2024 Garden Thread!

[begreen]

Thank you. I've got four two foot multi-color LEDs that I am going to set up. I had the fan on my brain but walked out without one this morning. I have used one in the past.

I got these two lights a couple of years ago. They were $15 less back then. I used them to grow lettuce and peppers last winter and they are now over starts in the greenhouse.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JLJ3D6Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

[Woodsplitter67]

It looks like there is a gap between the potting soil and the bottom of the cup. How is that space maintained?

Yes.. there is a gap between the pot and cup at the bottom.. it is not maintained at all. As the plants get bigger the roots grow through the bottom of the pot.. As it gets warmer out. I normally fill that void with water.

 

[begreen]

Ah, I didn't see that peat pots were being used. Cool, that works well. The starts are about twice the size of mine. When is it safe to put them outside in the ground in your area?

I recycle starter packs and 4" pots and set them in plastic trays that veggies come in from the store. If I am going to be away on a hot day then I add some water to the tray for the starts to soak up as needed.

 

[Northern NH Mike]

I got these two lights a couple of years ago. They were $15 less back then. I used them to grow lettuce and peppers last winter and they are now over starts in the greenhouse.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JLJ3D6Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Thanks begreen. I had a couple of these already so I decided to stick with them and add a couple more.

(broken link removed)

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Ah, I didn't see that peat pots were being used. Cool, that works well. The starts are about twice the size of mine. When is it safe to put them outside in the ground in your area?

I recycle starter packs and 4" pots and set them in plastic trays that veggies come in from the store. If I am going to be away on a hot day then I add some water to the tray for the starts to soak up as needed.

Never april.. some people try but lose plants.. I d o the first week of may.. this year will probably be the 5th if the weather look good. the nightime temperatures are what counts. One year it went down to 28 degrees in the middle of May like 5 years ago... everybody was scrambling..

 

[EbS-P]

It was 82 today. My tower garden is starting to wilt by mid afternoon in the sun. In deciding when and how to deploy shade cloth. the tower is all lettuce kale chard and komatsuna. The later has bolted. it was all seeded December 1st I think. Tomatoes are starting to ripen. I’ve got a big mess to keep squirrels out of. It’s drinking 5 gallons a day now.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Not veggies, but last fall I planted 100 red tulips throughout my front lawn. They just started popping up out of the ground yesterday and today!

I’m stupidly excited to see if my front lawn gets peppered with red tulips!

 

[begreen]

They're coming. Most of ours have started blooming. Up in the Skagit valley it will be a riot of color for the next 2 weeks. This is a classic shot by Piere LeClerc

Tulip Farm in the Skagit Valley by Pierre Leclerc Photography

Tulip Farm in the Skagit Valley Photograph by Pierre Leclerc Photography

pixels.com

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Im not going for that much color, but a little will be nice, lol

 

[stoveliker]

They're coming. Most of ours have started blooming. Up in the Skagit valley it will be a riot of color for the next 2 weeks. This is a classic shot by Piere LeClerc

Tulip Farm in the Skagit Valley by Pierre Leclerc Photography

Tulip Farm in the Skagit Valley Photograph by Pierre Leclerc Photography

pixels.com

View attachment 326379

Apart from the hills in the background that looks Dutch ;-)

 

[begreen]

Apart from the hills in the background that looks Dutch ;-)

The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is the largest tulip festival in the US by acreage of tulips, number of farms, and days of blooms.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Saturday, May 4, 2024

Save the day! Lol

Be wary of links other than Wikipedia!

 

[begreen]

Seems like June 1 would be a safer bet but then, why just one day?

 

[stoveliker]

why just one day?
Occupational hazards, especially when it's not cold ...

Potential for a whole new meaning to the word pruning - and I won't go much farther than that to not derail this any further

 

[EbS-P]

Verdict is in Buckbee’s New tomatoe is a winner. It tastes fine. (I don’t have much to compare it too right now). It’s not life altering but it sets fruit in cold weather. Nothing in the hydroponic table has produced anything close. A clipping I took probably around new years is now 4 feet tall and will be loaded with fruits. It’s good enough I’m going to cut down all but two other tomatoes in the hydro table.

It’s not the most round perfect fruit but it’s cold hardiness and general growth during cool season means it’s going to find a permanent year round spot for me if only to take clippings to get really early start on the growing season

 

[begreen]

Nice. They certainly are early. The file sizes for 2 images were too large. I reduced them down to 1200 x 900 pixels so that they would show.

 

[EbS-P]

Nice. They certainly are early. The file sizes for 2 images were too large. I reduced them down to 1200 x 900 pixels so that they would show.

It’s not so much that they are early as they really kept plugging along with short cool short days and now it’s warming up really taking off. Only bright in when freezing temps were predicted. We had 20 night below 38 and several days with highs below 50.

Thanks New phone. Need to change settings.

 

[EbS-P]

Update….
blue berries look like they will make a great crop this year the orange tree blossom and has a ton of fruit lemons too, but they aren’t pictured. I counted 28 tomato bags at my house 15 more at my dads.

Surprises so far are how well the tomatillos have done in the cool spring loaded with blossoms. We have small cauliflower heads forming. These were white “amazing” variety. We have several purple that have not formed heads yet but are much larger plants all but a bit spindly. I’ll be planting some pickle Bush, cucumbers and lemon cucumber soon along with some Korean melons and Asian string beans and cherry peppers all in the straw bales.

 

[begreen]

That looks great! Our blueberries are just starting to leaf out. The citruses are blooming too and the Satsuma has lots of new leaves and some branches forming! I have a portable greenhouse I am trying out over the pepper bed this year. I have baby plants and my 2 December started peppers in there. One has 3 nicely developing peppers on it. I liberated those two plants from their pots and put them in the ground today. Next week's forecast looks sunny and warm. I may put a few tomatoes out under cover then depending on night and soil temps.

 

[begreen]

The December-started peppers are outdoors now under the cover of a portable greenhouse. We have several peppers on one plant and flowers on the other. I'll remove their cover in a couple of weeks.

 

[EbS-P]

It was 88 yesterday and same or hotter today. I just threw up the shade cloth. Plants should be happier.

 

[Pinesmoke]

We setup some raised beds last weekend. My wife demanded off ground beds due to all the copperheads around here. I can't say I blame her.

Put in some Roma plants. I just toss them in a vac bag and freeze them for winter. Run water on them for a few seconds and the skin comes off and they go into soup.

Planted some early girl plants and some grape and cherry plants for yard candy. I'm waiting on some volunteer tomatoes to come up at my old place, late May, to bring them down. They started 30 years back as a heirloom Sicilian drying tomato. They have become a 50 cent piece sized tomato that has a great flavor.

Some heirloom cucumbers are in and waiting for me to pick up some hog fence to bow in an arch over them to grow on. In the void under that and around the tomatoes are a couple dozen sweat red onions.

Basil, cilantro and mint are in and going. It's been 85 for the last few days so everything should be gtg.

 

[begreen]

It was 88 yesterday and same or hotter today. I just threw up the shade cloth. Plants should be happier.

We are still seeing cold nights, especially if it's clear out. Last night got down to 37º. Further inland they had frost. With two pepper plants in the ground, I was a bit concerned about how they would do. I checked at 8am (38ºF outside) and inside the greenhouse air temp was 52º. No problem there. It's insulated and the slab retains some heat overnight. I also checked the soil temp in the portable greenhouse where the two peppers are in the ground. It was 57º yesterday at 5pm and this morning the soil temp read 52º. The peppers look good. They are going to make it. We will be hitting close to 70º by Friday so there's a lot of managing temps and watering for starts, but spring is here and most plants should be going into the ground by the end of the month.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Today looks to be a day for some work in the garden. Last Saturday I planted out some larger eggplant and pepper transplants. The soil temperature was measuring at least sixty, but I also put up some wire supports and covered the transplants with frost cloth for the first night when temperatures in the forties were forecast. It was just one night of protection before a mini heat wave this week, though. I plan to put the frost cloth back up today as we’ll have a cooler week. I’m not concerned about actual frost, but I’d just like to keep the temperatures up a bit for these plants that like warmth. They were getting large enough that I thought they’d do better in the ground with a bit of protection.

I also have a few more lettuce transplants to put out and some flowers. I’ll need to discuss with my mother what else we might plant. A couple of weeks ago we attached poultry netting around the perimeter of the entire garden [more than two hundred fifty feet, I think] to keep rabbits out. We’d been losing some volunteer lettuce that had shown up, but our first transplants that we put out the day we fenced have been untouched. Hurray.

We also put out some brassica seedlings around that same time. Some of those we have lost, perhaps due to cutworm damage. Overall we still have a good number growing.

My mother has been harvesting and freezing rhubarb. I believe that she is up to twenty-seven pounds that she has picked. She made a rhubarb strawberry crisp from the last of what was in the freezer the day she started harvesting.

 

[stoveliker]

I just landed in Seattle, and it's much, MUCH greener here already than on Long Island. Most Trees have full or significant green on them here.