Gardening - Page 6

I garden here in Eden so my experiences are a little different. That said, straw or other mulch mounded around and almost over each plant will help a lot. Any old cloth, a towel, a shirt, an old sheet thrown over a plant will also do the trick (and look white trash as hell to boot = Texas Winning!). Really anything that provides some insulation. I've never used an upside down pot but I bet that would work as well.

Frankly I would try to protect my starts. Those sound pretty young and it does not take a very deep frost to fuck up your life. If it is not too much work, I'd toss a sheet or a couple of towels over the starts tonight.

Also mulch is the shit. Keeps thinks cool, warms, moist, and builds top soil. Use it with abandon.

I've heard good stuff about straw/mulch; I definitely think I'll be putting some down after I get the last couple of plants in the ground. I wish I had some to put out tonight, but I haven't picked any up yet.

The weather forecast for tonight now includes a frost advisory, so I went ahead and covered everything up. I wish I'd taken a picture - I'm pretty sure I reached new levels of white trashiness. I was a little worried about crushing the stalks on my shoots, so, instead of just throwing sheets over the plants, I turned over some lawn chairs and made little tents with the sheets. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough chairs and sheets to cover everything, which meant I had to further improvise with a bucket, an old pot, and a jug to cover the remaining few plants. It is, in a word, trashtacular. I am soooo glad my garden is in the back yard.

Nothing about gardening could possible be white trash, unless you start planting Big Macs.

I think this might be one of my favorite quotes I've seen in my years on this forum.

I need to spend a couple hours this weekend and plan out our vegetables for the season. We plant three raised beds with a total of about 120 sq. ft., though I've thought about converting one of them to a cutting bed this year for flowers (my wife LOVES sunflowers).

It's interesting how much perception of gardening has changed. Not that long ago "home grown" was another way of saying "too poor to afford store bought." The idea of home canned veg. was something poor people did and being able to afford processed food was a sign you had made it out of poverty.

I have yet to plant this year. Tilled the garden up a couple days ago, then a strom rolled in (wtf? in Arizona??). This year, I think I'm just going to stick with lettuce, different types of peppers and maybe cantaloupe. Last year, I planted wayyy too many different things, and the only things that produced were those mentioned above.

First planting in our new planters. About one and a half months in. Cucumber, Eggplant, Tomato::

The drought here crushedhalf of what I planted. Got a few small watermelons, four or five figs, but that's it. My cucumber vine is still fighting, but no fruit in sight. Cilantro died. Basil is bitter as shit. Down to rosemary (that stuff will not die), sage, mint, and parsley.

how did your cilantro die?

I should take pics of my garden's progress. Where I planted in front, stuff has grown so much it is blocking our front walkway. Stuff out back is largely good. Overwatered my strawberry pot, oh well.

Unbelievable how huge everything in our garden has gotten so far this year! We've had fairly constant rain which, mixed with the tons of composted horse manure we added to the beds, has lead to incredibly huge plants that seem to be producing at a ridiculous rate. Our squash plants are stretched almost 20 ft in length and our tomatoes have almost outgrown the 8ft tall trellis device I built for them this spring!

I just put a few minutes in the garden this morning and decided to pick a couple of Hungarian wax peppers, which I'm now enjoying sauteed with onions, rice, and Gardein as a little snack. They've got a great flavor and a considerable amount of heat! I'm very excited to see how the tomatoes taste once they start ripening up.

one green bean:

Wow. Look at you go.

My gf lives in such a shithole of a neighborhood that her best tomato, basil, and pepper plants were stolen off her porch. Does that not suck or what?

 

Really sucks, but happens to everyone I know who plants in the front yard. Gleaners have gotten pretty desperate these past 2000 years or so.

When we first moved to California we would have people bring grocery bags and pick tons of plums off of the part of our trees hanging over the sidewalk.

The gauntlet; it has been thrown.