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  • #61
    Re: Garden Geeks thread

    Planted the first two rows of peas this weekend, first seeds into the garden itself. the rest of the beds are still under black ground cover.

    about five weeks ago, we started tomatoes, peppers, morning glories, zinnias indoors, now in a bedroom filled with folding tables and grow lights, we are seeing all the seedlings progressing nicely. time to start cukes and beans indoors soon.


    I keep "intending" to maintain a journal, at least so far as to itemize how much we harvest of each thing we grow. It would be fun to see the "grocery store equivalent value" and then work backward from the store prices to find the pre-tax equivalent of our hourly rate....not


    I would like to note how much we harvest, skip the rest...I suppose it would stop the "tossed a row of radishes into the composter today because they went to seed before we harvested them" entries from appearing so often....
    "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

    "Beer is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

    "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- W. B. Yeats

    "People generally are most impatient with those flaws in others about which they are most ashamed of in themselves." - folk wisdom

    Comment


    • #62
      Re: Garden Geeks thread

      Originally posted by FreshFish View Post
      Planted the first two rows of peas this weekend, first seeds into the garden itself. the rest of the beds are still under black ground cover.

      about five weeks ago, we started tomatoes, peppers, morning glories, zinnias indoors, now in a bedroom filled with folding tables and grow lights, we are seeing all the seedlings progressing nicely. time to start cukes and beans indoors soon.


      I keep "intending" to maintain a journal, at least so far as to itemize how much we harvest of each thing we grow. It would be fun to see the "grocery store equivalent value" and then work backward from the store prices to find the pre-tax equivalent of our hourly rate....not


      I would like to note how much we harvest, skip the rest...I suppose it would stop the "tossed a row of radishes into the composter today because they went to seed before we harvested them" entries from appearing so often....
      I have a Garden Journal from Lee Valley Catalogue. I am in my 2nd one (this being the 11th yr I have kept it.) I just write one or 2 lines, sometimes just a few words about the day. It has all sorts of fancy stuff- pages for garden plots etc that I used at first but then that sort of petered out. It does cue me to think of things when last yr at this time I did X. Of course this yr everything is about 2 weeks ahead but still....

      Comment


      • #63
        Re: Garden Geeks thread

        Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
        I have a Garden Journal from Lee Valley Catalogue. I am in my 2nd one (this being the 11th yr I have kept it.) I just write one or 2 lines, sometimes just a few words about the day. It has all sorts of fancy stuff- pages for garden plots etc that I used at first but then that sort of petered out. It does cue me to think of things when last yr at this time I did X. Of course this yr everything is about 2 weeks ahead but still....
        Part of me is curious as to what the garden is "worth" in pecuniary as well as in avocational terms.....

        generally we get 'pint after pint' of raspberries, a half-pint of strawberries 'at a time', a fine harvest of green beans for dinner once a week 'in season', and tomato harvest varies on presence or absence of blight....one year we add all we could, gave many away, and made about 4-1/2 gallons of sauce to boot, another year we had half-gallon of sauce and barely had any to share beyond that....we still have dried hot peppers from several years ago before we figured out how many peppers you would get from just a few plants. I guesstimate maybe $225 worth overall, really hard to know. I do know that our one-season experiment with zucchini is unlikely to be repeated, that summer, when our neighbors saw us approaching with yet even more zucchini in hand they would run inside and lock their doors.

        always amazed that if you harvest scrupulously then the bearing season is so much longer, kind of a miraculous symbiosis.

        and then we also are doing our share to counterbalance global warming by removing CO2 from the atmosphere by having the plants capture it in their stalks and stems....
        Last edited by FreshFish; 04-15-2012, 04:29 PM.
        "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

        "Beer is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

        "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- W. B. Yeats

        "People generally are most impatient with those flaws in others about which they are most ashamed of in themselves." - folk wisdom

        Comment


        • #64
          Re: Garden Geeks thread

          In the last few yrs we have had horrendous luck. Peas got some sort of blight, the squash bugs always come out when we are on vacation and decimate the crop, the tomatoes got some horrid blight even tho I start my own seed. We plant nickel and soliel bush beans in the ground (From Scheepers) one planting and harvest shopping bags all summer until first frost. Arugula, lettuce do OK. Cukes are just not happy no matter how I ammend the soil. This yr putting the cukes in an earthgrow pot, the tomatoes in tubs as far away from the garden as possible. Hopefully I will get something besides green beans, wax beans, basil, lettuce and a world of pain trying everything else.

          Comment


          • #65
            Re: Garden Geeks thread

            Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
            In the last few yrs we have had horrendous luck. Peas got some sort of blight, the squash bugs always come out when we are on vacation and decimate the crop, the tomatoes got some horrid blight even tho I start my own seed. We plant nickel and soliel bush beans in the ground (From Scheepers) one planting and harvest shopping bags all summer until first frost. Arugula, lettuce do OK. Cukes are just not happy no matter how I ammend the soil. This yr putting the cukes in an earthgrow pot, the tomatoes in tubs as far away from the garden as possible. Hopefully I will get something besides green beans, wax beans, basil, lettuce and a world of pain trying everything else.
            We tried putting the tomatoes in tubs too, to no avail. The blight that we get here in southern Wisconsin is air-born, and only spraying with a fungicide has made any difference. Knowing you're pretty strictly organic, I don't know where that leaves you. Good luck, though. I certainly know the frustration you're dealing with.
            "This world is your world. Take it easy, but take it." - Woody Guthrie

            Comment


            • #66
              Re: Garden Geeks thread

              Originally posted by Carter View Post
              We tried putting the tomatoes in tubs too, to no avail. The blight that we get here in southern Wisconsin is air-born, and only spraying with a fungicide has made any difference. Knowing you're pretty strictly organic, I don't know where that leaves you. Good luck, though. I certainly know the frustration you're dealing with.
              It leaves me screwed. I will keep trying tho.

              Comment


              • #67
                Re: Garden Geeks thread

                Wow, what a spectacular week of visual cornucopia! The dogwoods are starting to bloom, the first blossoms on the lilacs and wisteria are beginning to show, the bleeding hearts are blooming, yet the forsythia have not quite faded.

                Now, if we can only get some rain!
                "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

                "Beer is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

                "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- W. B. Yeats

                "People generally are most impatient with those flaws in others about which they are most ashamed of in themselves." - folk wisdom

                Comment


                • #68
                  Re: Garden Geeks thread

                  A friendly reminder to my fellow gardeners (or at least to those in certain parts of the country): remember to use gloves when weeding. I went out for a short stroll during lunch break, and noticed an invasive vine starting to grow in one of the beds. I started to reach for it, then stopped just in time, as I recognized the innocuous-looking tri-part leaflets that identify poison ivy!
                  "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

                  "Beer is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

                  "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- W. B. Yeats

                  "People generally are most impatient with those flaws in others about which they are most ashamed of in themselves." - folk wisdom

                  Comment


                  • #69
                    Re: Garden Geeks thread

                    Originally posted by FreshFish View Post
                    A friendly reminder to my fellow gardeners (or at least to those in certain parts of the country): remember to use gloves when weeding. I went out for a short stroll during lunch break, and noticed an invasive vine starting to grow in one of the beds. I started to reach for it, then stopped just in time, as I recognized the innocuous-looking tri-part leaflets that identify poison ivy!
                    Hit it with RoundUp! Gone forever.
                    'Eavesdropped the BC forum in USCHO. A range of intellects over there. Mostly gentlemen, but a couple of coarse imbeciles' - academic_index, a Brown fan

                    Comment


                    • #70
                      Re: Garden Geeks thread

                      Tomatoes, all 135 of them, are in the solo cups and are at least a foot tall. Basil is about half that (3 flats of 72). My garden swap at church isn't until the 20th. I am going to have transport problems

                      My garden is absolutely decimated by voles. The cat from next door is gone I think and we had a mild winter. ANyone know what voles won't eat? I would have thought alliums but those turned out to be cocktail onions for them. They ate a bunch of species allium, the crocosmia, the columbines, the dafs ??!!(I thought those were poisonous), grape hyacinths, etc. Usually my garden is at its absolute best right now. Instead there are very large bare areas. Let me tell you- with what I had crammed in there you would not have believed that was possible.

                      Have the cascara ready to go but it needs to not rain long enough for it to work.

                      Comment


                      • #71
                        Re: Garden Geeks thread

                        Tried to get into upper garden, just a hair too wet still, sucks as its supposed to rain most of the week again. Tried lower garden, its definitely too wet. Got squash, cukes planted indoors yesterday, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower all look good
                        I swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell.

                        Maine Hockey Love it or Leave it

                        Comment


                        • #72
                          Re: Garden Geeks thread

                          Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
                          Tomatoes, all 135 of them, are in the solo cups and are at least a foot tall. Basil is about half that (3 flats of 72). My garden swap at church isn't until the 20th. I am going to have transport problems

                          My garden is absolutely decimated by voles. The cat from next door is gone I think and we had a mild winter. ANyone know what voles won't eat? I would have thought alliums but those turned out to be cocktail onions for them. They ate a bunch of species allium, the crocosmia, the columbines, the dafs ??!!(I thought those were poisonous), grape hyacinths, etc. Usually my garden is at its absolute best right now. Instead there are very large bare areas. Let me tell you- with what I had crammed in there you would not have believed that was possible.

                          Have the cascara ready to go but it needs to not rain long enough for it to work.
                          No offense, but what in hell does someone do with 135 tomato plants???? Do you grow commercially?
                          "This world is your world. Take it easy, but take it." - Woody Guthrie

                          Comment


                          • #73
                            Re: Garden Geeks thread

                            Originally posted by Carter View Post
                            No offense, but what in hell does someone do with 135 tomato plants???? Do you grow commercially?
                            No. I started yrs ago (probably about 20) wanting varieties I that I couldn't find without going to a bunch of different places. I bought the seeds. They said put 2 seeds in a pot and then thin them. I thought that was a ridiculous waste so I planted a seed to a peat plug. Of course with beginner's luck they all sprouted and I had a ton of tomatoes. I decided to run a swap at church- bring a plant take someone else's. It is now a tradition- who would have thunk it! A few yrs ago I was thinking I had had enough of doing it and wouldn't you know- people start asking me in January if I was doing it again.

                            I plant each seed in a peat plug, most survive. WHen they outgrow the lights I put put them in Solo cups with a few holes drilled in the bottom. I usually have 4 or more varieties and they all seem to come with 20-30 seeds. I plant them all. I know myself enough to know I won't plant them the next yr because something else will catch my eye.

                            People clear their perennials out and bring them to trade, start other seeds and bring those. People who never come to church come on this day for plants. Kind of cool.

                            Comment


                            • #74
                              Re: Garden Geeks thread

                              Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
                              No. I started yrs ago (probably about 20) wanting varieties I that I couldn't find without going to a bunch of different places. I bought the seeds. They said put 2 seeds in a pot and then thin them. I thought that was a ridiculous waste so I planted a seed to a peat plug. Of course with beginner's luck they all sprouted and I had a ton of tomatoes. I decided to run a swap at church- bring a plant take someone else's. It is now a tradition- who would have thunk it! A few yrs ago I was thinking I had had enough of doing it and wouldn't you know- people start asking me in January if I was doing it again.

                              I plant each seed in a peat plug, most survive. WHen they outgrow the lights I put put them in Solo cups with a few holes drilled in the bottom. I usually have 4 or more varieties and they all seem to come with 20-30 seeds. I plant them all. I know myself enough to know I won't plant them the next yr because something else will catch my eye.

                              People clear their perennials out and bring them to trade, start other seeds and bring those. People who never come to church come on this day for plants. Kind of cool.
                              Very cool indeed! So how many tomatoes do you ultimately plant in your garden? We usually have around 8 plants.
                              "This world is your world. Take it easy, but take it." - Woody Guthrie

                              Comment


                              • #75
                                Re: Garden Geeks thread

                                Originally posted by Carter View Post
                                Very cool indeed! So how many tomatoes do you ultimately plant in your garden? We usually have around 8 plants.
                                Somewhere around a dozen. That leaves a lot of plants for people to get at church. The ones no one wants I huck up on our back hill.

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