re: 2020 Garden Thread

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I like that bamboo idea. That’s a great (free) way to make a trellis.

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If you have them, zip ties work well to tie the cross beams.

I usually mix boilling water with my soil before planting seeds, haven’t had knat issues since doing that.
Do have mold though and I know it’s from over watering, but I feel like there’s no way around it because the mold always comes back even if i let the soil be dry for 2-3 days.

I have a few flats of tomatoes that got left out and rained on last night. About half of them look like they weathered it just fine. I'm worried that the other half may have gotten too much, as they were laid over with water this morning when I checked them. I have the plastic back up covering them from the rain the rest of the week. Any experience with how those that were laid over may fare?

Try cheap ground cinnamon sprinkled on it

I topped some of my pepper starts last night. I've found that the bell peppers don't respond that well to it, so those stayed intact.

Everything is doing pretty well. I've got a couple of tomatoes whose lower leaves shriveled and fell off. The new growth looks fine though so I think it's probably just a lack of light getting to the bottom because they're crowded. Coming along nicely though. The smaller seedlings are just stuff I started later/don't really care about.

I started six shishito seeds this morning

Cucumbers and tiger zucchini, which grows exceptionally fast ha.

A lot of my plants ended up real leggy. Mostly because of low light and the heat mat left on too long. I'm doing a half arse restart with a few more seeds and let nature decide which were the strongest by setting them out on a windy day this past week. Ended up only losing a handful of plants.

I'll cut the mat off as soon as I get sprouts and will be able to move them out more often with the mild weather we should be getting soon.

Garlic is looking strong though in the garden. I think next winter I will use up the whole bed with it since I haven't had to touch it at all and am most looking forward to it.

I found a few blossoms on my meyer lemon (still don't know what I'll do with the lemons but it was free) but nothing on the satsuma or ruby red yet. I might try getting a cutting from the satsuma and starting that over since I jacked up pruning it a few years back.

The 3 of the 4 blueberries are loaded with flowers along with the blackberry. The single blueberry was in mostly shade but has since been moved into full sun. I'm thinking about separating the blackberry and having a second bush going in the ground as opposed to in the pot. I'll look it up later but I'm guessing I can just separate roots where I have secondary shoots coming up out the soil and plant that.

I don't expect anything from the apple trees this year. The one that got hit hard by cedar apple rust ended up pulling through, but I have a feeling it will be a constant battle with that particular variety. The other was able to fight it off with little help from me. It's more of a "southern" type (Cinnamon Spice) than the other (Winter Banana) though. I doubt we got enough chills hours here though which wouldn't be a bad thing so it can take this next year and get some more growth.

Thanks. Good info. I may try it with a few of my jalapeño and Cayenne plants.

Meanwhile, I got my results back from the soil lab. They pretty much said “you don’t need to add anything.”