Gardening and Plant Thread

[Rickenbacker]

All from seeds that have been germinating for 2 weeks from left to right. In the white tray I have some bonsai tree saplings (2 years old at this point), tomatoes, and onions. Two pots gave flowers. In the blue container are an assortment of peppers.

 

[SphinxItOver]

grew a handful of radishes from one seed packet from the store. how much does one packet make?
only about 6 of them produced radishes while every other seed flowered without making any radishes.

What ever is causing your radish to split is causing your seeds to not germ. It could be a watering issue, fertilizer, or some other soil problem but those two things are definitely related.
I use the same pepper trick as you but add tossing the seeds into the freezer for a day before planting. I don't know why it works, but unless the seed is a decade+ old it gives higher germ rates. Doesn't stop me from over planting the things.
Thank you for the mental image of salt bae feeding fish flakes to plants.

I don't much like spinich anyway

Why did you grow it then? Is it just one style of cooking it or all of them? Do you have pets you can feed it to like rabbits or chickens?

All from seeds that have been germinating for 2 weeks from left to right. In the white tray I have some bonsai tree saplings (2 years old at this point), tomatoes, and onions. Two pots gave flowers. In the blue container are an assortment of peppers.View attachment 5106909

Your plants need a direct grow light over them if you plan to keep them inside. They are getting leggy from lack of light and haven't gotten their true leaves yet. That will make them vulnerable to breaking and dying.

 

[Rickenbacker]

What ever is causing your radish to split is causing your seeds to not germ. It could be a watering issue, fertilizer, or some other soil problem but those two things are definitely related.
I use the same pepper trick as you but add tossing the seeds into the freezer for a day before planting. I don't know why it works, but unless the seed is a decade+ old it gives higher germ rates. Doesn't stop me from over planting the things.
Thank you for the mental image of salt bae feeding fish flakes to plants.


Why did you grow it then? Is it just one style of cooking it or all of them? Do you have pets you can feed it to like rabbits or chickens?

Your plants need a direct grow light over them if you plan to keep them inside. They are getting leggy from lack of light and haven't gotten their true leaves yet. That will make them vulnerable to breaking and dying.

I never used grow lights before but been meaning to. What kind of brand and specs do you recommend?

 

[SphinxItOver]

I never used grow lights before but been meaning to. What kind of brand and specs do you recommend?

I don't use them but this video seemed informative and a good spot to begin research on lights.

 

[HERE YOU GO]

What ever is causing your radish to split is causing your seeds to not germ. It could be a watering issue, fertilizer, or some other soil problem but those two things are definitely related.
I use the same pepper trick as you but add tossing the seeds into the freezer for a day before planting. I don't know why it works, but unless the seed is a decade+ old it gives higher germ rates. Doesn't stop me from over planting the things.

you're right, they were under and over watered at some point which causes splitting in root crop.
the seeds did germinate, but the problem was most of them flowered instead of making radish bulbs first.
i recently found that radishes will 'bolt' and stop making bulbs and go straight to flowering if their conditions aren't right, so that's probably what happened.

Thank you for the mental image of salt bae feeding fish flakes to plants.

Spoiler: you're welcome

 

[NoReturn]

Why did you grow it then? Is it just one style of cooking it or all of them? Do you have pets you can feed it to like rabbits or chickens?

Because I've never grown it before and this is how I learn what things grow well in my environment and and fun to grow.
To clarify, I like eating spinach, but growing it isn't much fun so far.

Spoiler

 

[HarblMcDavid]

They will kill your plants, ruin the flowers, stunt or kill the produce. They reproduce like motherfuckers and once you get them it's very difficult to get rid of them. If you're the one house in the neighborhood with a garden or your fellow gardeners don't control for them, you WILL get squash bugs. Chemicals are expensive, cause irritation, kill beneficial insects and barely work. I haven't found a predator that prefers them over other pests. I grow every cucurbita plant up a fence or trellis (that will let me) and go out every morning with a pooter to check the plant bases and flowers for the damn things because I don't have the space for trap crops and the weather is fickle with helping.

View attachment 5090442
Sucks bugs up into a trap. Be careful to not confuse the pooter with a pooner, flatulence, or computer.

Something to consider since I've been experimenting with my spoods: if you live in the range of Phid Audax, they WILL eat squashbugs, I'm staring at one of mine dragging a squashbug across her enclosure right now that she took within 5 minutes of me putting it in. Adult females can take squashbugs and their relatives up to 3 times their own size no problems, I've seen that too.

Most spiders don't seem to have big enough jaws to get into the damn things, but larger jumping spiders like the Audax absolutely do: they pinch 'em on the seam between their wing protecting plates and their underbelly, and it is lights out at that point.

The issue becomes making a habitat near the plants you want patrolled that would encourage large jumping spiders to hang out nearby. Jumping spiders love sun and 90 degree overhangs, so perhaps consider a small wall-like installation overlooking your problem plants? It doesn't need to be very complex or massive, as long as it includes roughly half inch deep horizontal ridges for jumping spiders to hide under and look out from which gives them overwatch on the plants, you might just find a predator based solution to the squash bug question.

This definitely won't work if you aren't in the natural range for them, but something to consider if you are, or have a different large species resides near by (Phid Regius are also really common in the USA, and they are even bigger than Audax).

One other potential issue is that these suckers are not discriminatory about what they take, so they will probably also take pollinators too if that's something you're looking to avoid.

 

[SphinxItOver]

@HarblMcDavid I LOVE these little guys there's so many of them around here. I even let several over winter inside on the house plants and put them out early spring. Yes I have seen them eat the buggers from time to time but they are usually going after easier prey like caterpillars, the web worms falling out of the pecan tree, flies and so on. I'm not sure they need a wall since they have the fence to run along. I grow most of the plants upwards and the spiders like climbing up the vines and hanging out on the curbit leaves. This year I built an entire new raised 3ft bed to allow the squash I can't grow up a trellis to grow over the sides falling downwards in the hope that it'll be easy to get at the plant base and useful for the predators. The Mantis will go after the squash bugs some times and take a few failed bites. That's why I say predators will eat the things but don't actively go after them. I did notice an unusual amount of Tachinid flies around today while harvesting peas and haven't decided if that's a good or bad sign yet.

When I say squash bugs I'm talking about both these guys:


There is a ton of beneficial insects, birds, bats, amphibians, and reptiles around the house. I do a lot to promote their habitats, but I am lacking honey bees, toads, yellow garden spiders, and dragon flies. Currently making a transport cage to go visit the country neighbors and ask for permission to catch some to bring home later this month. Also went out and bought some clay pots and sand to make toad houses around the sunflower and mint and a metal water trough to set up for dragonflies.

Absolute random observation to share: Insects do not like the new LED street light. Unsure if the light is too blue or some other reason.

 

[HarblMcDavid]

Interesting, yeah, we're talking about the same bugs it looks like. Makes sense they might not be locked on to them, spoods are smart little things so it stands to reason they'll go for whatever they consider easy.

Funny about the mantids, that's pretty much what I found: might try but fail, I know that except for one rather small one that was still "green", the mantid I kept was steadfastly uninterested in putting in the effort to take one of the full-grown ones. Blew up the green one while I wasn't looking, but it was 1/7th the size of the mantid.

If you want to experiment a piece of scrap dowel tacked horizontally half and/or 3/4 up the fence is probably a low effort and largely free way to see if you can better direct spoods attention, since they really like the vision and protection those kinds of setups provide. Worst case scenario they ignore it and you take it down lol.

A lot of fences have a more vertical direction to their construction so that leaves spoods very vulnerable to birds without an overhang, something they are very keenly aware of. Never seen one of those things spin around faster than when it saw a bird way overhead.

 

[WolfeTone]

My friends, the way to a good woman's heart is simple:

 

[Prince Vegeta]

@AnOminous did any of your ghost peppers survive?

 

[AnOminous]

@AnOminous did any of your ghost peppers survive?

Unfortunately, no. They died. I think I waited to long to bring them indoors.

 

[HERE YOU GO]

when people sell plants:

-they distribute poisonous and harmful plants without restrictions such as sumac, poison ivy and thistle without fines for delivering harmful plants.
-they blame the store for shipping problems even though who they bought their plants from does NOT drive the delivery truck.
-they get standard shipping and wonder why their plants die in a dark closed box that takes 3+ weeks to arrive on the cheapest ground UPS.
-buyer blames shop and attempts to tell others "do not buy from this guy!" when problems are not caused by the seller at all.
-they think if their plant dies they are automatically entitled to a refund when they aren't.
-they will open lawsuits against you because their plant arrived dead when it's clearly stated in sale that there are no refunds for live plants.

what's fucking wrong with people???
people get plants and they arrive dead, yeah well no shit you paid someone to put a plant in a box for you ass hole, of course it arrived dead when it took too long or got too hot or cold in transit.

when humans buy something and it needs to be shipped, they have no fucking understanding that the shop owner is not the fucker that gets in the delivery truck and delivers the package.
all a nursery can do is pack up your plant and HOPE it arrives, and then when the oafish fucking shipping crew THROWS IT into the truck that isn't the shop's fault, it's the shipping company's fault.
when the shipping service delays a week, your plant will fucking die. they have no special services for plants and plants are shipped in the same way as tiny envelopes. no one cares about packages.

no one complains to the shipping, they instead go to someones small nursery and THREATEN THEM AND BE VERY RUDE.
then etsy or whatever doesn't remove the wrongful negative reviews even when the buyer is angry about shipping services, a service not controlled by the shop owner.
you also get nose-up people who complain that a plant was "overly" protected in wrapping, fuck yourselves.
if these fuckers had to run a shop for 2 seconds they would feel overwhelmed at the same attention they are giving being ignorantly given right back to them.

they do nothing about poison ivy and poison sumac being bought and spread into new areas from etsy buyers with the possible intent to harm their neighbors by growing it near their fence.
they'll stop some plants from being sold that make deadly poison, but you can still made cyanide out of apple seeds with half a brain.
apple seeds should have a limit they are sold in bulk, but no one cares. no one cares and that's why several things are happening.

homes get condemned because of abundant poison ivy and they're just letting people buy it and regrow it for it to become abandoned again in no time.
it costs thousands to fix poison ivy infested areas and also kills native flora that is entangled in the poison ivy, when the poison ivy is removed so is everything else.
it's basically tilled of all plants and barren, that's the only way to fix it and they don't even track people buying it, they don't make sellers of these plants need special licenses.
they don't send names of people to the DNR or police that buy these plants.

you can buy cannabis seeds as a kid so long as you say you're not growing them, literally fucking retarded planet.

 

[AnOminous]

they do nothing about poison ivy and poison sumac being bought and spread into new areas from etsy buyers with the possible intent to harm their neighbors by growing it near their fence.

Who the fuck buys poison ivy/sumac/oak/whatever? There are people who sell it? What conceivable actual use does it have?

 

[NoReturn]

My friends, oyster mushrooms apparently like garden compost.
For how long will they like the garden compost? Do I need to keep feeding them? I want to keep them alive.

Who the fuck buys poison ivy/sumac/oak/whatever? There are people who sell it? What conceivable actual use does it have?

Besides people doing it for malicious reasons, it's probably witches.
Bet you anything it's witches again.

 

[HERE YOU GO]

Who the fuck buys poison ivy/sumac/oak/whatever? There are people who sell it? What conceivable actual use does it have?

i guess some places distill poison ivy/sumac/oak to obtain 'urushiol', other people use it because of retarded homeopathy remedies.
urushiol is not something a civilian in america should be farming without a license due to hazardous cultivation.

some people want milk thistle for tea, but they're sold every type of thistle on this earth except milk thistle and don't know it.
most of these people don't know what milk thistle looks like, they just want to buy it because of tea or some other shit they read.

lesser known is all thistle is full of perma-scarring urushiol just like poison ivy and poison sumac.
a poke from any thistle injects you with a small amount of urushiol and causes irritation, they think it can't cause blindness but i'm sure it could judging from urushiol reactions.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I was too lazy to find out if my cactus garden needed to come in for the Winter and I figured they'd make it for a trip and if they were looking sick I'd bring them in. Well, they weren't okay and they all died. I finally (after months of watching their husks, for some reason cacti don't decompose, maybe nothing eats it here) went to remove their dirt and put the cacti mummies in a container for future use (maybe make a display with the cacti mummies with my frog mummy) and I got about a million stickers in my hands, my final punishment for having failed to take care of them.

 

[Spitz]

My peppers are coming along nicely, but they could be doing better. The weather around here hasn't been optimal for growing, especially for the Reapers and other exotic strains. The nights have been colder on average too, sometimes in the 40's, so I'm glad that I hardened all of these off ahead of time. The only peppers I haven't planted are some bananas that I had to split in order to get established in their own containers. They were stunted the most from that and a few of them got some leaf spot shortly after. All the new growth looks good and once they get the heat that they need then they'll be fine. I've also topped all of the pepper plants except for some that were germinated in mid April.

Here's a picture of a Reaper. It hasn't grown much taller in the past six weeks because of the colder temperatures, but it has some new growth branching off.

This one is either a Georgia Flame or Habanero, I've lost track of a few of them at this point. It has better growth than the more exotic peppers.

This one is a banana that I had to split from another banana. I bought them from a nursery and had to do a lot of work getting their roots divided and then transplant them into separate containers. This one is in a pot with a hot pepper, so maybe I'll get some interesting cross-pollination.

All in all, I'm happy with how they're doing and I'm looking forward to when we get some good, stable heat. Then they'll really take off.

 

[WolfeTone]

I managed to rehab an old ginger plant that had been gotten into by snails and now it's shooting up like mad, rhizomes are truly remarkable.

I've quadrupled the amount of aloe plants I had from last year.

Used to have a bunch of mint plants but they all died over the last 3 years, gonna roll the bones with some mint and basil again.

Threw some blackberry seeds in the ground, let's see what I can get.

 

[Just A Butt]

Threw some blackberry seeds in the ground

lol, good luck with that