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Gardening thread 2021

Started by Ferris, April 05, 2021, 02:26:54 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Dex Sawash

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 08, 2021, 07:45:47 PM

I'm in USDA Zone 6b

I wonder if Canada has different zone maps? 6B is like Northern Virginia.

Ferris

Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 09, 2021, 03:40:29 AM
I wonder if Canada has different zone maps? 6B is like Northern Virginia.

We're considered 6a by the Canadian USDA equivalent, and (juuust) 6b in the US system. I do not know why the systems are essentially the same but different, but here we are.



Also: coriander sprouts. Fucking loads of em overnight. I'm Monty Don for the new millennium.

Buelligan

Make sure you keep those coriander well fed and watered, also gentle picking of leaves (once they've got some size) and early/immediate removal of all flower buds - I trust they're in reasonable sized pots or something - if you don't, it will bolt, become coarse and untasty, go to seed (which you can then harvest and use) but the plants themselves will only be good for composting.  Same with Basil and most other herbs that are treated as annuals.  Plenty sun too.

Ferris

Quote from: Buelligan on April 09, 2021, 02:13:00 PM
Make sure you keep those coriander well fed and watered, also gentle picking of leaves (once they've got some size) and early/immediate removal of all flower buds - I trust they're in reasonable sized pots or something - if you don't, it will bolt, become coarse and untasty, go to seed (which you can then harvest and use) but the plants themselves will only be good for composting.  Same with Basil and most other herbs that are treated as annuals.  Plenty sun too.

Why do these fuckers require so much work?

Why can they not simply become a free source of food for me whenever I fancy? Honestly.

Buelligan

Heheh.  The more you do, the more you'll love it (probably). 

Ferris

I'm going to start lecturing to them that I could just go and buy some cilantro/mint if they're not careful.

That should set them straight.

Buelligan


Ferris

Quote from: Buelligan on April 09, 2021, 02:32:07 PM
Worrying.

I am tremendously trendy liberal parent, but the genetic '70s dad will out I'm afraid. Better aimed at the petunias than Ferris Jr.

Now if you don't mind, I'm off to berate my fava bean sprouts for not keeping their backs straight.

No Gardener's World tonight because of that old cunt dying. Outrageous.

Buelligan

Dear god.  I blame the medical profession.  Back in the days of George V, doctors knew their duty and would off the sovereign at a time that dovetailed decorously with public media consumption.  What has become of your once proud nation?

Emma Raducanu

My once incredibly healthy and abundant lupin foliage suddenly looks like it's falling asleep. Please don't die you cunts.

Buelligan

What do you mean DolphinFace?

Emma Raducanu

I planted some lupins, there looks to be fresh, healthy growth and some flower buds coming through but some of the leaves are wilting

Buelligan

Take it you gave the pots a good soak before planting, watered well after and made sure they've not dried out since.  Also nothing like dog pee has gone on them and they've not been shocked by extreme cold or heat.  If the answers to all these questions are all OK then think about something nasty like this https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=687

Emma Raducanu

I watered them in well but maybe not watered them well enough since. I don't think it looks like that disease; they looked pretty good yesterday. I'll give them some water tomorrow and see.

Buelligan

It's really important when you plant new things, water before, water in and water after, repeatedly, not just a day or two.  Hope they perk up all lovely.

Reason for watering before you plant (good soak half an hour or so before) is that you want to make sure the soil/compost in the pot is really wet.  If you plant something dry, you can get a situation where the potting mixture never bonds with the soil in the bed, the roots don't grow out as they should and the potting mixture just dries out (stressing or killing the plant).  Always good to make sure the pot soil and the bed soil are thoroughly wet through.

Ferris

Quote from: Buelligan on April 09, 2021, 10:20:15 PM
It's really important when you plant new things, water before, water in and water after, repeatedly, not just a day or two.  Hope they perk up all lovely.

I tried this and got mould! You can't win with these fuckers.

Side note: since I last posted the coriander's gone bananas[nb]not literally[/nb]

Buelligan

Heheh.  Mould?  If you're getting white/grey mouldy looking patches on your plants, it's usually because you've not got enough space between them or there's some other issue with air flow around them and/or it's very damp weather or you're watering them onto the leaves (rather than direct onto the soil) so you're splashing around fungus spores and giving them a nice damp home on the leaves.

Great news on the coriander.

Ferris

It was air flow (probably?), I've turned the soil over a bit and it seems completely fine now.

Jittlebags

I'm mainly just removing cat-dirt from the back garden. As well as covering it with plants which appears to dissuade the furry fuckers.

Sherringford Hovis

Quote from: Sherringford Hovis on April 17, 2020, 04:02:31 PM
Have to decide this weekend whether a plainly wrapped express package from Seedsman is in the offing this year or not.

Didn't bother in 2020, but having planted 'em on Monday, as of this morning I'm proud Dad to six beautiful young ladies: well, I hope, ladies - won't be able to tell for a few weeks, but the two Lowryder and one Blueberry should be, as they're feminised autos; the three Jack Herer are traditional photoperiod so anything could happen. I'm so excited - haven't grown since 2018.

Asparagus?
Where the fuck has it been? Just beginning to poke out a languid tentacle or two. Latest it's ever showed up - hurry up, you bastards: I don't want to have to eat Sugar Puffs just to stink up my piss.

Garlic
Designed by HR Geiger. Ominous and earnestly yonnic.

Onions
Juicy. Unattractive and not particularly pungent - but really juicy. Never known any onions so crisp, yet moist. My abdomen distends vaingloriously with better coleslaw than you've ever tasted.

Cabbages
Original Swamp Thing, not Alan Moore Swamp Thing. Vengeful and one-dimensional.

Rainbow chard
Restarted from seed after losing clumps that had been going 8+ years. As brave as a 1950s Pride march, just as fragile, just as tragic.

Raspberries
Coin-toss glut or famine, never the happy medium.

Loganberries
Probably not bothering this year, think they're mostly dead and require greater faffing with canes and bird protection than I can be arsed with.

Strawberries
Feral neglecterinos drowning in the mud. Fruit or don't? Fuck you, straw-bez. Don't care either way.

Apple and pear trees
Raining blossom way too fast. Invented some tiny little whips to make the bees work faster, efficacy doubtful but if I can sell the idea to the almond-milk agri-behemoths, I'm in clover.

Blackcurrants and redcurrants
I pruned them back so hard it made my wife cry and complain to the neighbours about my serial plant-murdering ways. Those bastards better sprout like triffids - my whole gardening reputation depends on it in a village that makes Ambridge look like a stoic and non-gossipy place by comparison.

Gooseberry
Clinging to the area where previous householders burned stolen motorbikes, these weary looking, ancient dependables produce no matter what. Shame we don't do anything with them other than make booze. We always freeze the best few kilos, dreaming of gourmet Gooseberry delicacies but then smash 'em into low-effort wine after making precisely one boring crumble in 10 months.

Blackberries
No clearer evidence that agriculture is a retrograde step from hunter-gathering. Do nothing, then harvest. Best fruit ever.

Beans and peas

Arguing about beans. I want to grow an absolute fuckload of just broad beans because they're low effort and I could eat 'em every day. HovisWife wants to faff about with lots of different varieties including revisiting past failures. My position: if you want to fuck about with the beans, then all the pulses are yourthing™. I don't have a position on peas, other than bollocks to peas; if you want peas they're yourthing™ as well. The impetus behind my unreasonableness is: of our overly cornucopic pulse selection, broad beans are the only one that taste better than shop-bought, so the others are a waste of space (plus peas are soooo cheap, it's a wasted effort too). I will win, Pyrrhicly. 

Grape vines
About another five years to viability. 2020's tiny bunches were equally as hilariously cute as they were inedible.

Indoor olive tree
HovisWife's deity. Only an idolator would refuse to venerate and genuflect before the holy plant. Hallejujahgobble! We must perform a Quirkafleeg!

Rhubarb
After the heat-death of the multiverse, there will be rhubarb. Rhubarb is as rhubarb does.

Roots: parsnip, turnip, multitudinous heritage carrots of many colours, radish.
Fuck salsify, scorzonera and kohlrabi: there's a reason you're not popular - IT'S BECAUSE NO ONE LIKES YOU. If I've grown you more than once it's only because I was brainwashed by weekend lifestyle colour supplements.

Peppers and chillies various: didn't even read the packets, just planted 'em. If there's reapers and Dorset Nagas in with the bells and mini sweet - so be it. If we dies, we dies.

Brassica:
purple broccoli; no Romanesco this year because they make my eyes go funny, conical cabbage, Brussels bastards because nothing's better than 10 minutes of awkward Christmas small-talk about homegrown Brussels bastards.

Leaves: I dunno - lots, I guess. I like it when you don't wash out all the inhabitants thoroughly enough for that special surprise protein crunch.

Melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, squashes: depending on what pollinates what, some bizarre results in the past including flying saucer shapes. Hoping for something properly eldritch this year, an edible Arwassa mayhap.

Courgettes: The Adrian Chiles of vegetables. Bemusing in their banality.

Herbs: basil, rosemary, chives, fennel. Keep the good ones for yourself, put the losers in fancy pots and give them away. The recipients will invariably kill them, leading them to guilt-gift you back something nicer than they'd normally consider.

That's an impressive list!

We don't make much effort to grow anything edible. We have 2 clumps of rhubarb; one was here when we moved in and one is "the family rhubarb" divided and handed down through the generations in my family. Once that one is established I think we'll be extracting the monstrous mound taking up prime real estate.

We also grown tomatoes in the greenhouse and lots of herbs but somehow the vegetable growing bug hasn't hit despite having plenty of space and a walled garden.

It's my wife who is the gardener really - I just do what she tells me and offer an opinion. She's always talking to me about her annuals and perennials, her cosmos and her dahlias. I enjoy the outdoor exercise and the lovely garden that results.

IsavedLatin

Today I planted a euphorbia and two pretty big agapanthus plants in my front garden, and despite all being decently big plants (at least 5l pots) they look amazingly titchy in the soil. Feeling a bit twitchy that the agapanthus up by the front wall may not get enough light, fuck it. Also dotted in a few crocosmia corms that I picked up in Sainsbury's for under £3.  (What do we all think of buying gardening stuff at the supermarket, is it déclassé?)

Also wanged a few foxgloves into the back garden, at the same time inadvertently bludgeoning and probably killing the couple of foxgloves I put in last year.  I gave them some compost love, we'll see what happens. 

The hydrangeas I ordered from my delivery lady look exactly like a bunch of dead sticks in a pot.  I am going to put them into containers, so that I can try them out, once in bloom, in a couple of different locations, and possibly next year I'll commit to a permanent home.

Ferris

Tomatoes are sprouting, cilantro is going like the clappers.

Piece of piss this isn't it?

Dex Sawash

Dug a trench for the flowering sweet peas next to the fence and found the buried electrical feed for my house. Only cut through the first layer of insulation. Close one there, off to buy a lottery ticket.

Buelligan

I bloody love sweet peas - too hot and dry here though.  If you get the chance, try growing Cupani.  Supposed to be the first cultivated sweet pea, beautiful dark flowers with a scent that's unparalleled.

Quote from: IsavedLatin on April 11, 2021, 06:50:53 PM
What do we all think of buying gardening stuff at the supermarket, is it déclassé?

Nope.  Never be tempted by price into buying something vile though, never buy anything you actually want that you can see is sick, dead or useless, that's the rule (with me, at least). 

Recently (in the last year), I've bought crocosmia (25, I think), Gladiolus byzantinus (the small, species, gladioli, native to this area, a delicate subtle plummish thing, at least 25), a wonderful dark blackish bronze Iris hollandica (at least 25), all things I would like to have bought anyway and got for 2.50€ a pack or less.  Also got a Trachelospermum jasminoides for 3.50€ and a bog standard lavender for a neighbour's garden for 2€.  And usually buy a basil (one of those ones you're supposed to kill on the kitchen windowsill) just pot it up in good compost and grow it outside all summer, giving me a summer's worth of basil for less than a pack of seeds.  Also do mint that way.

Brian Freeze

Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 11, 2021, 07:01:41 PM
Dug a trench for the flowering sweet peas next to the fence and found the buried electrical feed for my house. Only cut through the first layer of insulation. Close one there, off to buy a lottery ticket.

Nice, how deep is this trench?


Dex Sawash

Lineman out yesterday at 6 to see what the idiot homeowner had done. It was an abandoned plastic irrigation pipe. Fucksakes.

Edit- trench 12" deep

Buelligan

A good depth for sweet peas, fill it full of fine food and drink.  Do not stint.  In the olden times they used to line trenches (for runner beans as well as sweet peas) with newspapers before backfilling with rich soil and compost, to keep the root run moist.