Weekly Garden Thread May 9-15, 2020

May 9, 2020 | Diana in Wisconsin/Greeneyes

[MomwithHope]

Mine are not looking too good either. But they are just in peat moss. I am putting them in larger pots today with some of my good garden soil, some bone meal, and a little fertilizer. they need food!

[Vermont Lt]

In my other plants, sprouting, reaching, and spindly gets over is a light issue. I grow indoors a lot and it helps to keep the light close. Real close sometimes. I also have a variable speed fan going. The slight breeze stimulates the stem to get thicker and support more weight.

[Paul R.]

Thanks for the reply! Again, purchased plants do great in the garden itself. There are lots of worms in the garden and compost. It is seedlings started in small pots or those 4 or 6 packs, reused from plants' purchases after they have been emptied, that don't make it. I've tried so many varieties of purchased potting soil and top soil that I can't even tell you which I used last year. Most of which soils I've also used when planting store bought plants (to help refill the hole - works fine / those plants generally do well.) Plus I've tried soil from what we compost. The latter (part of the compost area itself) grows volunteer tomato plants* just great(!) if undisturbed and not added to / dumped on with more material to be composted that would bury the young plants.

*Apparently a few stray seeds from food prep / slicing & dicing tomatoes or tomatoes that go bad get in the compost.

That said, thanks, I may pick up a bag of the Hapi-Gro Timberline 40-lb Organic Compost and Manure (1.88) and / or Peat Humus40-lb $2.28) that you recommend. We are low on such material. The lighting for the seedlings is mostly artificial (grow bulbs - no good unshaded windows to grow stuff) but I've also tried starting the plants outside - granted that was in early summer after the indoor attempts failed, and those may have received too much heat and light early on. (We are in the Mid-South, Zone 7, and the seedlings would have been about 5- 10 days old right at summer solstice, both times, IIRC.) So that might have been a different problem.

Water, well (pun) it's good tasting well water, a bit "hard" but not bad, I drink a lot of it untreated, and I haven't toppled over yet. I guess I could test ITS ph or just switch to collected rainwater. (There is plenty of that available in the spring, here!)

I'm guessing maybe when watering for being away 2-4 days the plants are TOO wet too long. Or maybe it is the light, or, some sort of pathogen* (despite the new soil) that plants 1-2 weeks old in small reused containers are vulnerable to. It is NOT too much plant for the container -- store purchased plants are probably 20-100 times more plant mass for the container than the seedlings, at the point the seedlings keel over.

*I also suppose it is just barely possible there is enough juglone in the well water to damage seedlings at their most vulnerable(?) stage(?) -- we have tons of hickory trees in the area (but not near the garden.) We use the same water for the garden though - no apparent problem, but then that's on older plants. This time of year or a little later, there's no need to water the volunteers - they get plenty of rain.

[Paul R.]

Thanks for the many replies!

Maybe the grow light needs to be closer? Within a foot or less? (In past years it was a 40w. fluorescent bulb about 30" away. For this winter I replaced it with a 5000 lumen 5000K LED fixture - it worked ok for plants (including a couple mature tomato plants) I overwintered - see below).

I have NOT yet had a chance to start from seed tomatoes this year -- figured I'd get on here and ask some questions 1st, actually, since the past attempts were a waste of time / disaster.

Also, that light is not on a timer, so maybe the "never off" light messes up young plants even more than people? (It's never hurt other wintered plants we have, so far as I know.)

The problem when I tried growing seedlings from seed "outside" in small containers may be a different issue, as noted.

The fan is a good idea, but how to not forget the dang thing when I'm away, and dry out the plants even faster? It'd only take one mistake... Maybe run it on a separate timer so it's only on an hour a day?

[daniel1212]

The part about not enough light is not intuitive.

Perhaps but you see with my Scottish/Irish DNA then I am rather conscious about the sun:). Went to the beach with some of my friends from work when I was about 14 (and knew everything), and forsook the law of my mother by not covering up as was the exhortation, and after about 5 hours of sun I ended up with 2nd degree burns on my legs, blisters, could not walk, and sheets of skin coming of my back.

You can also bury the stems and they will root, so when you transplant them, transplant them deep enough so that the plants don’t tip over and break.

Correct, and it is recommended to even break any smaller lower stems and plant them up to the first larger branches. I usually dig a deep hole and put some screened dirt/loam in it as a good base to begin with, and it is also it is recommended to plant the roots rather sideways, which I supposes helps them get water easier and maybe better soil to begin with.

[daniel1212]

I'm guessing maybe when watering for being away 2-4 days the plants are TOO wet too long. Or maybe it is the light, or, some sort of pathogen* (despite the new soil) that plants 1-2 weeks old in small reused containers are vulnerable to.

Sounds like you are far from a novice! I would recommend getting some 20oz paper cups (or 60 18oz for 12.00) and putting a couple holes in the bottom and using them to plant in, with good soil. On watering, I only water our many (thank God) growing plants about twice a week at the most.

[LilFarmer]

Diana, thanks for the ping!

I’m a long time gardener, with heirlooms and I’m happy to hear about this thread!

Hubby and I have been scrambling the last few nights to cover everything. I don’t remember having cold spells this low in GA in May. I have zucchini, cucumber, spaghetti squash, tomatoes, bell and jalapeño pepper, corn, bush beans and potatoes planted and all are a few inches tall, except tomatoes which I started early and already have flowers.

This year I am trying two different ways with potatoes - one in rows, old-school style, and the other using fence wrapped into circles and continuously adding compost and straw. I’ll let you know the outcome. So far the fence column potatoes are almost up to my chin, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Hubby and I planted a couple dozen blueberry bushes this year, and working on bird netting for those.

I have a question... I’m guessing a lot of us raise chickens. We have an evil fox picking off my birds. The most recent attack left one of my hen’s entire back scalped, from near the base of her neck, to her tail, and wing to wing. I nearly put her down that day. But I sprayed blu kote on her back and dosed her with pen-g for a few days. She is eating, drinking, scratching, laying and is not being picked on by the other birds. She gets around slow, has a slight limp. Her back aggravates her some, she picks at it. No blood. But like I said, she was scalped and I wanted to know if this has happened to any others and does anyone know if her skin/feathers grow back?

I really hate that fox.

[LilFarmer]

I have had good luck with seedsavers.com? Or farmerseed.com

[LilFarmer]

Typo... www.seedsavers.org

[mrsmith]

“Not accepting new orders”

I tried the usuals.
Looks like I’m just out of luck. And it’s no surprise.
Thanks though.

[LilFarmer]

Ugh, sorry. My husband said our small rural feed and seed had some. Is that a possibility?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I used to raise chickens for egg sales, but haven’t for about 10 years now.

I have passed my ‘Chicken Queen Crown’ to Ellendra, so we’ll see what she thinks. She’s good at nursing chickens back to health - and butchering, LOL!

[piasa]

I had a coon that ripped a chunk of thigh muscle the size of my fist out of one of my big hens in the middle of the night- it had entered the coop by squeezing through roof panels. I cleaned the wound as best I could and got some iodine and coated her wound with it, then sewed the major muscles as close to the anatomical positions as I could with cotton thread, then stitched as much skin back over the opening as possible with a crazyquilt of thread, and spread the bare area with Neosporin, and let her sleep the rest of the night and morning in a tupperware tub of horse bedding pellets until she got restless and wanted out.

She limped awful bad the first couple days - she had almost no rib or thigh muscles on one side, after all- but she improved rapidly despite looking like a Frankenchicken. In a couple weeks she stopped limping and her feathers started coming back in. A couple more weeks and there was no way to tell she had ever been Hurt without picking her up and feeling through the feathers for the stitches, which I never found but one end sticking out.

[LilFarmer]

Wow! It is amazing she survived that! Fortunately, my hen’s wounds are not deep like that, just cover a large surface area.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Spain. It’s where I live.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

What a slice of Heaven! Keep the pictures coming! :)

Remember the last picture of the beach and I said to look at the trees? Here is the promenade in that section of town. As you can see it's much wider. In the summertime when it isn't deserted because of a lockdown it's full of people, craft booths, street performers, artists, etc. Fun for all.

So that's all down at sea level. This picture is taken from the beach looking up at the hills. Up there is where we live. You can see how the houses are stacked over each other so everyone gets a nice view. Above the very first white building directly in line with the beach is the green hill you see from our terrace. Across from the last big building on the left is the narrower promenade I showed in the first picture. It just keeps going for about a kilometre until it gets to where I snapped my first shot for you.

[Paul R.]

The cups may be a good idea, as with their size the soil in them would not dry out so fast, so I would not have to begin trips away with the plants basically in a swamp (to not dry out by the time I returned). It’ll take up more room, but I think I can make it work. Then I can move the light closer, but it will only then cover one “shelf” of plants, so to do the 2nd shelf I’ll need another light. I could probably steal one* from my shop as business is dead anyway. (If I need to get into the area in question - it’s mostly storage - I have multiple head flashlights.) Maybe add a timer (or two) and a fan. Yeah, I have most all the stuff needed, on hand. Wish I’d salvaged the cups from the last big party my wife’s friends threw... :-)

*That bright LED light overwintered a bunch of our plants well this winter, even my wife’s 3 potted Malunggay (moringa) trees. (She prunes them way back and then they sprout back to life each spring — all 3 are looking good.) Even the medium size potted tomato plant I brought in survived ok.

Our 6-10 day and 8-14 day forecasts call for warmer than avg. weather, so, I think the risk of frosts may finally be over for this spring. However, we usually get at least one modest hail storm in May / June , so seedlings outside are very dicey. Even heavy rain can beat ‘em down very badly. Bigger plants usually survive if the hail is only pea size...

[Califreak]

Sometimes if you reuse containers your seedlings get cooties.

I forget what the ratio is for bleach to water for washing containers.

Some people bake their soil to sterilize it.

[Paul R.]

My 1st funny fish story of 2020:

Maybe 1/2 hour and a 4-5” bluegill after arriving @ a local trout pond last Thursday, I got a “big” hit that broke my line, above the bobber. My hook set was not “big”, as I was expecting a 10” trout! The line must have somehow had a weak spot and it was still last fall’s line — Anyway, for the next hour “plus”, I was treated to watching my bobber go swimming & diving around the pond. This was particularly aggravating as I’d been using one of my “Rocket Bobbers”, which I really like, but are a bit pricey and hard to get since Wal-Mart no longer carries them. I try to only use them in “safe” circumstances - not around snags and such. At one point the fish apparently got tired and the bobber “rested” near enough to shore that I tried to snag it with my longer pole - no luck, of course - it just pulled free of my rod. Then the show swam over to the other side of the pond, where a young fellow fishing there started casting at it - oh, 25-30 ft. out, I’d say. I thought this was fairly hopeless, but, I’ll be darned if ~20 minutes later he successfully snagged the line and reeled in the trout & bobber, yelling over to me “do you want your fish?” Well, I wanted the bobber more & offered him the fish, but he didn’t want to clean just 1 fish: He wanted to trade me both bobber & fish just to know what bait I’d been using! I’d been using PowerBait trout dough balls, mostly, but a garden worm caught one trout.

Well, that was an obvious trade to make, so I got my bobber back plus the best fish of the evening (16-1/2” long). I’d better restring that reel, or at least test the remaining line, as “I’ll be back” as “Ahhhnold” would say.

[Ellendra]

It sounds like you’re doing everything you should be doing with that chicken. If the others start pecking at her she’ll need isolated, but other than that, watch how she does and keep spraying the spot with blu kote.