2015 Garden thread

a reply to: MamaShredAK

Whenever you get there, just let me know!

I think i have to have 20 posts ? ha im not sure . . . as soon as i can i will

a reply to: woodsmom

a reply to: woodsmom
Seeds I have:

Goronong
Madame Jeanette
Green Habanero [ripens to green]
Superdatil
Jamaican Hot Chocolate
Bonda Ma Jacque
Habanero White
Bahamian Goat Pepper
Bishops Crown
Thai Orange Hot
Aji Limon Peru
Brazalian Starfish
Giant Mexican Rocoto
Yellow Fatalli
Trinidad Scoprion Cardi
Habanero Chocolate
Datil
Douglah

These are the ones I overwintered:

7 Pot
Bhut Jolokia Assam
Brain Strain Yellow
Moruga Scoprion
Carolina Reaper
Trinidad Scorpion
Caribbean Red
Ghost Pepper [Bhut Jolokia]
Tabasco

I don't have much luck with sweet peppers!

At least not with bells. I would suggest any sweet pepper other than a bell lol

The Trinidad Scorpion CARDI is supposed to be one of the best flavored sweet peppers. It's a super hot that was bred to have all the heat taken out. It however is 90-120 maturation.

originally posted by: woodsmom
a reply to: olaru12

Thanks! You too!
My poor asparagus just never liked where they were planted. I have about a quarter acre to expand from my current set up. We are going to build some hugelkulture mounds. Hopefully the asparagus will like it there at the base. We have another half acre of woods after that, and more than enough rotting wood to build them with.

Oh yes good ol asparagus. I have about 75 crowns growing in pots that were seeded last year.

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a reply to: Lucid Lunacy

I would love to just sit among all those plants and enjoy their smell on a warm day! They even sound gorgeous!
Thanks for the tip about the Trinidad Scorpion CARDI. I may seek it out and try to grow it as a house plant.
My boys will eat sweet peppers like they are candy, so I would love to have one. Why are the bell peppers so temperamental, I wonder?

I really love Alaska, and I have even tried to leave and live other places, but that pepper list makes me wish for at least a zone 7.

a reply to: Logarock

May I ask how to get them to grow from seed? Just for shipping purposes alone I would love to be able to go that route.

a reply to: woodsmom
Well if you're not too concerned about sharing a location to send some seeds I certainly have some to spare for the CARDI.

I'll consult my notes for some other sweet pepper suggestions. Is there any heat level you are okay with? Like say around jalapeño?

Yeah I guess I am really lucky with my zone as apparently I can overwinter some of the plants. Super stoked about that. Or maybe it was just a mild winter heh.

Peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants can all be grafted on one another. I bet if you grafted bells on a more sturdy rootstock you'd have much more luck!

My goal is to make a 'Salsa Tree'. A term I came up with in the hopes of grafting peppers and tomatoes on the same plant.

a reply to: Lucid Lunacy

I honestly had never thought about grafting them! I have tried eggplant too and it doesn't work up here either, so that would be another huge bonus. Thank you!

Our well just took a poo, so this was just a quick check. I would love seeds though, that's super sweet. I have some to share as well! I have a list of seeds that I have posted in an old garden research project around here somewhere. There are a few new things and some that didn't produce the greatest and didn't continue themselves, but I have most of my tomato varieties still!

Great idea for a thread WoodsMom! Reading many of the posts has really got me in the mood for spring (plus it is a bright and sunny day here)

I cannot wait to get this years veg on the go! I tried gardening in earnest last year for the first time-lessons learned?

•slugs love pepper plants-tomatoes were spared,but watch out for the wasps,as they are partial to a Tom.

•wait til weather warms adequately until peppers are put out,with consideration of cold protection in the fall.

•don't leave carrots too long-as they were woody,but decent yield as compared to previous years.

•preparing soil amendments adequately (as there was too much clay) and also pay attention to crop rotation and previous activity on a particular patch,say at an allotment,or in my case a family members garden-as I had to throw 30 kg of tomatoes,as they caught a blight and apparently this was an issue many years before,except I found out too late.

So with all that taken into consideration I hope this year is better!

I have a balcony which is enclosed so I think that is where I'll try the peppers-habanero and jalapeños this time yum..

I have some random seeds to try as well.which are black pepper corns,ginseng,cocoa bean tree,kohlrabi (apparently it is in the top tier of hardiest veg? So a nice survival scenario crop possibly? as are mushrooms which would do well in low light,in say a volcanic/nuclear winter)

One last thing that may be worth mentioning if nobody else has? (as this is in a survival thread) is that I learned there are a few vegetables,fruit and mushrooms that can be re-grown from scraps,simply by putting the remainder of the veg (usually at the base) in soil or a glass of water.

Here goes:

•pineapple-remove the fruit from the crown and plant the crown.

•onion

•potato- in this case you don't always need a whole potato to create one new plant, all you need is a 'segment' with a sprout or two,you may even get 4 or 5 per potato?

•Carrots and celery can be done if you leave the greens on the carrot and remove just below,although you will only regrow greens and as for the celery it is at the base.

•mushrooms

•I'm sure there are a few more I've forgotten?

Happy growing to everybody and good season!

a reply to: EndOfDays77

Congratulations on getting your fist year under your belt!

It's a great feeling to coax life and food out of a tiny seed! One of the most satisfying endeavors I undertake aside from raising my kids, but the plants don't talk back.

Re growing carrots that way is actually the only way to get them to seed too, at least in a harsh winter area. I have tried to overwinter them to get seed in the garden, but it never seems to pan out. Cabbage is another plant I'm trying to figure out how to convince it to seed. That's the best part about gardening, even after twenty years, there are still lessons to be learned and challenges to be faced.

Might I suggest a garden journal? I rely on mine to remember all the odd details for me every year. I record last and first frost dates. Specific pest issues and blight problems being recorded can help immensely in future years, as you may have discovered. I can imagine it's a little tougher with a community garden. The best source of info there might be some of elderly gardeners. They are a wealth of information and usually like the company for a bit.

If you have a slug problem, copper will keep them away from your plants. It's kind of fun. First pick off all slugs and visible eggs. Then build a copper barrier around easy plant. The slugs won't cross over it. I forget the reason at the moment though. I loved sitting in the garden as a kid building penny walls to save the plants.

Happy planting!

It's been a week since germination and put the little buggers in peat pots with potting soil under LEDs and CFL lights...

Whoa...much to early to transplant and will soon out grow the pots and need to be moved to bigger clay or ceramic digs.

I highly recommend LEDs to get a jump start on mother nature; creating a longer growing season, when transplanting to the garden, results in bigger yields.

Hi, has anyone heard or tried permaculture?? I started learning about it last year and have started putting it into practise this year on my allotment, i got aload of cardboard and covered sll my growing areas and then got 10 bales of hay from my local farmer and then covered it all in that.
I built a swale at the top as its on a bit of a slope and iv started planting some fruit trees. Cant wait to see it in summer, no more digging for me.

a reply to: Lompyt

I'm going to put in some large permaculture beds this year called hugelkulture. They are large mounds built over a base of dead and rotting wood, cardboard, compost, manure, and upside down sod. They basically recycle a huge amount of waste materials into a roughly 6x5 mound. There will be two between twenty and forty feet long. I will keep everyone posted on their progress! Good luck with yours!

a reply to: olaru12

Yay! It's so nice to find the babies waking up!
We found our first alyssum yesterday! A pretty little carpet. I have been having to hold myself back from planting too much. My first year I started my own seeds, they were too overgrown to even recover when they finally got put out. Oh the things we learn the hard way right?

That sounds like a great idea, i saw a video of a guy growing potatoes in hay so im giving that a go this year as well. Clean potatoes!!a reply to: woodsmom

Ok, my images seem to be working. Hopefully I can embed at least a few photos of my plants! All from previous years of course!

Oops. Double post


a reply to: Lompyt

That's a great idea! The straw bale gardening seems like an excellent method that doesn't require the groundwork, and you are still improving your growing space by adding organics! Good luck!! If you get them from a farm, maybe you can get some aged manure to add in.

I was researching that method when I realized that most straw is wheat straw. Commercial strawberries are grown on wheat straw as well. That was when I realized that my Valentine's strawberries made me sick (I had assumed it was something else). I have celiac disease and commercial strawberries are usually contaminated. So in that entire process I discovered that I'm not going to be using straw bales myself, and that commercial strawberries are off limits. At least I won't get myself sick anymore that way. I know it seems off topic, but I put it here to make people aware of that fact. My homegrown ones are fine, it's only because of the straw.

So because the straw is unsafe for me, I had my honey bring me home some pallets that will be planted with spinach in a couple weeks! Lettuce too if the weather warms back up. It got cold again.

originally posted by: woodsmom
a reply to: Logarock

May I ask how to get them to grow from seed? Just for shipping purposes alone I would love to be able to go that route.

Yes. Having problems like so many trying to get the seeds to geminate I found info on a site (I will post later if you wish).

Take a one gallon freezer bag and fill it peat. Wet it all to the consistency of a damp sponge. Mix in your seeds throughout and then put the bag in the back of the refrigerator. Let it set for about 30 days, more or less, until you see the small root hook pop out of the seed. At that point spread the peat out and pick the seeds out and transfer.

This sounds odd to some but it really works. I left mine in for 3 months because it looked like the deal wasn't working but then I looked closely and saw that they were popping out. Its not real obvious. They don't start growing but they do pop.

Now is the time to do it!

My goal is to get several hundred plants going because of problems around here with growing consistently healthy plants that produce well, so numbers is the game. Things were ok with the first crops set out a few years ago but with all the snow last year, moisture, freezing, poor drainage although the beds are somewhat raised, we had root damage and common "rust" fungus and some loss. If the same happens this year I am going to start coving my plants with waterproofing in the early winter this coming December and run gravel drains throughout the beds.

a reply to: woodsmom

The fourth picture down...if you cut those at the head,they are edible.

I got out into my raspberry patch this weekend and cut out all of the old dead canes I could get to. We have had so many freeze, thaw cycles this year that many of the canes are still inaccessible even without the snow cover. It was nice to at least start on the chore though. The greenhouse is getting up to between 60 and 70 during the day, but still dropped into the high twenties at night. It dropped to 5 that night, so at least she is building her heat up internally and holding it again! I may even start my spinach outside and my lettuce in the greenhouse soon. I just can't quite trust the weather yet. I seeded my tomatoes and my attempts at sweet peppers yesterday. I planted eight varieties of tomato and pimento, sweet banana and sweet cherry peppers. My banana peppers did great last summer, I just made the mistake of canning them with my serranos, this year I will keep more of them fresh and sweet. They are tasty in a salad. Who needs bell peppers, at least this year.


a reply to: Logarock

That is great! Thank you! I have had such a hard time with my asparagus. That's why I am hoping planting it into these permaculture mounds will help. Maybe I will plant them a little higher up on the mound to facilitate the ice and the drainage problems. Thank you!