23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
This is really a Growing from Seed forum question and comes up often there. There is a FAQ there about it.
But the basic answer is a brief 10 min. soak is sufficient. Even a good misting with a 10:1 water to bleach solution followed by a period of outside air drying is sufficient.
Dave
Yes, they are globe artichokes. this is there second year, they died back towards the end of the summer last year, and i thought they died but they emerged back a few months ago after a good winter.
I want to move them, because I made wrong calculation of distance, so they are kind of closer than they should (that's one reason) and i think this maybe a reason for their slow development... plus the old pine trees in my garden are invading my veggie patch with their roots.
I don't know if the following may help... I had moved my two year old artichoke because the location had too much sun and too close to a large ash tree. I dug it up, and the root felt like a huge potato about half size of a football. I moved it on October of 2011. After having it moved, it grew huge. In 2012 it was just one huge Artichoke plant and gave about 6 or 7 globes. This year, it has propagated to a much larger, about five different artichoke plants. I can't wait to see how many globes it will produce.
To start you'll have to get up early to do it for an hour in the morning or do it in the evenings after work. Say an hour at a time and monitored closely. If you do that for 5 days then by the weekend they should be ready for something like 2 hours out, 2 hours in, 2 hours out, etc. Come Monday they can probably stay out in a well shaded, wind protected area.
Dave
Lots of ways to cope with this. For example my house faces North. If I put the seedlings out in the lawn, but close to the house, they will be in shade at 10 am. but wait, I am worried about frost. The brick patio in the back is some 5 degrees warmer, and with my work bench is outside because I am starting all sorts of trees and vegetables, I can put seedlings behind the bench, they will get some sun around 10 am, then sun after 4pm. If I am really worried about cold, I will put them on top of two to four five gallons pails, full of water. There are week ends, as others have said. There is protection from prevailing winds. I can put them under the hammock for filtered sunlight. My problem are the squirrels looking to dig for acorns in my seedlings pots.
Early May is, IMO, enough time for a summer garden, if you're willing to buy some seedlings. In fact, I think that's when I got my first community garden plot, and I remember it as a pretty good year.
May is early enough to plant purchased seedlings of tomato, pepper, eggplant, and other hot-weather fruiting plants. And to plant bean seeds, and I think onion sets for scallions. (I suspect that you'd need to buy the sets now and put them in the fridge.) And basil from seed or seedling. And corn seeds, if your garden is that kind of big.
You can put in perennial herbs almost any time that the ground isn't frozen. Bare-root bramble berries may be gone from the stores by May, but you could get a few now and put them into one-gallon pots now, and plant them later.
I think that you could sow leek seedlings now in a pot, or buy some (it is a little late to sow) and grow them on until you have your garden. It's too late to plant garlic for bulbs, but you could grow it for garlic greens, rather like scallions from sets.
You could probably start lettuce now in tiny pots, get it in the ground in May, and juuust get some to eat before it's hot enough for it to be likely to bolt.
Plenty to do. And of course, once the summer garden is in you can start thinking about the fall and winter garden.
Did you say your last frost is in April? I am in zone 7 and last frost in zone 7 is MAY 5. In zone 6 the last frost should be late May. You have plenty of time to have summer garden. Remember when you plant vegetable and the soil temp is below 50 they don't grow and it makes no difference if you plant it in April or May. The root system works only if it senses the temp is ideal. I have all my vegetable in Jiffy pots inside the house and I will take it out in May . Honestly taking care of 60 plants inside is a pain in the A.
Abe
That product is designed to be used as a dust -- that is, dry.
Consider recycling the stuff in an appropriate hazardous waste collection, then purchasing a kind that's meant to be applied as a liquid.
In the meantime, start looking for green caterpillars. Look on both the top & lower surfaces of leaves. When one is found, flick into soapy water. Repeat daily!
This might help. Here's how I built my enclosure
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/grtlks/msg0622590923398.html?1
@ChicagoDeli37: None of the pictures in your post are showing up. I'm seeing the message Images have been moved or Deleted
@gardenlen: Regarding Aspect,please take a look at 
@ltilton This is what I had read about, the shed itself is offwhite so shouldn't be too bad but I thought reflecting more light would help. If it's going to cause damage and/or not be significantly better then def not worth it, especially since it'll look pretty weird :D
Also the layout itself looks ok? Basically I will only be able to walk in between the beds on one side due to the shed and face, would that be a big concern?
If you are growing hard neck garlic, it will send up a blossom head called a garlic scape. The scape can be snapped off before in makes a second loop. It will still be tender and can be minced up to cook as garlic. Last year here in NH I made a wonderful garlic scape hummus for our 4th of July party. I would not wait until the leaves turned brown because I think by then, the cloves get too big and are splitting. I read an article last year that said with a garlic scape points straight up again, it's time to dig. I dig mine when the leaves are starting to turn brown.
I pulled or broken off all my garlic scapes after it makes a turn. According Wikipedia, "Garlic scapes are removed to focus all the garlic's energy into bulb growth. The scapes can be eaten raw or cooked" Some websites state that some types of garlics are not affected by this practice. But to my experience, garlics grew bigger when scapes are removed. I have dug up a few to compare. And scapes are a delicious treat. A very hard find at any market.
If you harvest the scapes too late, they turn tough and woody.
Back to the OP's question. The time to pick garlic is July, but you can check by digging one out near the middle of the Summer. It is too early now, for the outer paper-like covering of garlic cloves are not yet fully transformed.
Hmmm....I think I'll go plant my Easter Egg Radishes.
You have me laughing and thinking of Easter and Egg related plants. The radishes might actually be reasonable to plant now with a bit of protection. Maybe start some White Egg Eggplants inside if I can find the seeds. LOL
The plants per person charts are extremely inaccurate and out of date. It is better to look at average yield per plant and see if that is how much you need.
Here is a link that might be useful: one such chart
I think that "plants per person" would just give you a vague, vague order of magnitude. I would instead look for figures for pounds of produce per plant, and match them against the pounds of produce that you'll use in the plant's season.
And then, of course, you'd have to think about how you're using the produce. If each tomato plant produces about three pounds per week, and you want to make one giant pot of tomato sauce per summer month that requires twenty pounds of tomatoes, how long will the tomatoes keep? Will you have to grow enough plants to produce twenty pounds in one week, and then figure out what to do with the extra in the non-sauce weeks?
Do you eat spinach fresh or cooked? Do you want to freeze beans and strawberries? Are you eating your corn off the cob or do you want a whole bunch for succotash? Do you use your onions for an occasional slice in a sandwich or do you want to cook a year's worth of frozen caramelized onions?
In other words, I think that every item is likely to require a personal calculation.
Should be there soon! It was supposed to be 60 today, made it up to 59' so it's getting better. But I know what you mean, it's been the same here all week, 5 or more degrees lower than forecast. Potatoes are in, will be hardening off everything else the next few days, and the peach tree is just about to bloom.
I feel you.
We are having spectacular weather, with that said we could get snow and a hard freeze any time in the next month LOL!!
I have onions out, just direct sowed spinach and lettuce, have potatoes in and artichoke.
I have growing under lights: tomatoes, peppers, basil and cucumber which got huge so I potted up and am now putting outside during the day.
Parsley is hardening off I may plant it soon as it's getting huge in pots.
Don't know what it is, but no doubt in some parts of the world that juicy worm would be considered haut cuisine crispy fried...perhaps with a nice shiraz.
Some sort of cutworm, maybe Red-backed?
Red-backed Cutworm example 1
Red-backed Cutworm example 2
If they're eating the fruit then I would apply bacillus thuringiensis (BT) to my crop. Then till the soil at the beginning and end of each season, to help destroy the pupa that lie in the soil.