23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

seriously -- don't till the asparagus. It is a perennial. It stays in the ground. Just plant what you want in other areas of the garden. You'll get your asparagus to eat in the spring -- keep on cutting it before it gets too tall, and you'll have a few weeks of great eating.

I agree about NOT tilling the asparagus! Cut it back when it turns brownish in the fall. Keep it mulched to control the weeds. Let it be it's own bed!
You really need to go over to the composting or soil forums to learn about different ways of composting!
Things like straw or hay (hay has seeds), different kinds of manure have weed seed in them and you want to find out from people you get the manure from if their animals are treated with certain things or their feed is treated.
Not sure about this "spot composting", but if you get as much as I do each day, you'll have little holes all over your yard!LOL. You might be referring to trench composting? (I hope I have that right) digging a trench and adding your kitchen waste as you go????
You will have to find a source of "browns" to go with all of those "greens". Your straw (chopped up!) lots and lots of leaves, also chopped as well as you can! UCGs are great also!
Anyway, make your way over to the soil board and do some perusing! It'll keep your winter full of things to learn! Nancy

At Wal-Mart I have seen Purple Passion, the Washington ones and Jersey varieties. I bought some of the Purple and Jersey to fill in gaps in my beds and they did fine. However, the ones I received mail order were definitely bigger/more developed.

They did have Jersey Asparagus crowns/roots that I bought, and they didn't grow anything.

I bought the Bonnie asparagus in a plastic 6 pack planter. Not very developed, and I may or may not get Asparagus in the Spring... but they definitely grew nicely for the first year from what I have read.

Buying the stuff when they have them at the big box store is so much cheaper than online.... I save the online buying for the hard to find stuff that produces well enough to justify the price.

Overwintering peppers works great. I leave them in the ground and protect from frost. I've got peppers on the plants when other gardeners just have small seedlings. I'd be interested to know about eggplant. Eggplants are, I believe, less tolerant of cool temperatures than peppers. Peppers just stop producing. Eggplants may actually die. Now, I have heard of eggplants dying back and then resprouting in the spring, but then you're not really ahead of where you'd bee with new seedlings.

I've had eggplants and peppers live up to four years and production was better each year.
Mine were outside near the brick wall of the house. I used blankets, boxes and heaters on rare cold nights.
Habanero is very sensitive to cold and wet. The anaheims, jalapeño and poblanos seem sturdier.

I enjoy your screened in garden. My husband is looking to re-do ours for next year. I would like to use your picture in my blog as a perfect example of what we would like to use. I would like to ask permission to use your picture. I will lead people to your website if they are interested in doing the same thing.

If you have any tips and pointers to give my husband on how you did it please share.

Thanks in advance.

Dang! I regret giving away my old round redwood hot tub now that we're in an epic drought!
3 little 50 gal drums wouldn't last me a month!
Here in sunny No CA, we usually don't get rain from April til October!
I'm lucky enough to have a nice deep well!
I think I'll be looking for some large containers in case this drought keeps going! Nancy

Great, that was exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks for the response.

I agree, not a problem, IME.

BTW, I find pole varieties on fencing is a much easier and better way to raise dry beans than bush cultivars.

You put newspaper or cardboard down several sheets thick on top of the grass/weeds to smother and prevent it from growing so you won't have to dig it out. Then you fill the raised beds. If you removed the grass/weeds before filling the beds then there was really no reason to use the newspaper underneath the soil. And you're right, the newspaper is only temporary. It will be composted fairly quickly leaving nothing behind.

As Ken said, using newspaper/cardboard on top of the soil and covering it with mulch is often used to prevent weeds and is much more effective during the growing season.

Adding raw organic matter in the form of coffee grounds and egg shells and whatnot to new beds is a good idea but don't expect them to provide your plants with many nutrients in the first year. It usually takes at least a year before new beds mature and the organic matter can become useful to plants. So I'd plan on fertilizing with an organic fertilizer (or a fert of your choice) next year. Even if it's not necessary, and it most likely will be especially with heavy feeders like tomatoes and corn, it's good to be prepared.

Rodney

Have you ever read that book on the $64 tomato? (:

I put down 2" x 6" x 10' planks to make the frame. I placed a grid of wire mesh (old aluminum gutter guards, screen, etc) and stapled it to the frame then turned it over directly onto the lawn. The wire mesh prevents any burrowing critter from attacking the plants from below.

Of course, this will prevent any roto-killing but then I never do it as it destroys the soil structure on which plants depend.

I filled it with a mix of compost and soil with total disregard to amounts. I used only soil and fiber from my own yard. Be aware, all soil had weeds and they can take 2, - 4 years to germinate so you will never be rid of them.

That winter, I took my collection of saved double page sections of newspaper, stapled them 4 sheets at a time end to end and rolled them up. (no glossy paper.)

In the spring, roll it out and cover it with 3" - 4" cooked hay. Cooking kills the seeds. It totally stopped all weeds for the entire year except where they could find a hole. The next spring, I rolled out another 4 ply of newspaper and added more hay. After the second year, the first layer is gone so don't worry about build up over the years.

After three years, I finally had the soil tested. There were no recommendations for adjustments or amendments.

Does any of that help?

I'm confused about what you are asking, but I can tell you this:

I live in Tennessee, and like maplegarden172...I plant spinach this time of year and harvest in the early spring (i do like to cover with lots of leaves to help insulate the plants).

I was told to plant my fall seeds this week. Of course the weather is against me. Maybe I can get out there tomorrow. It was cold and windy today and the skeeters were heavy around my face.

If you have a large garden and not planting a fall garden then a cover crop is good. Oats and buckweat are a great cover crop. Their roots go less deep than rye grass. They will produce a healthy layer and keep the weeds out. Both will die at first frost and cover the area. When spring arrives, you can till it under and they both decompose quickly creating healthy nutrients for your spring soil.

Autumn is coming. Leaves are soon to be plentiful. There are a lot worse things you could do than covering your beds with leaves. Shred em and you might find that they even composted over winter.

I'd like to see more people interested in mushrooms, which are a very beneficial life form in the garden. The proteins in mycelium and fruiting bodies break down in to soil nitrogen. Accept that very few species are edible, and appreciate them for their forms and colors, like flowers. If I want to ID one, the first thing I do is take a spore print. Depending on species, the spore print can be white, pink green, black, etc.

I also think they are a parasol mushroom of some type, genus Lepiota. Some are edible, some are unpleasant, and some are poisonous. So no, don't eat them. The forum here that has people who know mushrooms is the ferns and moss forum, I seem to recall. Cheers!

Carmen, Gypsy and Diablo Sweet did extremely well for me this year.

I grow Gypsy hybrid and Orange blaze. From 25 plants I am getting about 120-150 liters of peppers a season. Only pick green ones very early in the season (just few) when I can't wait for fresh pepper in my salad and at the end of the season when it's getting cold. Every year I pant another variety of classic red bell pepper hopping that this one will be early and prolific. Every fall I promise myself not to waist garden space is red bell and just plant what I know works the best, but in spring, can't resist to try something new. No luck so far)

To mdfarmer about wireworms...
They are larva of click beetles and grow several years in the soil before they actually become a beetle and produce eggs. So manual removal helps a lot. I dig my bed 3 times a year - spring, after harvest and right before hard frost, or even after it before the next one. Every time I pick what I see. They hard to smash, so I just rip them in half - that kills them. The fact they grow several years before become to be able to reproduce means that if you didn't find one this year - you will find it next year. Just remove each one you see. Also, if after harvest you place several potatoes in the already empty soil and mark where they are, you can come once a week, dig around the marks and collect the wireworms eating you lure. Keep in mind, that you also should kill beetles when you see them, they usually do not do any harm themselves, so we tend to ignore them.

I believe beneficial nematodes will kill wireworms.

Just start over with new seeds.

Until they sprout, they must be kept continually moist. This may mean watering once or even twice per day (lightly). Once you see that a lot of them have sprouted, you can cut back watering to once a day, and after a while, you can cut back more and more.

My opinion is that most likely you didn't water enough to get the seeds to sprout. Sometimes, freshly sprouted seeds are eaten by birds, snails or slugs almost from day 1 of sprouting, but usually you will see some sign of the sprout or the culprit when that happens.

Bigger, deeper set seeds like beans are less likely to need twice-a-day watering. Small seeds, planted shallowly are more likely to need continuous moisture.

--McKenzie

Agee with McKenzie. Sounds to me like you underwatered them. It was probably too hot as well, given that some beets and peas (more tolerant of warm soil) germinated and no spinach or lettuce did.
If watering daily isn't possible, increase your seeding depth.

Do pumpkins also get sweeter after a time in storage?

Johnnyseeds says that most winter squash gets sweeter with storage time, as carbohydrates break down into sugars. I understand that the process can be accelerated by keeping the squash warm for a few weeks after harvest, though that may cut down on the storage lifetime. Interestingly, the caratenoid (think vitamin A) content of butternuts also increases with storage time, so older squash are healthier as well as sweeter.