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Post by squishysquashy on Mar 5, 2015 20:51:59 GMT -5
I decided to be cool and make a thread for my garden doings. About the so-called experiments....I wouldn't call them very scientific. They are more like "how lazy can I possibly be and still grow food" experiments. Now about the garden. My husband and I (and our awesome cat) live in an apartment in the midst of south Arlington. There is no dirt and very little sun, seasonally. I have a few things in containers that can thrive on serious neglect: chives, rosemary, parsley, and mint (which I almost killed. For real.) Everything else I have tried in a container has died. I only water the stuff on my balcony when I remember, which, in the winter, is never. I just don't like container gardening, because I don't like watering! Imagine that! So how did I get that big watermelon in my picture? "Share-cropping!" My REAL garden is in my mother-in-law's backyard. Because I don't live there, everything in the garden has to be able to handle my usual level of neglect. I go there once a week fall through early spring. In April I start going twice a week to harvest and smite insects or water. This is only my 3rd season doing any kind of gardening, so I still have a lot to learn. Last season I did find out which plants can forage for their own water and which ones aren't so good at it. If I have to baby something, I don't bother with it (except young peppers and tomatoes ) This week seemed like a good week to start this garden blog because the weather is rather freakish right now! For those of you northern folks on here, snow in March is highly unusual for Texas, unless you're in the far west or the Panhandle. We've had TWO snows so far this month, both 5 inches each, and very cold temps! Last year I had already planted potatoes by now. Now the soil is too cold and muddy to dig. I'm pretty sure my carrots, beets, and peas all rotted in the soil by now. Some pics from today: the herb garden and compost bins can't see my rows anymore! sorrel, mache, green wave mustard, red giant mustard, buried. Mustards still alive, but I don't think the others ever sprouted. garlic and perennial onions, and MIL's Poop-doggy dog Gonna go dig up some pics from last year Emily
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Post by philagardener on Mar 5, 2015 21:03:38 GMT -5
Hope that nice rosemary makes it through the cold!
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 5, 2015 21:44:12 GMT -5
I feel your pain. I am about a day's drive south of you and it's supposed to be around 10 F tonight. Usually I am planting by now. We never had snow in Arlington when I was there.
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Post by squishysquashy on Mar 6, 2015 13:41:32 GMT -5
Really? We've had SOME sort of snow every year since I've been here (3 years), but not like this last bout of snow. It was so powdery and fluffy that you had to hold it in your hands a while for it to melt in order to make a proper snowball! You know how "snow" around here is usually a pretty useless ice-snow combination... lol! I hope we have a little bit of a proper spring before it jumps straight to HOT. If not, I've lost the whole season for cool-weather crops. I had all these runner beans I wanted to test. philagardener I've always read that rosemary is so frost tender, but it has been my hardiest plant. I have another one at the apartment growing in a leaky metal watering can, and it has withstood temps down to 25 degrees. The big one in the picture has lived through one night of 11 degrees last year without even a sign of damage. Weird?
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Post by reed on Mar 6, 2015 14:27:19 GMT -5
There is a lot of variability in Rosemary. We have had it live through here in Indiana lots of times. Sorry I don't know the names of the more hardy ones. I bet there in Texas you could plant them in the ground and they would grow into big bushes. I think it needs a gradual acclamation though, a mostly winter-less winter followed by a couple days below zero is hard on it.
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Post by philagardener on Mar 6, 2015 17:03:59 GMT -5
I manage to get mine through about 3 of every 4 winters outside here in the mid-Atlantic but not the last two years. I had a good run a few years ago and it made it to about 5 ft tall before I lost it. I have a variety that is hardy to about 10F for me (it may be "Arp" but came to me as a nameless cutting). I always bring a few cuttings in to bridge from one year to the next so as not to lose it.
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 6, 2015 23:01:29 GMT -5
Squishy oh my! My farm apprentice is in Houston and she finally got her first allotment (Community Garden Share) and she's gone crazy. Her closet and balcony are full of plants that she's going to transplant. She loved my weird and wacky farm experiments. So, will beans climb sunflowers or corn may not be very scientific, but they are pertinent. How can you learn if you don't roll the dice and ask questions?
I have never seen my rosemary under snow. Yes, under hail, but not snow. When it snows here, it melts before it sticks very much. Yikes, without rosemary, oregano, parsley, thyme, sage & bay I don't think I could cook. Yeah, basil too, but even it doesn't grow here in the winter!
Ottawa says you can garden lazily. So far, I haven't figured out how to do that, except for eliminating anything that's just too darn fussy, or commits planticide...that's suicide for green things. No, I cannot grow a gardenia or Daphne for more than 2 years. I cannot grow Brussel Sprouts, Crambe, or peanuts. Like Joseph, I have conquered okra.
Today the okra, tomorrow the sweet potato...maybe.
Love the poop/doggy/dog. Does he rap?
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Post by kazedwards on Mar 7, 2015 0:40:23 GMT -5
That's as much snow as we have had this year in Missouri. I doubt we have had 8" total. Only one was much more than 2". Feel your pain with the cold though.
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 7, 2015 11:54:52 GMT -5
reed Rosemary is one of the favorite landscaping plants down here because deer won't touch them. I've seen the upright ones growing five feet tall in the ground making wonderful privacy screens. Keep in mind I'm a lot further south than Squishy. I'm guessing squishysquashy the years I was in Arlington probably pre-date you (UTSA alum '81), so it's shocking to me to see snow. I only remember it once, driving through Dallas on a Thanksgiving trip. I had never driven through snow before in my life.
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Post by squishysquashy on Mar 7, 2015 20:37:14 GMT -5
I really like that blue flowered weeping rosemary in landscaping. A lot of businesses up here are using it for their landscaping, but they don't know how to prune/maintain it. They try to make everything a boxwood. Boo. I don't know about other rosemary varieties, but the one on my balcony is definitely more sweet smelling and better tasting than that big one in the raised bed. It has a nicer, more gnarly shape, too. That's a huge thyme plant wedged up under the big rosemary and there's a monster oregano behind it. I chopped it real low but it's got runners all over that side of the bed. 12540dumont I have to take a picture of my grow-light setup. It is kind of hilarious, but effective in my extreme lack of space! Maybe your friend has an equally insane setup? No rapping dog, but somethin ain't right about him, or his pooper... One "lazy gardener" dream plant that I discovered last year was cowpeas. I planted them as a cover crop in a 12x4 bed and didn't so much as look at them. Next thing you know, they were setting pods like mad. I think they were Red Ripper. I harvested them from the end of August into October and got enough to make a big pot of beans and enough to plant again this year. ok I'm going to cook dinner and then get some pictures!
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Post by squishysquashy on Mar 7, 2015 21:12:46 GMT -5
Here's my grow-light setup. I only have room for a flat of peppers and a flat of tomatoes because I only have two window sills (the third belongs to the cat, naturally.) My light is attached to the bottom of the blinds so I can raise it as the plants grow. Good ol' packing tape! I'd like to build a proper light stand one day but I don't have room. Those are Stupice, Costoluto Fiorentino, Roma VF, Speckled Roman, and a yellow Mortgage Lifter I got for free that I don't have high hopes for.
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Post by flowerweaver on Mar 7, 2015 21:45:09 GMT -5
Very clever Squishy!
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Post by Al on Mar 11, 2015 13:19:21 GMT -5
Excellent idea using the blind. Slimline & unobtrusive. My double tube construction has been banished to the workshop at the end of the garden. Might see if a light like yours is acceptable to 'her indoors' next year.
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Post by squishysquashy on Mar 16, 2015 11:27:28 GMT -5
I finally got to start my plantings of things other than hardy greens! Did potatoes (Purple Majesty, which I did not realize was PVP), morning glories, chards...Runner beans, tomatoes, and sunflowers tomorrow, since I ran out of time yesterday. Normally I would plant this stuff March 1st (except tomatoes), but it was snowing! Some pics from last year's garden, for fun! easter egg wow, these are huge pictures. one of my early June harvest baskets...or was it late May? (not at home, can't check the date)
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Post by rowan on Mar 16, 2015 19:12:11 GMT -5
Good stuff, this is what I like to see - people getting excited in their gardens
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