Weekly Gardening Thread
Posted on 11/12/2010 5:10:16 AM PST by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. Hope all of you and your winter gardens are doing well. Nothing but perfect Autumn weather here in Mississippi. We may be getting some needed rain the first part of this coming week.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
Weekly Gardening Thread
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Morning Red. Nothing new here from the drought strickened area north of Houston. A little rain two weeks ago, nothing since. That made twice in three months.
hello. the rain from late last week really helped the garden out tremendously. I think the tomato plant grew by 50% in that shower.
I’ve also started looking for water that isn’t chlorinated to water my plants with. I guess it ain’t good for them, huh? last night I filled my sprinkling can from the ditch in front of the house. That ought to be better for the plants. I’d like to get a rain barrel, but I’m hesitant to butcher my landlord’s downspout.
If they survive the winter, I’m gonna have tons of little tomato plants from the seeds I planted. Hope we have some global warming relative to last year...
I'm growing couch potatoes.
I’ve been working on compost this week, and it’s paying dividends already.
My compost bin is 8’ long, 4’ wide, and about 5 feet deep. It’s right next to the chicken coop and provides a handy way to dispose of what the chickens are done with. For the past 4 months I have been layering chicken poop into a 30 gallon trash can and covering it with wood ashes and cat letter. It’s stayed dry and doesn’t stink.
Last week I collected 2 large loads of shredded leaves and started layering leaves and dried chicken manure into the pile, and filled it to the top. I didn’t have to water it because we got plenty of rain.
The past two days I have been out there turning the pile with my mini roto tiller, and the pile is already up to 130 degrees! When I disturb it in any way it lets off an enormous plume of steam and heat. The chickens like to get up in there, peck around and sit in the warm compost on cold days. They also help mix the pile.
When I finished last week the bin was completely filled, and now that it has settled and started to compost it has compacted by about 1/3rd. I have plenty more leaves to gather and will probably add another foot or more of chopped leaves in the next week or two. The bottom line though, is that we will have several yards of finished compost to use come Spring.
Morning...still no rain here....
Day 5 of 60 degree, sunny days here in the Ohio Valley! I have one small garden lasagna composted and I’ll work on the other this weekend. I can’t wait to see the results next spring! I am greatly increasing what I plant next year. I usually just do a salsa garden. Next year will be potatoes (in containers, should be interesting), tomatoes, peas, carrots, onions, lettuce, peppers, and corn if I can make room for it.
Master Gardener class is still going well. First of the weekly quizzes was this past Tuesday. It was based on the previous class's topics, Basic Botany and Basic Plant Physiology. I did alright. Nailed everything I studied. Got a few other things that I just remembered. And missed a few other questions.
Tuesday's class was Plant Pathology. Quiz on that next Tuesday.
Tip of the Week: If you have a sweet gum tree and hate the prickly sweet gum balls it drops, collect them and use them in the garden. After planting bulbs, lay down a thick layer of sweet gum balls as mulch. It will keep the neighborhood critters from digging up the new plantings. 
Went to water this morningso I could do final clean up and light till this weekend and the damn hose was iced!
For thoses in the DC area, my garden is near Gallows and the Beltway. Oven night temps are often ~4 degrees cooler than the general area. When there is a tiny frost at my house, it is ground freeze at my garden.
I love seeing the steam rise from a compost pile in the morning!
Oh, and our PAR gardener/farmer set me straight on the size of sweet potatoes. I pulled a honeydew size sweet potato out of my garden this year and thought it was huge. The PAR gardener came to class Tuesday to thank everyone who came out to help on the sweet potato harvest (3400 pounds) and showed off a 7 pound HALF of a sweet potato harvested that day. The full potato was 14 pounds, about the size of a watermelon! Wow! I should have gotten a picture.
Oh, and our PAR gardener/farmer set me straight on the size of sweet potatoes. I pulled a honeydew size sweet potato out of my garden this year and thought it was huge. The PAR gardener came to class Tuesday to thank everyone who came out to help on the sweet potato harvest (3400 pounds) and showed off a 7 pound HALF of a sweet potato harvested that day. The full potato was 14 pounds, about the size of a watermelon! Wow! I should have gotten a picture.
For those who follow U.S. weather.. Drought Monitor... and scroll down and this is a 6 week and 12 week animation:
http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
My husband has been mulching leaves with the mower and putting them directly on the gardens. The soil was quite acidic so he is adding lime and then tilling it all in. Is there anything else to add at this time?
We do have a big compost bin as well but use that in the Spring as needed.
Thanks for any info from all you experts! You saved our tomato crop from ‘blossom end rot’!
The chlorination won’t hurt them and can actually be a benefit in larger concentrations because it kills bacteria.
Fill a couple of buckets and let them sit overnight. The chlorine will gas off in 24 hours or so and you will have chlorine free water.
I’ve been raking and composting a lot of leaves. :)
Chlorine also kills the microorganisms and fungi in your soil that have essential symbiotic relationships with your plants, not to mention the benefits they offer your soil by composting. Without those microorganisms your plants will not thrive. Worms don't like chlorine, either. It takes a while, but chlorine residue will build up in the soil over time, especially in potted plants, and kill these essential critters. Chlorine free water is a much better way to go.
I do the same with leaves out of the yard and lime, then till it in. Eventually, when you get enough organic matter tilled in you should see worms and that is a good thing. Worms do wonderful things to your soil. I also add a layer of chicken litter and/or manure and till that in. Over the winter all the ashes from my fireplace are scattered on the garden, too. If you have access to a subsoiler now is a good time to subsoil so that the nutrients from the composting material you are adding gets deeper into the soil. Subsoiling aslo loosens up the dirt for next spring.
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