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The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby DiGoRyKiRkE » Mar 11, 2014 7:05 pm

Mum and I went to our local gardening centre today. They had shamrocks! I used to have one of these glorious little house plants on my desk when I worked at the library, but it didn't belong to me, and I had to leave it there when I quit.

These little beauties are so fragile. . . transplanting them is always a challenge. Indeed. . . I think that many of the leaves and flowers that are currently on the plant will die, but the rhizomes looked like they were in very good shape when I inadvertantly got a peek at them whilst transplanting it.

I really hope it makes it. . . It would be so lovely and cheerful to have in my apartment.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » Mar 16, 2014 5:34 pm

I like shamrocks, but I've never been able to keep one alive. :( Somehow my green gardening thumb doesn't carry over to houseplants.

I got a lot of gardening stuff done this weekend. It was SOOO nice out I got into my herb garden and really cleaned it out. The only thing I didn't touch was the sage. Lots of herbs were already coming up, like the tarragon and mint. We're thinking about revamping our herb garden this year and sticking a good number of them in pots to keep them under control. So many of the ones I have are very aggressive and taking over other parts of the herb garden.

The other project my husband and I worked on was trimming up our grapes. It's a rather brutal process because you literally cut off about 90% of the grape vines and leave a stump, which is rather intimidating. ;)) But me being the mean, cruel person I am went out and hacked away. A few of them that had a couple good runners in the vicinity of where I wanted them to grow and so I left those alone. But this will be good because the bottom vines that were growing across the ground are now cleaned up. And all of the fruit vines and trees that I hacked away on were budding out. Yay! So it was definitely time! :D (Note: We've learned that if you prune grapes when they're active, they will literally 'bleed' and it can really damage them. Crazy...)
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby johobbit » Mar 18, 2014 12:11 pm

Just want to say that I keep up with reading the posts here in this topic, and find it exceedingly odd to think of gardening here outside now with all the snow we have left. ;)) And I've never been one to begin plants indoors ... not sure why. :-\ I plan the gardens about two weeks before I go get the seeds in late May. :P

Interesting about the grape vines, fantasia.

shastastwin, I hope you can have a garden plot this year. It's so much fun and very fulfilling, therapeutic, and rewarding. :D
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » Mar 21, 2014 1:49 pm

I believe my backyard is now cleaned up and ready for spring gardening! :D My husband cleaned out all of the straw, leaves, and dead asparagus, and put the hurt on my overgrown sage :P (and we'll probably take more of it off after it's done blooming). I completely trimmed my blueberries that were still quite damaged from the heat last year. Next step: Till the garden, and plant onions and kale. :)

The front flower bed is a whole different ballgame. It's rather horrifying and will require a lot of work. :P ;))
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » Apr 06, 2014 9:05 pm

fantasia_kitty wrote:Next step: Till the garden, and plant onions and kale. :)

So um... this ended up being a slightly longer and more involved process than anticipated. :)) We had some major tiller woes and it took us several weeks to finally get the garden tilled... which my husband did tonight. But now the weekend is over and I have to magically find the time to plant my onions and kale. I'm slightly concerned about the state of my onions. Had I known it was going to take this long to plant them I would have put them in some damp soil or something.
The nice thing about not being able to till/plant is that I've been able to do a fair bit of maintenance on my herb garden and flower garden. Neither area is completely done, but both are much better. :)

In other news, for the second year in a row, my tomatoes are not doing so hot. *looks around suspiciously* Symptoms include pale green/yellowish leaves, purple veins, and poor growth. In googling web advice, it appears that vitamin deficiency seems to be the culprit, which is what I suspected because I'm not doing anything differently than in previous years. The frustrating thing is that I'm using Miracle Grow potting soil, and so one would think that'd be full of goodness for baby plants. Apparently not. So on top of my already busy schedule, some emergency transplanting may need to take place if I hope to have any tomatoes survive (last year I literally lost them all :-o , but I also was dealing with a newborn baby so that might have something to do with it too....)

And the final thing on my near-future to-do list, I need to start my watermelon seeds.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby shastastwin » Apr 07, 2014 8:56 am

johobbit wrote:shastastwin, I hope you can have a garden plot this year. It's so much fun and very fulfilling, therapeutic, and rewarding. :D


Thanks, Jo. I've been clearing the area in my after work time over the last week or so. I have the edges of the bed cleared, which is where the previous tenants planted various herbs. Some have survived, and some have yet to decide whether they survived. ;)) We currently have sage, oregano, orange mint, English thyme, chives, and rosemary coming in. I've also cleared out most of the old plants from last year's garden and as many of the weeds as I could find. I need to clear the leaves and such from the surface and till (or trowel, in this case) the soil so I can be ready to plant in a few weeks. I think we'll have a nice little crop of veggies if all goes well.

We have seeds for squash, green beans, onions, and bell peppers that I'll plant around Easter. We'll probably buy a tomato plant or two around then as well, and maybe some basil to round out the herbs. If the tomatoes come in well, then we'll see about making our own marinara and salsa. :D
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » Apr 09, 2014 6:27 pm

stwin wrote:We have seeds for ... bell peppers that I'll plant around Easter
Bell pepper seeds should be started ASAP. I tend to start mine in late January and then move them to the great outdoors in mid to late May. Your garden sounds great though! Is this your first one?

We're finally moving along on our garden (yaaay!). So far I have six short rows of onions planted. I think I've actually planted less onions this year than in the past few years, but I also have several go bad all the other years so maybe this will be a proper amount for a change. I also planted a row of beets. I'm kind of hesitant to stick the kale in because the extended forecast shows a 32F for a low next week. I know kale is pretty tough, but I'm being cautious. :P ;)) It's in my greenhouse right now. :)

I bought three out of five of my desired herbs the other day. I got a basil, a parsley, and a rosemary (mine died last year :( ). I still need a thyme (also died last year :( ) and a flat leaf parsley (which is vastly superior to curly leafed parsley :P ;)) ). I'm also waiting for the danger of frost to pass before sticking them in my herb garden. They're hanging out in the greenhouse too. ;))

Next items on the gardening to-do list.
~Start the watermelon indoors.
~Plant any leafy greens and root veggies that we want in the garden.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby shastastwin » Apr 09, 2014 6:31 pm

fantasia wrote:Bell pepper seeds should be started ASAP. I tend to start mine in late January and then move them to the great outdoors in mid to late May. Your garden sounds great though! Is this your first one?


I would have started them inside before now, but with our new cat, I didn't want any plants indoors to tempt her. ;)) I think I may be able to plant this weekend if I can get myself outside and working on it the next few days. We're supposed to be clear of frosts here by Easter, which is why I had that as my plant date.

This is the first garden that we will have planted together, and the first one that I've been in charge of ever. I've helped with gardens planted by my parents, teachers, and pastors in the past, but this is my first "official" garden. ;)
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby Aslanisthebest » Apr 09, 2014 7:27 pm

Reading this thread makes me more and more excited to get gardening! :D

I've been a little bit careless with my seedlings this year, and they're very leggy as a result. I'm putting them in the sun, but I think they'll be alright. I have Eggplant, Tomato, Peppers, Okra, and Watermelon started. I think that my Totally Tomatoes seeds from 2012 are officially done producing; none of them seemed to come up, but that could have been my fault, again. I was smart and forgot to label everything, so I'm kind of just trying to identify the plants by whatever comes up. :P

I'm planning to start my herbs and outside plants like Pumpkin and Sunflower later this month, once I'm certain that the frost date is gone. However, I was a bit impatient today, and I put some Radishes, Beets, Beans, and Spinach in my raised bed and in one tilled area. I think that we have a few more days yet of frost, so I'll probably have to cover them. :P It was just so warm, and the dirt was so till-able--I couldn't resist. ;)) I think that I've got a really good collection of earthworms, so I'm happy. :D

Fantasia, I saw you mentioned you hacked away at one of your trees on Ara's facebook? I did the same recently. :P A tree stump of ours was falling apart due to fungus. I grabbed a hatchet and had at it. I broke half of it, and my sister pushed the main thing out of the ground and uncovered cicada larvae.... >.> <.< (We left that part of the tree standing)
When I broke the tree, there was an awful lot of decomposed dirt inside--some of it had fungus, but other parts of it seemed like potting soil. Is it safe to use that for my plants, and is the area safe for another tree, or do I have to put anything on the area to kill the fungus?

stwin wrote:We're supposed to be clear of frosts here by Easter, which is why I had that as my plant date.
You're further south than me, I think, so now I'm worried about what I planted outside.... :P
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » Apr 18, 2014 6:04 pm

Bella, how is your garden doing?

Hehe, my tree incident was a little different than yours. ;) This was a small healthy tree, and I was pruning it back because it was REALLY bushy at the base. Technically you're not supposed to cut off more than 1/3 of the tree every year because it's really hard on them if you do. But I probably cut 1/2 of it off. ;)) It looks sooo much better though.

Despite the extremely couple of cold mornings, everything I have planted looks great. My onions are coming along nicely, and I noticed the beets are coming up. I also planted the remaining 8 kale I received from my sister.

I still haven't started my watermelon :-s but things have just been sooo busy that they'll just have to get off to a slow start. I also need to put my herbs in.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby shastastwin » Apr 28, 2014 4:55 pm

I got everything planted the Thursday before Easter, just after our last frost that sneaked in that week.

Well, we have volunteers from last year's beans already jumping up. ("Volunteers" are what my dad always called the plants that grew from fallen seeds.) I'm expecting this year's to join them soon.

We also have squash coming up. I'm pretty sure they all jumped out overnight. :D I'm very excited about those. My onions are peeking out as well. No sign of my peppers yet. I expect those to take the longest, since I needed to get them started sooner but wasn't able to with our resident kitty. :P I'm hoping that nothing gets drowned or washed away with all this rain we're getting. First, it was dry, and now I'm worried it's too wet. Our weather just can't make up its mind.

I'll try to get pictures up sometime soon, if only so I can have proof of my baby plants. We're planning on getting some basil and tomatoes soon as well. We've already used some of our other herbs on some chicken the other night, and it was wonderful to use fresh herbs.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » May 04, 2014 7:09 pm

Once again, I am BEHIND on gardening. :ymblushing: :p ;)) But I did make progress tonight, so yay! I got my last two herbs in that are going in the ground. Just the chocolate mint left and I need to put a pot together for it.

I would have made more progress on the tomatoes and peppers except that I suddenly realized I had a lot more alive than I first thought. So instead my husband and I sat down and figured out what I had and where we wanted to put them. I got four tomatoes in the ground before it got too dark to see. I plan to plant 4-8 more tomatoes and I have quite a few peppers to put in too, but I haven't counted those yet. Hopefully I can get those in over the next two days.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby johobbit » May 08, 2014 3:36 pm

Ahh, it's fun reading about each of your gardening adventures. And, st, I love the term 'volunteers' in reference to plants' seeds that have fallen and then grown up, themselves. Very cool!

So, I didn't realize this was a word, but the other week the Word of the Day from dictionary.com was "plantlet". I mean, it makes sense, but it was nice to see it official. ;))

The past couple of days have been the first time since the snow has gone that we could actually work in the gardens. No slush; no rain; no puddles. ;)) We got so much clean-up done that the gardens are now prepared for planting in late May.

I loved brushing aside old detritus from the autumn and winter to see tiny green shoots peeping through. We could theoretically get frost for another couple of weeks, but looking at the longer-range forecast, it is doubtful.
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » May 13, 2014 7:02 pm

I'm so behind this year, but after thinking about it, I was more behind last year cause last year was so stinkin' cold. At any rate, I finished putting in all of my tomatoes and peppers tonight. :D So nice to be done with one project at least. Here's my list...
~Two Juliets
~Two Cherokee Purple
~Two San Marzano
~Two Abe Lincoln (new tomato this year)
~One Habanero
~One Jalapeno
~One Piros (new pepper this year, supposed to be a small red bell)
~Two Flavorburst
~Three Big Bertha

Still need to put in my watermelons, sweet potatoes (if I can find them this year), and green beans. I wasn't going to grow green beans, but my kiddo LOVES them so I figured I'd better plant some. ;)
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby fantasia » May 27, 2014 10:11 am

I'm slowly and steadily making progress on my garden. :) Everything has been planted now except for the green beans. We've FINALLY had some nice rain which means everything (plants and weeds alike) are taking off.

Waiting for things to dry out a bit more before I put the green bean seeds in the ground. :)

I've also been putting some new annuals in my front flower bed. I'm a big perennial fan so these annuals are foreign to me. ;)) But one I've always loved is Lantana so I got a yellow/orange/red variety. So pretty. :)
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Re: The thread for people who have Green Thumbs (Gardening)

Postby johobbit » May 27, 2014 10:30 am

Nice, fantasia! And so glad you had that good rain.

I have never heard of Lantana, but I sure hope it's available up here. It is stunning!

We have a major move coming up in another month, so I will not get to planting much this year—a few annuals amongst the perennials, probably, but no vegetable garden. *weeps* However, next summer we will definitely have one :D, and somewhat larger than we have had here. I need to decide, though, where is best to put it. :) The current owners are not gardeners, so I will have a fresh start up there with perennials and veggies.

Someone suggested a potted patio tomato (thanks, fantasia ;))), which at least is better than nothing! And I do adore tomatoes. ♥
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