Posted on 05/17/2013 1:01:42 PM PDT by greeneyes
OH, that looks so nice.
I was contemplating my pepper plants in my indoor garden. They are loaded with blooms and little peppers, but the leaves on the bottom are very sgraggly or else missing entirely.
I was wondering if they would be like tomatoes, so that I could bury the bare stem and they would form additional roots. You grow so many peppers, I thought you might have tried this before?
/johnny
OK thanks.
I bought something this morning tha was 12% nitrogen, 56% phosphorous and some other stuff in it. Said 3 teaspoons Ina gallon of water every two weeks. I will see what that does.
My second 4x4 was built this morning. Too tired to plant so I will do that tomorrow. This crop will be beets, cukes, corn, lettuce and more beans. People at Millbergers told me it was too late for tomatoes and carrots.
What are you using as mulch?
We buy hay by the big round bale from a local farmer. Since we mulch over 5 or 6 layers of newspapers and cardboard boxes (from cereal, pasta, etc) we don’t worry if we’re spreading weed seeds in the garden. They just get covered over again next year. We also use raked leaves and grass clippings from our yard. We usually try to sweep the leaves off the neighbors yards too. On the beds that are in the ‘yard’ and part of the ‘landscaping’ we use regular old pinestraw over cardboard boxes.
Ick, yuck, pooey! I was out in the garden this morning picking some of the Ferry-Morse Mesclun mix and smelled a skunk. I picked some more and the smell stayed with me. I took the bucket into the house and still smelled it. As I was rinsing the leaves, one was awful! It was a spikey leaf sort of like a thistle. It was a young leaf, about two inches in diameter. I’ve looked on the internet for a picture of something similar but no luck. I went through the names on the seed package (arugula, endive red kale, red and green romaine, salad bowl and loola rossa lettuce) but still no luck. I tasted it and it tasted like it smelled - like skunk. No, the leaf is nothing like a skunk cabbage. I’m not a botanist so the best I can do in describing the leaf is picture the palm of a hand and fingers with the fingers having spikes on them like thistles do but not the fuzzy stuff. I was thinking maybe an endive but I’ve never known them to smell like skunk.
Sure, I have tons of weeds but I haven’t seen or smelled this thing before so chances are it came in the mesclun seed packet. I may have to throw out those packets and cross Ferry-Morse off my list because it’s really nasty.
Anyone know what it might be?
Horsehockey. It is too late for carrots, beets and some varieties of lettuce since they are generally cool weather plants, but tomatoes are still good to go.
56% phosphorus? Wow! That's a lot. My tomato plants are going crazy. The stems are real thick, and there are tons of blooms with a lot of small tomatoes. I'm real happy with the rock phosphate. I know I have a lot of nitrogen since my raised beds are composted horse manure, but many plants just didn't do that well last year.
I shouldn't bust on Millbergers since I like the place, but several years ago I took a couple leaves and a piece of a branch from a voluteer tree to them hoping for identification. They told me it was a Chinqapin Oak. Imagine my surprise a couple years later when the "Chinqapin Oak" started bearing Mulberry's. ;)
Great looking strawberries!
Happy Birthday too!
I have no idea. I can’t believe you tasted it without knowing what it was.LOL
I usually have some hay left over from the winter garden, and we keep a lot of newspapers and cardboard too. I don’t use the cereal boxes and soda boxes because I am not sure what kind of dye they are using.
Another thread tried to help ID it but not luck. My face has what looks like poison ivy, my eyes are puffy and my ears hurt so whatever it is is now on the poisonous list. I’m still tasting skunk and have been rinsing with baking soda and peroxide. Hubby dug up the whole area and disposed of the dirt this morning and then he ran to the shower because he was itchy. No where else was there a skunk smell so it wasn’t from a skunk spraying. It was definitely the plant. Ferry-Morse is now on my ban list. Never again.
I am so sorry. Maybe take some antihistamine or benadryl? Do you have some calamine lotion in your medicine cabinet? If it gets too bad, I hope you’ll go to the doctor.
Hope you are better soon.
Where are you located? It will soon be too hot for carrots, but you should be able to get a crop of carrots in the fall.
As for the tomatoes, you could get some of the shorter DTM varieties. You could also grow one or two in a pot. That way you could bring the pot indoors if the weather gets too extreme.
Tomatoes have trouble setting fruit when it’s too hot. They don’t really make progress when weather gets to the 40’s either.
I think the same regulations about use of heavy metal dyes in the newspapers affects the cardboard cereal boxes too. I think I read that somewhere. It’s about what ends up in the landfill and leaches into the water table.
I’ll see if I can find it this afternoon when I have more time.
I think the problem I had was I planted and then Texas had a bit of a freeze. Planted my new 4x4 this morning. I am new at this so it is a learning process.
Have lettuce, onions, beets,carrots, corn, broccoli and string beans. Will see how that goes and adjust. My goal is to have 3 4x4’s by the end of summer.
Looked in the outdoor storage room and found the unopened package of 28 ft x 28 ft bird netting and that will cover with net left over however many large containers go on the deck. Then, ordered two, each one 14x14, to use in the dirt garden when I get the fabric planting bags with plants growing in them, sitting on the dirt.
I think there are seeds to get out of my mailbox - I did order more lettuce seed so that will be one of those in the mailbox. I'll plant that in those grow bags and I've got enough cut up bird netting to put over each bag to keep squirrels and birds out. Soon as the new netting gets here, will use that over all the bags grouped together.
The multi-flower seeds will be in there to plant along the front edge of the dirt garden and the sesame flower seeds will be there.
I have now ordered heirloom tomato seed to try to grow those in the big containers this fall. Anything growing on the deck will be covered with the large netting.
So, it's grow bags set on dirt in the dirt garden for smaller plants and big containers on the deck for tomatoes and root veggies. Next spring comes the new Deck Sweet Corn plants with bean plants next to the corn to grow the bean up the corn stalk and squash planted in front of the corn stalk.
Somewhere strawberries and blackberries have to grow - haven't figured that out yet. Well, guess they could go in the big containers as those containers have the trellis attached. Blackberries could grow up the trellis. The strawberry plants I want are separate plants that do not send out runners, they are separate plants so those could actually go in the grow bags. These strawberries come back every year. I'll have to check that again as I looked at bunches of strawberry possibilities.
“outdoor” should be “indoors”
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