What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[baywax]

I hereby announce the first annual PF carrot day. Every PF member who shows up at my house before noon on October 7th gets a free carrot. Hurry! Supplies are limited.

Hey, Turbo, where are you man? I'm out at the farm and no sign of anyone, let alone carrots!

What's with America? Don't you guys celebrate Halloween or something like it there? I can see that there are plenty of pumpkin growers in the States... but no jack'o'lanterns. Is trick or treat not as big as it is in Canada? I guess a good part of your country is pretty warm all year round, with little notice to the turning of the leaves.

We never stop celebrating this equinox, at any age. Our Thanksgiving is on Oct. 13th. From there on in the retail stores are packed with Vampire teeth and Lucifer's tridents... to name a few items, like the animated ghost that goes "whoooooooooo" when you walk up the stairs. Actually, you can get all your costume and paraphernalia now. Certainly keeps the economy rolling through a dull spot, before Chris Cringle day.

 

[turbo]

I'm in Central Maine, and the leaves are maybe just a bit shy of peak, but still pretty none the less. This picture is a bit on the wide side, so I didn't embed it. I'm sorry that PF carrot day is not convenient for members in SW Canada - what can I do?

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x318/turbo-1/lookout.jpg

 

[baywax]

I'm in Central Maine, and the leaves are maybe just a bit shy of peak, but still pretty none the less. This picture is a bit on the wide side, so I didn't embed it. I'm sorry that PF carrot day is not convenient for members in SW Canada - what can I do?

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x318/turbo-1/lookout.jpg

Wow, that is pretty out there Turbo!

The landscape is reminiscent of South Eastern BC where the Columbia River has carved out some of the widest and prettiest valleys, just above the boarder with Montana. I don't think our trees have turned as much as yours... but we are in a milder and more temperate zone.
Thanks for the peek at the fiery leaves of Maine!

 

[turbo]

Thanks, baywax. If I get a clearer day near peak color, I'll try to get another shot or two.

 

[Borek]

Not exactly my garden, more like my fence, but that's what I see now through my window.

It would perfectly fit Seeing Red contest, unfortunately there were no sun last week so I couldn't take the picture.

 

[Evo]

Wow, Borek, you've taken some great pictures lately! Are those trees, bushes, vines?

The trees here are all still mostly green. The walnut trees behind my house have leaves that turn yellow and then fall off 60 seconds later, so the trees are green, they just continue to have fewer leaves.

GREG, STOP MOVING THE SMILIES! Every time I think I know where a smilie is, they move.

 

[turbo]

I am VERY sore and lame today and here is why. This is a shot of the north half of my garden, showing the dark well-rotted manure that my neighbor and I shoveled and spread yesterday. It's raining today, but when things dry up, I'll pick out any rocks, wood, etc (typical manure pile - it has a lot of stuff in it) and till it in. I had to pay the farmer $20/truck-load, which is actually a really good deal, considering the crappier bagged stuff at the landscaping place would have cost me hundreds of dollars a load. Plus, he loaded the truck with his tractor. Two loads top-dressed the whole garden pretty well.

 

[Borek]

Wow, Borek, you've taken some great pictures lately!

And I plan to post more of them

Are those trees, bushes, vines?

Virginia creeper, or something very similar.

 

[Borek]

This is a shot of the north half of my garden, showing the dark well-rotted manure that my neighbor and I shoveled and spread yesterday.

It looks... fertile?

 

[turbo]

It looks... fertile?

It's good stuff. If we get cooperative weather next season, the hard work should pay off with a good crops. It was a pain to shovel out of the truck and spread - very compacted, heavy, and stuck together. Apparently, the pile was built by someone who had no intention of running it through a manure spreader, because there are rocks and pieces of wood in there, and they are quite capable of killing or injuring the tractor operator if they got flung forward. I even found an old tire chain in there.

I'll probably get one wheelbarrow full of wood and rocks, etc. Not too bad for two large pickup-loads.

 

[baywax]

Its not my garden but its my fascination... the world's largest pumpkin...

By The Associated Press

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. - Thad Starr's giant pumpkin really began putting on weight in August - a lot of weight.

The pumpkin gained about 30 pounds a day on its way to victory Monday at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay.

Starr's pumpkin finished at a record 1,528 pounds (693 kg). Starr won last year with a pumpkin that that was four pounds lighter and also set a record.

Starr, of Pleasant Hill, Ore., bought a trailer to transport the pumpkin. It has a circumference of 15 feet.

He says his secret to growing big pumpkins is good soil: "We really pamper them."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081014/koddities/odd_giant_pumpkins

Trust that this one is from Oregon!

 

[turbo]

My organic-gardening neighbor grows pumpkins. Not the big giants, but ones suitable for jack-o-lanterns and for making pies. He doesn't bother tilling the ground. He dumps a truckload of that black rotted manure where he wants the patch and plants his seeds in that. He gets pretty darned good crops.

BTW, I did get a full wheelbarrow of rocks and wood out of the manure earlier today. After it dries a bit more, I'll rake it out better, and till it into the soil.

 

[tribdog]

considering the crappier bagged stuff at the landscaping place would have cost me hundreds of dollars a load.

When it comes to manure though isn't crappier better? You've got to pay if you want to get the crappiest manure they've got.

 

[baywax]

My organic-gardening neighbor grows pumpkins. Not the big giants, but ones suitable for jack-o-lanterns and for making pies. He doesn't bother tilling the ground. He dumps a truckload of that black rotted manure where he wants the patch and plants his seeds in that. He gets pretty darned good crops.

BTW, I did get a full wheelbarrow of rocks and wood out of the manure earlier today. After it dries a bit more, I'll rake it out better, and till it into the soil.

This is all just makes me want to do some gardening. Agh!

 

[turbo]

This is all just makes me want to do some gardening. Agh!

I still have quite a bit of gardening to do this year. After tilling, I'll hoe up wide beds for my garlic, and when it gets colder, I'll plant the cloves and mulch them. I waited a bit too long last year - the ground was frozen and I had to punch the holes with an iron digging bar. The crop came out perfectly, though.

 

[turbo]

When it comes to manure though isn't crappier better? You've got to pay if you want to get the crappiest manure they've got.

I wish it were that simple...

 

[turbo]

Well, the truckloads of manure are now raked out, and tilled into the garden, and I'm beat.

The old (at least 30 years, I estimate) Troy-Bilt Horse is mostly cast-iron, so with the weight of the machine, it doesn't beat you up like lesser tillers, BUT you've got to manhandle it at the end of each pass to get turned around for the next pass, and the old beast weighs a ton! The frame, engine, transmission, etc are all heavy cast iron, with steel tines, handles and controls, and a modest amount of sheet metal. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Troy-Bilt's most recent Horse incarnation looks flimsy in comparison. For any US gardener who wants a tiller for a medium to large garden, this is the machine to buy. If the transmission engages crisply, etc (even if the motor needs to be rebuilt) buy it. Just make sure you've got one of the older cast-iron engines, grit your teeth when you pay for the rebuild, and run your tiller for the next 30 years.

 

[turbo]

Garlic! The gift that keeps giving.

I have hoed up a couple of rows for my squash and cucumber (just so I'd have the spacing correct), and then hoed up three wide raised bed for garlic. Last year, the single bed was wide enough to plant double rows. This year, there are three beds wide enough to plant triple rows of cloves. This is probably about the limit for my garden, since I still need space to plant tomatoes, chilies, sweet peppers, carrots, beans, and leaf crops, as well as herbs. Last year, I got a bit busy, and the ground was frozen hard by the time I planted garlic, so I had to punch the holes with a heavy iron bar. I'll probably plant later this month, put newspapers between the rows, and mulch heavily with oat straw. Before I started planting garlic, I was generally done with gardening by the first killing frosts - now, I get to play in the dirt right up until November or later.

 

[turbo]

For anybody who has not tried growing garlic, it's easy, and a fun crop to deal with. Get some bulbs of garlic and separate them into individual cloves. Each clove will sprout and develop a whole bulb of garlic next year, so you can get quite a lot of garlic from a small investment. Hoe up a nice, rich area of your garden that you can leave undisturbed next spring and plant your garlic cloves. It's good to wait until the soil is cool and you're getting regular frosts, then plant the garlic cloves about 4-5" apart, with the pointed ends up (root end down), about 2-3" deep. Mulch with clean oat straw to help keep the bed temperatures relatively stable and suppress weeds. In the spring, check the beds, and gently clear away some of the mulch to let the shoots emerge. When the shoots emerge through the mulch, you can re-adjust the mulch so that it is up against the shoots, and prevents weeds from growing. Keep your garlic well-weeded. In early-to-mid-summer a central stalk will emerge from each cluster of leaves. This is called a scape. When the scapes have emerged so that a swelling in the scape is visible (usually as the scape begins to curl), it's time to start snapping them off, so that all the nutrients in the bub go toward further development of the bulb and not to the development of a flowering head. Search "scape" in this thread or the food thread for suggestions on how to use these tasty shoots. Eventually, the leaves emerging from the garlic will start to dry and turn brown. When they are about 50% died back, that's when I pull my garlic. Clean the roots as thoroughly as possible, though gently, and tie the tops together to form bunches of garlic to be hung in a shaded airy place to dry. I hang garlic bunches from nails in the studs of my detached garage, and leave the overhead door and windows open to dry and cure the garlic. For the first week or so, I ran an oscillating floor-mounted fan to keep the air moving and dry the dirt left on the bulbs. None of my garlic developed any mold or mildew this way, though a few of my neighbors' did - they left their garlic drying on racks and probably did not move them enough to promote drying. Anyway, that's the whole garlic cycle. You get to do some planting in late fall, get a harvest of scapes in summer, then get a harvest of bulbs later in the summer.

http://www.garlicfarm.ca/growing-garlic.htm

 

[hypatia]

Can you use garlic that you buy at the grocery store, or do you need special garlic?

 

[turbo]

Can you use garlic that you buy at the grocery store, or do you need special garlic?

Refer to the link I posted for some details, but the garlic that works for these plantings are the hard-neck varieties. I'm planting Russian and German garlic that I got from my neighbor a couple of years back.

Here is a web-site that tells you which varieties are hard-neck and soft-neck. Generally, if you have purplish tints or stripes on the outside of the bulb and a firm stalk, it's a hard-neck. They tend to be pretty potent, flavor-wise, so if you are a garlic-lover, you can economize by using these more flavorful varieties.

http://www.bigjohnsgarden.com/shopgarlic.html

 

[Ouabache]

I just baked one of my "Tennessee Vining" pumpkins. The groundhog took a nibble of this one, so rather than put it with the others, in the root cellar, i decided to bake this one. It yielded 27 cups of baked orange goodness. Great in muffins, dessert breads, pie and soups.

 

[Evo]

All right, it's time to tell of my ordeal with the squirrels, to be known from this day forth as the "rat bastages" and the RAVINE OF DEATH.

The other day I was sitting at my computer when I noticed a squirrel racing across the yard with one of my huge, almost fully ripe tomatoes clutched in it's jaws. I raced to my patio and when I opened the door there was a human bridge of squirrels (ok, the Evo Child says squirrels can't form human bridges, but you know what I mean) with the top squirrel wrenching another tomato off of my plant. They scattered the moment I opened the door, but the damage had been done. Over 2 pounds of perfect ripe tomatoes had been taken. I looked down into the Ravine of No Return and saw my tomatoes scattered amongst the trees.

Horrified by the ghastly scene, I climbed down the treacherous, muddy, loosely packed dirt, and gathered up my poor tomatoes, then realized I had a death defying 75 degree incline to negotiate in my knitted cat and mouse booties if I was ever to get back to safety. Crawling on my hands and knees, feeling for toeholds of ground that did not crumble and careen down into the RAVINE OF DEATH, I finaly made it back to my patio.

Unfortunately, I pulled a major muscle in my left thigh and have been crippled for the last few days.

Of course, realizing that all of my tomatoes had fang marks in them, I was afraid to eat them. DAMN THE RAT BASTAGES!

 

[turbo]

OK, so a couple of critters have lugged some of your tomatoes down into the Ditch of Darn. What's the problem? Every gardener knows that in order to get a crop, you have to plant enough to grow, enough to fail, enough to get eaten, and enough to harvest.

 

[Evo]

OK, so a couple of critters have lugged some of your tomatoes down into the Ditch of Darn. What's the problem? Every gardener knows that in order to get a crop, you have to plant enough to grow, enough to fail, enough to get eaten, and enough to harvest.

I was INJURED! Badly! And my hand knitted cat and mouse booties were soiled!

 

[turbo]

Gardening is dangerous work. Suck it up.

At least you still have vegetables. I had to chip frozen dirt to plant my garlic today. I picked all the remaining apples in the morning, got about a bushel for us, and 1/2 bushel for a friend's horse. Then, when it warmed up to the mid-30's, I started punching holes in the garlic beds for the cloves. I cracked all the bulbs of garlic left in the garage, and planted the cloves and mulched them with oat straw. I hate stoop-labor, and I can't kneel because of my arthritic knees, so I'll be really lame tomorrow. Still, if the cloves all develop, we'll have about 500 bulbs of garlic next year.

 

[Evo]

Gardening is dangerous work. Suck it up.

But, but, I have a tiny patio container garden.

 

[Moonbear]

I don't even have tomatoes anymore. Most suffered from the bad weather this summer and rotted on the vines. We've now had several frosts that have finished off the vines. All that's left to do is cut the plants out of the pots and turn them into the compost pile.

 

[turbo]

But, but, I have a tiny patio container garden.

Ah guerrilla gardening. An extreme form of gardening fraught with risks. You knew what you were getting into!

 

[Proton Soup]

heh, we had troubles with a squirrel that was wasting pecans. it would cut a green one, see that it wasn't ready, then move on to another. in rapid succession.

with a havahart trap, i have relocated 3 squirrels and 3 possums this year.
http://www.havahart.com/