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Gardening Tips
I like gardening as a diversion from brain work and as a way to wake up with fresh air and sunshine with my morning coffee. There are many effective tips and tricks to help our gardens grow. Since springtime is upon us and things are already rapidly growing, now might be a good time to share some tips we have discovered for ourselves. Here's a few to start: BLUEBERRIES: In past years, my blueberry plants have been "normal" with healthy looking plants and a moderate to light crop of blueberries. In January, I re-potted with an acidified soil mixture and they are kicking ass now like I've never seen before. My 7 blueberry bushes are loaded with blueberries already and most of my plants have more clusters of blueberries then they do leaves. This happened because I custom mixed my soil: 1/3 potting soil, or homemade equivalent 1/3 miniature size redwood "gravel" 1/3 Sphagnum peat moss I bought a soil acidity tester on Amazon for $3 and the soil measures at 5.5 ph - perfect, and the key to bountiful blueberries. I keep my blueberry plants in large pots because I can control the soil mixture and drainage better. I can also roll them into the warm sunny places in winter and spring, then back away from the intense sun and heat we can get later in the summer that will fry many plants, no matter how much they like full sun. SUCCULENTS: I met two lady neighbors this morning who where working in their BEAUTIFUL drought proof front yard of a large variety of exceptionally nice succulents. They were terraced with boxes and flagstone walkways. Weed screen covered the ground, then smooth pebbles over that. She said they put in a drip system when they assembled their yard 2 years ago and never use it. They loaded me up with enough clippings from about 15 varieties of succulents to first pot, then propagate my new landscape in the weeks to come as I reconfigure my soil and irrigation systems. I am down to one small lawn (used to have three lawns on three sides of the house). I'm seriously considering removing my last lawn and going "native" with my ornamental landscape and save the water I recycle for my herbs, peppers and tomatoes, and for my fruit & nut trees (grapefruits, oranges, mangos, limes, guava, bananas, macadamias, avocados, etc.) We have a 30% water rate increase coming at us, no doubt with massive finger-wagging and penalties for using more than a meager allotment per peasant per month. Most of this enormous cash flow is sucked dry by the bloated and ever-growing bureaucracies that regulate us rather than for the actual water, or the cost of new water delivering infrastructure. I don't know if it's legal, but this spring I'm going to re-route the drains from my sinks and showers for 100% recapture to my yards as gray water. F'em. I'm also hooking up a rain barrel system to my washing machine to bucket onto my non-edible landscape. All my dishwashing water has been going on my plants for the past three years. Fresh rinse water goes on my edible plants and the soap water (Dawn) goes on my non-edible plants, also as part of my insect control plan. The soil tip I learned from the succulent ladies today is this: 1/2 potting soil 1/2 "Dry Stall" which is the same as perlite, crushed lava, etc. The difference being is that Dry Stall is sold at animal feed stores to throw on the ground in horse stalls. It's $14 for a 40 pound sack, which is dramatically cheaper than buying commercial cactus mix or perlite at places like Home Depot. ------ None of them are red yet, but my tomato crop is already emerging from last years plants that never died, or the volunteers popping up in their place. It's time to get some fresh new plants in the ground. There are lots of blooms on last years pepper plants and my japanese eggplants are loaded with finger size eggplants already. My eggplants are also in terracotta pots so they can migrate around my yards as the sun and heat locations change. ------ Grape vines use relatively less water. I have Perlette for seedless sweet table grapes, due to be ripe in the heat of later summer. ------ What are some other effective tips and tricks for enhancing our gardens? Mar 21 15 01:19 pm Link It's pretty labor intensive but we put layers of newspaper down with mulch on top between rows. Really keeps the weeds out. Pepper spray helps alleviate the damage of deer and rabbits but rabbits further with the addition of a .22. Yeah, yeah, I know, they're cute and cuddly and everything but they'll destroy your plants before they're little more than seedlings. You're in CA? Are you allowed to collect your rain water and the like? I know some states that will convict over that. Mar 21 15 08:09 pm Link Good stuff. My two tips. 1. Here in England, most people's gardens are small, so explore vertical gardening + raised beds and trellis, 2. Half the year, stuff looks dead so invest in evergreens eg evergreen honeysuckle and jasmine which smells great and is easily trained up trellis or dead trunks. Done this at my parents garden. along with a raised pond, and what a delight it is. Mar 21 15 09:44 pm Link Good stuff. My two tips. 1. Here in England, most people's gardens are small, so explore vertical gardening + raised beds and trellis, 2. Half the year, stuff looks dead so invest in evergreens eg evergreen honeysuckle and jasmine which smells great and is easily trained up trellis or dead trunks. Done this at my parents garden and what a delight it is. Mar 21 15 09:44 pm Link Vermicomposting Composting Your Organic Kitchen Wastes with Worms Require time and the quantity produced is low for a garden but sufficient for use on some plants and remains a positive approach to the recycling and a conscious use of resources, reducing waste. Use plants adapted to the territory, which reduces the need for interventions. Crop rotation, mulching, etc. Try to use the nature for help itself on the gardening: List of companion plants while don't forgetting to pay particular attention to the possible drawbacks associated with some of them. Eventually take a look even at Soap Plants for understand if could be view as an alternative, at least for control pest on some plants, when is necessary. For caution, when is used Soap, even in non-edible plants, try to pay attention to the amount: Insect Control: Soaps and Detergents And for greater caution, don't exaggerating to avoid any possibility of contamination of the land, eventually ground water, and/or beneficial insects. Generally try to look at Organic gardening as much as possible. Ideally try to adapt the approach of Fukuoka: Masanobu Fukuoka's 'The One-Straw Revolution' which requires several years, for obtain certain results, and a deep knowledge of the area, and pests as well, that inhabit the territory. Note: Those who have the space and time, maybe it could also add some small farm animals (like chickens,etc) after protecting the part of the garden and plants of interest, in order to optimize the use of their territory, that give even advantages at the level of self-consumption. Mar 22 15 05:13 am Link Click Hamilton wrote: No, it's not. Your local officials won't like that, and you'll like it even less if you get caught. Mar 22 15 07:17 am Link Whomever built the house Hue and I bought decided it should have a lawn. WTF? Lawns **do not** belong in the low desert, besides Hue said the grass didn't taste good in her Vietnamese recipes. Hue wanted me to dig out the lawn and plant an "Asian" garden. It's really funny how women can come up with good ideas that involve a shit-ton of really hard work. Since the lawn already had a pop-up sprinkler system, I figured cool. Not so much. Once the plants around the edge got too big, they blocked the water from getting to other plants. Sigh. Being the rocket scientist that I am (and a really smart dude), I got lengths of PVC and raised the pop-ups to about five feet above ground. That way, the water would fall down on the garden like rain. HA! Did I mention that I was really smart? Ummm, not so much. I didn't realize that many plants, like tomatoes, really don't like to get their leafs wet especially in a hot climate. Sigh. I have now converted my pop-up system to a soaker system. One backbone with soaker tubing for each row. Shit, by the time I get this figured out, I sure my maters and other stuff will come in at 400 ea. That's o.k. 'cause I'm so smart I know it is a far better deal than just going to the store and getting stuff for 1.00 ea.  Compost. Compost is a **good** thing. Just don't do it the way Hue was taught growing up in Vietnam. Her momma just told her to spread all of the (organic) kitchen waste around the garden. So, one day, I was out in the garden and noticed these plants starting to grow. It was obvious they were not weeds so I thought I'd wait and see what happened. BIG FREAKIN MISTAKE. BIG! HUGE! By the time I could identify them they had (overnight it seems) taken over my garden and were literally climbing up low hanging branches on my trees. Who knew cantaloupes could grow so fast or climb trees? If you think taking out an established lawn is painful, try taking out cantaloupe vines. That there is some truly miserable work. Going back to the "Hue Angle." I can't really say for certain why anyone living in the Sonoran desert would want to try and grow things that simply do not belong here, but I suspect it has something to do with Hue being Vietnamese. Oops, I meant to say Vietnamese-American. My bad. I must admit to being very surprised. Stuff that I thought would never stand a chance in hell do quite well - mint, Thai basil, lemon grass, etc. Go figure. Lesson learned (for me) was to set aside a 2ft sq plot and use it for a test bed. Along those lines, I have also found it better to get seeds for non-native plants from the country of origin via Amazon or some such. I bought some Thai basil plants that were already about 3 in tall. They went to flower when they got to about 1ft. The leafs were so scrawny as to be unusable. Me, being the pig-headed bastard that I am (read that as really smart), decided to order some seeds from Thailand. I stuck them in the ground and waited, and waited, and waited. I figured that I had been sent some bad seeds. Oh well, life happens. One morning I was shocked to see a row full of sprouts. Them Thai basil plants hit about 4.5 ft before even thinking about going to flower and the leafs were freaking huge. Hue was very happy. Yeppers. I'm convinced that a test bed is a good idea. Ya just never know until you give it a shot . . . . One final tip. Some plants grow from seed. Other spread via their root system. Mint, for example, will spread like a wildfire when given enough water. Plants such as these are easy to contain if you get some old shingles or similar and make an underground wall by pounding them about 10in into the ground. You're welcome. My little sister that I haven't seen in about 30 years is coming in from the U.K. on Tuesday. I've been fretting about what the hell I'm gonna do with her out here in the middle of nowhere. I think I just got my answer. Think I'll wait 'till she gets here before I tell her. Mar 22 15 08:08 am Link Take a look even at Growing Potatoes in Containers that give many different benefits as: - to have fresh potatoes year round - less likely to be harmed by bugs or other pests - easier harvest naturally giving them the appropriate need for the soil and change it after every harvest. Note: Jute Potato storage sacks instead of plastic are a more naturals containers. Mar 22 15 11:31 pm Link Click Hamilton wrote: It's possible that it might be legal to do, but you should definitely do more research than I've done. Mar 23 15 11:37 am Link If you get fresh manure (like horse), let it sit 6 months before you use it. When it is fresh it is high in nitrogen and will burn your plants. Makes a great base for composting though and gives you time to add the other normal compost stuff. Its also usually free if you ask a local farm if you can remove some of their manure. Cayenne pepper sprinkled around the garden will also help keep the critters away. It was useful when I planted tulip bulbs and kept the squirrels from eating my bulbs. Also works if you have to bury a pet in the backyard (lime works too). Mar 24 15 12:35 am Link R80 wrote: Yes. They hand out taxpayer subsidized rain barrel rebates here. "Starting at" ... $75 per barrel. Mar 25 15 07:47 pm Link Lohkee wrote: We are also offered a rebate of "$2 or more" per square foot of lawn we remove. Mar 25 15 07:55 pm Link Click Hamilton wrote: Cherrystone wrote: I suppose that means I'm not allowed to pee in my back yard either, right? Mar 25 15 08:01 pm Link I had a garden once. There were strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, and wild catnip. My husband at the time had the bright idea of planting tomatoes. My tip is to never let a color blind person pick the crops! He is red/green color blind so he did more harm than good. Mar 25 15 08:05 pm Link Click Hamilton wrote: Brian Diaz wrote: There has been activism and debates going on about using this source of water rather than dumping it down the sewer. Most gray water is safe and should be recycled into our landscape. I think the pendulum is swinging that direction. It should. Mar 25 15 08:18 pm Link Steve Young Photos wrote: Add lots of shredded newspaper to the manure. The newspaper contains carbon and balances out the manure's nitrogen. Mar 26 15 11:00 pm Link |
