What did you do in the garden today?

[BReeder!]

it is about blight why potatoes and squash/pumpkins should not be planted together.

In our gardens, I find issues like blight and powdery mildew to be negligible when determining where to plant things. To truly prevent such problems, agricultural guidelines often dictate plantings to be in appear fields hundreds or thousands of feet (or miles) apart. We cannot afford that in gardens. So I just plant. I do try to prevent things growing near each other that will lead to stunted growth or competition for nutrients. For example, I learned on here about dill not being friendly with many other herbs. But bugs and disease are not something I can effectively combat with spacing crops apart. I could only avoid planting a certain crop, turn to resistant varieties or deploy the use of chemicals (which I try to avoid).

 

[chickengr]

Not gardening yet, but I have a pile of bones in the kitchen to blend into a slurry and add to the garden beds to supplement phosphorous and calcium. First time doing this, but the logic makes sense to me. It's just bone meal that isn't dry.

The bones are from turkey, duck and chicken. I had them in bags in the freezer and finally pulled them out yesterday and made stock. I ran them in the pressure cooker 5 or 6 times and made about 4 gallons of stock that is now in my freezer in 6 gallon sized zip bags. I didn't season this stock, not even salt, because I knew I was going to use the bones for the garden. I figure we can add herbs, spices and salt when we cook with the stock later.

what do you use to blend bones?

 

[chickengr]

You can plant 2 or 3 seeds power cup. Just pinch the extras after they sprout to leave 1 plant per cup.

I leave all the seedlings. with my luck only the worst looking manage to live and thrive, lol.

 

[Sara S]

Well as it’s currently 3:03 and a full moon. I was standing outside freezing while I ran to my trash can to throw out my garbage

 

[BReeder!]

what do you use to blend bones?

I have a few things that would work. I'm going to run them through the Ninja blender with some water. My food processer would take care of them also. They are very soft and brittle after being boiled multiple times in the pressure cooker.

 

[Sally PB]

I have a question about those of you who are very experienced with seed starting. How many seeds do you start of any given variety? I made 2 seed starter cups for each variety of tomatoes. That seems like a precarious amount. If the starts die or fail to germinate, I don't have hardly any extras started to fall back on... But it also seems like a waste to start a bunch of plants if I only want 2 or 3 active plants of each variety. I can't bring myself to chuck out perfectly good plants and I would have no one to give the extras to...

For me, it's hard to gauge sometimes. Last year, I planted 19 Amish paste tomatoes (9 for me, 10 for a friend) and got... 19 AP tomatoes. I planted 9 of various other varieties, and got... 2 or 3.

This year, I'm going to plant 20 AP, and probably 1.5-2x what I want for the other varieties, which will be different from last year.

I start plants in decent sized pots, so I put 4 seeds in each pot. I figure I can snip off the weakest and leave the best 1-2. Seed is cheap, time is irreplaceable.

For something I want 2-3 of, I'll plant 4. Like habaneros and jalapenos for DH.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

If you have more started plants than you need, you may be able to sell or gift some of them. Especially this coming growing season.
That's what my plan is to do.

 

[Acre4Me]

For a few years, I've planted potatoes next to squash. Well, maybe 3-4 feet between the beds, and probably 6-8 feet from a potato plant to the squash hill. I like having them there, as it's a big flat area and I can let the vines sprawl, and dig the potatoes without messing up a raised bed (my RBs are just mounded). I also liked having the squash where they were, as there are some huge boulders about 8-12" down. The squash can grow there, but not root crops.

I just read that taters and squash shouldn't be planted next to each other, so I was wondering if their "not getting along" is why I had fewer potatoes and zero squash last year.

We planted butternut and yellow squash in same bed. Typically, the squash starts to die off late summer. Last year, we had vine borer problems, so they didn’t live as long as normal. Usually, we plant marigolds and nasturtiums with the squash. Marigold flowers go to the chickens. The nasturtium flowers and leaves are edible. But they get nice and full later in the season.
Here is the squash bed mid-September: mostly Nasturtiums and marigolds, so it’s visually attractive too.

 

[Acre4Me]

We grow potatoes in a bed, the next year, we plant beans in the bed. Maybe a later crop of mustard or beets or carrots. This way, there is a year, at least, of no potatoes. Blight, we have not experienced yet (hopefully never), but the Colorado potato beetle showed up last year-my neighbor had an infestation in 2020, and in 2021, but he would just shake them off the leaves to let them fall to the ground…so they weren’t controlled at all. No surprise they showed up in my garden this past year. I hunted them daily, squished every single one I found, tore off leaves with egg deposits after hunting eggs with a mirror to see undersides of the leaves bc the eggs are bright yellow. We may skip potatoes this year for that reason : the Colorado Potato Beetle. We will see what neighbor decides to grow - maybe he will skip potatoes too.

My other neighbor loves to grow squash, he just leaves pumpkins to rot in his garden and lets whatever grow, to grow. So, that is a fine nursery for the Squash Vine Borer and Squash Bugs. But, I can deal with those a little easier. Still, it’s not the best garden practice .

 

[Ascholten]

Stupid question.
Lets say a plant needs a fertilizer 5,5,5 but all you have is 10,10,10. Can you just use half of that amount and be ok? or the other way around?

Not entirely sure how that works.

Thanks
Aaron