happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Mar 30, 2016 10:39:38 GMT -5
Container garden until then? Or no outside access at all. We have a tiny little balcony where I can probably fit 2-3 plants. We have a large shared patio with the other tenants. Last summer our neighbor had a couple of huge planters... one for peas and one for cherry tomatoes. Sadly, they left the city last month... so I might follow suit and do the same thing. We'll see. Most all of our neighbors are new... everyone has left chicago in the last year. I would like to think people won't steal my tomatoes, but you never know. Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards Depending on the railing around your little balcony you might be able to find boxes that fit on the railing. Won't hold something as big as a tomato plant, I don't think, but you could do some herbs and flowers.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Mar 30, 2016 10:41:33 GMT -5
Got my two potato grow bags in the mail yesterday - you put about 16 inches of soil in them, plant the potatoes, and as they get taller you keep adding soil until you fill the bag to the top.
I've grown potatoes in my raised beds before but hard to hill them properly when you've got other plants in around them. Hopefully this will work well - I love Kennebec potatoes!
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sarcasticgirl
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Post by sarcasticgirl on Mar 30, 2016 21:16:52 GMT -5
We have a tiny little balcony where I can probably fit 2-3 plants. We have a large shared patio with the other tenants. Last summer our neighbor had a couple of huge planters... one for peas and one for cherry tomatoes. Sadly, they left the city last month... so I might follow suit and do the same thing. We'll see. Most all of our neighbors are new... everyone has left chicago in the last year. I would like to think people won't steal my tomatoes, but you never know. Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards Depending on the railing around your little balcony you might be able to find boxes that fit on the railing. Won't hold something as big as a tomato plant, I don't think, but you could do some herbs and flowers. I have planted some herbs last weekend and some some flower seeds to plant this weekend. Definitely room for those. I just dream of a spacious garden where I can grow lettuce and carrots and potatoes and cucumbers and hot peppers and squash and tomatillos... my list goes on! Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards
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ken a.k.a OMK
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Post by ken a.k.a OMK on Mar 30, 2016 21:23:44 GMT -5
Got my Butterfly bush bare root plants in the mail today. Gave them some water and will plant them in a day or 2.
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sarcasticgirl
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Post by sarcasticgirl on Mar 30, 2016 21:40:41 GMT -5
Got my two potato grow bags in the mail yesterday - you put about 16 inches of soil in them, plant the potatoes, and as they get taller you keep adding soil until you fill the bag to the top.
I've grown potatoes in my raised beds before but hard to hill them properly when you've got other plants in around them. Hopefully this will work well - I love Kennebec potatoes! Potato grow bags? A quick Google tells me that this is something I can probably do! Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2016 3:27:30 GMT -5
Got my two potato grow bags in the mail yesterday - you put about 16 inches of soil in them, plant the potatoes, and as they get taller you keep adding soil until you fill the bag to the top.
I've grown potatoes in my raised beds before but hard to hill them properly when you've got other plants in around them. Hopefully this will work well - I love Kennebec potatoes! Potato grow bags? A quick Google tells me that this is something I can probably do! Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards You can also use recyclable fabric grocery bags and a couple bags of potting soil. I've done it a couple of years now. Last year I kind of waited until the last minute so my end result potatoes were tiny but still edible.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2016 19:26:41 GMT -5
I have one little bloom on my jalapeno plant today - woohoo!!! So far nothing has attacked the tomatoes. Satsuma orange tree had/has lots of blooms but that is not a harbinger of the harvest because rats, possums, raccoons, etc. love oranges as much as I do. I saw one little chew mark on the Thai basil but nothing else. Maybe I don't have Thai bugs
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MarleyKeezy78
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Post by MarleyKeezy78 on Apr 1, 2016 21:05:49 GMT -5
I took some seeds from a tomato we ate about two weeks ago and put them in a pot in the window, have sprouts and am excited to actually grow something myself! Hoping for large tomatoes early this year
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justme
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Post by justme on Apr 1, 2016 21:27:25 GMT -5
I need to buy herbs again since mine all died off this winter. Apparently I have to take them in at night once it gets into the 50s.
I think I'm just going to buy already grown plants. Just pull em out of the plastic containers and stick em in pots with some extra dirt?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2016 21:36:44 GMT -5
I need to buy herbs again since mine all died off this winter. Apparently I have to take them in at night once it gets into the 50s. I think I'm just going to buy already grown plants. Just pull em out of the plastic containers and stick em in pots with some extra dirt? Keep an eye out for whiteflies and other fun little pests. I brought home a mint plant a few weeks ago and stuck it in the plant nirvana that is my kitchen window and about a week later the frickin' whiteflies were everywhere. Plant went outside into a planter box out front as I have no interest in infesting my violets. Should check if it's still alive. The scale on my scheffleras is a whole 'nother pain in my ass.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Apr 1, 2016 21:47:14 GMT -5
OK, every time I read this thread it's suppose to snow in the next few days! happyhoix - I am soooo getting those potato bags. I tried potatoes last year in my raised beds - it was a nightmare!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2016 21:52:50 GMT -5
OK, every time I read this thread it's suppose to snow in the next few days! happyhoix - I am soooo getting those potato bags. I tried potatoes last year in my raised beds - it was a nightmare! Don't remind me. It's been what, upper-60s the last 2 days and now we're getting snow on Sunday and Monday? A friend said someone told her we are getting about 8 inches. God I hope not.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Apr 1, 2016 21:56:12 GMT -5
Yeah, I am still in denial
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Apr 1, 2016 22:24:55 GMT -5
I had a petunia plant survive the winter outdoors in its planter. Night time temps got down as low as the high teens but the plant stayed green and is now in bloom. The rest of the petunia plants in the planter died off after the first hard freeze.
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GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl
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Post by GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl on Apr 2, 2016 9:51:26 GMT -5
My dogwood is in full bloom.
The snow and temps in the 20s forecasted for this weekend will take care of that. :-(
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Apr 5, 2016 9:42:14 GMT -5
Potato grow bags? A quick Google tells me that this is something I can probably do! Sent from my SM-G920T using proboards You can also use recyclable fabric grocery bags and a couple bags of potting soil. I've done it a couple of years now. Last year I kind of waited until the last minute so my end result potatoes were tiny but still edible. I knew a guy who cut a hole in the top of a Miracle Grow garden soil bag and planted a tomato right in the bag.
Said he got really nice tomatoes off of it.
I couldn't go that because of the redneck neighbor's dogs, they chew up any plastic bags of anything I leave sitting out over night. Destroyed a bag of sphagnum moss and another of mushroom compost. Have to shut them up in the storage room if I'm not using them right away. I'm kind of worried they'll go after the potato bags but they're the large ones, pretty darn heavy, and canvas, not thin plastic. Hopefully they'll leave them alone.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Apr 5, 2016 9:44:17 GMT -5
OK, every time I read this thread it's suppose to snow in the next few days! happyhoix - I am soooo getting those potato bags. I tried potatoes last year in my raised beds - it was a nightmare! The only time I did good with the potatoes in the raised beds was when I ONLY had potatoes in one of the beds - then I could excavate some of the soil and hill up around the plants as they grew without bothering the neighboring plants. Prior to that, I usually a couple potato plants and the rest other plants, and I couldn't hill the potatoes right. Still got potatoes, just not as many as I should have.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Apr 5, 2016 9:52:38 GMT -5
I had a petunia plant survive the winter outdoors in its planter. Night time temps got down as low as the high teens but the plant stayed green and is now in bloom. The rest of the petunia plants in the planter died off after the first hard freeze. The year we had the tornado, we had to have our 2 acre yard full of dead trees scraped together and burned. We were left with a martian red landscape of clay and rocks. In the middle of it, some purple wave petunias started to bloom, most in one spot, a few in a couple other spots. Apparently someone had a pot of them and the tornado blew the pot away and dumped the petunias in our yard, and they somehow managed not to get run over or scraped away by the bulldozer, then rooted themselves in the middle of our deathscape backyard. (I dug them up and move them to a flowerbed so I could water them).
Petunias are pretty but apparently very tough. So are tulip poplars - we had a big forty foot one in our front yard that lost every limb it had. Looked like a big pipe cleaner. We were going to cut it down, but it was one of only 3 trees that we had left, so we let it try to recover, and that thing put out new branches that are now about 6 - 8 feet long, all up and down the tree. Almost doesn't look freakish anymore. Amazingly tough trees!
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Apr 5, 2016 13:32:18 GMT -5
I had a petunia plant survive the winter outdoors in its planter. Night time temps got down as low as the high teens but the plant stayed green and is now in bloom. The rest of the petunia plants in the planter died off after the first hard freeze. The year we had the tornado, we had to have our 2 acre yard full of dead trees scraped together and burned. We were left with a martian red landscape of clay and rocks. In the middle of it, some purple wave petunias started to bloom, most in one spot, a few in a couple other spots. Apparently someone had a pot of them and the tornado blew the pot away and dumped the petunias in our yard, and they somehow managed not to get run over or scraped away by the bulldozer, then rooted themselves in the middle of our deathscape backyard. (I dug them up and move them to a flowerbed so I could water them).
Petunias are pretty but apparently very tough. So are tulip poplars - we had a big forty foot one in our front yard that lost every limb it had. Looked like a big pipe cleaner. We were going to cut it down, but it was one of only 3 trees that we had left, so we let it try to recover, and that thing put out new branches that are now about 6 - 8 feet long, all up and down the tree. Almost doesn't look freakish anymore. Amazingly tough trees!
The petunia in bloom in the planter now is a Wave petunia. And the funny thing about that is that I didn't plant any petunias in the planter in 2015. A seed hung out in the planter from maybe 2013 and decided to germinate and spread in the spring of 2015. Tropical/Deep south lantanas are not known fur surviving winters here but I had one come back three years in a row until a really cold winter finally got it. It had its own mini micro-climate that kept it safe from the cold (south-facing and in a corner of the backyard protected from northern winds by a fence).
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Apr 6, 2016 7:23:59 GMT -5
The year we had the tornado, we had to have our 2 acre yard full of dead trees scraped together and burned. We were left with a martian red landscape of clay and rocks. In the middle of it, some purple wave petunias started to bloom, most in one spot, a few in a couple other spots. Apparently someone had a pot of them and the tornado blew the pot away and dumped the petunias in our yard, and they somehow managed not to get run over or scraped away by the bulldozer, then rooted themselves in the middle of our deathscape backyard. (I dug them up and move them to a flowerbed so I could water them).
Petunias are pretty but apparently very tough. So are tulip poplars - we had a big forty foot one in our front yard that lost every limb it had. Looked like a big pipe cleaner. We were going to cut it down, but it was one of only 3 trees that we had left, so we let it try to recover, and that thing put out new branches that are now about 6 - 8 feet long, all up and down the tree. Almost doesn't look freakish anymore. Amazingly tough trees!
The petunia in bloom in the planter now is a Wave petunia. And the funny thing about that is that I didn't plant any petunias in the planter in 2015. A seed hung out in the planter from maybe 2013 and decided to germinate and spread in the spring of 2015. Tropical/Deep south lantanas are not known fur surviving winters here but I had one come back three years in a row until a really cold winter finally got it. It had its own mini micro-climate that kept it safe from the cold (south-facing and in a corner of the backyard protected from northern winds by a fence). Yeah I'm right at the edge with the lantanas - they grow pretty well in the summer but die back in the winter. I was shocked to find an enormous lantana bush growing on the dock at Gulf Shores AL - apparently down there, where they don't usually have a really hard frost, they grow like weeds and get bush sized.
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midjd
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Post by midjd on Apr 6, 2016 13:32:06 GMT -5
One of our neighbors has a GORGEOUS dogwood tree in his front yard. It started blooming last week and just makes the whole house look like a postcard. Saturday's high winds broke it off at the base. I didn't realize how emotionally attached I would become to a tree I drove past twice a day... I can't even imagine what the poor owners are going through! Seeing it lying there (still in full bloom) is so depressing, I hope they haul it off soon.
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Apr 6, 2016 14:16:57 GMT -5
One of our neighbors has a GORGEOUS dogwood tree in his front yard. It started blooming last week and just makes the whole house look like a postcard. Saturday's high winds broke it off at the base. I didn't realize how emotionally attached I would become to a tree I drove past twice a day... I can't even imagine what the poor owners are going through! Seeing it lying there (still in full bloom) is so depressing, I hope they haul it off soon. Speaking of trees, nothing prettier in the fall and winter months than a deciduous holly tree. On a mostly cloudy day, when there is a break for sunlight, and the sunlight hits the tree and its fruit, it glows.
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t-dog
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Post by t-dog on Apr 6, 2016 15:20:43 GMT -5
Beautiful tree Tennesseer! So here on the west coast we are looking for our first 90 degree day today. Its well over 80 already. My garden has been started and we are slowly re-landscaping with edibles. Artichokes make lovely landscape plants with the added bonus of deliciousness for a short time each year!
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Tennesseer
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Post by Tennesseer on Apr 6, 2016 15:57:03 GMT -5
Beautiful tree Tennesseer ! So here on the west coast we are looking for our first 90 degree day today. Its well over 80 already. My garden has been started and we are slowly re-landscaping with edibles. Artichokes make lovely landscape plants with the added bonus of deliciousness for a short time each year!
Funny you mention growing artichokes as landscape plants and getting a meal out of them too. Years ago at a local plant nursery, I came across a plant called a cardoon. I had no idea what it was but I bought it and planted it. The cardoon is also called the artichoke thistle, a member of the the artichoke family, and parts of it are edible. When it bloomed, it was pretty impressive. Never came across the plant again in the area probably because it requires a cool growing season and call it is not here in the summertime. It looked like this in bloom:
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GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl
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Post by GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl on Apr 7, 2016 21:06:33 GMT -5
My dogwood is in full bloom. The snow and temps in the 20s forecasted for this weekend will take care of that. :-( All of the blossoms on my dogwood are dead and brown. Total bummer.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2016 18:32:38 GMT -5
Made the first pass tilling the garden this weekend. Gave up on building raised beds again this year. Someday...I just don't have time or energy right now. Made the garden smaller too so I can hopefully keep up with it better. It's about 40' X 20' now where it used to be 60' X 30'. Part of the reason I made it smaller too is because I have to fence it from the stupid rabbits. Bought two rolls of rabbit guard for $40. The first in many expenses to raise "free" vegetables.
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kittensaver
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Post by kittensaver on Apr 19, 2016 19:17:33 GMT -5
This weekend in our community garden plots we harvested artichokes, onions, beets, carrots, fava beans, Swiss chard, spinach, kale, celery, the last of the lettuce, the last of the peas and the last of the cabbage (both green and red). What we couldn't use went to our families and the local food bank.
The soil has been turned and amended for the summer crops. Over the next few weeks we'll be planting a dozen varieties of tomatoes, 4 varieties of peppers, 2 types of eggplant, both zucchini and yellow summer squash, patty pan squash, hubbard squash, mini watermelons, cucumbers, 3 varieties of beans, arugula, cantaloupe, strawberries and pumpkins. We will also start new crops of the things that grow here year around: carrots, beets, onions, garlic, fennel and parsley.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2016 19:58:41 GMT -5
DH found two little tomatoes forming on one plant today. We have 4-5 jalapenos on that bush; one is probably a week out from harvest. CSA pickup was delayed b/c of Monday's record flooding but I expect same as last week: sorrel, kale, carrots, beets, parsley, garlic chives, shingiku (yeah, Google that-it's yummy), spring onions, etc.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Apr 21, 2016 5:43:06 GMT -5
All we have right now is chives and scallions. Garden expansion is planned for the first weekend in May. We typically do the actual planting over Memorial Day weekend. Then the wait ....
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Apr 21, 2016 6:55:34 GMT -5
Oh I love asparagus. That is something we should try!
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