re: 2020 Garden Thread

Hell, I just grab the bag and toss handfuls down the rows.

My seedlings are taking off. Beans have sprouted, saw a couple of Okra taking off, and even a cucumber. Still waiting on squash and tomatoes to sprout. I know I got a late start but we have a long growing season here. I went ahead and tilled two areas on Saturday afternoon. My old existing garden space where I plan to put everything, and a smaller patch to just do beans in. Plan is to plant the beans first, whatever will fit, and the rest I'll put in the back garden. I've bought lumber to frame off the bigger area. The second area isn't as sloped and it is going to be all beans anyway. Going to get them in the ground later this week. Any tips before I do that? Should I take the seedlings outside for a few days first?

When is it time to fertilize? Most of my plants are just starting to flower and some are just starting to produce. Also, what do y'all recommend I use? Finally have a decent garden going and too scared to frick it up. Have some Osmocote as well as some blood meal and bone meal readily available, but will order something if I need to.

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For example a tomato plant that is ready to be transplanted outside, I would harden off for about a week. Starting at like 30 minutes on the first day, gradually increasing to a few hours at a time around the 7th day.

Are you not able to just let them sprout outside?

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I was mainly talking about the beans. Most of them have already sprouted. They’ve been planted in starter pots for about two weeks. I didn’t have the ground ready and last time I had a garden it worked well to start in the basement. I still have other plants that are just starting to sprout.

When my plants are in what I call the in-between growth phase (between seedling and production), I like to use the Miracle Gro Tomato Plant Food once a week. It has higher Nitrogen (18:18:21) and gets them off to a strong start.

Once they start making flowers, I used to use the Jobes Organics Vegetable and Tomato food because of the lower Nitrogen content (2:7:4). You want the plant to focus more on the fruit rather than the foliage. This year I’m using Hi-Yield Garden Fertilizer (8:10:8) to see if it makes a difference.



I’ve been using Fertilome/Hi-Yield products for a lot of other things and love their stuff. Might as well try more of it in my garden.

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I was mainly talking about the beans. Most of them have already sprouted. They’ve been planted in starter pots for about two weeks. I didn’t have the ground ready and last time I had a garden it worked well to start in the basement. I still have other plants that are just starting to sprout.

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I would put anything in a starter pot outside as soon as they sprouted. They will also grow much faster in the sunlight.

Never transplanted beans, but i would start putting them outside a little bit at a time and see how they take it, and increasing duration each day.

Do you guys use epsom salt when they start producing fruit?

Yea, sunlight coming through windows is probably at least 10x less than natural sunlight.

I think I read that 50k lux is the most amount of sunlight that can be used by most veggie plants. Which is about a little less than full sunlight, ive measured full sunlight to be about 65k - 90k. With partly clouds its about 50k. Overcast about 25k - 30k.

I’m saying that because I just went measure what a few of my windows get, and it’s not more than 1k lux (although I don’t have any direct sun facing windows right now).

My grow light puts out about 10k lux. I have some okra plants that i seeded at same time, a couple outside and a couple inside under grow light. The ones under grow light barely have true leaves developed and the ones outside are on like their 3rd or 4th set and considerably larger.

I just rambled a bunch just to state the obvious that anything indoors doesn’t compare to full unfiltered sunlight! Lol

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If you notice the big bright green bush on the bottom is a Roma Tomato, why is it big and green and the other two to it’s left are brown and dead looking? They all three were planted at the same time.

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That's a good question. Are they getting the same amount of water? What are the other two varieties?

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Also notice the cherry tomatoes to the left are starting to have little flowers budding out. What should I do with those?

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Those flowers will ideally make tomatoes. Let them ride.

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The banana peppers on the bottom right are doing fine I guess, are the leaves supposed to be bright yellow?

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No. They should be dark green. Bright yellow suggests a nutrient deficiency of either nitrogen or iron. If the yellowing starts at the bottom and worked its way to the top, it's probably nitrogen. If the veins of the leaves are green, but the outer parts of the leaves are yellow, then it's probably an iron deficiency. It's also possible that the soil was a little hot/nitrogen heavy when you planted everything out and the plants got burned a bit.

Here's a link to check out: LINK

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The back right is cucumbers idk wtf is going on with them.

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They look stunted from the photo but it's hard to tell.

What did you use to make your soil?

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The back left is bush beans and they are doing fantastic. Do I need to do anything to them?

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Nope. Let em grow.