Gardening 2020

posiepurrs

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I didn't find a post about gardening this year so here it is! What are you planting? Has the virus changed your gardening plans?
I was going to just slightly enlarge my garden this year, easing back into it after not gardening for several years. However I am going at it full tilt now. I have almost tripled the size it was last year. Given the shortages, manmade or otherwise, I plan on growing as much as I can for my family. I have 2 rows of potatoes, cabbage, mustard and collard greens, peas and onions in the ground now. After the middle of May I can plant my tomatoes (2 kinds) peppers (5 kinds) beans, black eyes peas, green beans, squash, cucumbers and more. I need to buy another freezer, dehydrator and pressure canner before I start processing all of it. Some of the things I want to plant, I didn't get a chance to buy the seed before the craziness started so I either have to forgo those veggies or go to the nursery for plants...something that I am not comfortable doing right now. Our state still has over 60000 confirmed cases of covid -19. Our stay at home order is in place until May 18.
 

AbbysMom

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I'm going to skip the vegetable garden again this year, although I've been going back and forth on it because of the shortages. I do have a few pots of lettuce on my deck right now and I will put a few tomato plants and peppers in pots as well.

posiepurrs posiepurrs Are any of the nurseries near you doing curbside pickup? A few near me are and that is how I will probably get my few plants. I normally like to pick out my own, but at this point I think it will be curbside. With the numbers we have been having I think things will be closed past May 18th.
 

Winchester

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We are having a garden this year. Rick has one raised bed ready to go; he wants to do two more. I can very little, but I do freeze.
I can sweet zucchini relish, red onions in honey, and a few jars of chutney. I used to can pickles, but now I can't grow cucumbers; they just don't do well.

Broccoli - only for fresh, as I don't like trying to cook frozen broccoli all that much
Corn
Pepper plants - for fresh and for freezing
Tomatoes - for fresh and for sauce for the freezer; I dehydrate the tomato skins, then put them through the food processor to make my own tomato powder (to put in soups and stews)
Onions
Butternut squash
Zucchini and yellow squash - I'll have to make sweet zucchini relish for us, for my sister, and for Rick's sister
Green beans and wax beans
Some herbs - for the dehydrator
We have asparagus, but haven't seen much in the way of shoots yet

I'd like to try to grow a few heads of cabbage. Rick's not crazy about trying, but I'd like to make sauerkraut. Normally I make sauerkraut with my BIL, but with the virus, we don't know what will happen come fall.

I may try either spinach or kale this year.

We'd like to make two square garden boxes with side doors, one for regular white potatoes and one for sweet potatoes. Instead of digging for potatoes, supposedly you can just open the side door of the container and fish around for potatoes. We thought it might be interesting to try them. If we like them, we'll continue with them next year. It would be nice to get a good crop of potatoes, considering the possibility of the virus this coming fall and winter.

We have seeds for a couple varieties of corn as well as green and wax string beans and we're thinking of planting the beans this coming weekend. Several area nurseries are open; we're thinking of visiting during the morning hours through the week for garden plants; none of them have curbside pickup.

As you can tell, we are also trying to plant for the freezer into next summer, largely because of the virus. We just don't know. And it's been very difficult to find frozen vegetables in our local grocery stores since this thing started.
 

MoochNNoodles

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I have my garden started. I've been to a garden center and it was pretty busy. I have 5 tomatoes and 3 peppers. My peas are in the ground and up. I have 3 raised beds and plan to plant lima beans, 3 kinds of beans (because they freeze well, I don't have a pressure canner), summer squash and zucchini, and carrots. I bought corn also; which I've never grown. I just need to either borrow a tiller or see if I can even hire the neighbor to till a patch for me. I'm going to try growing the carrots in pots because they've always had bug issues in the ground. I'm thinking I can dump them on a tarp to harvest and refill the pots and start again. My aunt grows her potatoes in buckets and they do well.

Don't forget farm stands. I saw one open yesterday and they had a lot of flowers and plants out. They might have veggie plants too. I didn't stop to see what they actually had.
 

NY cat man

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The only things I plan on this year are a couple of low-growing perennials to shade the clematis roots and a couple of cherry tomato plants. Everything we planted last year has shown signs of regrowth, so anything else would be just to fill in any gaps, and there aren't many of those. The bigger question is when the greenhouses will be allowed to reopen.
 

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One of our nurseries actually opened today, so I got my 2 cherry tomato plants. Now all I need is for it to stop raining long enough for the ground to dry out so I can plant them. We got several inches in the past couple of days, and it has rained just about every other day for the last month.
 
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posiepurrs

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I was driving by my favorite nursery yesterday on the way to pick up my husbands medicine and saw there was only 1 car in the parking lot. I stopped! I only got some broccoli and some scallion seeds. I wanted to walk through the entire nursery but didn't. Got what I wanted and got out. We have several days of gorgeous weather here and I plan to make the most of it!
 

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We planted our green and wax beans this afternoon. I think we may be hitting our favorite nursery on Monday morning bc I want to look at azaleas for outside the shed.
Here are some asparagus I cut this afternoon for tonight. I can't believe I didn't see them before. There are plenty more coming up, too, so I think we'll be eating asparagus for a while.....nice to have something fresh! A couple are a little on the thick side, but we're eating them anyway.

2020MayAsparagus.jpg
 

MoochNNoodles

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Someone ate one of my potted pepper plants. It wasn’t big yet but theres barely a stem left. I was out in the almost dark tying bird netting and bird tape to the fence over the pots for now. It was hard to see the netting in the dark.
 

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Yay, we have a gardening thread!

I haven't planted any vegetables this year, but I've got flowers in all the planters.

Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong with my tulips? I plant them, they flower the first year but then after that all I get is leaves. I tried giving them lots of fertilizer last year, so I've got more leaves than ever. No flowers though. I also tried planting some tulips in pots with potting soil. Beautiful flowers the first year, only leaves and one flower this year.

Could it be too cold here for them? It get's down to at least -10C in the winter.

Does anyone have any tips for tulips?
 

catapault

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Hi Norachan Norachan Tulips do just fine with cold weather. After all, they originated in the high mountains. In fact, tulips do very poorly in warmer climates.

The bulbs you buy in the fall have a flower bud along with nascent leaves, down in the bulb. That's why they always flower the first spring. The issue is that where you and I live it rains in the summer. If it doesn't rain, we water the garden. This confuses the tulip bulbs which originated in summer dry locations, and a flower bud for the following spring never forms. Sometimes you only get one large "rabbit ear" leaf the following spring.

My suggestion is to think of tulips as annuals with an odd cycle. Plant in the fall, they flower in the spring, then after flowering just dig and discard.

The smaller Greigii (they have striped leaves, like chocolate bar code markings) and Kaufmanniana hybrids do repeat flower somewhat better. They're earlier, shorter, flowers red to rose to yellow rather than the tall May flowering cultivars. Good drainage is important - some people like them for a rock garden - but not the Japanese style rock garden, I hasten to add.

Bulbs that are better at returning to flower year after year are daffodils and hyacinths.
 

NY cat man

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Yay, we have a gardening thread!

I haven't planted any vegetables this year, but I've got flowers in all the planters.

Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong with my tulips? I plant them, they flower the first year but then after that all I get is leaves. I tried giving them lots of fertilizer last year, so I've got more leaves than ever. No flowers though. I also tried planting some tulips in pots with potting soil. Beautiful flowers the first year, only leaves and one flower this year.

Could it be too cold here for them? It get's down to at least -10C in the winter.

Does anyone have any tips for tulips?
I don't think that it's the cold, as it routinely gets that cold here, and our tulips do just fine. Is there any way you can check the Ph of your soil? It may be too acidic for them.
 

NY cat man

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Ours are coming along nicely. The only thing we have to do with them is every so often we dig them up and divide the bulb clump and replant them. We have some that are 10 years or more old and they bloom every year. We have both dwarf and regular varieties. Even those we transplanted last year are budded out.
IMG_1262.JPG
This is one of our dwarf tulips
 

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We're south of Houston TX. My hubby is growing cherry tomatoes, several kinds of peppers, cilantro and cucumbers, but he's doing it in big pots in our side yard. When we put stuff in the ground here, everything gets eaten up by nematodes. We haven't been able to get rid of them yet. But the pots are working well. I love gardening myself, I know a lot about herb gardening, and used to grow abundant herbs, but I don't participate in the side yard anymore because I'm allergic to the biting gnats. I got bit a month ago between my eyebrows and one of my eyes swelled shut and was purple, like I'd been in a boxing match. I wear a hat and head-net to go in the side yard. So it's not fun for me unfortunately. I have to stay away from the side yard. But hubby is doing great with the container gardens.
 

les26

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I planted lettuce plants weeks ago and for awhile they just sort of sat there thinking "should I grow or not?" because the weather here in PA. is all over the place, warm, cool, hot now cold, but about a week ago they shot up and we had some and it is oh so good, Bibb and Great Lakes lettuce. I buy the plants already started at a local nursery, they are inexpensive and I like how it rejuvenates itself and grows back! I had planted it for years a few years ago, then took a break from it but went back and I am glad, and I have found that it is much better in the Spring rather than the Fall, it likes the cooler weather rather than hot and humid and in fact I just covered it again with black tarp because today is cold and tomorrow is supposed to be windy and cold with wind chills in the 20"s and 30's? This weather is as wacky as the world is right now....

I also built a raised bed garden for tomatoes in the spot where I had planted them for several years now. Each year was getting better as I had been working in manure, peat moss and Tomato Tone plant food but last Spring we had two days in a row of just deluges of rain and they are in a low lying area where a swimming pool was years ago so they drown basically, they couldn't shrug off the water fast enough so last year they were not good, but this year they will be raised up so that should help immensely. The lettuce is in a raised box so that is good, and you know I only had to water the lettuce twice since I planted it, once when I planted it and once when I added some plant food, that is how much rain we have gotten here this season so far!

I don't know where I am going to plant the peppers, they were going in the raised box but now the lettuce is in there, maybe I;ll have to build another raised box!
 

MoochNNoodles

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I got bit a month ago between my eyebrows and one of my eyes swelled shut and was purple, like I'd been in a boxing match.
Ouch!! When my son was just a little guy he was bit on the cheek a bit below his temple and by the next morning his bottom half of his eye had swelled into one big puffy mess. His eye would have been swollen shut if the top half had swelled too. We ended up at the pediatrician over that one! I think I took it worse than he did though! :crazy:

My peas seem slow growing this year. I am using a different brand because I couldn’t get into a store like I planned. But I’ve gotten all my potted flowers in now. I just need to make the bean trellis for the pole beans and get everything else in the ground.

My garage looks like a garden center tonight because I had to pull everything in before the cold hit here. I’m wishing I had some grow lights for them for tomorrow because I don’t want to haul everything in and out again.
 

Norachan

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My suggestion is to think of tulips as annuals with an odd cycle. Plant in the fall, they flower in the spring, then after flowering just dig and discard.
I think it must be the monsoon that confuses them. I'm sure I tried digging some up and drying them out one summer, then planting them again in October. I just can't remember which bulbs I put where.

:paperbag:
It may be too acidic for them.
I'm sure it is, I live in the middle of a pine forest. Even the bulbs in planters and potting soil didn't do too well though.

I'm allergic to the biting gnats
I got bitten by something yesterday. We still had snow on the ground this time last month and I'm already getting bitten. It's not fair.
:sigh:
 

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I admire people who can plant and grow things. Even if I had a garden I doubt I would be able to look after living things that don't make demands or complaints. I'm trying a pot of rocket plant (I love the salad so maybe it will be an incentive) and my boyfriend has a pot of poinsettia (since he prefers beauty) in the small balcony. We will see
 
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