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Tildes gardening group: Spring (week 1)
Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!
Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.
‘Seed’ questions:
- What are you growing this year?
- Does anyone else help out?
- What are you not going to do this year after what happened last year?
And apologies to anyone in the southern hemisphere or in non 4 season style climates! I didn’t consider that when I posted the title…
It’s not gone very well for me. I have done a little work around the garden, added some compost and planted a raspberry plant that was struggling in a plastic trough. But otherwise, I’ve been time limited in what I can do.
Most of my garden was planted before I moved in and is low effort. I normally concentrate on growing vegetables in plastic troughs to avoid disrupting too much of the garden and making use of patio space.
Last year my son loved eating peas, strawberries and blueberries off the plants, so I want to do those again. He also really loved flowers, so I’m going to try plant a few more flowers this year too.
Last year I mostly ignored the front garden, mostly because im too lazy to run the watering can or hose around to the front, but I will try be a bit better this year and maybe plant a few in the sunny bits in the front of the house.
My question is has anyone had success with the cheap self assembled plastic green houses? I tried one last year and it just cooked my seedlings because the weather changed too quickly for me to able to micromanage them. Is there any you would recommend, or any position in the garden you had success with?
Also, I’m not sure about tech in the garden. I have kept my gardening low tech partly to be able to step away from tech, and a lack of knowledge/outdoor power supplies. This year however I have even less time, and have potential access to power. How have other people treated tech in their gardening hobby?
For the cheap greenhouses do you mean the ones that are basically cheap shelves with a plastic wrap? If so we have used those in the past and had mixed results. Dealing with temperature swings does require some managing of opening them up on hot days to avoid cooking the seedlings. But they did mostly do their job. We also always had to tie them to a fence so they wouldn’t blow over (windy area).
The only real tech I think we are using is a garden planner that remembers what was planted the previous years so we can do crop rotation more easily. Otherwise we are fairly low tech, mostly I think because the cost benefit ratio hasn’t shifted in the favor of picking up anything so far.
A couple years ago I built a cheap greenhouse over part of my in-ground garden: a simple dome frame from found materials covered with 6 mil plastic. I set it up maybe a month before last frost date (in May where I live) and planted quick, cool weather veg in it: Arugula, mustard greens, radish, lettuce.
It worked fantastically for this purpose, protecting the plants from light frosts overnight while giving them cool weather to thrive in before bolting. Too early for bugs, too. Best arugula I've ever grown.
I don't know if we're in different zones (there's still snow in my forecast), or if this application makes sense for what you're thinking. For a lot of veg, I have to start my seeds indoors for them to be grown enough by the time frosts end.
@nukeman @vord @zenon @crialpaca @Aran @pistos @thecakeisalime @tyrny @pekt @rosco @dustylungs @lackofaname @neonbright @monarda @tanglisha
Spring is starting!!! The gardening projects on my property are largely managed by my mom and I, although with me pregnant this year I think I am going to enlist my husband and siblings to do some more heavy labor for me (my parents and siblings live in an out building on our property).
I ended up buying 4 new fruit trees this year instead of 3. We got 2 pears (Bartlett and Bosc), a Stanley plum, and we finally were early enough to pick up a Granny Smith apple from the co-op we buy our fruit trees from. I probably should have planted them last Sunday because the weather was great for it with a sunny day followed by rain, but oh well.
Since we are still waiting for our last frost date the veg garden work is mostly just prepping the beds and some pruning. All the raspberries, blackberries, and grapes have been pruned in the past couple weeks. And the beds are having the old stalks and such removed now and hardscaping cleaned up. We tend to leave the stalks and everything over winter for bugs to live in, but it’s warm enough now that the bugs have moved on.
Last fall I built an arbor for my front porch. I still haven’t decided which vine I will plant, but I need to pick soon.
Otherwise we also have an endless chore of mulching. We will need another chip drop soon. And after a bad wind storm couple weeks ago my husband has been hard at work dealing with fallen trees in our woods to keep them off the paths. But most of our native gardening takes second fiddle to the veg garden in early spring.