Gardeners of AW, unite

As far as I know, they stay on whatever plant they emerge on.

ETA: I also want to say that the sheer volume of water my crooknecks demand is completely ridiculous.

One of my potato plants are blossoming which means there are baby potatoes underneath it.

One of my squash plants, I believe it was my banana squash got destroyed by bugs, so we are having to spray. My strawberry patch is officially destroyed, there is nothing left. I found four beet plants among the weeds. My cilantro died, my basil is coming back and I was able to pick some and some parsley as well as dill and use them in my cooking. I have crooknecks and zucchini as well as a couple baby pumpkins on. There are five baby cantaloupes. My corn is doing reasonably well, my peas disappeared to who knows what. The onions are doing great. The radishes got too hot and went to seed all of a sudden we got triple digits.

The corn is thriving and my watermelon plant is meandering along. I'm still picking broccoli and I have baby peppers. Slowly but surely things are coming along. Still no luck whatsoever growing carrots though.

Hornworms become hummingbird moths. I thought about growing some tomatoes just to see if I can get a hornworm. I have seen a moth zipping around the past couple weeks. I may plant some dill next year just for the swallowtail caterpillars. I'm not a veggie person, so it would be cool to grow these and let the buggies eat them. Slugs and earwigs however, must die!

Also, while I'm here, how do you know when Jalapeno and Habanero peppers are ready to be picked? I have some pretty good sized peppers, and this is the first time I've grown them.

Bah. My corn got knocked over in a storm last night. GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I planted the whole damn bag of tomato seeds this year because last year they didn't germify.

I now have 43 plants. What the hey am I gonna do with all these tomatos?

Wayne K said:

I planted the whole damn bag of tomato seeds this year because last year they didn't germify.

I now have 43 plants. What the hey am I gonna do with all these tomatos?

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Barter them with neighbors for other things. If you have a neighbor with chickens or fruit trees or anything else you want, see if they'll trade for tomatoes.

ETA: Or something I just thought of. Make and can your tomato sauce and salsa for the year. The taste is so much better and you can can them fairly easily. Get your jars which you can reuse and the rings and canning lids and a pressure cooker. You won't regret it.

My Recycle Bin Garden

Hello AW Gardeners!

Below are some pics of my redneck urban garden. People are starting to stop at my house and ask me about it. Corn growing in the village???

I live in a village. I missed gardening. My backyard is small and there is sun there only a limited part of the day because of my beautiful (and becoming endangered) butternut tree. Nor did I want to dig up what little lawn I had. The best sun is in the driveway. So how to overcome this?

My friend told me about square foot gardening, and I got the book at the local tractor supply store, lots of tips but still, I didn't want to dig up the lawn. So we combined that with container gardening.

For our containers we used recycle bins hubby got from a local company. They are rejects or the ones that are put on the top and bottom of a bin stack order to protect the printing imprint. He built gardening tables from pallets and 4 x 4 pieces we had around for the legs.

We mixed the dirt according to the Sq. Ft. Book. 1/3 peat, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost. We're experimenting with different brands of compost to see which works best. For some, instead of compost, we used 30 years of dirt/manure trompled on from a dry cow pasture of a farmer we know.

The nice part is no bending, weeding, the watering is controlled to the roots and you use less, so less problems with mildew. It's growing like gangbsters! Here are my pics.

Your garden looks fantastic. I want to do container/raised bed gardening because after set up they are so much easier to maintain. Someday I hope.

It was a bit to set up but a lot less to maintain. My hubby kept bringing home bins and it kept getting larger. I'll use the same dirt next year, just add a bit more of compost so it should set up faster. One neat part is if something looked like it wasn't getting enough sun, or something too much, we just switched them.

We a got a Topsy turvy too. We used one of those empty 5 gallon paint buckets (clean of course or you can buy them empty). Put a little flap on opposite sides at the bottom, stuck 2 tomato plants down there and one out of the top. Amazing, how dark green they are, but I guess if you take in consideration gravity and all, it makes sense.

Wayne K said:

I planted the whole damn bag of tomato seeds this year because last year they didn't germify.

I now have 43 plants. What the hey am I gonna do with all these tomatos?

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Sell 'em from the trunk of your car on weekends.
Get a folding table, a chair, an umbrella and a cooler of beer for you.

Fenika said:

Those topsy turvys are so awesome. Can we get a picture of your set up, History?

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Yep, I'll have my daughter take a pic later.

Off the top of your heads- anyone know what causes tomatoes to get spotted, and turn brown from the bottom up? They look pretty pathetic as a whole, but are still bearing *some* nice looking fruit. Obviously the yield is going way down though. These technically aren't my tomatoes (they are my sisters, and the ones she planted WAY too close together) so I'm not spending too much time on them, particularly since it may be too late.

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Ah yes, had that once. Sounds like Blossom Rot (called that because its at the end of the fruit where the flower used to be). Lack of calcium. Probably can find some kind of fertilizer at her local garden shop with calcium in it. Planting too close together, they are fighting too much for the nutrients.


How you water makes a difference too. I water at the base only, evenly all the way around the whole plant.
Here is a link to our Cornell Cooperative Extension. It gives you some facts.

Rosemary's dead.

2 basil and 2 parsley are all that remain.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of these plant pots.

I meant for in ground actually, Fenika. Fertilizer with calcium in should help with the inground garden for those tomatoes. I haven't had to fertilize my bins because it was special mixed with good stuff starting out.

Fenika said:

Jenn- Plant MOAR. You'll need some younger basil to replace the older stuff, once it's the ancient age of 2 months old.

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My "old" basil is no bigger than it was when I bought it. I've been looking for seedlings (since starting from seed was epic fail) but haven't seen any. I did buy some plant food though. I'll see if a little extra nom works for them.

A glut of zucchini? Lucky you.

Zucchini Breakfast Casserole from Simply Recipes

6 hours?? lol

My plants are on the windowsill and are lucky to get 20 minutes of light a day. I face west, I'm on the first floor, and in the bottom of the U of a U shaped building. The building across the street blocks the early morning sun and the south side of the U blocks the afternoon sun.

My apartment has been described as a dungeon. And while that can be fun in some ways it's not the best for growing things. And barring any strange financial happenings, I'm likely to be here for another 3.5-4 years while I finish school.

I refuse to give up on my little green things though. I've got a lavender, a sage and a mint to replace the recently deceased.

jennontheisland said:

6 hours?? lol

My plants are on the windowsill and are lucky to get 20 minutes of light a day. I face west, I'm on the first floor, and in the bottom of the U of a U shaped building. The building across the street blocks the early morning sun and the south side of the U blocks the afternoon sun.

My apartment has been described as a dungeon. And while that can be fun in some ways it's not the best for growing things. And barring any strange financial happenings, I'm likely to be here for another 3.5-4 years while I finish school.

I refuse to give up on my little green things though. I've got a lavender, a sage and a mint to replace the recently deceased.

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Invest in plant lights. They'll make up for the dungeon atmosphere and give your plants the light they need.

Well a flash flood knocked over half my corn. Lucky for me I have a very sweet MIL who went out and stood them all up for me. They are still doing fine and are tasseling which means the ears are starting to grow.

My potatoes are growing like mad. The first crop had failed to pop up so I went tilled it up and replanted so now I have thirty, I kid you not, thirty potato plants growing, three of them already have blossoms. We think the tilling action brought them closer to the surface and gave them a boost. I have three little beets growing and shock of all shock a little tiny lettuce plant finally decided to show up. After two months, I have a lettuce plant. Who knew! My squash are doing comparatively well though one has been sacrificed to the squash bugs and two more are looking iffy. We had to dump insecticide on them. I'm crossing my fingers to see if they come back, the one has two nice pumpkins growing on it and I'd like them to actually mature.

I have peppers. I bought two sections of bell peppers and somehow ended up with one jalapeño. How do you figure that? The bells are doing nice as well, but a jalapeño? It has three little peppers on it and you do not touch that thing, that's for sure!

My broccoli is done for the year and my watermelon plant, my sole survivor, is trying to decide whether or not to do anything. My strawberries the last two hold outs died in the flash flood. They fought the good fight. I'm going to plant the rest of my carrot seeds this week and see if I have any more luck with carrots. Now that my MIL's carrots are coming up I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to grow carrots too.

She gave me a few pounds of peas, lettuce, beets, and I harvested a few pounds of baby crooknecks and baby zucchini. It's been so nice to eat things fresh out of the garden.

She has lent me her dehydrator as well so I've been dehydrating onions and peppers and chives and cucumber chips and my house is smelling amazing. Next on the list are sun-dried tomatoes and then apple chips, nectarines, peaches, and plums. This makes me really want my own dehydrator.

Dehydrator! Oh, baby.
When I lived in Nevada, garlic was a popular and prolific crop.
My best friend would peel heads and heads of fresh garlic and dry them in her dehydrator.
She gifted us each Christmas with a large bottle of the best garlic powder ever!
Store bought tastes like sawdust to me now.