Do you have a cheap secret to great lettuce & leafy greens?
Like depression-type secrets?
Or are you breaking even with soil & other additions?
Garden Thread
- Thread starter IschKabibble
- Start date
Like depression-type secrets?
Or are you breaking even with soil & other additions?
After the initial buy in with the soil, there isn't much I have to do. The soil doesn't go bad, it just needs to be topped with compost once in a while, fertilized properly prior to each new crop, and then recharged from time to time (like every 2-3 years). One thing I really like to feed the soil is if I harvest a full bed of lettuce, I'll cut all stalks into little bits, and tear up the greens that I won't be eating, then just bury them in the upper 3-4" of the planters and let the worms and bioactivity break them down a bit prior to replanting any given planter. I don't wait until they break down completely because they are still giving off nitrogen as they break down. I also use Espoma's Garden Tone prior to each planting. I take a couple handfuls and just work that into the top 2" of soil, then plant directly in. It isn't too expensive for organic fertilizer if you buy the larger bags (they are just under 30lbs). As soil levels drop over time I add cow manure compost and toss that into the top part of the soil (you don't want a thick layer on top of the soil because it's actually really hydrophobic once it's dry, and new plants really need that water in the upper column of the planters). When they need a recharge I mix in new soil with the used soil, but it isn't an issue of removing any existing soil, it's just adding new and mixing it in. This isn't needed all that often.
I don't think about being ahead or breaking even, so that would be difficult to calculate. If I were selling my lettuce instead of giving it away to friends and family I'd be wayyyyyy ahead, but that's not my business. I just pretty much never buy what I grow, unless we're talking peppers in the off season. I will say I eat TONS MORE vegetables than before I started growing my own food, that that's something I also wouldn't be able to calculate.
His climate is crazy consistent from what I have gathered
average low/highs most of the year in your location? semi dry air?
I'm in growing zone 10b, a few miles from the coast, and 45 minutes from the Mexico border. Average for most of the year is tough to determine unless you look at weather.com. Winter is 50's and 60's in the day, 40's at night, sometimes dipping into the 30's (just a few nights a year). Summer is 80's, sometimes 90's. We get Santa Ana winds (winds switch from onshore to offshore, so the desert dry air blows to the coast) during the summer and fall which push temperatures into the 100's for a few days at a time. Humidity is pretty low year round.
It was 82 today for example.
My oro blanco grapefruit is throwing out blossoms like crazy and they smell amazing.
My 3 year old (basically bonsai) Serrano plant is packed with peppers.
At the end of the first year I had this plant I thought that would be the case as well, but I was lazy and didn't pull it from its container prior to winter. I didn't water it or anything, thinking it was done. Then come late February I noticed it wasn't dead, so I threw some cow manure compost on top, a handful of garden tone, and then in another month and a half it was throwing out crazy flowers and produced far heavier than the previous year.
They really only die when it gets really close to freezing
a bit of decent weather and sun afterwards and they can stay alive even if they drop leaves
We have days with only 9 hours of light and it can be dark, wet, cold High 30s-low 40s for weeks/months at at time. All peppers and tomatoes basically die from cold and start to wilt/rot by sometime in December.
I love that it has been alive 3 years, very fucking cool.
what size pot?
It's 3 gallons, lol. That's why I'm calling it basically a bonsai.
I don't fuck with tomatoes after they have disease, which they all get at some point. Having said that, I also forgot about romas that I thought were dead, and one of those plants survived in a 3 gallon pot, with literally ZERO help from me, and it produced really shitty looking tomatoes the following year. I always thought determinate tomatoes would die after they give their flush, but lesson learned, not the case.
That is odd.
I think your climate defies many gardening guidelines.
Sometimes a plant will revert to previous genetics via seed but I haven't heard of it in the same plant, maybe it mutated when it almost died that year and came back??...
Should have tested it tho, that tomato was probably the cure for Tourettes or something medicinal like that
Or eating one turns you into a Biden. Who knows? Based upon tomato disease I would only experiment with it, not eat the fruit the following year. If it can poison compost, who knows what it would do to a person's system.
I only meant to feed it to someone with Tourettes and observe in the name of science
I personally wouldn't eat such a thing, the thought of it is unsettling
I wonder if
@KnockoutThoughts is game for the experiment?
My tomato plants are looking more healthy than anytime I can remember them in the past and it's 100% the size of the container. Typically I'd use pots but this year I'm using a 3' circular fabric planter that is usually a lettuce bed. I've got 2 cherokee purple and one brandywine. I'll probably need to stake them soon since they are growing out of the tops of the cages. I should have bought the tall cages...
I'm thinking of bending a bunch of hog panels into pentagon or hexagon shaped cages for super grande tomato plants
I made one a few years ago and really like it, I just put a 2x6 across it and bend it and then move it and bend again, 4-5 bends and you have a super sturdy lifetime tomato cage...need bolt cutter to cut the heavy gauge hog panel
Kind of like this but I don't want right angles, I want a pentagon or hexagon cage
I replanted my planters with prizehead and lollo rosso. The prizehead were putting on length to the stems under crowns, so they just be ready ready to bolt off the bat, especially with the next 5 days or more looking likenits going to be in the 90's. Time will tell. I could have gone heavier with lollo rosso and even added ruby leaf and black seeded Simpson but I made the executive decision to go prizehead heavy since it's my favorit lettuce. I'll give the other plugs away or just throw them in the compost pile.
I'm not a gardener - yet - but the wife had bought some cocktail tomatoes for a salad. I cut one 1/8" slice out of the middle of the tomato and covered it with 1/4" of dirt.
About a week later a bunch of seedlings popped up and I pulled the biggest one out and replanted it.
It's a good 36" tall now and starting to fruit.
About a week later a bunch of seedlings popped up and I pulled the biggest one out and replanted it.
It's a good 36" tall now and starting to fruit.
My tahitian lime tree is throwing out tons of blooms. This little fucker is going to be loaded.
Fuck yeah!
First passion fruit flower. Do these need other flowers to pollinate? It's the only one on the plant and there aren't even signs of another that I can see. This one kind of came out of nowhere to be honest because I don't even know what I'm looking for.
Second one out of nowhere. Really interesting plant. The flowers only stay open for less than a day, so yesterday's flower is already gone. That is the window of time it has to pollinate and become fruit.
This is my first time growing Tabasco and I'm shocked at how prolific they are. Coming in heavy, and larger than I thought they would be as well.
The serranos are producing really nice size fruit, perfect for throwing on the grill.