23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
There is a container gardening forum on this website. You may also want to ask there. I grew carrots in a wine barrel once. They did pretty well. I just used plain old potting mix.
That moisture control mix by Miracle Grow is a little weird to me. Have you ever seen it soaked? Big gloppy ice cube looking chunks, that may be harmless, but I found it a little startling. I bought a bag at Costco and now use it mostly for ornamentals.
I didn't figure out what that ice-cube glob is either, but it only seems to have showed up the first time when the soil gets really wet.
OP, you're a good parent to get all those ingredients for the kids. Some adult gardeners don't or can't even get all those things in the first go-around. :-)
Some soil mixes already have fertilizer or plant food, so there is that option also.
Creativeguy: I went vertical last year with some hale's best. And you're right, you can use slings to support them. When they were about 3-4" in diameter, I used old pantyhose as slings. Nice and stretchy so it didn't inhibit growth. IIRC, these were spaced about 15". Should have spaced them about 18" or so just to make manipulating the vines through the netting a little easier. You'll want to go a lot higher than 4 feet though. This was 10" and they easily grew to the top.
Kevin
Thanks, all. My hope was to encourage the vines to spread laterally rather than upward on the trellis, which is how I grow my cucumbers. At the end of the day, I guess the plants themselves will let me know what they need and I can always add some height to my cattle panels. Nc-cm, my plan for the large melons is to put them on small adjustable height "stools" I'm welding up. Picture a tall stake with a frame atop and some old cut up rope hammock stretched over the frame. I'll train the vines onto the trellis and wherever a watermelon forms I'll set up a support for it. This is all to help streamline my lawncare... things got unmanageable growing pumpkins and melons on the ground last year, and I have little time as it is for such things. More time spent gardening and playing with my kids, less time mowing and such is the goal. Again, i appreciate the advice!
Sometimes I have noticed that plants that didn't get a lot of top growth will actually be doing something else -- getting a lot of root growth.
An example of this is when you buy starter packs from the stores. They may have remained at 4-6" at the store, and even at home when you bring it home and didn't transplant yet. But when you finally get to it, boy oh boy, there is a lot of roots in that little starter cell.
Same case for when you buy starter plants, transfer them to you yard, but the weather is still not yet optimal for growing. They sit in your yard for a while and look like nothing is happening up top, but they are definitely growing roots down below.
I just wanted to revisit problem #1 again: "Its been 3 weeks and The ones in the raised beds haven't grown at all with the exception of one tomato plant that grew 2 inches."
You mentioned that there is grass under the raised beds. It may take a while for the vegetable plants to take hold. Sometimes when I've covered grass for 3 weeks, its still popped back to life! It takes a while for the grass to die. In the meantime, your poor seedlings are fighting to get through the grass and establish their roots. The grass (and then the dead grass) actually will temporarily form a barrier, inhibiting root growth until the grass is dead and decaying.
I am left feeling that some book out there has misled a lot of new gardeners
I blame Pinterest for showing so many raised beds. :)
There are places where it's required ... poor soil and/or a bad back.
It also makes the garden look tidier.
I just installed "raised" beds for my chilis and herbs, sort of. It's more a mulch retainer than anything.
Here is a link that might be useful: My
Wow that is really infuriating. I'm sorry you're having to deal with it. I would be slapping up security cameras (they aren't very expensive) and taking videos to the cops. Then I'd be suing in small claims, including the cost of the cameras.
Hopefully, your next house will provide you with a better group of neighbors.
Normal young asparagus gone to fern as is normal Sure looks like it could use feeding however.
The ferns will continue to grow through out the summer feeding energy to the crown for the next couple of years and then you can harvest some. Assuming you water and feed it appropriately.
I agree with floral above - you need to do some basic research into how to grow asparagus, what its feeding and watering needs are and what to expect from growth.
Dave
Asparagus takes 2-3 years to get going! You also have to pretty much make that bed mostly gus, as they don't like a lot of competition. I'll plant things like basil and onions on the outside of the bed, cause the gus is finishing up here right now, and I'm planting my summer stuff.
6 is a bit iffy for more than one person. The gus is very random about when it comes up! I actually use those Debbie Meyer green bags that keep produce fresh for a very long time for my gus, so I can keep it fresh until I have enough for a meal for 2-4. Then I use them when it is all coming up at the same time! (I love gus so much, I don't freeze it! Soups is good if you have too much!)
I would say to plant a dozen more, maybe 2 YO crowns, make sure this is a dedicated bed for the gus, cut it back when it turns brown (Thanksgiving?), dump a bunch of compost on it and mulch for weeds during the winter. Repeat, then in a couple of years you will have the biggest, fattest, yummy gus! I eat it right out of the garden!
Good luck! Nancy
If your plants aren't showing any signs of being root-bound, I wouldn't bother to repot them (yet.)
The "bolting" on broccolli is the part you eat, but it will flower quicker and taste stronger when thing start to heat up. If you have an early variety, they might do okay.
Cauliflower depends on the variety as well, but you are probably too late to get mild tasting heads. And later varieties (e.g. self blanching) will probably just wait until fall to head.
Cabbage and its flavor probably won't be affected much. But the leaves will be tougher. Later varieties (e.g. flat dutch) may also wait until fall to head.
Hope this helps with your decisions. -Terry
The potato spud itself sends up several eyes, and when the eye reaches soil emergence, the eye starts producing leaves, and the plant starts growing roots. Most potatoes will grow multiple eyes. Some gardeners like to have 2 or 3 good, growing eyes on each peiece of seed potato that they cut up. Some gardeners prefer to halve them, and smaller scale gardeners will plant the whole potato.
On the roots, under the newly growing potato plant is where the potatoes grow (literally next to the parent piece of seed potato), and if you hill around the plant, and cover up most of the growth (leaving half the plant still uncovered) the newly covered stem will send out new roots, and produce potatoes in the soil that you hilled.
You can also take a potato plant and add a tire around the base, then fill with dirt, and grow potatoes upwards as high as you stack tires filled with dirt. The problem is, the higher you go, the smaller all of the potatoes get because of the length of the growing season. But it's still interesting that a potato plant can grow 5 feet tall or more and produce spuds all along the 5 feet of buried growth.
My great grandfather was SUCH a tightwad, he would pick the eyes out of the potatoes before supper in the spring, and plant just the picked out eyes. Most of them didn't grow, but every time he got a potato plant to grow from just the eye he felt like he was being the thriftiest guy alive. Old skinflint.
Rodney: By that that reasoning, a lowland virgin forest would have infinite leaves on the forest floor. That doesn't happen. If anything, it turns into a muck pit (which, when drained, makes the best garden soil.
"Sphagnum and the peat formed from it do not decay readily because of the phenolic compounds embedded in the moss's cell walls."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum
Here is a link that might be useful: Celeryville, OH
Sorry for the double post. Can't see how to delete it completely.
Here is a link that might be useful: Celeryville, OH
This post was edited by terry_neoh on Wed, Apr 23, 14 at 21:40
They are treated in the fields with various treatments - see link below. Supplemental treatment may be applied in storeage. But the inhibitors don't prevent sprouting, just slow it so yes, stored potatoes will usually sprout - eventually.
There are many discussions here about using store-bought poatoes as seed potatoes in the home garden. The forum search will pull them up for you. It is a fairly common practice.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Potato sprout inhibitors
That's a very sturdy frame. You could probably fence it off with chicken wire and raise chickens.
But as for vining veggies, many would still need finer things to vine on than a 2x4. If you can add that, then I would definitely suggest one of the large melon or pumpkin/squash families, since that is so strong. Canteloupe or honeydew would be something you could grow on there.
I will say that the sturdiness of your frame is just about right. Last fall, we had a large Bradford pear tree get spapped off in a wind storm, as well as half a Norway maple. Each of my next door neighbors lost a spruce. All tress over 20 years old. And this was not a tornado, or even a thunderstorm. It's now part of the "Hauntd Ohio" lore.
(I know, the lawn needs some nitrogen, and the tree was not rotted or insect infested. The wood is as soilid as a baseball bat.)
On second thought, you might want to add some flying buttresses.
This post was edited by terry_neoh on Fri, Apr 25, 14 at 12:10