Gardening, what to grow this upcoming season

[Jilang]

All our window sills are full of small plants. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. It's still too cold to put them in the greenhouse yet. The cucumbers will probably stay in the conservatory as they do better in there and can they trained to go up and along. When the cucumbers arrive they look great!

 

[Pythagorean]

I buy into local farm shares and help out weekly at the farm. Kale, Kohlrabi, tomatoes, peas, lettuce, squash, carrots, cucumbers, beats, turnips, parsnips, various herbs and flower, and many more!

 

[AlephZero]

Miracle grow potting soil comes in a bag

Near where some of my family lives, peat based compost comes in a ship, about 3000 tons at a time.

You can usually find a few lumps by the side of the road for free, when it is being trucked to the factory that puts it into the plastic bags

 

[lenell]

Here are the instructions for bag gardening:
Use the 2 cubic feet bag of Miracle grow potting soil; rumple bag quite a bit to loosen it.
Poke quite a few holes on bottom for drainage.
Don't put on hot concrete. Saw horses with a grate between is good.
Cut out top leaving 4"-5" border all around.
Lightly rake through soil to even it out and loosen it more.
Then carefully & evenly sprinkle seeds around.
They put cornmeal with salad green seeds into an old spice bottle with a shaker top, shook it to
blend cornmeal and seeds and sprinkled it on the soil. Cornmeal was used to make sure of
even seed coverage.
If doing radish or spinach seeds, make lines the depth mentioned on seed packet, plant the seeds
and cover appropriately.
For salad greens, they sprinkled a light covering of soil over the cornmeal & seeds and then they
spray-misted them to water them in.
When harvesting, don't pull plants out--use scissors to cut what you need. Cut ones will grow
back (salad greens & spinach)
Spray-mist seeds and plantlings till established; then you can water more vigorously as plants
mature. Probably need to water more often since depth of bag is not as deep as in the
ground. They kept theirs moist but not sopping wet.
Hope this helps.

 

[dlgoff]

I would love to try growing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helichrysum_italicum

I brought some wild seeds from Croatia last year, but I don't know yet whether they will germinate.

What are you going to use if for? Being a chemist, I'm guessing, , you'er going to extract the oils which seems to have the same healing properties as Aloe barbadensis.

Historically, aloe was used topically to heal wounds and for various skin conditions, and orally as a laxative. Today, in addition to these uses, aloe is used as a folk or traditional remedy for a variety of conditions, including diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, and osteoarthritis. It is also used topically for osteoarthritis, burns, sunburns, and psoriasis. Aloe vera gel can be found in hundreds of skin products, including lotions and sunblocks. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved aloe vera as a natural food flavoring.

bolding by me

According to http://www.helichrysum-italicum.com/,

Aromatherapy : The word was originally used by French chemist Rene-Maurice Gattefosse in 1920.In a laboratory accident, Gattefosse set his arm on fire and immediately thrust it into the nearest vat of cold liquid, which happened to be lavender oil. Instantly, he felt soothing relief and watched as the burn continued to heal quickly, with no inflammation or scarring. The profound healing benefits led him to a lifetime of research in a field that he termed “aromatherapy.”

 

[Borek]

Just for the smell of it.