Garden Thread 2023!

[NHWS]

@begreen Thanks for the answer/link!
I've been trying raised beds for 2 years and absolutely can't
keep them hydrated...I even mixed my 'soil' from the Square Foot Gardening instructions.
These look promising

I've been using drip irrigation on timers in my raised beds. Seems to work well. I use the slowest drippers available and run them long enough to keep the subsurface soil moist. Much of the surface (everywhere except directly under the drippers) remains fairly dry, which somewhat reduces slugs and other pests. A soil moisture meter is very helpful to tune the irrigation time.

Now if I could just find a way to keep the bears out of the squash...

 

[NHWS]

Very sandy soil needs a lot of organic matter to help retain moisture. Keep adding mulched leaves in the fall and compost in the spring,

It's easy to go overboard, though. A bit too much drainage can be handled with a bit more watering. Too little drainage is much harder to rectify.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@DuaeGuttae ...I looked up a few videos on youtube...what is your favorite way to close the hole in the
bottom of the ollas? I'm absolutely gonna give these a try this summer... We honestly don't eat
a lot of veggies, but I really love to play in the dirt.

Maybe if you can get those raised beds to work, you’ll have some more veggies to eat. I just love fresh vegetables.

I actually don’t use pots with holes. Years ago when I started my raised bed project, I found great pots at Hobby Lobby that didn’t have drainage holes in the bottom. They were cheaper then, and I’d get them on half price sales. I also discovered that Hobby Lobby had lots of problems with them cracking or chipping in shipments, and people didn’t want to buy those for their floral arrangements for weddings or what have you. I’d talk to a manager and arrange to buy the lightly cracked or chipped ones for an additional discount off of the half price sales.

Terra Cotta Long Stem Flower Pot | Hobby Lobby | 598813

Get Terra Cotta Long Stem Flower Pot online or find other Containers products from HobbyLobby.com

www.hobbylobby.com

I don’t know if you have Hobby Lobby in your area, but it’s possible that other craft stores might have something similar. The key is to have unglazed terra cotta.

When my ollas have needed gluing, I have used original Gorilla Glue because it Is deemed food safe. I figured that anything in contact with the water that is nourishing my plants needed to be considered food safe. I’ve also used a silicone aquarium sealant to patch a huge terra cotta pot that cracked like a jigsaw puzzle during our 2021 single digit temperatures. If I were closing up a hole in the bottom of a pot, I think I’d just find some small tiles larger than the diameter of the circle and glue one over the top of the hole from the inside.

We have watering restrictions so often in the summers that I can’t hook up to our water service for watering my garden. If I could, I would have been tempted to do drip irrigation as @NHWS mentions. I believe that’s what @begreen runs in his raised beds as well.

Ollas are super-cool, though, and I find it especially fascinating how the roots of the plant will grow right around the pot. Sometimes they attach so tightly that it can even be hard for me to remove the ollas even much later when the plant is no longer there.

I do think you should work to address why your raised beds aren’t holding water. I know you used the “Mel’s Mix” formula from Square Foot Gardening. There are forums about that, and some people do have trouble with the formula. Here’s an example of a thread about such problems.

Mel's mix too loose?

I just harvested two boxes worth of carrots, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, and broccoli. Some of these performed very well, others not so well. I explored the soil and found that it was generally dry, especially in the 12 inch carrot box. I've been watering liberally twice a day. I...

www.houzz.com

One thing I have done to increase the moisture holding abilities of my raised beds is to incorporate some clay into my homemade compost. As NHWS points out, you really don’t want to go too far with that, but it sounds like you don’t have any waterlogging problems. I use bags of cheap unscented cat little from our local grocery that are a mixture of zeolite and bentonite granules, and it works great to give a little extra moisture retention for me. You could probably pretty easily find pure bentonite cat litter and try incorporating a little bit at a time into your beds to see if it helps.

Peat moss can become hydrophobic when it dries out completely. If your beds have lots of peat, I’ve heard that people sometimes add a tiny bit of dish soap to a handheld sprayer and saturate the beds with that before a good rain, and it helps the beds not to shed the rainwater.

I’m sorry if this is a data dump. I’m rushing to finish as my husband just prepared a lunch for us and has rung the dinner bell.

 

[Dan Freeman]

@Dan Freeman , how are your ribs after all your work on the greenhouse

I find that at the end of the day, I get a dull ache in the area where I broke my ribs. Deep breathing and certain movements make me feel it more. Most times, when I wake up in the morning the discomfort has been greatly reduced. Somewhat begrudgingly, I am grateful for today after working for a few days in a row. While I wanted to work today, the weather kept me from it. It was supposed to be mostly sunny and 46, but the sun never came out, the temperature only made it to 42, and it stayed breezy all day. Needless to say, I didn't work outside today. The day's rest is good for me.

We have a couple of YouTube videos we want to see and then we're going to have homemade meatballs and pasta with our last frozen batch of sauce made from our San Marzano tomatoes from last year.

Note to self: Plant more San Marzanos this year!

 

[Dan Freeman]

I don't think I posted this from yesterday...

Today, I got the gutters off the greenhouse, removed the cage on the strawberry patch and removed any slate or concrete blocks on the door sides.

Tomorrow, we will start moving the strawberries down to the FF. So happy the weather is mild. Then, we just have to dismantle the greenhouse, but we have to wait another 1 1/2 weeks until our 10-foot stepladder arrives. We have a 6 foot one that we used to build this old greenhouse (you can see it through the glazing in the first picture), but that is when I would take the chance standing on the very top as I held on for life. I heard you can get hurt on a stepladder , so I want one that gives me a higher reach and more support.

Gutters down, strawberry cage gone


Moved out of the way


Slate and concrete blocks removed


Footprint of new greenhouse will share the same line as the north and east sides of the present greenhouse.


10-foot Ladder for smart people who prefer not to fall and break ribs!

 

[ispinwool]

@DuaeGuttae ...wow! thanks for the info! We really do enjoy salads but we feel better on a 'meat heavy' diet. Hubby and I were very overweight and a meat based diet is helping us trim down.

we don't have a Hobby Lobby that's nearby but I'm thinking I can 'make do' with a regular pot...we have a lovely garden shop on the other side of town. I'll pop over this week and see what they have.

And I can relate to the Mel's Mix link you posted...I absolutely had the same issue. I honestly wasn't sure
if it was due to inadequate water or too much shade. My garden box isn't in the greatest spot--but it's where
my hubby's tractor can't 'accidently' mow it! LOL!😲🙄
I'm gonna try Ollas this year and see how things go. The other plantings are in asst'd pots and Earth Boxes...they'll also get Ollas!
The past few years I've been so frustrated with the few plants I've attempted...I'm looking forward to this year!

 

[Dan Freeman]

It is now 56 and we are finished for today. What a beautiful, but breezy day. The sun is gone now and there is a gray overcast.

We moved 4 of the elevated raised beds down into the FF. After carrying the first, we came up with the idea of dragging the last three, one at a time, down to the FF on a big tarp. Worked very well! :hurray:

You can barely see them all the way down there ("mist green"). They have to be moved into place, but first we need to move 2 regular height 4 x 8 raised beds.



We started digging up the strawberry bed just outside the old greenhouse and transplanting strawberry plants down into the FF. We barely put a dent in it, maybe 20% moved; we still have many more to move. It's coming at a good time. We kind of neglected this strawberry bed last year and the production really dropped, at least the ones we were able to eat. We wound up throwing more to the chickens than we ate.

 

[clancey]

You sure do have a "pretty" setting with your food garden...Love the forest background...I found out years ago with my hurt ribs that when I overdid it I started to get dull aches in different places. Be careful and get those ribs well but it takes time...Happy Velentine's day everyone..clancey

 

[Dan Freeman]

You sure do have a "pretty" setting with your food garden...Love the forest background...I found out years ago with my hurt ribs that when I overdid it I started to get dull aches in different places. Be careful and get those ribs well but it takes time...Happy Velentine's day everyone..clancey

I get those dull aches, too. Here's a nice pic I took this evening.

 

[clancey]

How Pretty Thanks clancey

 

[ispinwool]

I get those dull aches, too. Here's a nice pic I took this evening.
View attachment 309683

WOWZERS!! that's amazing! ...are those bees on the right by the pine tree?

 

[Dan Freeman]

WOWZERS!! that's amazing! ...are those bees on the right by the pine tree?

Funny, it does look like it could be a stack of beehives, but it is a small storage shed to keep tools and supplies in.

 

[EbS-P]

Good news or bad news first? Bad. Ok.

I killed everything in my salad rack. It was my fault. I was in a hurry just tried to guess ph based on what tap water was. And I trusted Google to much. And may have made a decimal error in my math. I needed to lower the PH about one point. (It was a guess and a decent one) with no meter or strips. I should have left it alone. I added way too much vinegar and killed everything. 100 net cups. Live and learn. Starting over.

Good news. The tomatoes were on in the salad rack and have been transferred to the the tower and are doing well. I have way too many of them. 14 but one is not going to make it. A couple chard plants too.

I know have a meter and ph down solution. So. In about three weeks I will up the nutrient levels. Redo starting seeds for the rack. Better variety this time and will hopefully have a decent way to continuously replant in both systems in a a month.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

@ispinwool, I hope you find something good. The pots at ”a lovely garden shop” might be too fancy for burying in the ground, but maybe they have just the basics, too. My pots hold about two quarts of water, by the way. That lasts me a week or longer in the cooler weather. During this summers drought and days and days of 100+ temperatures under burning sunshine, I had to fill them every other day. I don’t think you’ll have that kind of heat and aridity in Pennsylvania, but you do want a decent-sized reservoir.

@EbS-P , I’m sorry to hear about your salad rack, but glad that you’ve still got tomatoes. Salad is much easier just to replant.

My bad news is that I left some seedlings out overnight because I was only paying attention to the temperature on the weather forecast, and it was only going down to the forties with the cold front. The front came roaring in with high winds, though, and blew the tray of seedlings of the table. I rescued what I could this morning. I think some will recover. Others won’t.

The good news is that my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant that I seeded on Saturday have started to sprout. I did some rearranging (moving the huge ginger planter) to get them on the plant cart so that I could turn on the grow light suspended above it. I may need to raise the seedling tray higher since I also have a jade plant on the cart and don’t want to get the light too close to it, but I’m making progress.

The first picture is the seedlings I had to pick up from their crash onto my deck. The second is mostly just sponges with seeds with radicles, but there are a few sprouts popping up.

 

[EbS-P]

Tomatoes are looking great for 5 weeks. Not sure how to cage 12 plants inside. I’ll figure it out as I go.

Started more plants on the salad rack. The is mostly broccoli rabbi

 

[clancey]

I'm from PA and I sure hope that chemical spill did not affect any of your family and your beautiful
food forest...Saying prayers for all those people in Ohio and all the states that might be affected by the deadly pollution freeman...clancey

 

[ispinwool]

@DuaeGuttae OOF! that's too bad that your seedlings did a nosedive...at least you could save some.

I'm enlisting the help of my kids to search for clay pots. I was astonished to discover that my eldest (34 years old; male) knew what Ollas were! The kid that never grew anything ever, and he knew an ancient irrigation system. Go figure! LOL!
The birds are beginning to build their nests in our neck of the woods...time to break out the seed packets and see what I have and what I need. (which probably should have happened while ago...but I always procrastinate so I have something to do tomorrow! LOL)

 

[EbS-P]

Tomatoes are looking great. These were seeded on January 19th. I’m using fluorescent grow lights on the tomatoes. The salad rack has broad-spectrum LED. The fluorescent spectrum is much more blue, while the broad-spectrum has a larger red component. I might do an experiment and put some LEDs on the tomatoes.

 

[begreen]

Tomatoes are looking great. These were seeded on January 19th. I’m using fluorescent grow lights on the tomatoes. The salad rack has broad-spectrum LED. The fluorescent spectrum is much more blue, while the broad-spectrum has a larger red component. I might do an experiment and put some LEDs on the tomatoes.

View attachment 310135

They make red spectrum fluorescent tubes too. I have 4 bulb fixtures in which I use 2 of each.

 

[Dan Freeman]

The pond for the new greenhouse arrived today. Still waiting on the 10' ladder so I can begin to take down the old greenhouse. I ordered it on Jan 29th from Lowes. It was supposed to be in on February 20th. It is now 3 days later, and it is still showing "Getting ready to ship to store". Chat on the Lowes' site is useless because it is a computer, and the wait time for a real person is 1/2 to 1 hour!

We have a date of April 6th for Site Prep to come and put in the foundation for our greenhouse. The slope is 11 inches, so there is a $311 upcharge, and because of a few specifications I want, there is a further upcharge of another $250. So, $2310 has become $2871. IMHO still worth every cent if I don't have to do it!

 

[EbS-P]

I am really liking these non woven bags. A 7 gallon bag just watered is still manageable weight.
Planted yesterday. Two bags of chard, one kale, spinach, arugula, red lettuce, and okra. I ordered 20 more 5 gallon bags.

Next weekend project will be getting them set up for automatic watering

 

[begreen]

The lettuce can be put in a 3-gallon bag or pot. They don't have the deep roots that chard has. Your growing season for spinach will probably be over by May. It doesn't like heat. You might consider growing perpetual spinach, which is actually a type of chard, but cooks and tastes a lot more like spinach. It's slower to bolt and can provide multiple harvests.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Well, I thought we might get away without any significant snow this winter, but it looks like March is coming in like a lion.

Snow supposed to start around 5pm tonight and go through tomorrow afternoon until 1pm. 5-8 inches predicted for us with a glaze of ice.

We are cooking a turkey tomorrow. (The "emergency" turkey I bought in September in case they didn't have them at Thanksgiving.) We wanted to get it out of the freezer to make room for the next big batch of meatballs and sauce. Just a nice coincidence we will be cooking it on a snowy indoor day. We'll have the turkey with stuffing, turnips, mashed potatoes, broccoli, gravy, and cranberry sauce. It's a 17lb bird, so we should have good eating and plenty of soup over the next few weeks.

 

[weee123]

Just found this thread today. Last year was my first year gardening and I learned quite a bit to put to use for this year. Don’t get over eager and plant too early!

Last year started a perennial fruit section with apple trees, a peach tree, and this year added blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Also added in some asparagus near the vegetable garden, and planted a black walnut in a different section of the property last year.

Expanded the vegetable garden this year and will soon be planting spinach and radishes and some sugar snap peas.

 

[EbS-P]

The lettuce can be put in a 3-gallon bag or pot. They don't have the deep roots that chard has. Your growing season for spinach will probably be over by May. It doesn't like heat. You might consider growing perpetual spinach, which is actually a type of chard, but cooks and tastes a lot more like spinach. It's slower to bolt and can provide multiple harvests.

I read up on perennial greens that would survive our heat and humidity. As I recall there were some good options. Forgot most of them now. I need to follow back up.

I will also be figuring out what grows well in the hydroponic rack. It will just take some time.