Gardening talk anyone?

[Dina]

Anyone interested in gardening? This novice gardening has several questions to all you gardening experts.

I love gardening and I'm determined to make a beautiful garden this year. Looks like Spring has sprung down here in South Texas and I'm in desperate need of saving some of my plants: exoras and hibiscus, to name a few. So anyone interested in some gardening chat, exchanging your expertise, tips, hints on becoming a "green thumb" gardener, etc. just come on in here.

 

[jkath]

Constance........oh Constance......!

Dina, I love gardening, and am sad that I left it when we moved a couple of months ago. I miss my giant hydrangeas and my wisteria most of all!
But, now I've got a new one that is just screaming for color!

PS - have you ever dried your hibiscus flowers for tea? It's quite tasty!!!

 

[callie]

I'm a gardener at heart with a not very green thumb! We have 10 inches of snow in our yard but my thoughts are on my summer garden. My growing season (outside) is really short - mid-June through August. What a challenge...

So I don't have any expertise to lend - but the word "gardening" makes me feel like Spring might arrive one of these days!

 

[lindatooo]

Big Sigh....I love to garden - but since we've just had the wettest January in 30 years here I'll have to wait another six weeks AFTER the rain stops before I can go out and play! All I can do right now is bait the slugs.

I love to grow 4 O'Clocks and Sweet Peas and Nasturtium (which are also very tasty in salads) and I grow most of my own herbs. Rosemary is a perennial here. I have hundreds of day lillies and iris....ah spring....

 

[Dina]

jkath,
Sorry to hear you had to leave your garden. I'm sure you'll get a new one started soon. Make sure you post some pics of it. If I ever get my hibiscus plants to bloom, I'll make sure to try the tea. BTW, I trimmed some huge hibiscus plants and decided to dip the trimmings in water then plant them in potting soil. My Dad swears they will root and grow. Any ideas on that?

Callie,
What part of the Rocky Mountains are you from and what do you plant during your summers? I'm not much of a green thumb gardener either but sure love it. I'm sure we can all learn from everyone here. Hope the snow dissipates soon.

Oh Linda,
Rain is something we're hoping for down here in the south. We love sweet peas, lillies and iris! My daughter planted some sweet peas seeds last February and grew so beautifully by the summer. Too bad our 110 degrees temps burned them out. Speaking of herbs, just planted some sweet basil seeds last weekend and waiting anxiously to see the seedlings.

 

[jkath]

BTW, I trimmed some huge hibiscus plants and decided to dip the trimmings in water then plant them in potting soil. My Dad swears they will root and grow. Any ideas on that?.

Make sure to dip it in a rooting hormone before they are potted, otherwise they may not take root. Look for something like Rhizopon, I believe.

 

[-DEADLY SUSHI-]

I would really enjoy growing a garden but I live in an apartment. Bringing mounds of earth to my balcony isnt recommended.

 

[callie]

Dina, I'm in the southwest part of Colorado - at an altitude of 8600+ feet. I've found container gardening is the most successful for me. Last year I started Early Girl tomatoes from seed. I kept the plants in big pots on my deck until the end of August then brought them inside before the freezing temps came in September. We had enough tomatoes to eat - but not enough to can. sigh. This year I want to plant some lettuce in pots and maybe some onions. I also have to deal with the deer. They are very friendly - and hungry - and eat everything! Suggestions?

I love petunias, marigolds and geraniums. They work well for me in pots on the decks. I'm going to try giant sunflowers this year, too. But I'm guessing the deer will eat them before they get a chance to grow and bloom!

 

[Alix]

We're several months yet from thinking about gardening. But...I read there is some kind of "panther pee" that you spray on your garden to keep the deer away. Don't know how well it works though. Try some roma tomatoes next time. They bear really well and are PERFECT for canning and salsa.

 

[callie]

Thanks, Alix, I will look for roma tomato seeds. Any particular kind I should look for? I like romas. I've just never grown them.

 

[jkath]

There's a deer repellant my friend used years ago. Scared away the deer, but not the bears!

It's a mix of tabasco, milk, eggs and a couple of other goodies. I'll ask my aunt if she's got the mix.

 

[callie]

We have bears, too...it's quite a wildlife refuge around here during the summer! The deer (and bears, too) don't have any fear of walking on our decks. They look in the windows and doors - and eat everything in sight. The deer even ate my jalepeno plants! Haven't found anything yet that keeps them away...

 

[Alix]

I haven't looked at seed brand names, sorry Callie. But I think you will be happy with the romas. I also like to do pepper plants in pots. Whoo! Say that 10 times fast!

 

[lindatooo]

Thanks for the deer repellent idea - pleae post it my MIL and DF both have deer coming into their front yards and "pruning" everything in sight!

2

 

[buckytom]

experienced organic veggie and herb gardener here. stooped posture, bow-legs, sunburnt back, constant muttering about the bugs and wild animals. you know the kind.
also, kinda hank hill-ish about my lawn and shrubs. boy-howdy.

i grow 2 to 3 season veggie gardens a year, starting with leafy greens, peas, beets, onions, turnips, carrots, and other cool weather plants, leaving a 2 1/2 foot space between rows. everything is started from directly sown seed. i usually begin in late march, depending on the snow.

then, just after mother's day, i fill the empty rows with nightshade veggies and other hot weather crops, as seedlings started in my basement, as the spring stuff comes to fruition.

this usually carries me into sept. or october, when, in a good year, i will replant leafy greens and peas in the spent spring rows, shaded by the now overgrown summer stuff.

i do not use any chemical pesticide, herbicide, or fertilizer. i use compost, sphagnum peat, lime, and natural fertilizers, and employ sacrificial and naturally pest repellent plants. i also use sulphur (fungicide), pyrethrin and diatomaceous earth (pesticides), beer baths and copper strips, and beneficial insect releases (bacillus thuringensis, green wings, lady bugs, etc.).

in the end, it's all about the soil.

now, if i could only keep 'bug and her collected bugs away from my garden.

 

[Raven]

We're several months yet from thinking about gardening. But...I read there is some kind of "panther pee" that you spray on your garden to keep the deer away. Don't know how well it works though. Try some roma tomatoes next time. They bear really well and are PERFECT for canning and salsa.

I'm an avid organic vegitable gardener but since I live on the second floor of an apartment I have to do container veg's.

Roma's are great because they can be grown in as little as 4 quarts of soil (I've grown them quite well in thos 5 quart "Flower Pouch's" from Parks, but ROMA'S ARE NOTORIOUS FOR BLOSSOM END ROT (as some varieties are, especially the plum and cherry sized varieties), so be very careful about using plenty of Compost and Worm Castings, keep the Ph between 6.2 and 6.8 and use water crystals to even the watering out.

A dear friend of mine is a professor of micro-biology at Rutgers University and gave me the complete low-down on BER (and in scientific terms that went far over my head ha ha), but in essance, here is what she said.

Blossom End Rot (BER) is not a disease, it's a calcium deficiency. It can be caused by either too little calcium in the soil or the plant is unable to absorb the calcium that's in the soil. There are sprays that claim to stop blossom end rot but since liquid cannot penetrate the skin of a tomato, and the leaves are only marginal at absorbing Ca. there is little evidence that they have any effect what-so-ever. (though I did have a good experience feeding my plant's Caltrate one year)

What's more, once you notice BER, there's nothing you can do about until the plant get's over whatever is causing it (stess, uneven watering etc.), and there is strong evidence that BER is a natural part of the life-cycle of tomatoes that are vulnerable to it even under perfect conditions and usually show signs of BER in the first round of the plant's production (sometimes even showing BER on all early fruits).

Since the tomatoes are the reproductive part of the plant, if the plant does not have adequate calcium to keep it alive, it will sacrifice the fruit to keep the plant it's-self alive, so keep both Plant Stess and Nitrogen to a minimum. The more Nitrogen you put on the plant, the more plant you will get and thus the more calcium the plant will need, therefore fewer tomatoes.


BER can be caused by any and/or all of the following.

1. Too much Nitrogen
2. Too much water
3. Too little water
4. A combination of 2 and 3 (drought/drown)
5. Too little Calcium
6. Too high/low Ph.
7. Plant Stess (Too hot, too cold, flip-flopping temps)

If you see BER on your roma's, just check to make sure your doing everything correctly, and if you are don't worry about it, it probably just means that the plant isn't mature enough to be producing good tomatoes yet. Give it some time to grow and you'll be canning before you know it.

~ Raven ~

 

[licia]

My sister was telling me about an ad she saw for an earth box for gardening. Has anyone tried that. I believe it has a place to put water so you don't have to do that much - it takes it up as it needs it. She is thinking about getting one for my mother who loved gardening and can't do all those things anymore.

 

[Dina]

I'm sure I had BER on my tomatoes Raven. The kids planted tomato seeds last February and got some beautiful vines with nice, blump tomatoes but once our 110 degrees summer hit they began to rot. We ended up pulling out all the plants (more than 20 of them). Our cayanne, banana, and anaheim pepper plants are doing great. The vines are as tall as 4 feet now. I do see some deterioration on the leaves so I'll search for ants or some sort of bug that's eating them away. Some bug repellent might work.

We live in Zone 9 (minimum temps of 20-30 degrees) and neighborhood was made over what used to be fields of crops. We have lots of bugs and our soil is claylike - EEK! I read that Ixora shrubs need acidic soil or acid fertilizer at least. Where do I find that fertilizer and what's it called? Should I dig deeper and add gardening soil to finally have my Ixoras bloom? I've even afraid to transplant my hibiscus to the ground. RATS!

I love rose bushes, hydrangeas and azaleas too just end up killing them all the time. Must be the heavy soil. Does anyone know what plants would tolerate clay soil?

 

[buckytom]

dina, you can "repair" your clay or heavy soil by turning in lots of organic matter, such as peat moss and compost. i took over my fil's garden a number of years back, and the soil was terrible. it was a shallow layer of expended soil, almost sandy, above heavy clay soil. he was a big believer in chemicals, so the soil was over used and abused. it took me a few years of adding cold compost (which was mostly composed of worm castings) and peat moss. i double turned the soil, putting a good inch or 2 of peat into it, them forming my rows, then tilling the compost into the top few inches of row.

if you don't want to go that route, try growing grapes. they thrive in clay soil, so long as you don't get too much rain. try to get your hands on a 1/2" to 1" thick by 3 foot piece of live grape vine, dig a hole about 2 1/2 feet deep, give the hole a good watering, then bury most of the vine in the hole.
you'll have grapes within 2 to 3 years as the vines mature.

 

[Dina]

Callie,
I love Colorado; it's a beautiful state. We took the train tour to Pike's Peak last summer and boy, was it an awsome sight. Sorry I can't give you much input on keeping the dear away. We have none down here