Here is the gardening thread for 2011. Happy New Year!
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Here is the gardening thread for 2011. Happy New Year!
Asparagus, any one know where to purchase for a fair price? I just received 2 catalogs and both had em' 10 1 year old plants for 14.95
So when is ya'll planting times? Some here will set tomatoes as early as mid March but most wait until 1st or 2nd week in April if they dont want to be bothered with covering plants due to chances of frost.
May is generally the month I put tomato plants in the garden, probably the most pop mo. in tidewater VA.
Flats look at a feed store that carries a good supply of seed, onion, & potato seed, etc..., and chances are they carry asparagus in the early spring. Think I paid $4.95 for what was 22 or 23 crowns when seperated. (5 yrs ago) They were sold in a loosely bound bundle. If you find em they are sold pre-sexed, they are yearling plants grown from seed and dug up and sexed before resale as starters. The crowns are white and have many tentacles. If you see any red spots on any of the crowns toss em. They are the wrong sex, and will only produce skinny, somewhat woody spears. You will get enuf of that in yur bed after several yrs from natural reseeding, but it is undesireable to plant them as starters beginning a new bed. If you should find too many of em I would point it out and ask for a discount. Or for solid white replacements for them, crown for crown. Most places that sell em dont know about em, just the cost & mark-up part.
Hog Choker and I put in beds at near the same time and are enjoying the rewards.
2 truck farmers I know both said they have attended conferences on growing asparagus and the one thing they preach is phosphate use- plenty of bone meal. I know I can get em here just down the road, or can tell you when theyre in if you strike out down there.
Thanks for the updated thread PanMan.
Date of last frost in North Eastern NC is around April 15th. Now if there is a certain soil temp needed for Tomatoes, I don't know.CF
Flatbread- Va. Beach Feed and Seed Witchduck Rd. near Va. Beach Blvd.
Like HS said, I put my bed in maybe 4 or 5 yrs. ago and it's a wonderful thing to see 'em pop up in the late winter.
I'm sure you've read up on it, but you really have to hold back on the cutting for the first couple of years to let them get established. After that it's game on and your pee will be stinking from March through June:)
I have never noticed that, and am always taken unawares every time I see reference to it. Guess I'm 53, I better get down on all 4s, or arc a stream past my nose and see what the fact of the matter is. I hate to caveman on myself and be swishing it around in a spaghetti sauce jar, holding it to my nose to detect any eloquent bouquets and crap like that. Sipping definitely outta the question.
Brad you coulda offered to "prune" it for the 1st two yrs for him, get it trained to grow best when it matures.
And anyone else interested:
I am ordering potato onions. Google em. Theyre regular yellow onions, albeit smaller, and grow in a cluster, hence the potato name. Theyre smaller than a regular onion but STORE INCREDIBLY LONG. Getting seed for them is still hard cuz theyre coming back into popularity after many many yrs of going backshelf to modern large varieties. I am getting my seed from Southeast Seed Exchange, and the way they do it is by first-come, first-serve orders taken after Jan 1st. They raise their seed right there and harvest in June and start filling orders. The idea is to get 1 order (8-12 onions) as starters, plant em in the fall, then June of 2012 I will have a good amount of onions from those to start planting with eating in mind and a part reserved for seed. The very true claim to these onions (we grew em on the farm) is that once you buy the initial ones you will never ever have to buy another onion in yur life after 1-2 yrs. They keep so well that you always have seed from that yrs' crop, and even will keep the extra yr if you skip planting a yr. They are so prolific growing in clusters like they do that you just always have good firm onions around. I aint trying to live sustainable or nuthin but am doing things like asparagus, garlic, onions now, and saving seed from stuff so that some items will never be on my shopping list in this lifetime again. I remember how we grew big onions in the garden, and had a good place in a root cellar in our houses' rock cellar-like a sandbox, to keep em for a good long time, but there was always a big cardboard box fulla potato onions sittin in the porch cuz they kept so well it dint matter that it wasnt good conditions. If/when the big onions ran out or started going bad we always had potato onions and often used em anyway cuz there were so many and they were handy kept upstairs. Citified friends of the family were always amazed when my folks would send em back home with a feedsack fulla potato onions, be calling a yr later saying dam theyre just as firm as day you gave em to us.
Moral of the story: Do ya want some?
http://www.southernexposure.com/inde...roducts_id=873
Please explain "save some for seed"?
Do you plant the same bulb and it grows another cluster of onions?
I feel ya on the saving seed stuff. It felt good to plant garlic that I produced last year. I'm still eating garlic that I pulled last June. Did the same with the shallots. And those green onions you gave me have helped with many a good meal. I think I've provided 3 or 4 gardeners with starter bunches from the ones you provided.
-Let the good times roll
I just ordered mine. Under "special instructions" I put to just make sure they send mine before they send yours:p
Do you plant the same bulb and it grows another cluster of onions?
Yes. These originals, saying 1 order is 8-12 bulbs, each bulb will produce a cluster when planted. Those 8-12 clusters will represent quite a few bulbs. About 2 of those 8-12 clusters will be replacing yur original 8-12 bulbs and 6-10 clusters will be
the amount you have multiplied yur original stock by. Now you can do what you want, keep aside the same # of bulbs you started with for replanting for the following years' crop, and eat the rest,.... or keep even more aside for reseeding and have a really huge harvest the 2nd yr.
Some other things I aim to plant this year Brad include Delicatta winter squash, dent corn or flint corn, cranberry beans, turban squash, Purple Andes potatoes. Gonna have that kid of Happyspankers swing by and give him a Shoer Spud Sampler next summer with S. American blues, Yukon Golds, LaSoda reds, and Kennebec russets. Him & I are are going to do some bootstrap barter for some additions to my Jigs of the NFL series, which quite a few of the sites' tiers have made entries to inclusive in orders upon request. Yeah, ol Shoer been workin on a cpl projects behind the scenes that may be a cpl yrs before unveiling but should be worth the wait when shown in their entirety.
My community garden has decided to erect an electric fence rather than a 7' tall deer netting style fence. We are doing this based upon the recommendation of one of our neighbors who says the electric fence works great. I am skeptical because I think the deer will simply jump over it. Our garden will have a perimeter of 50' x 160' with individual plots of 20x20 inside. Does anybody have experience using an electric fence to keep out deer? I suspect it will have 2 or 3 rows of wire, top row probably chest height to a deer.
My Neighbor has an electric fence around his. Its about 6 strands going about 10 feet high.
I planted some asparagus yesterday. Think it was too late or early to plant it? I bought it from Stark Bros. online. I have had it for about a month refrigerated and they were looking a little dry.They have good prices and free shipping.I also bought 3 blackberry plants. 2 apple trees, 2 peach trees and a cherry tree.
I don't know which part of VA you are in. I planted my asparagus bed about 5 yrs. ago. I planted early March, about the time the daffodills appeared. Since you probably planted deep, you'll probably be OK.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Cat
I'd pick around to check for growth about mid-March. Good luck. Asparagus is a great crop.
my dad had big probs with the deer.he ran a single strand electric fence about 30 in high and put peanut butter on it occasionally,no deer even come close since
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hog Choker
What time of year are they picked? Thought it was late spring?
March through June for me. You do know that you can't pick any for the first two years. If you do it will have a negative impact on long term production.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Cat
I was just recommending pulling dirt away to check for growth (just to make sure the plant was alive)
It took me a couple springs to get all my crowns going good, but now I don't think you could kill'em if you tried.
I just went back and read the book that came with my plants and it says....
"Asparagus spears should be lightly harvested the first two years until the plants
are established. By the third year, you should have a nice crop from late April
until spears grow thin, usually late June.."
So I guess I wasn't BS'ing you. I've been known to do that from time to time, but not about anything as serious as growing asparagus.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big_Cat
hey brad when should i plant taters this spring and how long till harvest. and when should i start to teal up the ground. oh master of the graden. i should have payed more attention from my father. he had supplied me with veg for a lot of years. i never got it till a couple of years ago. growing a garden is a lot of fun. looking forward to spring
Is it new ground that you're tilling? If so it will take a few go rounds to get it right. I'd start whenever it's dry enough that the loose dirt won't hold a ball after mashing it in your hands. The spuds should go in mid Feb. through early March.Quote:
Originally Posted by jim.b
Back to the tilling: I've got lots of good reasons to NOT till. Come by one afternoon when we can go out back and I'll show and tell. You may find it interesting.
Is it too early to put in onion sets? I bought a bag of them this weekend and could use some advice about growing them. Do I plant them in stages if I want to harvest all summer?
Keep the onion sets cool & dry and wait a few weeks. Your garden sits at an elevation of 500'+ and is 150 miles from the ocean, so you have none of the advantages that allow SE VA gardners to start early. Anything you put in the ground now will just sit there and shiver. If you have muck soil or it's poorly drained, cold wet ground will rot most seed and halt the growth of transplants. Onions can take a lot, but in the long run they'll do better if they can put down roots and start growing aggressively as soon as they are planted.Quote:
Originally Posted by wasabi
The only way to cheat the climate is with black plastic. A black plastic cover captures the sun's heat and traps it in the soil. As soon as you can till your plot thoroughly, prepare a 12" to 18" seed bed with 4" deep trenches along the sides. Roll the black plastic down your rows and pile dirt all along the edges to keep it from blowing loose. Plant through small slits in the plastic. Yes this is more difficult and expensive and it requires extra clean-up at season-end, but for selected goodies, it's worth the effort.
did some tilling this aternoon,gettn ready to plant onions,peas,taters,lettuce prolly 2 more weeks but gonna be ready
fatslab are you really here in Va.????? I took one step into my garden yesterday and went up to my ankle in mud. I don't see any late winter planting here in Suffolk.
AC
hey bradley when i get a chance i'll stop by and steal some of your secrets . also do muskrats like taters. i hope not. they put a hurting on my garden last summer. funny thing was they only ate certain veggies so this year i'm not going to plant the ones they like. i think i am having a shoer moment. i miss jeff:(:o
ac the ground is tillable here in saluda,thought i would go ahead before this mid week rain hits.prolly can open a few rows with my hand plow now that its tilled in a couple weeks or so,plantn gods willn
The muskrats might "dig" those spuds, but not to worry. I'll give you my trap. even lend you my .22 to dispatch them. You just have to prromise to post pics. of the carnage.Quote:
Originally Posted by jim.b
Saluda you say. Should be sandy topsoil I would guess.
AC
local feed and seed closed,went to a new source and they dint have onyuns no sugar peas or english peas or taters neither,gonna find some today and get started.try to get lettuce too.
onions are sprouting and lettuce is coming up,sugar peas,taters,cabbage and brussell sprouts in,come on warm wx
Not a big fan of Walmart, but, they have their stuff in now, including several types of seed potatoes, asparagus, onions, about anything you may want.
Heretick Feed and Seed in Hopewell has the best looking plants I've seen this year and they have a lady there who can knowledgeably discuss about any gardening topic.
doin some tillin,taters,onyuns,cabbages not sure about peas this year?maybe
i planted 8#red pontiac taters.1#white onyuns.8 cabbages,flathead dutch and gourmet blend lettuce got em in just before the rains
found Hereticks years ago after working in Hopewell on a shutdown (retired Millwright) , Have great line of EXMARK zero turn mowers as well as good parts and service,(I have lots of grass). have used them ever since for variety and healthy well managed seedlings. for example 35 broccoli sets 3.50 . I put carrots and spinach in a small patch back in October carrots are going crazy though the spinach is bout done will replant as I enjoyed fresh spinach all winter this year. Hopewell quite a run from Louisa but hey I can also visit the big boys toy store in Petersburg (Agri Supply)Quote:
Originally Posted by Redy2Fish
I am thinking with all this rain I may have a tater patch instead of rows has the rains hampered your early planting any?Quote:
Originally Posted by fatslab
problem solved thanks anyhow .straw baie erosion control will get me straight
my lettuce seed got scattered by the rain taters are breaking up thru the ground ,onyuns about 6in hi.if it was dry i would till some more and plant snaps maybe squash since its so warm