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Would anyone be interested in an online gardening club?
It’s spring time, and I am belatedly thinking about growing some plants. I tend to quite enjoy growing edible plants, but I might try a few flowers this year. Would be anyone else be interested in a regular gardening chat group where we can share our experiences and challenges in growing plants? Indoor, outdoor, all welcome!
I envisage something similar to the weekly minecraft threads, but less square potatoes or pixelated flowers, and something more tangible (not to knock the minecraft threads, I love them, and they are my inspiration for this!)
We've had a fair number of gardening posts in the past, so I could see this getting traction.
Recently moved into a rental, so we're focusing on pots and aquaponics this year.
We had ditched our big aquarium when the last of the fish died, but retained a small tank with the plants and snails if we decide to ramp up again in the future. We ended up adding some shrimps and an assasin snail to help balance the ecosystem a bit more, and we've started floating kitchen scraps to regrow them...green onions work amazing, lettuce does OK but is hard to manage in the small tank, and the avocado pit is starting to aprout.
Starting to prep some beans, peppers, and cherry tomatoes.
I'm in. Preparations for this year's garden are underway. The capiscums and celeriacs are growing well in the indoors sprouting area. In a week or two I'll plant the tomatoes and cucumbers. Wife broadcast kale and other greens in the greenhouses this weekend, for spring microgreens.
Apart from that, I think I'll only plant beets and parsnips outside this year. Usually we're a bit more ambitious, but we have lots of (non-gardening) stuff planned for this summer, so that will do. We have like 15 types of edible perennials too.
That's a lot of edible perennials. What do you have?
We're in Europe hardiness zone 6, and these grow well in our garden:
Asparagus (soon!)
Chives
Welsh onion
Ramsons
Ground elder (against our will, but technically edible)
Dandelions (ditto)
Thyme
Sage
Jerusalem artichokes (de-facto perennial)
Wild rocket
Hops
Strawberries (wild and cultivated)
Redcurrant
Blackcurrant
Gooseberry
Seaberry
Raspberry
Morello cherries
Apples
Pears
Mini-kiwifruit
Blueberries
Various grapes
Blackberries
Also Agaricus silvaticus and Leucopaxillus giganteus have decided to grow in the leaf litter under our hedges.
I didn’t realize there was a perennial version of rocket!
I’m going into my third year for asparagus and blueberries, we finally get to eat some 🙂
Have you gotten any fruit off your mini kiwis? I assume that’s what is called kiwi berry here, I killed one last year.
I think perennial rocket is a completely different species than regular arugula, but it looks and tastes about the same.
Fresh asparagus really is something!
We got a good handful of kiwiberries last year, after like 3 years :-) I wonder if they're good self-pollinators.
My understanding is that kiwi berries are not good self pollinators. If you don’t have a male, one of your neighbors might. I saw someone online graft a male to a healthy female vine, which I thought was pretty clever and could save from buying another plant.
I'm about to move internationally, so I can't participate yet, but once I've set up my own place I would love to join in on something like this.
Oh wow that sounds like an ordeal! Have you done it before?
Technically yes (I moved abroad and am returning to my hometown), but I had just graduated undergrad then, so it was a lot easier to fit my whole life into a few suitcases. Whereas this time I need to sell a bunch of used furniture and such. Luckily or unluckily, I killed my remaining houseplants over the winter, so I'm not gonna try to bring them with me lol
Hi me yes!!! We just set up our raised bed last weekend and put in some cold-hardy veggies. The rest of the spring season veggies are hardening off. We've got bulbs in the garage to throw in the ground after the last frost date. We got an espaliered apple tree to mostly keep an eye on this year (not supposed to let it fruit the first year I guess). I would love to share progress and keep up with fellow plant enjoyers.
If my herbs survive my east facing balcony and black thumb, maybe I’ll post about them…….
My previous gardening attempts have been limited to growing cat grass and catnip. The grass was fine; the catnip grew like, maybe two inches from the soil and stayed like that for basically 3 months where I couldn’t tell if it was struggling or still growing…
I'm an absolute beginner. In the past, I managed to kill a peace lily, despite trying to keep it healthy. For several months now, I have been trying to maintain a couple of orchids at least long enough to see a second blooming.
I'd be interested. Despite having a lot of space outdoors to grow veggies, they keep getting eaten by the wildlife (squirrels, rabbits, and maybe deer?), so I've not had a lot of success.
This year, I was going to try to grow spinach and some other non-pollinated plants indoors hydroponically. I haven't made much progress yet, but since it's indoors, I'm not constrained by things like seasons and weather.
The weather is starting to hint of spring so gardening has been on my mind, and today walking the dogs I saw that the bulbs I planted in the fall are starting to come up which is exciting.
Our veg garden plan is not finalized yet this year but we have started some seeds indoors as it’s about 10 weeks till last frost. Need to get scooted on finishing the layout and plan.
We are also planning on adding pears and maybe one other fruit to our mini orchard this year. Some contenders include plum, apricot, or another apple variety. Meanwhile I got to enjoy a lime off my lime tree with last night’s dinner which was handy and very very strong!
There is some discussion of reclaiming a bit more of the woods from the invasies to make a new experimental native garden, but who knows how that will pan out with the other projects.
Finally I am planning on adding some more plants into the landscaping in my front yard. Last year I built a trellis and am trying to decide between virgin’s bower, coral honeysuckle, or American wisteria. The choice (or choices) will join my hydrangea, NJ tea, mountain lilac, bleeding heart, lady ferns, and rhododendrons.
I think I'd be interested. I've been wanting to grow more things at home and this could help me get over the hump and start transforming the garden space where we're staying now from a grass patch into a nice garden
Nice! I started a few years ago and just bumbled along with a few different easy plants. It was very satisfying, especially eating things like peas of the plant!
That's how everyone starts unless they grew up with a garden.
I'm interested as well! We've recently moved into a new place and I lost my lovely garden, so for now it'll just be a lot of large potted plants - but still some fun ones like fig and olive trees. I am in the 10.a USDA zone, but in reality we deal with a ton of coastal fog. So while green veg and the like go bananas, things like tomatoes and stone fruit do very poorly here. It hasn't stopped me from try every year, but man is it frustrating to finally have my purple cherokees finally ripen in November and just taste mealy and awful.
We also deal with a number of "pests". Our biggest concern is the deer, but our garden is also often attacked by gophers. To combat that we actually used to fully encompass our garden with deer fencing (deer netting wasn't great as birds and insects would get stuck in it) and the rigidity means we could encompass larger sections. We believe that the "pests" are also just local inhabitants too, so I try to implement a 50/50 rule. Half of the garden is fenced off for food production, the other is open and wild-ish to create habitat and food for the local fauna.
So excited to talk gardening with everyone!
Oregon State University is offering this online, 4 hour, on demand class for free right now Vegetable Gardening Course
It’s a beginner course. I don’t think you need to be an Oregon resident to take it.
They also have another free course available right now: Getting Started in Urban Agriculture This one is 6 hours.
I've recently been filling my house with propagated pothos clippings while trying to learn more about its biology. I'd love to hear about other Tildeans' experiences with propagating plants (especially easy plants like pothos). I have a few parent plants living atop a fish tank, and clippings from those have now ended up in 40+ glass bottles around the house.
If you’re talking about houseplants, two that I find easy to propagate and hard to kill are Plectranthus verticillatus (swedish ivy) and Tradescantia zebrina (silver inch plant). Both are trailers and grow quickly from cuttings. Most begonias can be propagated in the same way. Super easy. But several species can be propagated from leaf cuttings laid flat on soil and secured with pins. I find this fun to do and watch as you’ll get multiple plantlets popping up from the leaf. This works well with most rhizomatous begonias like begonias in the rex group (Begonia rex-cultorum). There’s also the wonderful world of succulents, many of them easily propagated too.
Yes, houseplants. I don't think I've heard of swedish ivy before, but I've been on the lookout for silver inch. I'll have to get some soil if I get either of these. My pothos plants are all purely grown in water with a drop of nutrients once in a while. I've had pretty good success with jade plants in the past. Begonias sound interesting!
I've had very good experiences getting plant starts off of Etsy if you're having trouble finding that. Availability comes and goes, but it's where I got my true Christmas Cactus.
Ah, I will check there. Thanks. I've also been mulling over setting up a "little free library" for plant clippings in a corner of my office at work. It seems like it could be a good source of plants and an interesting social networking experiment.
I'd be into that! Though, I'm possibly going to step back from taking on as many gardening projects as I tried the last couple years, because I kept finding myself with too much going on and neglecting certain things.
I haven't even though about starting veggie seeds yet, so that may get axed in favour of growing a few herbs, and then continuing to clean up current garden beds before thinking about more. Mayyyybe do a little hardscaping related to home maintenance.
Yes, I'd be interested... but I'm in Australia and my seasons are likely very different from those of most Tildarians.
It's late summer just moving into autumn here, and that means we are in our fallow season. The heat and most importantly the lack of rain brings gardening to a halt in the same way that snow does elsewhere.
I have a large garden and have been gardening for many years. We grow a bit of everything; fruit, flowers, veggies, native plants for the birds etc etc. The pears are ready for picking this week.
We also have an extensive collection of houseplants, many of which have been grown from vegetative propagation of one kind or another.
It's surprisingly quick and easy to get plants to make more plants.
I’d be down for something like this.
I’m interested!