BYC gardening thread!!

[lazy gardener]

Um... still about 2.5' of snow on the ground here. Want some????

 

[politicalcenter]

No, thank you. The frogs are waking up and and pastures are greening up. I grew up with snow and I have seen enough. We are in T shirts most days. But it will get hot soon.

 

[Loc20chick]

e :yiipchick   This is me today:  happy dance, jumping for joy, shouting praise!  The soil in my green house has finally thawed out!  I'm washing up some milk jugs, and other plastic lids and such to do a double layer of plastic.  Can plant some seeds in the green house this week.  There are about 6 plants that appear to have survived the winter.  A swiss chard, a couple of lettuce, kale, and 1 or 2 spinach plants.    Oh yeah, there's also some garlic bulbils, and some parsley.   

FYI, still 2.5' of snow on the ground everywhere else!  

I can understand your excitement!!! It always feels good to start the garden again.... started a few seeds last week and some Swiss chard are starting to sprout.

 

[appps]

Must be a very long winter when you can't grow anything! We are heading into autumn at the moment and I'm doing a bit of an experiment and have just planted some cold tolerant large cherry type tomatos. Will be interesting to see how they fare. We have been forecast to stay summer warm right through till April but then it's rained ever since they said that

 

[Birdlover 13]

Right now my garden is drying out and there's nothing I can do about it....

I'm in South Africa and we have water restrictions where I live and the worst is they haven't for spelled large amounts of rain for the winter

 

[CherMoz]

I hope you have your garden well mulched.

 

[appps]

Right now my garden is drying out and there's nothing I can do about it....

I'm in South Africa and we have water restrictions where I live and the worst is they haven't for spelled large amounts of rain for the winter

It's hard when water restrictions hit. We've been lucky the last few years and avoided them.
Have you seen this. He has his verges at a weekender so is never there to water and this helps them survive without it.

 

[appps]

Well that was super disappointing. Grew potatoes for the first time this year and it was a dismal failure. First lot I put in grew ok for a bit but died off pretty quickly and I got only 1-2 potatoes per plant. I planted a second batch a bit later right next to them. These grew better plants and I left in till plants were totally dead but smaller barely edible size potatoes.
My third try was a few leftover ones that I planted in a container. These plants grew the most healthy and were left the longest but dug them up today and there was just a handful of thumbnail sized potatoes.

Obviously I'm missing something

 

[dan26552]

Potatoes are one of those hit or miss crops, sometimes you get it some times you don't.

 

[trailrider330]

Good morning!

I've been thinking about doing some plantings along the outside of my chicken pens, which are made out of 6' high chain link dog kennel panels. I want something that will add some shade and be a partial windbreak for the chickens, definitely be non-toxic to them, and perhaps even provide some food for the chickens, but I'd also like it to buffer some sound for the neighbors if possible. Obviously, it would also have to be hardy in Michigan and preferably somewhat fast growing, but easy to take care of. The soil is quite sandy, already has some shade and mostly faces north. A perennial would be ideal, but I'd also entertain suggestions for annuals. I've thought about chocolate vine or perhaps a vertical garden (cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, etc.), sunflowers, etc.. Does anyone have any suggestions for me?