23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Jennie, the Pest Forum is under the Garden Clinic. The forum was always there in the alphabetical listing, but the Pests and Diseases Forum was its other name.
Sow/pill bugs, in large numbers, will absolutely damage garden plants, especially when young and tender. If the medium in your raised bed is largely decomposing vegetative matter, these little guys will feed on that like crazy, too.
If you do a little research, you'll learn how to trap them, how to change the environment to discourage them, and how to bait-kill them.
The garlic chive blooms also make a really great infused vinegar--we use in seasoned rice vin that DH uses for salad dressings and stir fries where it adds a nice garlic hint. Like it better than onion chive vinegar, though it's good too.
I direct seeded chard/beets/carrots, but since both the vegetable sprouts and weeds look so similar (for these vegetables) and are so small, it makes it a bit difficult - but I understand what you're saying for other veggies that can be transplanted. It's easier for me to tell the difference between things like lettuce/spinach sprouts and these weeds b/c they look different.
When planting you might try sowing a few seeds of each crop in small pots with weed-seed-free potting mix. Then use the known seedlings in the pots for comparision with what's in the garden beds. From your IDs you can decide what stays and what gets removed. But soon you will learn the recognize the various seedlings and won't need any samples to help.
Weeding out most of the unwanteds when they are small is quick with a hoe, even a hand held hoe/cultivator. Just pull it over the seedlings on a warm sunny day so they are sliced off at the soil line. A little while in the sun will fry them and you won't even see the "organic matter" you have added to the soil. A mulch of straw, untreated grass clipping, or crumbly leaves from last fall can be put on top of the soil once the wanted veggies are a bit larger. It will help prevent weeds from growing and retain soil moisture.
Looks like you have 15 feet of trellised slicing cucumbers in your plan. You could end up quite overwhelmed with slicing cukes. Consider reducing the slicing cukes to about half that length (or less) and add a pickling variety for the other half. The pickling cukes will be more versatile for preserving - canned or fermented pickles.
I'm concerned that you only have about one foot between the radishes bed and the two large tomatoes in the SE corner. I'd put the radishes where the garlic bed is and move the garlic bed over to butt up against the onions bed. That will give you greater access to the tomatoes since the garlic bed will be unused until the fall.
As Dave pointed out, its getting a bit late for some of the things you want to grow and you may have to wait until next year to incorporate them into the plan. But this year, you can use those spaces for other things - perhaps eggplant, bush or pole beans, brussels sprouts, etc.
Looks very nice, but I would start thinking about succession planting. You have only allowed yourself one crop in each space per year. You can get far more mileage out of your garden than that. For example, what happens after the radishes have all bolted or been eaten? Will that spot sit empty? Why not plant some beans there? Or mesclun mix? And your garlic won't be planted until fall, so you can get pretty much a whole season out of that spot before the garlic goes in. Why not plant basil in there in the meantime?
What are you doing for paths between the beds?
Your reference is rather misleading. The technique is a form of forcing and the plants cannot be grown long term inside without light. You start off with outdoor grown, healthy, robust plants. Then you move the roots inside where they push out new stem growth in the spring. Commercially this is done in large sheds but home gardeners do it outdoors just by covering the rhubarb plant in the spring with an upturned bucket or similar. After harvesting outdoor forced plants must be rested for at least a year before forcing again. Indoor forced plants are completely exhausted and are composted.
It is the same principle as growing any other blanched vegetable like chicory chicons, celery or cardoons. Exclude light and force new pale, tender growth. forcing rhubarb
Or you could try the Name That Plant Forum which is specifically for getting ids. Name That Plant
I made a real nice raised bed garden to plant some veggies in and then bought a bunch of potting soil at Walmart, finishing it off with many bags of EarthGro Potting Soil and EarthGro Steer Manure and "compost".
My epiphany came too late after I'd spent a lot of time, and money when I checked with SourceWatch:http://www.sourcew atch.org/index.php/SourceWatch
and googled in EarthGro. The following is what I found:
"Paul Sellew is s a CEO of Harvest Power. Paul also founded Earthgro, which is the second largest producer of biosolids-based lawn and garden products. Paul was a senior executive with Synagro. He also founded International Process Systems, AllGro, Environmental Credit Corp, and Backyard Farms.[1]"
Just in case you didn't know, biosolids is another name for sewage sludge. I don't know about you, but I am not going to eat vegetables grown in sewer sludge which contains God only knows what besides human crap. Now, I'm going to have to use my nice raised bed for Remedial plants such as sunflowers to decontaminate this soil if it's ever to be used again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoremediation
In view of this information, I'm wondering just how many of the non-organic fruits and vegetables are being grown in soil contaminated by biosolids, aks toxic sewage sludge and sold to Americans without our knowing it?
" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Biosolid... ;
Biosolids
is the Orwellian PR euphemism for toxic sewage sludge. The name was
created and chosen in a PR contest by the lobby association for sewage
industry, the Water Environment Federation (WEF). For more background
see also The EPA's plan to bypass opposition to sewage sludge disposal
and You say biosolids, I say sewage sludge. There is now a SourceWatch
Portal on "Biosolids" Beyond biosolids, the sewage sludge industry now
puts its waste product into bags labeled "compost" and promotes them
through US Composting Council, BioCycle and other front groups and
partners.
Beginning in the 1990's the WEF, with the active encouragement and approval of the Environmental Protection Agency, pushed for the disposal of sewage sludge on farm land after bans were imposed on dumping it in the ocean or incinerating it. The name change of sewage sludge to "biosolids" was crucial the image makeover for sewage sludge, a classic industry-government campaign of greenwashing to change the public perception of toxic sewage sludge from an accurate one of "hazardous waste" to the misleading image of biosolids representing safe "beneficial reuse," responsible "recycling" and healthy "organic fertilizer," lately including the ruse of sewage sludge as "organic compost."
A list of just some of the hazardous chemicals and pathogens found in sludge can be found in the article Sludge contaminants. Sludge contaminants include Dioxins and Furans, Flame Retardants, Metals, Organochlorine Pesticides, 1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane (DBCP), Naphthalene, Triclosan, Nonylphenols, Phthalates, Nanosilver, and thousands more substances. "Sewage is the mix of water and whatever wastes from domestic and industrial life are flushed into the sewer.... We must note that, though the aim of sewage treatment is to produce clean water, it is never to produce 'clean' sludge. Indeed, the 'dirtier' the sludge - the more complete its concentration of the noxious wastes - the more the treatment has done its job.... very waste produced in our society that can be got rid of down toilets and drains and that can also be got out of the sewage by a given treatment process will be in the sludge. Sludge is thus inevitably a noxious brew of vastly various and incompatible materials unpredictable in themselves and in the toxicity of their amalgamation, incalculably but certainly wildly dangerous to life." [1]
scarlettfourseasonsrv - I think you may wish to explore the issue a bit more before making so many unsubstantiated claims. Are you aware of the personal agenda of SourceWatch? If not I'd suggest you explore that issue as well before blissfully imparting the labels of truth and objectivity to the info they provide.
For example:
Biosolids is not an Orwellian PR euphemism for toxic sewage sludge. The biota used by Harvest Power is listed on their website as "food scraps and yard wastes" - aka compost.
Paul Sellew is no longer a CEO of Harvest Power. Kathleen Ligocki is. Paul Sellew is a member of the board of directors and an acknowledged co-founder. http://www.harvestpower.com/company/leadership/
Google reveals you have copied this exact same post on several other forums as well. So one has to ask exactly what is your agenda? Perhaps pushing links to Source Watch? To cast aspersions on the organic foods industry? Or just to discredit Paul Sellew, an acknowledged leader in the field of organic agriculture.
What you choose to use in your own garden is of course your choice but I strongly encourage you to not buy into what are noted fear-mongering sources for your information.
Dave
When I had raised beds at my previous home, we just mulched with woodchips that we got for free from the power line trimming crew. It did grow some fungus, but spread thickly it completely suppressed weeds. It drained well also. Buried edging or a V cut edge helps keep the grass from growing in from the edges.
I actually have/had mulch between the beds, but guess it might not have been enough. I had layed weed fabric down and put the mulch on top of that, but lack of free time to keep things nice and tidy have resulted in the fabric-mulch-weeds-plastic parfait going on right now. I had thought about using pine needles since I've got plenty of those in the back, but having something that flammable next to the house is not a good thing.
That's why I was thinking something more permanent - lack of time to devote to keeping things tidy. Although that looks like it'll be changing in the next month or so, so maybe ripping everything out of the aisles and re-covering them might be another option...
Thanks for the ideas, everyone. They're much appreciated.
Any growing-on potting mix just as with any container plants. V-shaped holes in the bottom edges just as with solo cups and watering from the bottom is recommended but many do top watering. You just can't use the top of the soil surface as a valid indicator for watering.
You'll find many more discussions about all of this in the How-To FAQs and the discussions over on the Growing from Seed forum here.
Dave
The snow looks like it will be all melted by tomorrow, and I can plant if I wanted... Dixondale says the onions should be planted now according to their generic advice, but not sure it applies to a climate like this one where it can be in the low 20's a few weeks before last frost (and in fact it will be 19F tomorrow night.) The ground will also be soggy.
Maybe I will do some tomorrow and some next week?
On another note, should I rake the leaf mulch from the garlic I planted? It is extremely wet. About half the bulbs sprouted. They definitely took a beating this winter and have yellowed a bit.
Fun view! It looks happy & healthy. Good luck!
There is a container gardening board here.