BYC gardening thread!!

[dan26552]

So the other day I found yet more volunteer squash (dang chickens... ) one was growing in a cattle pen so lots of rich compost there and it's HUGE!

The PVC in the second pic is about where it was three days ago, unfortunately lots of growth, few flowers.

And then there's one beside the chicken coop that's fairly nice sized it's smaller than the other but has more flowers.

 

[dan26552]

Here's a pic of a squash from one of the plants in the front yard (also volunteer)

 

[hennible]

Wow
Can't even imagine growing those outside!

 

[jerryse]

Here's a pic of a squash from one of the plants in the front yard (also volunteer)

Seems kind of flat . Could have some mini pumpkin or patty pan in the mix to produce that shape .

 

[Arielle]

Love to. Garlic is the easiest lazy crop there is. When it sends up the seed scapes in the early summer, don't remove them. They will "flower" and produce a crop of bulbils, which are small bulbs at the top of the scape. Leave these in place until they get quite large. They will get up to 1/2" in diameter. You can then pick them off and plant them where you want your next crop of garlic. (or you can just let them fall to the ground and plant themselves.) I warn you: it will take a while. They will send up a tiny bit of growth the first year, looks like a couple of blades of grass. The following spring, you'll have a single clove from each bulbil. Leave that in place, and the following year, you'll have a typical head of garlic there. Now, depending on how much garlic you use, how much garden space you have, and whether you till or not, you can leave a clump of garlic in place indefinitely. I have clumps of garlic that are about 8 - 10" in diameter at the roots. They consist of MANY heads clumped together. When the leaves die down in mid summer, I harvest enough heads to carry me through the year, and leave the rest of those clumps right where they are. Until this season, garlic was every where in my garden, all stages from recently sown bulbils to 10" clumps. This year, I re-organized my garden, so dug up most of those clumps, and put them in a single row. They are spaced about 1' apart, and the row is about 30' long. I broke up some clumps and took them to a fund raiser plant sale. I sold every pot I took, and could have sold a lot more. Am thinking that garlic plants would be a great spring cash crop. People really became interested when I explained how garlic can be a perennial crop.

For northern gardeners, you want to be sure to grow a stiff necked variety. I am zone 4, and don't do anything to protect my garlic over the winter. But, my soil is sandy loam. Did you know that bulbs have the ability to draw themselves deeper into the soil? They actually use their roots to pull themselves down if they are not planted deep enough. Ever noticed that when you plant tulips or hyacinths, and dig them up several years later, they're deeper than you remember planting them? How awesome is that. Who taught them how to do that????

So very cool!!

I eat a lot of garlic. LOTS. 2-3 cloves a day in my morning eggs. Supposed to be good for preventing cancer. . .. my son jokes, no mom, garlic is for vampires. lol I"m surprised the bulbs can manage so crowded. This was one of my concerns so I was happy to see you address this as all the packaging for seed, etc wants us to plant far apart.

Do you mulch them to help them?? OR just count on their ability to pull themselves down deeper??

I need to start scrounging again, a greenhouse is on tap and another chicken facility. I have pretty well depleted my stores of lumber. I love repurposing materials.

I just did some scrounging, then told DH what was left and raced off to collect some 30 sheeets of 18inch x 3 feet scrap. lol Hee hee, he took the time to cover that pile of plywood but left a few bales of hay out in the rain!!

 

[Arielle]

This is what my leeks did, I didn't know they did that.

Thought I was looking at grapes

ANd I first thought: pearls and wooden beads!! Rofl

 

[dan26552]

Seems kind of flat . Could have some mini pumpkin or patty pan in the mix to produce that shape .

Two years ago my mom throw some patty pan squash in the chicken coop, they've been popping up everywhere since.

 

[dan26552]

ANd I first thought: pearls and wooden beads!!   Rofl

Oh I figured out why they did that, my mom had some "special" garlic and I didn't want to mix it up with my other garlic so I planted it with the leeks, boy do I feel silly Not sure why it died in the middle of the growing season though :/

 

[dan26552]

Wow
Can't even imagine growing those outside!

The squash?

 

[lazy gardener]

So very cool!!

I eat a lot of garlic. LOTS. 2-3 cloves a day in my morning eggs. Supposed to be good for preventing cancer. . .. my son jokes, no mom, garlic is for vampires. lol I"m surprised the bulbs can manage so crowded. This was one of my concerns so I was happy to see you address this as all the packaging for seed, etc wants us to plant far apart.

Do you mulch them to help them?? OR just count on their ability to pull themselves down deeper??

I just did some scrounging, then told DH what was left and raced off to collect some 30 sheeets of 18inch x 3 feet scrap. lol Hee hee, he took the time to cover that pile of plywood but left a few bales of hay out in the rain!!

The fact that bulbs pull themselves deeper is just a bit of fascinating trivia I threw in. I love how God equips even plants to take care of their needs. Want an other little bit of "blow your socks off" plant trivia? Have you ever pulled up a really well established wild violet plant by the roots? Notice anything odd? You'll most likely see a bunch of blanched seed pods around the base of the plant, below soil level. Those pods will be full of blanched very large seeds. I think this is an other survival mechanism. Those seed pods started out just like any other pods on that plant, but the stems actually shortened to draw them down below soil level to provide a crop of seeds just in case the usual propagation method ended up going bust!

I mulch because I mulch. My gardening style is: Spread a heavy layer of hay over everything. Keeps the weeds down. Keeps the soil from drying out. Keeps the soil from being too wet. (Figure that one out! I still can't wrap my head around it!) Nourishes the soil. Keeps the soil soft and friable. Never have to till. (though I did this year, because I pulled the green house off the garden, and completely turned the orientation of the beds and rows around) Keeps the frost from going so deep, so I can get in and plant while my neighbors are still whining about their gardens being too muddy, or still having frost, so they can't till them to plant. I loathe seeing bare soil. However, when I turn my chickens into the garden in the fall, they till all of that hay into the soil, so my garden is pretty much bare all winter. I just start over with a good layer of hay again in the spring. One of my favorite things to do, is get about 10 bales of hay, and lay them out on the north end of the garden. It has a gentle south slope. Then, I put a few bales perpindicular to that row, lay some 2 x 4's over the top, cover with cattle panels, and put my storm door panels over the cattle panels. Lay some construction plastic over the top, including the hay bales, and it makes a fantastic winter time cold frame. The ideal would be to set this up just as the nights are getting colder, and plant it with cold hardy greens: kale, lettuce, spinnach, mache, miners lettuce, radish, and the like. You can do some harvesting until the ground starts to freeze in November. Then it will go dormant but start growing again in Feb. or March. You can start harvesting again just as soon as you can get through the ice to lift the plastic from the front. You'll be harvesting lots of salads, while your neighbors are still whining about their frozen mud ball gardens. Then, you can clean out those beds, and you've got 10 bales of hay ready to spread on your garden.

Your wet hay will be harder to spread, but it's getting a head start on getting conditioned for the garden. (unless you had an other use planned for it.)