Garden Geeks thread

[Carter]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Beat 2 eggs really well and add to 1 gallon of water... spray on plants. The deer will move on to your other goodies. Compliments of my dear friend, Shirley Nason, Seboeis Plantation. It really works. Deer don't like the taste of egg.
I add a little garlic powder as well... they don't like the taste and smell of garlic either.

Shoot the worms with high caliber rifle.

I have a friend who, back in his school days, spent a summer spraying seedling fir trees for Weyerhaeuser out in the Northwest. I remember him telling me that the basic deer repellent was composed of egg yolks.

 

[bigblue_dl]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

I have a very easy solution to your deer problem....involving a piece of lead moving at a very high speed.

 

[walrus]

I have a very easy solution to your deer problem....involving a piece of lead moving at a very high speed.

Lots of deer , I expect a thinning of the herd once hunting season starts.
Going to try eggs spray, have lots of eggs. Must have to spray e everytime it rains?

 

[CLS]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

I think my tomatillo is plotting world domination. I can't believe how huge it is. I have a tomato cage around it, but it's a lot taller than the cage and dwarfs everything else in the garden. I read up on how to tell when they're ripe, and it said when the fruit is about the size of the husk, they're good to go (but apparently they're edible at any stage).

...

My tomatillos are trying to take over the lawn.

I just wait until the husk discolors or starts to split, or even when the fruit falls off the plant. If you harvest them too early they're kind of bitter.

Made a batch of tomatillo salsa already. Yum.

 

[FiveHole12]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Lots of deer , I expect a thinning of the herd once hunting season starts.
Going to try eggs spray, have lots of eggs. Must have to spray e everytime it rains?

Yup. That's the only draw back to the eggs.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Over the weekend we got the fall crops planted, including cucumbers, beets, carrots, onions, kale, lettuce, and broccoli. All were planted from seed, so we get the usual suspense of seeing when and how much actually comes up. Now I need to get the automatic watering set up for when they're past the germination stage.

 

[bigmrg74]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Kicking around the idea of building a green house. we've got a couple of 4x6 post in the ground with a couple of 2x6 between them for a sawdust pit, but it's never really worked well for keeping the sawdust dry, especially when the tarp gets a little aged and it just leaks. probably going to go back to having it dumped into the corner of our indoor arena when we need to have more delivered Mom said. The pit is about 16 by 14, so I think it would be plenty of room to grow a few things, maybe use a corner of it to keep some chickens, and perhaps even use it as a shed for the lawn mower. Just need to collect a few ideas for it while we're working on cleaning it out. Just having the posts there would be most of the structure up already, and I know they're all set on concrete blocks with quikrete around em as well.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Fun. This morning went out to water the new plantings, and the cucumbers are already coming up, all four hills of them. I almost was going to pull them as weeds, as I didn't think anything would come up that quickly. Now if the rest will only follow suit!

 

[walrus]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Just brought in all the squash, got quite few, would have had more if not for those MFin' deer. Few tomatoes left, green beans, chile peppers, thats about it for this year

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

I'm still getting tomatoes (down to 2 plants - ripped the others out) - which seems late to me. I'm guessing that we've usually had a killing frost by now. They're not ripening very fast, but I'm getting a couple a day which is perfect for slicing.

Have one more batch of hot peppers that I'll grab before the frost.

Finished the carrots last week.

Have brussels sprouts that will be perfect in early November.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

While it's snowing quite heavily here right now, indoors we are paging through seed catalogs, planning the garden plots, and getting ready to unpack the grow lights and seed-starting trays, so that over the next two weeks or so we'll get tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini started. If Punxatawny Phil is to be believed, in a little more than four weeks we'll be thinking about how soon to plant peas outdoors.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

We've had a warm January and early February with no frost, so the more frost sensitive plants, like the tomatoes, are doing well and will hopefully keep chugging through spring. Some of our root vegetables, like the carrots and beets, haven't formed well, though we got some decent rutabegas. Tomatoes are producing nicely now. About to plant our spring crop, including some more lettuce and a few other things we'll figure out this weekend. The broccoli plants grew big, but went to seed with the first blossoms, so didn't really get anything there. Arugala is coming along nicely.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Funny that this is bumped today as I was just looking outside and remembering that one of my first tasks this spring - if all this ****ing snow ever melts - is to expand the garden by 50%.

Wanted a smaller plot at this house compared to the old house, but realized last year that 8 x 16 wasn't sufficient. Gonna expand to 12 x 16.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Garden Geeks thread

Funny that this is bumped today as I was just looking outside and remembering that one of my first tasks this spring - if all this ****ing snow ever melts - is to expand the garden by 50%.

Wanted a smaller plot at this house compared to the old house, but realized last year that 8 x 16 wasn't sufficient. Gonna expand to 12 x 16.

Perhaps you are already doing what I'm about to mention?

We swear by the "square foot garden" concept because it really helps promote yield. Our garden is separated into sections so that you can access each one from both sides. You can really control weeds, tie up plants, etc etc quite well that way. By cultivating smaller sections more intensely, you get much better yield. also, for peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc., by growing them vertically we also get much better yield per square foot. Usually I am using a step ladder to harvest tomatoes by the end of the growing season and we are reaching out of the windows of the house to pick cucumbers grown on a trellis leaning against an outside wall.

 

[jen]

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.

 

[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.