- Joined
- Jul 25, 2020
I live in zone 4. Once you get past the winters, our climate is actually pretty good for roses as we get a lot of sun and regular rain. I still wish I could grow dahlias, though.
Gardening and Plant Thread
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HERE YOU GO
kiwifarms.net
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- Oct 31, 2020
what the heck i almost made a plant thread last night because i failed to find this how many times!?
okay now that i'm here, i started growing some basil, parsley and cilantro in a bin while i wait for the ground to thaw outside.
i will be coming back to post more.
i have these hibernating in my closet while it's cold:
i wanted to try growing melons like cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon to make juice, because they produce so much liquid they should make a lot of juice.
added with how many apples i already have, i can already make apple juice, and i pressed sweet cider last year. it was very tasty.
i need to spend time fencing in the orchard and new crop area, i have a huge crop area i'm starting so i can grow even more things like a big row of carrots, pumpkins and sugar beets.
the ground is cold, but i can start digging into it on most days already. i still have to wait till about june to plant any big crops so i have months to go before anything goes outside.
okay now that i'm here, i started growing some basil, parsley and cilantro in a bin while i wait for the ground to thaw outside.
i will be coming back to post more.
i have these hibernating in my closet while it's cold:
- vanilla bean vine ( madagascar vanilla beans )
- common dragonfruit cactus ( red rind, white inside )
- apricot sapling
- brown turkey fig
- dwarf banana ( edible )
- windmill palm tree sapling
- grapefruit sapling
- chinese cinnamon
- snake plant ( grown for my garter snakes habitat )
- celery that will be transplanted outdoors ( i cut the bottoms off store bought celery to re grow it )
- a sweet potato vine that has died and come back several times
- an apple orchard
- long rows of raspberries and black berries
- 3 types of mint for tea
- oregano
- jumbo red strawberries and white strawberries
i wanted to try growing melons like cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon to make juice, because they produce so much liquid they should make a lot of juice.
added with how many apples i already have, i can already make apple juice, and i pressed sweet cider last year. it was very tasty.
i need to spend time fencing in the orchard and new crop area, i have a huge crop area i'm starting so i can grow even more things like a big row of carrots, pumpkins and sugar beets.
the ground is cold, but i can start digging into it on most days already. i still have to wait till about june to plant any big crops so i have months to go before anything goes outside.
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Man I'd do almost anything to have a small personal orchard, there are so many varieties of fruit you just can't buy commercially. I have a similar situation in a sunny room in my house with maybe a dozen purple dragonfruit plants I started from seed 3 years ago, a Thai butterfly pea that I'm trying to overwinter, and a random assortment of potted flowers. Last fall I was given a nice used 8' by 12' hobby greenhouse so I'm looking forward finally having adequate room to start seeds and transfer them into 3in pots before the last frost. I've already started some seeds, only 2 more months before I can really get down and play in the dirt.
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2020
wow, dragonfruit started from seed, those are about just as small as vanilla bean seeds.
i had a large dragonfruit cactus limb that someone sent to me in the mail, my lack of knowledge caused it to die several times but i got the hang of it, and now it's this tiny little plant. it used to have a huge piece to grow from, but it died off so much that it's now a tiny recovering plant.
my orchard started as a food plot that deer hunters were using to bait deer, they planted the best apple you can imagine of course, honeycrisp.
there is a deer problem in my entire state, a wild growing 9+ tree orchard of honeycrisp apples was definitely attracting them and my yard has major reoccurring deer issues.
the prior owner was pretty bad here needless to say, i've picked all the apples up every year since and have enjoyed them.
the deer problems are why i need a solid fence for all of my crops, but that's gonna be a shit load of fence to put up so it's not happening as fast as i would like it to be.
the orchard used to be bigger, there were several dead apple trees that had to be cut, i saved the apple wood to smoke meat like brisket.
i've bought very expensive illicium verum ( chinese star anise ) multiple times and unfortunately every time i try to own the beautiful aromatic plant it completely dies.
it's always like 100$ and up to buy the damn plant, it's hard to find anywhere. i'm wary about buying another one because they keep dying, i want it to live!!!!
it's an exotic plant that isn't very hardy i guess..
star anise has been a problem for me. i also have a hard time growing pimpinella ( butterfly weed ).
pimpinella is extremely aromatic and makes great candy like the Anis de Flavigny brand.
here is my tiny dwarfed and almost died several times dragonfruit. it stopped dying and started making new growths a few months ago.
i'm surprised it's alive at all. i'm not having a lot of luck with it.
it has a large clean cut at the top because it started to rot and turn into mush half way down the stalk at one point, i cut the rot off trying to save what was left. it still looks like it might die at any moment lol.
Honored guest
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
I don't recommend growing from seed if you have cutting as a option, the initial growth is painfully slow, I've also had problems with die off with my dragon fruits. They're pretty resilient in that its hard to kill them but its easy to hurt them, I've had large portions of die off just from the plants being near a cool window that went a few degree below room temp (72f), I've had portions die off because is got a little to sunny and they weren't fully hardened off in the spring, and I've had portions die because they felt like it.
I've never tried growing stare anise, and at $100 a pop I don't know if I will try any time soon, have you tried getting your hands on seeds instead of buying live plants? It'll probably take a few years longer to get a harvest but it'll give you more chances to make mistakes and correct them as time goes on.
Butterfly weed grows wild by me, you need to stratify the seeds for about a month if you want to get any to germinate, once you get them established they should do fairly well. As for your deer problem get a shotgun buy some deer tags and bag yourself some fresh venison from your patio window while wearing nothing but your underwear.
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2020
i'm jealous that butterfly weed just grows around you. the star anise is hard to find seeds for because people sell you culinary star anise that are dried and can't germinate anymore. very hard to find seeds for sale that actually germinate because people don't sell them right, you'll often buy culinary seeds that don't germinate even when they say they're for planting.
i bought the vanilla as a small cut piece of another vine, and it has grown a lot since then, but the leaves stay small. i had plans to start vanilla from seed, but i kept buying underdeveloped seeds from people that don't know how to harvest vanilla correctly.
i even suspect people were buying the vanilla beans from the store and pulling out the seeds, calling them "grow-able"
i have all this exotic orchid shit like nutrient agar left over because i bought it all for vanilla seeds that weren't harvested correctly.
here is the vanilla vine piece now, it's been in the closet all winter so its new growth is dwarfed, it might have grown two vines from the lack of light, i'm not sure.
the leaves are small, and it doesn't have a perfect spot to grow in yet. i pulled it out of the closet to get a picture, it's about 3 years old.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2016
+1, starting Asclepias from seed is a colossal pain in the ass. We're lucky if we can get 40% of it to germinate.
- Joined
- May 9, 2020
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You use blue and red grow lights? Are you happy with them? I have one from a couple of years ago, but I feel like I'm getting better results with regular daylight 55Ws. I wonder if there's any use for the red LEDs if one is only growing plants that won't flower and fruit indoors (which in my case are all of them).
You use blue and red grow lights? Are you happy with them? I have one from a couple of years ago, but I feel like I'm getting better results with regular daylight 55Ws. I wonder if there's any use for the red LEDs if one is only growing plants that won't flower and fruit indoors (which in my case are all of them).
HERE YOU GO
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2020
if your plants are like a caladium and snake plant then they can grow with basic light.
more importantly is the light cycle, if your plants are on an appropriate light cycle they will grow better in general.
i have my lamps plugged into a timer, they turn off at the same time every day.
my best lamps are 300 watt 12-band LED grow lights, they used to be half the price they are now, so it seems like people like them.
beefy lamps like this are mostly for plants that need to fruit or flower, you can leave it on "veg mode" or "bloom mode".
the 300 watt 12-band LED light changes slightly when the 'bloom' switch is turned on, certain plants like this feature.
plants flower depending on how much light they are given everyday, not what spectrum of light they are exposed to.
that lamp looks like this:
alternatively i have small dome mounted lamps with 24 watt 6-band bulbs.
there is no flowering to vegetation switch on these like the 12-band has.
these work really well but they cover a lot less, the timers are the most important part though.
a bulb like this with a dome attachment goes a long way, but its downfall is how little space it covers.
you'll probably need to buy 4 of them to really cover a group of normal sized plants.
i suggest aiming them straight down above the plants and not at angles.
you may have to adjust the height of your lights when your plants get taller.
to answer your question, yes, i like them personally, the single 6-band bulbs are sold out on amazon and hard to find alternatives for.
i would try to plug your lamp into a timer even if it doesn't need full spectrum light. most plants like about 16 hours of daylight for vegetating.
every time you move a plant into a new area it has to establish it's light cycle differently and this weakens the plant.
( plants aren't supposed to get up and walk around so when you move them, they actually have to adjust )
you would need to plug your light into a timer like this and plug the timer into a wall socket.
you might need extension cords to use it.
plants really like light cycles, so when you forget to manually turn on their light it's not very good for them.
the timer really helps, you just make sure it shuts off at the right time.
this socket timer i suggested can turn on at specific days and times, you can have it turn on/off only on monday if you want.
the UV light can damage/temporarily alter your vision so i don't advise them to be in an open area of your house.
some plants hermaphrodite when exposed to awkward cycles of light so consider how much external light is getting into your plant room.
i have a ton of milkweed seeds myself, milkweed coma is the fluff attached to the seeds that carry them in the wind.
the milkweed coma can roll up similar to cotton, and one milkweed pod produces a ton of it, meaning it has multiple uses similar to cotton.
needle felting can be done with milkweed coma for example, a plant alternative to roven wool.
i personally think milkweed grows best by rhizome, judging by how i see it in the wilderness.
it makes long tube like roots and shoots up new stalks of milkweed the longer the root gets.
milkweed transplants horribly, its milky toxic stalks are very fragile, and i have never moved a milkweed that didn't die.
keep it when it dies, it is rebuilding rhizomes, it will shoot up another stalk and try again so long as it doesn't rot at the roots.
milkweed comes back every year, even in states that freeze, it's wild where i'm from and colder states are better candidates for milkweed because hot temperatures alter the toxicity of milkweed, causing adverse fatal effects on monarch larvae trying to eat it.
hot states may be able to grow milkweed, but the hot temperatures are growing milkweeds that are too toxic for monarch larvae.
i've found bird nests very tightly woven together hanging from trees full of milkweed coma, they use the fibers to stay warm and poke it into their nest a million times until it's a big wooly ball hanging from a tree.
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- Joined
- May 9, 2020
@HERE YOU GO
Thank you! I never got a timer, as I've always been unreasonably paranoid about setting my flat on fire, so the lamps are mostly on when I'm home and off when I'm out. There's some rhyme to it, but probably not exactly what seedlings need. The color LEDs used to have a bit of a pot growing stigma where I live. Thankfully, chilli growing got popular, so it's OK to be seen using one, lol. I'll try to read some more on it and perhaps give them another chance. I tend to be too "intuitive" with this stuff, when a more scientific approach would probably work better.
Thank you! I never got a timer, as I've always been unreasonably paranoid about setting my flat on fire, so the lamps are mostly on when I'm home and off when I'm out. There's some rhyme to it, but probably not exactly what seedlings need. The color LEDs used to have a bit of a pot growing stigma where I live. Thankfully, chilli growing got popular, so it's OK to be seen using one, lol. I'll try to read some more on it and perhaps give them another chance. I tend to be too "intuitive" with this stuff, when a more scientific approach would probably work better.
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2020
yes, the purple lights have a stigma and can even attract a criminal to your house thinking you have weed.
i grow weed personally, people have a tendency to ruin growing threads with their abundant marijuana pictures so i figured it wasn't important to share any of mine.
OP even said something about the weed pics on first post. i forgot how much police used to bust people for seeing the purple lights lol..
all the better reason to block out other light from coming in, no one will think you have weed.
how much light your plant wants depends on what plant it is, you have to look into what you have to know how much light per day it would want.
your plant can be a shade plant, half shade, or sun plant. a shaded plant may not like the light directly aimed at it but aimed next to it instead.
when you say you turn the light on and off throughout the day when you leave and come back, that isn't a light cycle a plant would like to live in.
the light should be on for a solid 16 hours and then off for the rest of the entire day, essentially trying to stimulate actual sunlight that rises early in the morning and sets late in the day. entering your grow room when the lights are off and letting light in can damage your plants similar to a human having interrupted sleep.
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- Joined
- Apr 21, 2021
Back in summer I bought three heavily-discounted (the lady gave them to me for $2 each I think) out-of-bloom phalaenopsis orchids. She was so happy I was taking them, because they get thrown away otherwise and she was out of room for more at her house. I actually love buying plants that aren't in bloom because 1). they're usually damn near free, and 2). it's exciting to me to wait and see what color flower I get.
One of them died, and I hadn't been paying much attention to the other two except to dump some water on them once in a while. I've been so preoccupied that I didn't even notice that they both had buds! They bloomed last week and they're both a lovely classic white (like the ones I found a generic image of; my camera is broke or else I would have got a picture). I'm just excited and think it's neat that they're blooming at the same time.
I guess a lot of people struggle with phals, but I've always had weirdly good luck with the "stick it in a clear pot in a brightish window and water it whenever I remember to" method.
One of them died, and I hadn't been paying much attention to the other two except to dump some water on them once in a while. I've been so preoccupied that I didn't even notice that they both had buds! They bloomed last week and they're both a lovely classic white (like the ones I found a generic image of; my camera is broke or else I would have got a picture). I'm just excited and think it's neat that they're blooming at the same time.
I guess a lot of people struggle with phals, but I've always had weirdly good luck with the "stick it in a clear pot in a brightish window and water it whenever I remember to" method.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2014
I got inspired by Null's stream and decided to start a small garden on my second floor patio (I live in an apartment). I bought an already-small spearmint plant, and my other ones in small pots are peppers, arugula, and basil. Problem is the plants are supposed to get "full sun" and they only face the west.
The problem is that a lot of the plants that aren't available is because plants are extremely picky about temperatures and soils. If my mother can complain that plants on one side of the house don't do as well because they get more direct sunlight and heat than other parts, then imagine trying to grow something exotic that won't play well with anything but conditions similar to the mountains outside of Rio de Janeiro.
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2020
Has anybody here every tried collecting rosehips off of their roses to make jelly out of? I have had rosehip jelly and I like it a lot, but I was curious if it was difficult to do.
I think you can use rosehips from almost any rose, but I am not sure.
I think you can use rosehips from almost any rose, but I am not sure.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2016
For people who took up or became more serious about gardening during the pandemic, are you staying with it now that it's all but over? Also, is inflation encouraging you to garden more?
- Joined
- May 9, 2020
I started shortly before covid and am planning to stick to it, as people who can grow food will be needed if some of us make it through the nuclear apocalypse.
Currently also planning to enroll in a carpentry course to be able to make some basic stuff like pallet boxes, planters or bird houses. I still can't quite turn gardening into a money saving hobby, but I figured I spend much more on things like this than I do on seeds and plants.
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Pepper seeds like warm soil, so if you can use a seed heating mat or something else to warm them. I've had seeds take about 2 weeks to sprout so they might just be slow starters, but you can always put some more seeds in the cells/pots. I find that soaking them in luke warm water for a few hours before I plant them also helps.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I've never done home gardening really seriously but I almost always grow a couple basil plants and some peppers. I'm a fan of basil pesto and freeze a few batches for the winter too. You can't really buy it fresh for a reasonable price.
Yeshua Moon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2021
Anyone have advice on making a lazy cheap garden from seed in a lawn that is mostly clay? Everyone on youtube seems to do raised beds with expensive gardening soil but based on my uninformed calculations it seems like the expense is dramatically more than it would cost to just buy the end product from the grocery store.
I tried really hard at making a garden once, but everything ended up getting obliterated by yankee beetles. I liked them when I first saw them because they looked interesting. Then they ate every leaf. Then I learned they were probably the origin of chemtrail conspiracy theories because the russians blamed cold war era starvation on americans dropping them from planes. (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-2...e propaganda,collect the beetles after school.)
I do have chemtrails over my house all the time.......
I tried really hard at making a garden once, but everything ended up getting obliterated by yankee beetles. I liked them when I first saw them because they looked interesting. Then they ate every leaf. Then I learned they were probably the origin of chemtrail conspiracy theories because the russians blamed cold war era starvation on americans dropping them from planes. (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-2...e propaganda,collect the beetles after school.)
I do have chemtrails over my house all the time.......