23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Oh dear. You could get an awful lot of seed potatoes for that price, and grow a nice crop. Next year, just plant potatoes, and you'll have much more chance of success!
There was a thread on here recently about the things that garden centers sell that make no sense -- like radish and carrot seedlings. Your garden center belongs on that thread as well!
Gardening is all a learning experience. This will be a story to tell :)
I'm suspecting that, if the potatoes were in 5 gallon pots, they were never intended for planting into a garden. That would certainly be a very unusual technique, as digdirt says. Possibly they were intended to be grown in the the container permanently just to provide a crop of new potatoes? If you Google potatoes in 5 gallon buckets there are lots of hits describing the technique. Maybe you should have just left them in the container, fed and watered them and waited until the foliage started to die down.
Yes, the leaves open and close and move around a lot. There are some interesting YouTube videos of their moves I looked at a few days ago. I'm trying peanuts for the first time this year, too. I don't expect them to do great since our summers are usually too short and too mild for them, but it will be fun to see some of how they grow.
Here is a link that might be useful: Peanut time lapse
We were in the city all day yesterday and came home to leaning plants all over the garden, all in the same direction. Winds were high, that's all. :) As long as nothing is broken, the tomatoes will correct themselves. The brassicas might need a little help, though. I'm going out today to nudge them back upright and mound the soil around them again. (I bury them quite a bit when I transplant, but if the top inch is a bit dry, young plants will still tilt a bit in high winds because the soil shifts instead of holds).
That's a healthy pumpkin plant. The flowers will sort themselves out eventually. It's normal for either males (usually) or females to show up without the other gender initially.
The vines will climb things if they are close and no, it's not a problem. No reason at all to chop it down. If a pumpkin does form on the vines that are climbing the fence you will need to make a sling to support the pumpkin to keep it from tearing the vines down. But if you don't want it climbing the fence, you can either snip the tendrils holding it to the fence so that it will lay back on the ground or just train the vine back down. If it were mine I'd leave it alone and let it do what it wants (unless it started growing into the neighbor's yard).
Rodney
O, ok. It's actually about 4-5 plants I think. They were sprouting in clumps in the compost pile (in the background of the photo above), and it was hard to thin them out initally. So I picked out 4-5 clumps and set them about 10-12 inches apart. So there's probably about 4-5 actual plants there. So excited, a few years ago I got a 22 lb pumpkin when the compost had pumpkin babies the first time ;) Hopefully I'll get a few this time around as well. I've never really fertilized, or learned the proper watering technique/amounts, besides watering the ground, and trying to keep the foliage dry. I have a feeling I water too often (once or every other day when it's over 80F).
Looks like a Crane Fly. I don't think of them as any sort of problem, although they do have subterranean larvae that in large numbers can be problematic in lawns. In any case, I doubt they cause any problem in your veg garden. I don't think they even eat anything as adults.
I vote crane fly.
Should not be a danger - adults mate and die - don't even eat.
Adult
The main goal of the adult crane fly in the spring is mating. During the adult stage, the crane fly does not eat. For the short 10- to 15-day period, the adults mate on plants or in the air near the water. Afterwards, the female deposits her eggs. When mating and egg distribution is complete, female dies. The male only lives up to 15 days as well.
It is true that the early stages of the creature's development can be a lawn problem: http://lakewhatcom.wsu.edu/gardenkit/unwantedpests/cranefly.htm
Here is a link that might be useful: THE LIFESPAN OF A CRANE FLY
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Do they have organic potting mix?
Yes, many brands of it available. And the existence of fungus growths like toadstools and such is considered beneficial, normal, desirable.
Trying to garden organically in containers has its own set of problems to overcome since it is totally different from gardening organically in the ground where a soil food web exists to provide nutrients. But the 'mushrooms' isn't one of them.
Dave
I have an area just like this. I have it planted in flowers but I also plant chard, kale and cherry tomatoes, plus a native chiltepan pepper.
We use the chiltepan peppers dry and crushed in a pepper grinder in place of pizza red pepper flakes.
My chard seeded itself this year from last spring.
In this area is also some Parsley, basil and hyacinth beans, plus some bulking flowers and tropicals.
I've had huge crops of Armenian cucumbers and squash in this area, too.
Also, during cooler seasons I plant salad veggies like lettuce, spinach and radishes in my shadier spots. Cowpeas will do okay but better in sun.
I found this link very helpful for our Zone 5 planting:
Here is a link that might be useful: PLANTING CALENDAR
I have covered the non planted / walk areas with old carpet and / or cardboard. Clean area to walk and no grass/weeds. Divert your bath/shower water to garden and use as stored water, save money and time.
I use cardboard a lot.
For efficiency, I don't think anything beats the old straight rows and the hoe, dirt mulch. Of course, it also tires ground out quickly, so fallowing is critical. The fallow is when weeds often take over, so the smart farmer plants the cover crops in rows as well and hoes, just like for the food crop.
Too bad I'm not that smart, or that energetic.