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Backyard Vegetable Gardening & Livestock Raising & Sustainable Living

I've been trying to get some Morgan scorpions to germinate. Damn super hots are fussy little buggers. Its getting to the point that if they do grow at all, I'll put them in pots to winter over in the house.

I dropped seeds for my tomatoes today.
Dreaming of a good BLT or just a tomato sandwich.
 
iheartthisthread said:
I've been trying to get some Morgan scorpions to germinate. Damn super hots are fussy little buggers. Its getting to the point that if they do grow at all, I'll put them in pots to winter over in the house.

I dropped seeds for my tomatoes today.
Dreaming of a good BLT or just a tomato sandwich.
Click to expand...

Mine took a good 2 weeks to germinate nicely. Had them in a moist paper towel in a ziplock bag. This is around 6 weeks in, took them a little while to get going because I couldn't find the heating pad but now they are doing well.

0dANCmz.jpg
 
Those are looking nice and healthy. Ms iheart got the seeds we used in a trade. Maybe the seed was old or something. The sweets and mildly hot peppers that I saved seed from are just emerging. I love seeing other peoples garden pics so keep us posted as they progress. :)
 
Last year I made my first proper attempt at gardening with raised beds. The slugs came, they conquered, they fucking decimated the lot; then the plants went all unhealthy and unappetising. The snails also played their part. So these are my raised beds last year before I put anything in:



And this (following picture) is how they look today after some tidying/improvements. I've managed to create some beautiful loam-esque style soil from the abundance of clay available in my garden. The plants you see are mainly my left over winter/spring salads (I planted them far too late). I've currently got mibuna, tatsoi, kale, sorrel, red giant mustard, chard and parsley.



Close up:



Close up 2:



Right, now for the interesting part. I found a link at instuctables for creating an electric slug fence.



The two stainless steel wires in the above image run parallel to each other around the perimeter of the raised beds. They are then connected to a 9V battery, which is located in the old box of Aldi paté. When a slug crosses the first wire nothing happens, because it hasn't completed the circuit. When the slug makes a connection with both wires, however, it receives a small, non-lethal shock and moves away. This is a video of the slug fence in action.



Apologies about the abrupt and shaky nature of the video. Ironically I couldn't find a single snail in my garden today (we usually have hundreds), and I was only able to find a single slug. Interestingly, the slugs seem to be instantly conditioned to avoid the wire after a single exposure (so I struggled to take a decent video as the slug knew what to expect).

I've tried all kinds of "natural" methods for slug control, unsuccessfully, and I'm not comfortable with killing them. Living in the cold, rainy and cloudy lands of Northumberland they are a serious problem and had I not happened upon this piece of ingenuity, then there is absolutely no chance I'd still be attempting to grow my own vegetables.

So yeah, if you suffer from slugs like I do, consider this! The materials are pretty cheap. Oh and also, the first raised bed which I wired up is now completely free of slug/snail damage. I expect the other to follow suit.

I'll keep you's updated on my endeavours.
 
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An electric slug fence. Epic post.

Lettuce ten days later.

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Nice to see new peeps in the thread :)

Planted 48 cells of tomatoes about a week ago. They're up... Most varieties of them anyway. Two of the cherries are lagging behind.

Seeded 72 cells of various broccoli, a six pack of both red and green cabbage and a dozen Brussels sprouts.

My garlic outside is starting to make a showing, so at least I know it survived the winter in the ground.

Can't wait for the garden to dry enough to get my peas in.
 
iheartthisthread said:
Nice to see new peeps in the thread :)

Planted 48 cells of tomatoes about a week ago. They're up... Most varieties of them anyway. Two of the cherries are lagging behind.

Seeded 72 cells of various broccoli, a six pack of both red and green cabbage and a dozen Brussels sprouts.

My garlic outside is starting to make a showing, so at least I know it survived the winter in the ground.

Can't wait for the garden to dry enough to get my peas in.
Click to expand...

That's a lot!! I wish I had that sort of room. I grow everything on a 3x15 balcony lol
 
My garden is about 2000 square feet give or take. I feel like we eat pretty healthy 99% of the time.

Every year we learn more about our eating habits. You only plant a dozen each zuchinnis and summer squash once. Lol. Lesson learned.

It can be tricky getting it all taken care of when it needs to be taken care of. We've spent many evenings canning, blanching and freezing, drying, but we do produce about 80% of the vegetables we eat.

Feels good man :D
 
iheartthisthread said:
My garden is about 2000 square feet give or take. I feel like we eat pretty healthy 99% of the time.

Every year we learn more about our eating habits. You only plant a dozen each zuchinnis and summer squash once. Lol. Lesson learned.

It can be tricky getting it all taken care of when it needs to be taken care of. We've spent many evenings canning, blanching and freezing, drying, but we do produce about 80% of the vegetables we eat.

Feels good man :D
Click to expand...

That's great. My goal is to have a house with a big plot of land so we don't have to buy vegetables anymore. Eat seasonally etc.
 
My single meyer lemon is finally turning yellow. Pests ate all of the other blossoms last year. Hopefully will have more this year. This was grown indoor from october-april

M3eyTAe.jpg
 
I don't know what climate you are in, LuGoJ, but my sister lives up in Oregon where it is also too cold for her little tree to be outside in the winter. She is having great luck with it under a grow light. I'm lucky to have a huge Meyer lemon in my front yard--I planted it 24 years ago!. I picked the whole tree last week and put a box out on the curb after juicing enough to make lots of lemon juice ice cubes, a pitcher of lemonade and 4 small mason jars of juice for baking.

It's pretty depressing being a gardener in California right now ( the drought). Usually in April I'm excited to be planting. My whole vegetable garden this year is going to be tomatoes (dry-farmed) and 1 squash plant. We are catching every drop of water we can inside just trying to keep the established perennials alive. Just had my bathtub re-plumbed to drain directly on the bamboo.;)
 
I planted another 40 feet of peas a week after the first row. Weather has turned around and the first row is coming up!

Got some potatoes chitting, hopefully will get them in in the next 3 days.

I gotta get my beets and carrots in soon too.
 
A few years ago I froze three 1 gallon ziplock bags full from 1 row. I'm hoping to do that again plus have more to eat fresh. Peas are my favorite to snack on raw while I'm out working in the garden.
 
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^Yep, peas and carrots pulled up and washed under the hose in the garden has to be one of life's great pleasures.=D
 
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The weather is getting really good for planting. Got potatoes in, way, way too many but, those little new potatoes with some green beans are gonna be awesome.

Beets and carrots will get planted tonight. Maybe some cabbage plants. If this warm trend continues, I want to get some corn in over the weekend.
 
A couple of punnets of Kale I'm going to put in at the community gardens on Monday. They are supposedly done organically at a nursery about half an hours drive from my place. For interests sake they cost $4.00 AU per 8 cell punnet, and Google tells me that is $3.17 US at the moment.

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