Gardening and Plant Thread

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

On the subject of men and women gardening, growing up my dad may not have always gardened but he always worked on the house. Even today, he’s always landscaping. No matter what, he is always adding flowers everywhere.
This is because in his Austrian immigrant family, the thing you did was make your house look nice. And flowers were always growing, and Oma was always growing food in the garden when my dad was a kid.
I think everyone should grow something, even just like a houseplant. It’s nice, it adds life and color. I’m personally someone who prefers to grow things I can eat. I think if you have the space to grow a decent amount of food you really should, it’s just good for you and it’s smart. If I had room, I’d be growing a lot more food. It’s always really rewarding biting into a meal you grew yourself, as fresh as it could possibly be.
Gardening likely became more gendered during the world wars, where men were off to fight and the women stayed home. The US government instated Victory Garden programs, where the women and children who stayed home were taught how to grow food and given the resources to garden at home to combat potential food shortages. Food prices were up due to having to feed an army overseas. This actually worked very well, turning front lawns into gardens large enough to feed an entire family with leftovers to preserve. A lot of the marketing unsurprisingly targeted women, mothers in particular, so yeah gardening and women became a common association.


This is what I’m growing this season. I have four summer squash plants, two longneck yellow squashes and two calabacitas. Squash, especially in the Southwest, yields like crazy and they are easy to keep. I also love squash in stirfrys and curries, or just fried up with some olive oil and seasonings, so we like to eat them.
The seeds I planted are all basil. 36 cells of regular basil, and 36 cells of Thai basil. I want a nice hedge of basil, just a retarded amount of fucking basil. We use basil a lot, and we love Thai basil but that shit is expensive sometimes. And trust me homegrown herbs taste so much better than storebought herbs. Even and especially freeze dried.

 

[Freya]

half of my plants are dead.

 

[River possum]

Does anybody have advice for growing poppies from seed? Every time I try they sprout, get their first true leaves, and then die. I've tried growing outside, in pots, and even in a controlled greenhouse environment. I've tried California poppies, Hungarian blues, and a couple others that I can't remember. Organic, non organic, doesn't matter they always die off after the first couple months.

 

[River possum]

Also here's my vegetable garden this year- potatoes in the back, then cherry tomatoes, bell and banana peppers, warm weather broccoli, collard greens and yellow squash. Doesn't look like much since we live in a valley without much sun but we are doing what we can. Second pic is my hardy kiwi, hoping it will fruit this year, but may need to bite the bullet and put it in the ground instead of the big pot

 

[Big Miss Steak]

I'm on the verge of just throwing my pings out. Is that a sin?

 

[Freya]

Does anybody have advice for growing poppies from seed? Every time I try they sprout, get their first true leaves, and then die. I've tried growing outside, in pots, and even in a controlled greenhouse environment. I've tried California poppies, Hungarian blues, and a couple others that I can't remember. Organic, non organic, doesn't matter they always die off after the first couple months.

mold？are you giving them any fertilizer? plants need that when they get their first set of true leaves

 

[River possum]

mold？are you giving them any fertilizer? plants need that when they get their first set of true leaves

Only one try got some mold before. The other times they didn't. What kind of fertilizer would you recommend? Because I have not done that yet

 

[Freya]

Only one try got some mold before. The other times they didn't. What kind of fertilizer would you recommend? Because I have not done that yet

Give them a small amount of all-purpose miraclegro diluted in the water you use to water them

 

[Judas Connor Moon]

My tulips, they blooming!

 

[drfuzzyballs]

Any advice on apple trees? I've got one I planted last year and plan on planting more.

 

[Big Miss Steak]

I found a garlic bulb sprouting in the recesses of my fridge and am struck with compassion for it. I will try to grow it.

 

[LowlyPheasent]

Any advice on apple trees? I've got one I planted last year and plan on planting more.

You'd not be at the point of fruit bearing yet with only a year on the thing but generally you want to trim trees before they begin to form buds. You want to trim off the central branches that grow vertically as well as prevent branches from growing out over primary branches too much and shading them. You can also tie off some branches together to try and shape them. Additionally with any fruit bearing trees you can pluck some of the buds, a smaller crop tends to bring in nicer quality at the expense of quantity as the plant has to distribute to less fruit.

 

[Bassomatic]

Any advice on apple trees? I've got one I planted last year and plan on planting more.

What kind of apple? Also expect a few years for anything. Trim them like anything else, if you don't know how to learn it. Sometimes you'll be chopping buds/fruits.

Apples are Delicious. But make sure its a good apple crab apples etc are trash.

 

[LowlyPheasent]

What kind of apple? Also expect a few years for anything. Trim them like anything else, if you don't know how to learn it. Sometimes you'll be chopping buds/fruits.

Apples are Delicious. But make sure its a good apple crab apples etc are trash.

You can still use crab apples for things like liquor or animal feed. I hear some people use them for jelly/jam but I've never had this myself.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Youngest daughters helped in the garden and greenhouse today by helping transferring the plants over. I think they rather enjoyed themselves. Oldest really doesn't have any interest in that but still prefers helping me in the kitchen. Youngest son helped with the front by getting it ready with the rotating cultivator. We also got some logs ready for some shiitake mushrooms.

You can still use crab apples for things like liquor or animal feed. I hear some people use them for jelly/jam but I've never had this myself.

crab apples are good to add to jams as they help thicken them. Also good in sauces and pies for that reason. Crab Apple jelly is also rather good to have around for cooking and baking. If you have the time you can get the pectin out of them for this use too. This is handy for fruits that are low in in it like peaches and pears.

 

[Judas Connor Moon]

My plants are bloòooomimg.

 

[Hepativore]

Coming back to the subject of roses...what are some of everybody's recommendations here for roses with very potent scents?

 

[Bassomatic]

Coming back to the subject of roses...what are some of everybody's recommendations here for roses with very potent scents?

I'll have to ask my mom this weekend she's got a bush that with the wind at it's back is like an Italian shower.

We've had some rain and hot weather everything is exploding. ... So much weeding. Also the bamboo in the parks woods bordering my house, growing fast, for bamboo! I swear you can watch it grow in real time.

 

[McLean Deluxe]

I see a bit of talk about fruit trees in this thread, and I want to advocate for the pawpaw tree as a great option for anyone looking to get into orchards. Its a relative of the banana, but is native to the midwest and is very cold hardy. Its actually grows the largest fruit native to North America, and because it's native it has almost no pests or diseases if grown in the US, unlike eurasian fruits like apples, plums, etc.

It tastes like a tropical fruit, kind of like a mix between a banana and a mango, and I find it very tasty to mix the pulp into ice cream. I transplanted a few dozen I started from seed last year and all but 1 survived, though some had their stems die off and have sent up new shoots. They take 7 years to reach maturity and bear fruit, and will last for 30 years.

The only downside to the pawpaw is that you need to plant at least two trees of different genetic makeups, as they do NOT self pollinate. You will need to hand pollinate them when the time comes, but that literally just means buying a paint brush and transferring pollen from one flower to another.

 

[Rakovnik]

I ended up tilling this 3 times to get everything pulverized enough for my seeder to work on it. Last week I got the seed put down, 2 acres of cow pasture mix and 1 acre of horse mix.

Here's the cow pasture mix I used
View attachment 5931657
View attachment 5931658

(Terrible edit on the background, sorry)
View attachment 5931651

My hay field is coming along well, it was spotty at 4 weeks so I used an aerator/seeder to double up the amount of seed I put down. It has a different mechanism than my tractor seeder and was able to handle the mix of seed sizes better. The first picture in each group is the cow pasture mix, second is the equine grass mix. I'll have to spray the weeds down once it's mowed, I'm just happy to have it growing before the dry, hot months.

Spoiler: 4 weeks

Spoiler: 6 weeks

I'm extremely behind on my garden, I have been trying to get a lot done between the rain and on the few days it was dry enough, it was too windy to spray roundup. I really need to get plants in the ground this week, with rain in the forecast every day that's sure to be fun.

Speaking of rain, I was baling hay until 3 this morning to beat rain that was coming in around 9 am and ends at 9pm. This was one of the few 3 day spans I've had to get it done so the night shift was necessary. If you saw my post in the welding thread, my weld on the knotter hold down worked perfect.



I'm ahead on turkey though! A friend's friend was growing turkeys on a tiny neighborhood lot and couldn't handle them, so we got them for free. Getting free birds is nice but having such a small group to care for separately is kind of a pain.


My next batch of egg layers should be laying by the end of this month so they'll finally be added to the flock. I need to refurbish an old barn to move the chicken flock into, this next batch will push the total over 200