23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

You can't separate plants grown in rock wool since they quickly incorporate the wool cube right into the roots and base of the plant. One reason why onions and other root crops aren't commonly considered a rock wool crop since you have to sacrifice part of the edible root to get rid of the wool cube..

Are clusters bad? If you plan to harvest and use them as scallions, yes. If you don't care if they look like bulbs of garlic or shallots and are willing to sacrifice the immature ones attached around the core, fine.

Dave

Thanks for the info everyone. Very good to know.

I saved rosemary seeds and basil and holy basil seeds last year. I'd love to trade with you. I am just learning how to save seeds. I want to grow mostly heirloom plants. I didn't have much luck on the seed exchange here. I got alot of seeds that didn't germinate.

Zackey, my wife grew holy basil for the first time this past year. I really liked the flavor. I wouldn't have thought any kind of basil would make a nice tea, but I thought the holy basil made an outstanding tea. I just saw in Southern Exposure's catalog that holy basil is supposed to be a different species from other basils (O. sanctum instead of O. basilicum.) I wonder if that means it won't cross with other basils. I also wonder what kind of isolation distance is necessary to prevent cross-pollination in basils that can cross-pollinate. Zackey, if you (or anyone else) wants to e-mail me directly, I'd be glad to hear about your interests, idea, recommendations, to explore potential for trades, etc.

Anne, thanks for the suggestion. I am familiar with CFSA. As one of the farms that gave a pre-conference farm tour my wife and I got free passes to the annual conference one year, and we certainly hear about other things that CFSA does. I haven't, however, seen/recognized much in the way of opportunities with CFSA to connect with other seed savers, especially not the kind of small-scale seed savers that would presumably be more open to non-commercial kinds of information sharing and cooperation, etc. I think they host an annual seed swap, and I used to think seed swaps would bring a bunch of seed savers together, but my impression now is that seed swaps (speaking generally here about seed swaps everywhere) mostly just involve leftover and surplus commercial seed.

That's interesting that you don't get them on your iPad sunnibel. If you look at the bottom of this screen you will see 'Learn more about in-text links on this page here'.
What you see is certain words within posts in a different colour and if you are unfortunate enough to hover your cursor near them an ad fills the middle of the screen making it impossible to continue reading the post until you click the x to close it. Even then often clicking the x makes it continue and you have to click again elsewhere to really get rid of it. For example a post about garden 'clean' up will cause an ad about a floor polish to fill your screen. They have annoyed plenty of other people.

Here is a link that might be useful: In text ads.

One thing annoys me about this 'sticky':

1. That it is on every page of each forum, not just page one.

Actually two things annoy me about this 'sticky':

2. That it is essentially an advertisement, not relevant to the topic of each forum and certainly not an attempt to preserve some of the valuable information or sage wisdom that drops off beyond 'page 67' every day, or even to be helpful to newcomers.

Actually three things annoy me about this 'sticky':

3. That it is just a repeat of a link from the 'What's new' section an inch above it!

Rodney,
I will be interested in reading here of your results. Most of the feed stores and old garden centers here sell the bulbs in the sprig.... figured they knew something.
Victor

I grew shallots from bulb last year with good sucess however the bulbs are pricy. I am in Minnesota so fall planting I doubt will work. I want to try these from seed this year. I typically start onions from seed in late February and work them under grow lights till they are ready to go outside. I am wondering if shallots from seed work the same way. If I do start them from seed will they have multiple shallots per plant or only one the first season?

I agree to some extent with lazygardener.
But the subject matter is too broad. It depend on the duration of these classes ; How many sessions? Who are the participants?

So to me you have to start with a brief introduction about plant life and soil chemistry in simple language first. Then get into a more practical aspects, like starting seeds and caring for it.

You wouldn't want to overload the information. Nowadays most people have access to internet. You can encourage hem to do some NET study if they really are serious about gardening. To me gardening is similar to swimming. You cannot teach in a classroom how to swim.

JMO

I agree totally with lazygardens - you need to hook people immediately with something practical and hands on. Maybe a vegetable id blind tasting or something. If you start with the soil science half of them will not be back the next week.

Since the OP has not returned there's not much to go on. All ideas are speculation without more info.

I think you also have to notify the federal authorities. They'll declare your bed a toxic waste dump, and evacuate people from the area. Plan on having the bed excavated, sterilized, covered with concrete, and lined with barbed wire fencing. Feel free to design your garden on that basis. Silk flowers, perhaps? You may hear howls of laughter from at least the local cat.

Sorry, I couldn't resist ...

" But one of the one commenters on my previous post commented that cat manure contains Toxoplasmosis bacteria that can be transported through my food that I grow... Is it something I should worry about?"

Actually ... NO. in the USA, infected meat is far more likely to be a cause of infection than cat feces.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/humbio103/ParaSites2006/Toxoplasmosis/epidemiology.html

If you look at the timing of the infection, the cysts are infectious for only a short while ... " Oocysts sporulated within 2-3 days in all types of cat litters and occasionally remained viable for 14 days. " (depends on the conditions - when it's cold and dry survival times are highest)

Also, a cat with Toxoplasmosis only releases the cysts for a short while.

I never stratified my Malabar spinach. I just planted the seeds in 1 gallon containers in the full sun when it was hot out. It grew like a weed.

There's a difference between stratification and scarification. ivanbelenjr is doing scarification. The period in the fridge is stratification. But it seems odd to me to stratify the seeds of tropical plants. What's the reasoning behind that?

Try Long squash

I had a great pepper that performed super well. It's called Lady Belle. It had all kinds of bug attacks and tons or rain. It never stopped producing. The only bad thing it got hot when it was baked as stuffed peppers. It got so heavy with peppers I had to stake it.

Chickens love them - I despise them - but...

Going to make a concerted effort to "harvest" as many pests this spring/summer to feed as a primary protein source for our chickens. Really want to get the chickens off of store bought feed (which I just discovered is GMO corn). Found an excellent book that gives great direction on how to naturally feed chickens.

It is definitely an attitude adjustment to look at garden pests as advantageous when considering them as an excellent food source for our girls. Didn't mean to hijack the thread - just wanted to extend a little hopefulness to those of us bothered by pests such as the hornworm (and the Japanese Beetle).

Posted link to book below.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Yep, we "treat" our girls with the hornworms too. So funny to watch them squabble over them!

Edie

I don't know about willow water but soaking some seeds like, squash/melons family, some beans, onions, parsley, ... can speed up germination. I personally always soak cucumber and squash seeds for about 24 hours in plain water before planting. In ground or in potting soil they might not get enough moisture for a good while, when planted dry. You can even sprout them before planting. We know that it take most seeds shorter time to germinate in warmer environment.
YMMV

This post was edited by seysonn on Wed, Jan 15, 14 at 4:40

Very true, and as I said rooting aids have their place to be sure. I am not at all knocking the idea, just saying it's not something that I would personally worry about. It very well may help with germination rate and/or speed. I honestly don't know. I've always left them more or less to their own devices. My theory would be that non viable seeds could not be made viable by adding extra stuff to it, but I've been known to be wrong before (ask my wife, lol).

I guess the margin of error in the experiment would be that it would be hard to tell if the increase in germination speed was caused by the additive or simply the soaking itself.

green mulberry , you are right, I'm planting a 40 foot row for my 85 year old dad. He doesn't bend like he used to, and honestly neither do I, lol .I'm looking for any edge I can get.

Floral, I thank you so much, I have ordered some of them from your suggested search and hope to have some success at making some home made seed tape with them. Hopefully dad can have lots of greens I like the bottoms , lol .

Doing certain tasks is like eating some food that is in front of you:
-- you can use you bare hands.
-- You may use a fork.
-- You can use a spoon.
-- You can use chop sticks( if you know how to use them)

The bottom line is the same.

I just took about 4 of them that i had and each one was made of two pieces, when I removed tha wrap and then planted them.

Here is one before dividing;

Here is the same shallot after removing the wrapper and dividing it.

I have grown onions all three ways:

1) from seeds. They did not get very big (maybe wrong kind)
2) from sets: Those are tiny onions. In my case a lot of them bolted.
3) seedling or plants: Those are grown in greenhouse, then bunched up, the tops cut and sold.. I have done that fairly successfully. Almost no bolting.

Another thing is that as they say "onions are heavy feeders". You should treat them as "leafy" vegetables, because the bulbs are just continuation of the leaves. So they need a lot more Nitrogen than "P" and "K".

The tricky part is to plant the varieti that is right for your climate.

I've been successful with Sets so far. I planted them in mid to late March last year, and pulled them around August or so. I got some pretty big ones, and they were sweet onions. I got about 80 for $3. I'll probably try some Red and Yellow and maybe White also. We'll see how many I buy, I probably could grow 300-500.

The biggest thing with the Onions was to keep them watered enough and weed every now and then. Once I popped in the sets, they were easy to grow though.