i love listening to people talk abour fertilizers and doing soil tests. meanwhile i'm just over here like "If i water plants with the rice washing water it's a luxury, anything else only breeds weakness and frailty. You either thrive or you die you coddled shit weeds" the only plants who get coddled to some degree are our fig (by coddled i mean we're bringing the poor dear inside in winter) and my nectarine because she's a problem child who came to us with a disease that thank heavens won't affect anything else, but is very difficult to get rid of once it's in a peach or nectarine plant I've found most solidly bred roses are really not even a little bit difficult if you just don't let them get away with being prissy. You water them regularly and you cut them once a year and you take off the flowers once they're not pretty anymore or you need them for cooking or bouquets or what have you and there you go a summer long wave of blooms all the time ever. Our soil is pretty shitty even, honestly, it's sandy clay stuff and most nutrition comes from fallow land plants being nearbyish and i uess the water but like. i have never understood all these memes about roses being prissy. Plums are much more likely to be whiny about everything
I don't even deadhead our Zepherine Drouhins anymore, just let them fight for dominance with next door's invasive river weeds and that one big bramble sucker no-one can find the source of
Ye honestly I didn't like his video work at all, but I did like his design. You can do the same thing for cheap on a smaller budget in totes though! https://albopepper.com/30-gallon-tote.php The only problem with the totes is the plastic breaks down and they fall apart over time as they get exposed to the weather. But the idea is to create a reservoir and an over flow drain, and the soil you fill it with will wick it up when it's dry without letting the roots sit in the water and rot.
I went to water the green babies and they made a surprising new friend? Where did it come from and how did it get into my upstairs linen closet???
what a good! hello little speckle friend! a round hero on patrol for aphids and wickedness. i want to grow squash this year. so much squash. now that i can get into the greenhouse it's time for me to plant seeds. i gotta get to the hardware store for supplies. i have love/hate for those little expandable peat tablet planty doodads, anyone have opinions?
There's these soil block makers that I haven't tried personally but really, really want. Idk if those are what you might me looking for, but it replaces the trays of plastic cups or the peat pellets and of you get the bigger ones it should work well for starting squash.
eh, if i want to use potting soil, i'll just put it in egg cartons. no need for forming it into perfect cubes. cut in half toilet paper rolls work good too. what i like about the peat pellets is that they don't get sogged down into mud the way soil does. what i don't like is how fast they dry out. so i'm kinda on the fence.
Hmm for that I would use a tray with drain slits, set into a solid tray with no drainage. Pack the pellets in kind of tight, and when you water add it to the tray about a 3rd of the way up the pellet and let it soak in the water for 10 -15 minutes then lift the first tray out of the second and discard the left over water. Letting it soak in from the bottom should let it saturate the pellet.
ah heck I completely missed this, sorry if u have more pics I will absolutely take a look at em! I can also try and upload the pics of a little sapling that I pruned in Feb, it was in a similar situation to yours although not as big
also @Lizardlicks ur rare seeds link is gonna be the death of me Chinese Shawo Fruit Radish oh my god??? oh my god
:3c Honestly, between this and seed savers it's a wonder I haven't spent more. (Only because my current garden doesn't have the space for everything I want).
For the first time in years, I'm in a literal and metaphorical place where I can garden, and I'm loving it. My sister is basically letting me do whatever I want with a little ~100 sq ft plot she and her husband planted last year, so I don't have to break sod or anything. I just finished loosening up the soil and digging it into raised beds and walkways. Unless the weather does something I don't like, I can sow some early crops this weekend.
here in mn it's flood season -- the snow's melting but the ground's still frozen, so everything's just running off into the river. which is playing mailbox baseball with bridges and whole trees. nothing green is showing yet. still, it's an exciting time, and i'm eager to start seeds so i can plant them in a month. i have the planter boxes roach built me, but i never managed to truck in enough dirt to fill them. i don't think the dye garden is happening this year, so i want to focus on delicious edibles. squash, for definitely. not a fan of raw tomatoes, and making sauce from scratch is a bit much for me at this stage, so probs not tomatoes. cucumbers, mayhap? i like those japanese style ones that are long and skinny and have thin skins, so you don't have to peel them.. aaaa there are so many options! snow peas? heirloom carrots? what's good to plant when you don't have a lot of space, and you're physically disabled so you can't put a lot of elbow grease into it? on the south side, where i put those freebie grapevines last year, i'm def gonna plant some sunflowers for seebs. seebs is a sunflower.
I know that strawberries, cucumbers and beans and peas can all be grown as trailing plants in hanging baskets to free up ground space, if that helps?
there's also hanging pot versions of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries in a local catalogue thing, but they're based in switzerland iirc so not sure if that's a thing in the US
!!! peas in hanging baskets! yes!!! and i have a smol strawberry plant that i kept alive over the winter in the greenhouse, though i was going to put that in an ornamental ceramic doodad. not sure about growing cucumbers in a basket, wouldn't the fruits be too heavy? though maybe a small-fruited variety. i keep finding these baby cukes at the supermarket that are individually the size of gherkin pickles but are smooth skinned and seedless, and exactly the right size for one (1) cucumber sandwich. if i could grow those in a hanging basket i would be a very happy bear.
eh, i've got wild raspberries all over my yard, the trick is keeping them from completely taking over. :D
oh my gosh, you know what would be SO CUTE??? patty-pan squash in a hanging basket! pair it with marigolds for pest protection and it'll be pretty AND delicious! or maybe i could companion-plant it with something tall in the big ground planters. this site https://insteading.com/blog/companion-planting-for-summer-squash/ recommends corn, which is traditional, but it explains WHY corn, and i think sunflowers would work just the same. since corn kinda has to be grown in big patches or it won't pollinate, and i don't have the space for that. or rather, i theoretically have the space, but i physically can't take care of that large a garden.
You can definitely get small cultivars of cukes to grow in baskets. 'Mini Star' seems to be popular here and is apparently heavy fruiting, although I haven't grown it myself.
