday morning, i looked out a 2nd-story window that overlooks our vegetable garden...no soil visible yet. That's unusual for around here, to have solid snow cover still around in the second week of March. The idea was to turn over some soil to enrich it in preparation for planting peas in three weeks....well that project was deferred until next weekend.

[Bob Gray]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Had some stuff come up the last few weeks so we didn't do get much in for our spring crop. Mostly just some lettuce plants that my nephew gave us. Tomatoes are still producing well. And we're getting some beets and carrots now from the fall planting. And our lemon and apples trees we planted two years ago are starting to really take off. Good to see after the lemon really got zapped by cold weather last winter.

[CLS]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

...

Oregano doubles as ground cover in our rock garden, and in those (now too infrequent) years in which we get a bountiful tomato harvest, provides lots of seasoning for sauce.

. . .

Agree, but be careful where you put it. Oregano spreads by underground roots, and it can be invasive and difficult to get rid of if it spreads where you don't want it. One side benefit though -- oregano (along with mint, which also spreads via underground roots) smells very nice if it spreads into your lawn and you mow it.

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

The seeds we planted indoors two weeks ago are starting to grow....

As an experiment, we bought starter pots made from compressed manure. The theory being that you just dig a hole in the ground and plop them in.

Hint: do not use them in a room where you care about the smell!

[Bob Gray]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Got a few potato plants peeking up after my wife put some eyes in the compost pile at the end of our garden. Didn't really know if anything would come up. The new lettuce are doing well, though a good ways from harvesting anything. And the cherry tomato plant continues to be very prolific. Planted a few new rose bushes last week and yesterday put in a couple star jasmine.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Okay, so this one is perhaps more of a home repair question, but I'll post it here first to see what you guys think.

I had one of those winterizing valve things on my hose bib, and the set screw sheared off when I tried to take it off last weekend. As a result, the only way to take it off the bib was with a wrench, and the screw wound up stripping off some of the male thread on the bib.

Now, because of the stripped thread, my hose can't make a solid seal and the water leaks between the bib and the hose when I turn the water on. It's a soldered bib (I'm sure), which means I don't have an easy way to fix it without completely repairing the bib. Any suggestions?

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Okay, so this one is perhaps more of a home repair question, but I'll post it here first to see what you guys think.

I had one of those winterizing valve things on my hose bib, and the set screw sheared off when I tried to take it off last weekend. As a result, the only way to take it off the bib was with a wrench, and the screw wound up stripping off some of the male thread on the bib.

Now, because of the stripped thread, my hose can't make a solid seal and the water leaks between the bib and the hose when I turn the water on. It's a soldered bib (I'm sure), which means I don't have an easy way to fix it without completely repairing the bib. Any suggestions?

Lots of thread tape? Put a thick rubber band around the threads?

Or, put an extension on it. you can get a part in a plumbing store that would work. One end is male thread, same size as you have now, the other end is female that fits over your existing male. You just glue it / seal it in place that way.

[FiveHole12]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

What FreshFish said ^^^

But I'm curious as to why you add anything to the bib for winterizing? I just turn off the water shut-off inside, open the spigot and leave it alone. Never had a problem. If you don't have a shutoff for each spigot on the inside... you should add them, IMO. And if you do that, you might as well sweat the old spigot off the pipe and solder a new one on.