Posted on 06/28/2013 1:01:56 PM PDT by greeneyes
That’s amazing!
Are you on the right thread? We’re talking about gardens and produce, so you might want to double check, in case you intended to post to someone else.
My neighbor pulled up some garlic and asked me what the little brown “nodes” were that are attached to the sides. I told him my dad used to plant them and grow a new crop of garlic the next year. Is that correct?
I rotate. This is a new spot this year. Maybe they needed more nutrition of some sort. Most came up, but did not last. There are about four bean plants, good ones, out of two rows.
OH MAN,That sucks! Where do you live?
Bump
One of those stems is upside down. Don’t know that one will work. Why waste a perfectly good potato? Just lay a few leggy stems over onto the ground, anchor them with dirt or a rock and they’ll start new roots. Eat the potatoes for dinner.
Sounds reasonable, but I have no first hand experience with those.
What did you plant there last year? Did you add any compost or fertilizer this year? I always check the plant for bugs or signs of disease first, then check the soil.
Beans are usually a pretty easy veggie to grow.
The evening news just announced it is 106 right now and might rise another degree or two before the sun starts to go down. The dogs came in and you could feel the heat coming off them. All they do lately is snooze under the A/C. Who can blame them.
I’ve been watering morning and evening just to keep things alive. The squash finally went caput without giving me anything. There is one little cuke I’ve got my eye on and may have to be happy with that for the summer. Despite all the watering, the corn is drying out and it only gave me one little bitty ear that never matured. I have two varieties of corn and neither have grown over 3-4 feet.
There is one little banana pepper and none of the peppers are growing much. But then I had to replant 3 times so they were very late getting into the ground. The tomatoes I had to restart aren’t much bigger than what they were when I put them out a month or so ago but they’re happy so maybe they don’t like the heat. If it weren’t for all the yellow pear volunteers, I’d have nothing. They have maters but aren’t getting any color. I need to see if the carrots are ready.
I think the potato is to keep the stems moist. But, I’m wondering what’s to stop the eyes on the tater from growing new tater plants?
OOOooooo nice homegrown produce pics there. My little suburban garden is doing ok. The Juliet tomato plant is producing pretty good and the Early Girl is nice and tall, lots of blooms but not many maters popping out so far. Now its 100 plus degrees in DFW so they may stall a bit. The green beans were leafy but very few pods. Cilantro and arugula have long bolted but I’m still eating on whats left of them in the salads. Next year I will put the tomatoes in with healthy plants by mid April and try to beat the summer heat. I have some partial shade back there from trees and its a good thing I think. I don’t miss living in NY but the summer temps are much more favorable vs here but I’ll adapt accordingly with the garden.
Sounds a little like last year here. I put a sheet over the tomatoes and watered morning and night, finally got some good maters in the fall.
I also dug up some of the pepper plants and put them in pots, and replanted lettuce and spinach in pots and put them where a tree shaded them all afternoon. Got some produce that way, and brought the pots indoors and continued getting produce during the winter.
Garlic, peppers, tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, rosemary, chives, tarragon parsley, and lavendar was all I got last year.
I guess I should clarify that I used the sheet as a roof to protect from the heat, and create some shade.
Another idea: A 50-lb bag of ammonium sulfate costs $6-$10, which means that each lb is just $0.16. To achieve a formulation of liquid 5-0-0, dilute this with compost tea (basically free from your yard, contains some N, P, K and traces of other micronutrients), it would only cost you far less than a nickel for each 16 oz of the equivalent liquid 5-0-0.
(I'm using the 50-lb bag only for illustration purposes. For most of us, a sack that big would last forever! But my point is, it's N and it's cheap, drastically cheaper than other recommended sources such as fish emulsion.)
Starbucks packages used coffee grounds for giveaway. My neighbor found a local small coffee place which was happy to save their grounds in his container. He would pick it up every day or two and leave a clean container.
I'm going to post in another minute about another N source: MDF dust. It's something I want to get some discussion on, so I'm putting it in a separate post.
Get back to us and let us know how the spinach turns out!
A friend of mine in DFW here she tells me that when her tomatoes get all mid summer scraggly from the heat she cuts back on them and waits until the Fall for a 2nd burst of growth. I may rethink my plan of using cuttings and just try to nurse those mater plants via trimmings past August and beyond.
I have a volunteer mater in the tree ring and the others I transplanted to containers but they are slow pokes—but maybe they will be late producers in the Fall if they make it that far. Or if I make it that far, eheheheheheh. Just kidding!
MDF is Medium Density Fiberboard. All the woodworking shops that make kitchen cabinets, furniture and the like, use MDF and end up with huge sacks of the dust which they are glad to give you, because otherwise they have to pay somebody to take it to the landfill.
At first gardeners were hesitant about using MDF dust for composting, because it is NOT like pure natural sawdust: it contains 10% or more chemicals (gums and binders) which we gardeners were suspicious of. The main binders are U-F (Urea-Formaldehyde) and Melamine.
However! Researchers have found that the U-F and M break down completely and rapidly into nice Nitrogen (mostly in the form ammonia) and that quickly gets the sawdust cooking compost-wise. They record no production of toxins of any kind: everything breaks down into N, CO2, and water. The resulting crumbly compost has a nice texture and is a good soil amendment.
Would like to know what anybody else thinks of this. Has anybody checked this out? HOw did you use it?
I did some experimenting when a woodworking friend give me 4 huge sacks of the stuff, and I'm finding it's actually a great free soil amendment, side-dressing, compost cooker and bulker.
I am going to have to try that, looks interesting.
I also wonder if you could end up growing taters with your roses.
Sounds like a plan.
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