your gardens

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ponee59
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Re: your gardens

Post by ponee59 »

I live in a rural area. We have one and half acres. It is mostly clay soil. I have not found many vegetables that do well in that type of soil. Lately we have been putting in grapes which are doing well. So my family has decided to start a small grapery. I am mostly interested in grapes for eating such as concords. I don't think we are quite ready to verge into wine making yet. We might try to expand into other types of fruit though.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Synchronized »

TNHawke wrote:I'm no plant expert- black thumb of death over here, actually- but Poinsettias don't actually bloom in winter. They are kept in hot houses with specific lighting schedules and then shipped out at Christmas because of the whole red and green thing. My Mom's usually died sometime in summer, although her last one has been alive for two years now.
I know that. They don't bloom at ALL if you don't have them on the specific lighting schedules. Turns out it's pretty hard to keep a plant in pitch darkness for two months, hence why mine didn't bloom at all during the two years I had it besides the Christmas we received it.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

wow... two whole months?! Do they need to be kept cold too? or does the lack of light just put them into hibernation?
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

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Re: your gardens

Post by Synchronized »

TNHawke wrote:wow... two whole months?! Do they need to be kept cold too? or does the lack of light just put them into hibernation?
No, poinsettias aren't a winter species. It's just the simulation of light/no light to make them "bloom".
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TNHawke
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

It's bulb season! Well, the season in which stores sell bulbs. I picked up quite a few different kinds. My garden is going to look spectacular come spring. IF I can get them planted! The problem is, they all want to be planted at least 5 inches down, a couple want 6 inches, but a few only want 3... my dirt is only 6 inches deep, and there's pavement under there! ><
There is room for more dirt on top, so I'm planning on getting some bags of cheap potting soil- very cheap now since it's the off season. and fill up the rest of my flower bed.

The problem is... what do I do with my current plants? The dirt currently down there is mostly clay, I'd like to mix the potting soil into it. I'd also like to lay down a water guard to keep moisture in the dirt and out of the bricks where it tends to drain away- slowly taking my dirt with it.

Should I just carefully dig up the current plants, mix the old dirt with the new dirt and then replant? some of my plants, like the petunias are annuals and I'll probably need to just pull them out eventually anyways. And I'm not sure about some of the others like the marigolds, or even what some of my flowers are! I would actually like to break up and spread out my succulent so that it can take over better and mix flower colors easier. They're kind of clumpy right now.

Any suggestions?
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

Thank you all for many fun years.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TxCat »

Hmmm...if you have a place that will do so (some Ace Hardwares do and you can also buy an inexpensive kit) I'd have the soil tested. You really shouldn't remediate unless you absolutely have to do so and the plants just aren't growing. Even then, potting soil is not the best choice because most companies who make it also mix fertilizers into them. I'd look for hummus soil and mix that in if you need to (it's just soil).

If the plants are annuals (plants which produce only once in the year and then die) then dig them up. If they're perennials (go dormant and then return) and you're in a cold place, it's time to start bedding them down. You can do this easily by spreading a thick layer of mulch or dead leaves around the beds and mounding them about the roots.

I don't know much about bulbs; they generally rot when put directly into the soil here so I don't plant them.

Meanwhile, we got a goodly portion of our yard cleared now that it's colder. I was surprised to find that our lettuce had bolted, reseeded itself, and now there are still edible leaves there. Yay!
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

I found the little plastic tags that came with most of the plants. I've got almost entirely annuals. So, that makes things easy once we have our first freeze. I'm not certain if the flowering succulent is meant to come back or not, but with all the flowers it made, it's probably reseeded itself.
I'm pretty sure marigolds are annuals, but what about snap dragons?

The ground here is literally solid clay- you can throw pots with it if you wanted to, all slippery and sticky when wet and hard as concrete when dry. On top of this, the specific dirt in my flower garden was scraped out of somewhere and just dumped into a brick rectangle on pavement next to the brick building. Even the native weeds have trouble growing in it. The fertilizer and little white balls to help keep the dirt aerated are very good things for this patch. What I'd done before was dig a hole in the clay, fill it with potting soil and then plant the flower in that- and they did great once they got over the shock of being transplanted.

It's still very warm and sunny out, and likely will be through most of October, so I don't need to do anything to winterize the flowers for a few more weeks. I just have to get the bulbs in the ground before the ground freezes. We'll get a couple of frosts over night before that happens, so once the annuals are dead, I'll pull them out.
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

Thank you all for many fun years.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TxCat »

TNHawke wrote:I'm pretty sure marigolds are annuals, but what about snap dragons?
Succulents are usually perennials and so are marigolds. You might have noticed that as the flowers headed on the marigolds, they got brittle and made some small black seeds. (Perennial also means they won't need replanting). Officially (and this varies with the climate) perennials live more than two years; annuals flower, seed, and die in a single year. Snapdragons are both, either all season perennials or cold season annuals.
The ground here is literally solid clay- you can throw pots with it if you wanted to, all slippery and sticky when wet and hard as concrete when dry.
That kind of soil can be extremely productive but it does need help. You'd have to ask your local gardener (if you have a gardening association even better) what needs added to fix the problem. I'd start completely from scratch and build a bed to your liking according to what plants you want to grow there.

We just brought all our cacti and cold sensitive plants in. It's not freezing yet but it will soon and I learned the hard way that a wet Florida frost is just as devastating as those dry cold ones gotten out west.
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Re: your gardens

Post by TNHawke »

TxCat wrote:
TNHawke wrote:I'm pretty sure marigolds are annuals, but what about snap dragons?
Succulents are usually perennials and so are marigolds. You might have noticed that as the flowers headed on the marigolds, they got brittle and made some small black seeds. (Perennial also means they won't need replanting). Officially (and this varies with the climate) perennials live more than two years; annuals flower, seed, and die in a single year. Snapdragons are both, either all season perennials or cold season annuals.
I know the Marigolds will re-seed. I've never been able to tell if the same plant comes back in the spring, or if it's new plants from the previous seeds. I was hoping that my Bachelor Buttons and the Marigolds that the Grasshopper ate had seeded, but I'm not too hopeful now. Maybe in the spring... We'll see.
Since I know it will freeze here, the snap dragons are likely considered annuals, so I'll pull them completely when I winterize.

Thanks!
Hawke's IRL fiance, Lunaroki, suffered a massive stroke and died on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015.

Hawke needs to concentrate on other things, and is leaving MS permanently.

Thank you all for many fun years.
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Re: your gardens

Post by Synchronized »

Welp, looks like I'm not getting anything this year-- my Morning Glories are finally starting to die off, as well as my tomato plants. I won't be doing the latter again next year, they don't do well in pots and I ended up not using any of the tomatoes anyway(I kept forgetting about them). My cantaloupes are starting to die too, so my dim hopes of fruit before winter were dashed. Darn. At least I have seeds for next year!

My columbines are still around, but still have not flowered for whatever reason-- my indoor basil isn't looking too good, and I suspect that I mistakenly gave it too small of a pot, when compared to my friend's basil plants(his were at least three times the size of mine). I may just snip it and chop some of it up for my beef stew tonight and dry the rest.

At least I got this out of it:
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Unfortunately the larger gaillardia plant has given no flowers and has essentially just turned into a very large weed. Sigh.
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