Garden Chat

Kind of different. If it were just for the garden, you could use dog wire and metal fence stakes (confession: we have some metal but more sharpened poplar saplings from the forest floor after the tornado). It wouldn’t give any privacy. A privacy fence that just happens to benefit the garden isn’t the same - basically the garden part is a free side effect.

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There is a chain fence with wood posts. So it’s fenced, but not in a privacy manner. Or a secure manner given the gate doesn’t latch and a couple of the posts are down.

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We staked the tomatoes today. I feel like I’m being optimistic with the height but better too tall than too short?

That’s a capsicum (bell pepper) in the middle. It’s probably too cold now to expect a decent harvest but we chucked it in anyway. The fence should help keep the day temperatures a bit higher right there and the mulch is thick, so maybe? We are still getting plenty of chilies from another plant in the garden :crossed_fingers:

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Hahaha. I used to get almost all my food for free, pre-pandemic. This might decrease things compared to what I would spend otherwise, but the produce part of my spend is pretty low already.

I found a local gardening group on FB and have gotten so much free stuff from them. Only today, we picked up cabbage, bok choy, arugula, leeks, and shallots. We’re doing our third plant swap in a few weeks, and I’m going to suggest a produce swap once everyone starts harvesting more than they can handle. Even if none of our raised beds amount to much, we’ll have figs and plums to give away.

We’re thinking about doing a couple hugelkultur beds, using random logs that are already starting to decompose on the side of the house, and a few tree stumps. I’ve read that certain kinds of trees shouldn’t be used, like black walnut. Any way to find out what these stumps used to be?

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Just compare your costs to what hiring a professional gardener to do all the work would cost and you should come out ahead :upside_down_face:

I’ve spent about $500 for supplies and seeds for my raised garden bed. For me it’s more about access to fresh food during the pandemic. I had also been interested in growing heirloom varieties of some vegetables and participating in my local library’s seed library. But for this year I just went with what was available when I went to the store because I was kind of overwhelmed.

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I personally find very little value (and not an insignificant amount of detriment) in thinking of my gardening monetarily. Some of that is my own personal issues/psychoses with money and frugality in general but I find a lot of benefit in just focusing on enjoying the process and also cherishing the quality of the food and sense of safisfaction you get from eating home grown food.

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Four inches of rain in one day last week. Another 2.5 inches of rain yesterday. I haven’t even bothered making the hour’s walk up to the community garden; I’m certain it’s underwater. My yard looks OK though, and I don’t have anything in there anyway except the berry bushes.

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Online chatting with my local farm shop has been so helpful, was able to send them a few shots of my porch and the planters I have along with details about what gets sun & when and they’re giving me recommendations on what to plant. I gave myself permission not to be productive with gardening and just do pretty things since I don’t really have enough space to plant anything that will produce at any kind of meaningful volume anyway. It’s ok that gardening is just a fun thing that looks pretty and doesn’t have to save us $ on groceries.

H is going there to get milk and to pick up my goodies today. I’m getting mint & globe basil for my 2, 10" pots, angelonia, snapdragons, alyssum, verbena, and lantana for my long planters (3 in one, 2 in the other) and some lavender for my smaller 5" pots.

SO EXCITED.

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You’ll get some food out of your herbs, and pretties to enjoy!

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Exactly! We cook with basil a lot and I love a good mint tea in the summer so I know I’ll get something useful from that. I’m working on not making all of my hobbies something that have to make/save me money because that quickly turns into work. Knitting and gardening are now officially allowed to cost me money and only produce pretty things that I wanted because they are pretty.

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Question that just occurred to me: the planters all have soil in them from last year. I got more potting mix because they need topped off to replace what was lost when I took out the old dead plants. Do I need to completely get rid of the soil from last year or should I just mix it with new potting soil? Since they’re relatively small containers I didn’t know if I should worry that they’re depleted of nutrients.

Also trying to figure out how to do this with minimal mess if I do mix them. I guess I can dump the old soil into the 1/4 bag of potting mix I have and mix it all around? Is that dumb? I know nothing about soil and have a 3’ by 4’ish space and I try hard not to get dirt all over the porches below mine.

Partly depends on what you grew last year and what you’re planting g there this year. Somethings that are prone to viruses, you should definitely not reuse the soil (I often cheat on this point, but don’t tell.)

One thing that you can do to be sure you can reuse soil
is to sterilize it in the oven. For nutrients, can you fertilize with anything? Even watering with leftover coffee (black) can make a difference.

This link says you can use a microwave to sterilize soil. I’ve never tried it (never thought to): https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/sterilizing-soil.htm

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Ooooh I should put my coffee grounds in here! I ended up using mostly new potting mix and mixing in a bit of old since I didn’t have quite enough. I kept some of the old in a bag, maybe I’ll throw the coffee grounds in that and that way I’ll have some ready for the next plants.

Here’s my before and after. Had to wash my rug because I got dirt all over it in an effort not to get dirt all on my neighbors porch below.

ETA: the wine bottles I saved from last year where it was so hot and dry my tomatoes would suck up 2 bottles each a day plus my watering them with the can, but now that I’m not growing tomatoes this year I decided to re-recycle them

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I’ve spent all of 2 days trying to harden off my basil and several of them already have sunburn. Ugh. I love basil but I am SO BAD at growing it. Or maybe it’s just persnickety.

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I have no idea about basil but I love this word

Have you tried keeping it a bit in the shade so it gets “peaks” of real sun? I find that helps. I have also burned a few leaves this year on mine.

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That’s what I plan to do today. I think yesterday the sun was just too direct.

One of my tomato plants was blown off the porch by a strong wind and snapped most of the way through it’s stem. I’m unreasonably upset about this.

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One of my pepper seedlings snapped almost all the way through its stem and I piled up dirt to hold it up and so far it’s still alive. Maybe there’s hope?

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:crossed_fingers: