23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening

Wolverine, why do you say this .... ?
"If you hold onto the bulbs you received they will be worthless by this fall. You are correct that they should have been planted last fall."

In what way would they become worthless; by sprouting too soon? (maybe answering my own question :)) but then why not just plant them if/when they do?

I always split my July harvest in two - half for the kitchen, half to plant in September, sometimes November, for next year's garlic. Obviously they stay usable for at least 3-4 months. And the garlic I have now is descended from cloves that were sown in early springtime for the first couple of years, before I learned better. They do absolutely grow bigger with fall planting but it's not essential.

I wonder, when would the nursery have harvested the bulbs sent to Treehugger, and how kept them viable till now? The more I think about this the more I think I don't know!

The first year I gardened I planted my garlic in the spring. They will be small but you'll not have to buy more for your. fall planting. ANd you'll have plenty to eat.
How well they keep depends on the temps and the type of garlic.

My only other suggestion is to spread those marigolds around. Get that funky marigold smell all over the garden and it may help deter some bugs and pests.

I find that chard gets very large and one in sq foot would be ample. On the other hand it cooks down a lot, like spinach, and I'd want at least 10 plants for 2 people. But I can harvest it pretty much all year round so maybe I need more to keep up the supply.

I suggest to put a diagonal bracing all around so that strong wind and weight of the tom can handle it.

I hate tomatoes cages. I used them in the past they limit the tomatoes trees from spreading its branches and producing more tomatoes. Beside it is a pain the A getting to the plant for care like fighting insects, fungus or fruit rotting. I am back to the good old tomatoes sticks and I can control it in any manner.

Radishes are funny critters. They will germinate awesome, but how they grow is a coin flip. I was never able to grow decent radishes......too leggy. But the soil at my wife's home was perfect. She just throws seeds in the ground and gets perfect radishes. A friend of mine used to grow them big as beets.

Thanks all. The taller plants are to the north and west of the radishes. The strawberries are east and south; they are starting to sprawl but they are not over-shadowing the radishes. I have observed the bed at different hours of the day and see no real shade over their location.

May be the peat moss is it. The other bed where the radish did ok is just a mix of various materials. I think the bed contains bagged compost, bagged "garden soil", some wood ash from fireplace, potting soils from abandoned containers, and possible others.

I know the peppermint is going to be an issue, but so is my 7 year-old daughter when I take it out. I am going to make do until I get her a small bed put together for just her choices.

A couple of summers ago as I was poking among the heavily-straw-mulched potato bed looking to nick a few new taters, I discovered a nest of baby bunnies in the middle of the bed. (My beds are about 18" high, no obstacle to a rabbit!)
Hm. I pondered.
The result of my pondering was to lift the nest, babies & all, and relocate it to the edge of the cornfield (well, it was soybeans that year). So, I knew it was unlikely that mom bunny found her offspring; most likely a night-prowling critter did (we have raccoons, skunks, coyotes, possums, the occasional fox, etc.) but, hey -- "cycle of life" and all that.
Previous occupants here (we moved in 5 years ago) had a chocolate lab and a couple of cats. No problems the first few years in the garden; apparently it took the varmint population several years to react to the absence, but for the last couple of years now, they're baaaaack...

We do have a couple of hawks that visit periodically. I cheer them on. Neighbor behind us has a pond and I did not tell him when I saw one of the redtails fly off with a big ol' bullfrog dangling from his claws! I like the frogs, too, but hate the rodents more!

Ahhh.... nature and the fun we have with it!

My soil is full of compost and mulched with shredded leaves, and pillbugs still damage some crops - lettuce, beans, etc. Gardens Alive has an organic Escar-go product that is also bait for pillbugs. It seems to help some.

I have a real problem with pill bugs in my compost-rich garden boxes. They like freshly killed plants, so rather than eat a live plant little by little, they gather around the stem and eat right through until it's severed. Even with relatively large plants. I've seen them try it with full-grown squash plants, but they are unsuccessful at killing larger, sturdier plants. Then once the plant has fallen, the village comes to feast.

Sluggo Plus is an organic pellet that you scatter around susceptible plants, and it really does work. You have to keep at it, though, since water reduces its effectiveness over time.

Dennis, today was perfect for planting. I got out of bed at 7 am, planted for 3 hours (9 beds), and finished in my parka as rain started falling. This was mostly lettuce and collards, but also broccoli and komatsuna. It has now drizzled for 8 hours, with steady 50-55 temperatures, this is perfect planting weather, specially ahead of the coming mid-70 week.

I hate early Sunday rises as much as anyone, but I hate more fussing over transplants during and after planting. In the case of lettuce, I just scratched trenches, laid semi-bare root plants in, and covered with some of my (semi-dry) planting soil, knowing that rain would finish the job for me. I can not do as good a job as nature did for me, to ensure no shock to the plants.

I have very little in the ground. The weather gets lovely for a bit and then a couple of days later, BAM! a terrible freeze. Last Tuesday was forecasted to be a low of 30 and it got to 17 instead. Then, back up to nice again, high 30s. I have to say, I hate spring. These wide swings are not good for the plants and not good for me either!

I'd definitely bury them below ground a few inches.

I had a bunch of potatoes too small to use in a bucket in the basement. They sprouted and were 3 - 8" long by the time I figured I'd just stick them in and see what happened. They seem happy - most have sprouted and the leaves look as vigorous as our prolonged dry cold spring permits. the sprouts are leafy, so point them up.

thanks for the reply gmom. that was very helpful.

Most of the vegetables you mention are summer (tomato, watermelon, cucumber, okra, eggplant, pepper) while the others are better suited for springtime. I don't know what your particular seasonal situation is, but not all those veggies should be going in at the same time.

Fertilization might be the most useful way to organize your veggies. All of the summer veggies you mention (I think--not sure about okra?) are going to want the same basic fertilization, heavy on the P in NPK (phosphorous), but a P-heavy fertilizer might cause greens (spinach, broccoli, maybe the chard even though it's a biennial) to flower early, which you probably don't want. Clustering together veggies that have the same basic needs might simplify your operations. In addition, the amount of watering matters. For example, watermelons and cucumbers want a lot of consistent watering, while peppers should dry out sometimes (especially if you're aiming for spicy peppers--too much water is supposed to make them blander).

The first few always do that. Could be they come a little earlier than the polinators.

With only 2 plants you're going to have some aborted/non-pollinated fruits until the flowers are going crazy with a good pollinator population visiting them.

Dill's hand pollination suggestion should get you through this.

Thanks for the info! I've started my basil indoors, but I'm thinking I have way too many seedlings for my couple of 12" pots that I have set aside for basil. I also have parsley, oregano, mint and stevia seedlings, and will direct sow my cilantro. Does the same advice (1 per 12" pot) apply?

Lori -- yes, 1 per 12" should be fine. Once it gets going, the mint likely will quickly fill the pot and spill over the sides but may be cut back frequently. Bear in mind that mint stems will root whenever they touch the ground, and oregano (also a mint family plant) will do the same, if not quite as quickly.

Cilantro also will self-sow easily when you allow a plant to go to seed--which I always do since I use the seeds (now coriander) in salads and cooking as well. And in the fall, late-seeding cilantro will hang out hugging the ground all winter and resume groing in the spring for an early crop. I was surprised when I learned how hardy this plant is!

The rule is to always rotate onions each year. Diazanon used to do the trick, but it's not even available any more.

Well, onions never go in the same spot twice here, but it's not a half-mile rotation (as recommended by one of the sites I visited) by any stretch. I find them most in my garlic, which is fall planted. The original clove seems to break down over the winter as the inner shoot grows and I wonder if that is attracting them. There aren't so many dying garlics this year as last, and this is a much more normal spring so perhaps the problem is resloving itself.

About the wild onions, I don't know if they are a host, but one must exist somewhere in the wild because the adults can only fly about a mile. No one else near me is growing onions- corn, soy, wheat, rye yes, and lots of pasture and woods. Thanks for your input, it reaffirms what I am reading elsewhere. Cheers!