2024 gardens

I’m going to give these a try.
I been using some smaller cages that really struggled so I’ll shift those over to the pepper department.

BigWerm wrote:

I’m usually pretty committed to waiting until Memorial Day to plant, but feel like this year could be a month+ earlier and be alright.

I won’t risk tomatoes and peppers before Memorial Day. My neighbor always pushes the envelope. Some years, he’s fine, other years, he loses everything to frost. I patiently wait. Honestly, mine are never far behind his. I don’t think you gain much by planting early, at least not with peppers and tomatoes.

That looks like it would work for both types. I just have the cheapo wire cages for determinates. Typically just roma. My Amish paste and cherry tomatoes are around 7′ tall at the end of the season and still producing. The larger slicers usually hit 5-6′ by the time they peter out.

We had a frost the 1st week of June a few years back. I lost a couple tomato plants because they were pretty small and had only been out a few days. Had I bothered to look at the forecast I would have covered everything. I’ll be waiting until late May and at least another week or two for pepper transplants.

i use the cheapo type cages………but i stake the cages…..the wind can tip them over pretty easy when there full grown!!!

glenn57 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>suzuki wrote:</div>
I have some mint tucked up against the foundation that’s still green from last year!

not sure exactly where you live, but with that mint planted, do you notice less mosquitoes?

I use a potion of mint mouthwash, water, and Epsom salt as a mosquitoe repellent at the cabin and works pretty good

I just saw this. Sorry. Our mint field is isolated in the back yard so I dont notice its affect on anything.

thanks Suzuki!!!!! no biggie!!!!

Now that its legal I was thinking of planting a “hemp” plant in the middle of the mint this year. Maybe create a new minty tasting strain?!?!?!?!

suzuki wrote:

Now that its legal…

I was thinking about it, too, but seeds are not cheap!

I was thinking about it, too, but seeds are not cheap!
[/quote] dont a few seeds come in the bag you buy…..

a friend told me that once!!!

any of you garden experts plant onion sets?? do you guys do anything special with them. i’m thinking about not planting them this year just have a hard time with that. i like my canned goodies to have as much as possible straight from my garden.

i get a decent crop once every 4 years. i was told to try to dig a little trench around the bulbs about once a week when they start growing. ?????

i have no problem having my winter onions grow…..i got them stickin outta my ears!!

I don’t plant sets. I plant onion plants. They come in small bundles with tops on the small bulbs. Plant them 6″ apart by poking a finger in the dirt about an inch and a half deep, drop in the bulb and push dirt to close the hole around the plant. I plant my onion plants as soon as I can get the dirt tilled. Keep them damp, but not wet. I usually broadcast a little 10-10-10 between the rows about the first of June and lightly hoe it in. As soon as the tops drop I take them up out of the dirt and lay them out to start drying. When the tops are wilted down well I bundle them into bunches of about ten or a dozen and hang them until the tops are dried, then I trim the tops off and bag the onions in onion sacks and hang the sacks where there’s good ventilation and out of direct sun. The sacks hang until the garage is cold enough to think about things freezing then I move the sack to a cool closet.

I still have about 15 pounds of baseball sized onions from last summer.

Personally, I like a variety of sweet yellow onion called “Patterson” and buy four 50 plant bundles to plant.

thanks for the info Jimmy….i did read onions like nitrogen, so thinking i may add some miloganite during the growing season, but 10-10-10 would work.

i did try th onion plants a couple years, had 1 good turnout, the other not so much. i may try a red onion this year. i dont see the plant being sold in greenhouses anywhere either.

on another note, i keep seeing/reading that pollinators are buried in leave piles etc and not to clean that up. i’m thinking of removing the leaves i put over my winter onions and my wifes flower bed. to early????????

i put maple leaves in my garden and mulch them up before it gets tilled. would like to do that, tired of the wind blowing them all over the place.

When I see that crates of onion plants get set out at the green houses here, I’ll send a text. I can pick some up and send them to you if they’re hard to find up there.

Jimmy Jones wrote:

When I see that crates of onion plants get set out at the green houses here, I’ll send a text. I can pick some up and send them to you if they’re hard to find up there.

thanks Jimmy…but you rreally dont have to.

much appreciated though……i’ll figure something out.

I had two year old serrano seeds win the race to germinate first. More than half were up in five days. By yesterday, or day 8, all the habanero and jalapeno were up. I had some two year old hot wax pepper seeds come in last. They grew like crap that year, so I didn’t start any last year. We’ll see.

16 serrano, 5 habanero, 12 jalapeno and 5 wax peppers in total so far. I’ll pick up some super hots from a greenhouse later. Planting two per 6 gallon fabric bag has worked for me.

I’ll start all the tomatoes in about a week. I’m still trying to figure out which frost tolerant plants to start and when because I’ve always just directly sowed them in ground after our last frost and the yields have been poor. My guess is because it goes from too cold to germinate to too hot in about a month around here and they go to seed right away. I’m going to use the two galvanized raised beds I got for free. It’ll be nice not having to crawl around.

I started broccoli and cauliflower a couple weeks ago cause like you said in the time it takes to start outside from seed its to damn hot at harvest time. Last year was my best broccoli year ever even with the deer eating half.

JEREMY wrote:

Last year was my best broccoli year ever even with the deer eating half.

Really? Broccoli is the only thing I’ve grown that deer haven’t eaten!

We do bucket gardening and this year adding some grow bags for potatoes. I heard they do better in the grow bags. This is done at the lake place we have no well so we use rain barrels and haul our own water up. This year I’m adding the Grow Bucket self watering system in the buckets. Sometimes I may not be there for a few days so they need to have water available. We also have a self watering raised bed that works pretty well.

The raised bed soil is always very wet but things grow great in it. This is our third year of doing it and have had mixed results. Any tips or tricks would be great. I buy starter plants I don’t have the room or desire to work from seeds.

Now yall got me itching to play in the dirt. Surprised nobody has mentioned Seed Savers! Three of my alltime favorites came from their catalog; moonglow tomatoes, orca dry beans, rattlesnake green beans. They have s ton of other great stuff too.

Ice Cap wrote:

We do bucket gardening and this year adding some grow bags for potatoes. I heard they do better in the grow bags. This is done at the lake place we have no well so we use rain barrels and haul our own water up. This year I’m adding the Grow Bucket self watering system in the buckets. Sometimes I may not be there for a few days so they need to have water available. We also have a self watering raised bed that works pretty well.

Finally making the move to grow bags this year. We have multiple big garden areas and we just couldn’t keep up with the weeding. Plus we’re in sand so sand burs become a huge problem, especially during the droughts the past three summers.

What size bags are you using for potatoes? Height specifically..

They are 10 gallon size and are 13 inches tall. Sounds like 3 to 4 potato plants per bucket is what should work. Hoping for good results. If they work we will probably add more next year.

What varieties of potatoes do you grow? I have two 35-40g stock tanks that I drilled drain holes into and thought I’d try taters in at least one of them.

picklerick wrote:

What varieties of potatoes do you grow? I have two 35-40g stock tanks that I drilled drain holes into and thought I’d try taters in at least one of them.

This being our first year trying potatoes I’m not sure yet. Start with the simple varieties and see how it goes. Most likely russets, reds and yukons. Same stuff we buy in stores. If things go well we will branch out into other varieties.

I started 72 tomato plants on 4/10. I’ll plant most of them and sell the rest at the town rummage sale on 6/1. I’ll be amending all my beds and planting a mess of snap peas tomorrow. After that, I’ll have a better idea what other cole crops I can get going outside now.

has anyone noticed the asparagus starting to pop out of the ground???

in about a week my winter onions should be game on!!!!!!

I’m kinda new to the gardening, last year was my first season.

I dumped some leaves in my garden last fall. The problem is that a lack of snow this winter didn’t really break them down much. Should I just leave them in there or remove them before I start using the garden again this a spring?

Not really a “garden”, or maybe a garden on steroids, but our leaser put in 35 acres of sweet corn on Friday, April 12.

I also saw ramps in the woods today while we pruned field edges. I’d expect morel reports to really flare up the next time we get 60+ degrees and sun after this week’s rain. A buddy sent a picture of a tiny one from down by La Crosse today

just till what ever didn’t blow away in.