Grow Getters & Mad Potters (Gardening Thread)

Would you like to be part of a seed exchange?

  • Yes

    Votes: 20 64.5%

  • No

    Votes: 4 12.9%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 7 22.6%
  • Total voters
    31
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Gonna dry apples next week. Then get some more apples to make sauce and apple butter.

My great aunt used to give 8(?) or 10(?) people each a case of quarts of canned peaches and canned pears for Christmas. When I was old enough to help my can, I suddenly realized how much work Aunt Lou did! That woman could make anything grow.

When I was a kid, I didn't "get" gardening. I get it now. Mom, Grandma, Aunt Lou, I get it now.
 
I finally called it quits in my main garden this year. I had a ton of green tomatoes which I picked and turned into a type of salsa verde and 1 jalepeno that when I ended up picking had a big hole in it, so it went in the compost.

A few things I found last year that I didn't like about that garden:

It is sloped which makes watering interesting, the drip only really watered the stuff that was on the downhill end not the uphill end. I will be digging the uphill end down level with the lower end this winter including actually sinking the cinderblocks into the ground on that end.

It actually isn't square, it is slightly twisted which made my cattle panel arch sit weird, this will be corrected when I dig it down this winter.

I didn't loosen and improve the soil deep enough to start with. When I was planting my plants I kept hitting concretelike clay with my hand trowel. I will dig and loosen about a foot down this winter and mix all of the top layer into that foot then buy another bale of peat moss to mix into the top several inches. This should give me moderately improved and loosened soil a foot down and actually good soil in the top several inches for next year.

Weeds kept coming up through the holes in my cinderblocks and making everything look messy. I will fill all of the holes (for now) with sawdust as well as use sawdust to kill the grass out about a foot or so all the way around the blocks to make it easier to mow up to the garden. I have a nearly unlimited supply of sawdust as I use pine pellets in my litterboxes and take the sawdust to the farm for composting (I remove the feces, so just urine and sawdust which should break down fairly well) so I will be using that as weed control and once it composts will go in the garden.

I also have another garden I am still breaking in for the first time, I am digging it down a foot and just filling it back in once it's been disturbed and loosened up, then I will mix peat moss or potting soil into the top several inches either this winter or in the spring.
 
I also have a bunch of trash hay from the last bailing that I will probably condition over the winter and see if they do ok for straw bale gardening. I won't expect much, but worst case, they will rot out and become more filler for my (eventually) raised bed that I am building up slowly.
 
Kusanar said:
I also have a bunch of trash hay from the last bailing that I will probably condition over the winter and see if they do ok for straw bale gardening. I won't expect much, but worst case, they will rot out and become more filler for my (eventually) raised bed that I am building up slowly.
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Thats exactly what I see straw bale gardening being good at doing if the initial attempt fails. If I ever have extra straw bales I will grow beans or other legumes it in to add nitrogen. Its just an idea so if an expert says not to do it don't copy me.

FortCluck said:
I need to find some to plant... I haven’t thought much about it
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I am just using store garlic, when I went to my neighborhood garden shop to ask if he had garlic to plant he told me he buys his garlic at the grocery store and plants it. He said it cost less than for him to do that than to buy it from a supplier. He pointed out which ones not to buy here locally. The Bulk Section where you buy it by weight is less likely to have sprout inhibitors than the ones all packaged up already. I am buying from 3 different stores to increase the chances of having at least one location without sprout inhibitors. I just remember discussing Garlic with you and made a post as a reminder with plenty of time for you to set something up if you wanted to put it on your agenda.
 
Compost King said:
Thats exactly what I see straw bale gardening being good at doing if the initial attempt fails. If I ever have extra straw bales I will grow beans or other legumes it in to add nitrogen. Its just an idea so if an expert says not to do it don't copy me.


I am just using store garlic, when I went to my neighborhood garden shop to ask if he had garlic to plant he told me he buys his garlic at the grocery store and plants it. He said it cost less than for him to do that than to buy it from a supplier. He pointed out which ones not to buy here locally. The Bulk Section where you buy it by weight is less likely to have sprout inhibitors than the ones all packaged up already. I am buying from 3 different stores to increase the chances of having at least one location without sprout inhibitors. I just remember discussing Garlic with you and made a post as a reminder with plenty of time for you to set something up if you wanted to put it on your agenda.
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So how do you plant it? I love garlic 🧄 I use it in all my cooking usually.
 
FortCluck said:
So how do you plant it?
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I just plant it in the ground 1 inch deep 3 to 4 inches a part. You plant the clove with skin still one. When you break the bunch up into cloves keep track of which end was up and which end was down because you have to plant it the correct direction for it to survive, it can't reorient itself if its planted upside down. I should be preparing my beds this week or weekend. I forgot if its better to plant a week before or a week after the first frost but I have heard people say they one way or another. You basically plant it around the first frost. Many people said that putting layer of mulch in the bed helps it to root faster/sooner/better but we need to make sure the mulch does not cover where it needs to grow up from. I am going to mulch half and not much another half and see if their is a difference in the final results.
 
Compost King said:
Thats exactly what I see straw bale gardening being good at doing if the initial attempt fails. If I ever have extra straw bales I will grow beans or other legumes it in to add nitrogen. Its just an idea so if an expert says not to do it don't copy me.
Click to expand...
I haven't done straw bale gardening, but my understanding with straw is that you put it on it's side and put it so that the folded side is down and the cut side is up (you know, where straw is hollow you want all of the little holes sticking up on the top side) then you water the heck out of it and fertilize it to make it start breaking down (adding nitrogen to a carbon to start a compost) and eventually you should have something that looks like dirt with a thin boarder of straw around the outside and the strings holding it together around the sides.

With hay, because it isn't straight carbon like straw is, it will do a lot of breaking down on it's own with just water added but you have more weeds that come up. I'm not too worried about my bales growing weeds. I can pull them or clip them off, no biggie. Since my hay is baled on the exact same land as the garden, it's even the same weeds that grow in the garden so not introducing anything nasty that isn't there already.
 
Compost King said:
I just plant it in the ground 1 inch deep 3 to 4 inches a part. You plant the clove with skin still one. When you break the bunch up into cloves keep track of which end was up and which end was down because you have to plant it the correct direction for it to survive, it can't reorient itself if its planted upside down. I should be preparing my beds this week or weekend. I forgot if its better to plant a week before or a week after the first frost but I have heard people say they one way or another. You basically plant it around the first frost. Many people said that putting layer of mulch in the bed helps it to root faster/sooner/better but we need to make sure the mulch does not cover where it needs to grow up from. I am going to mulch half and not much another half and see if their is a difference in the final results.
Click to expand...
I’ll be trying it next weekend. I’m building more beds because we do not have enough
 

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