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Backyard Vegetable Gardening & Livestock Raising & Sustainable Living

i start early indoors, as you will see when i get some pics up, just keep them under a soft white tube fluorescent for 16- 24 hours a day, 24 is good, thats what i do, for a month or 2 at around 68 - 78. 1, 4 foot fluro fixture with two t-12 tubes(soft-white t-5 rules) would veg 12-15 or more 4-6" starts - very inexpensive. t-8 fluorescent tubes and fixtures would be just as easy to find(wal-mart), and have quite a few extra lumens. they even have T-5 lights advertised as desk or under cabinet lighting, but they are the perfect starter light, ive seen those illuminating mass fine plants.

you can really start having fun if you get into indoor gardening....!

or you could use your sunroom still but cover your pots by cutting the bottom off of plastic milk bottles, if thats reasonable, it does works, and is recommended for outdoors, in situations just like this. or you could buy a self contained 150-250w metal halide, keep that several feet above the canopy, or on the ceiling, that will warm it up a few degrees, made your plants go bananas, and they are actually very energy efficient.

if you can keep 2L or larger bottles of water placed between your planters, the sun will warm the water during the day, and the that warmth will be released through out the night.

could you cover like all but the middle section of the glass with some thick clearish plastic? that would trap the heat... unbearably so in the summer.

the more time they have to vegetate before flowering the better, for sure ;-) - start popping them now!
 
good advice from panic
i was going to say covering them would definitely help

vib, what kind of tomato are you growing?
 
i always grow the cherry ones and the big ones. i vary the types, so i'm not sure of the names. but the best ones i ever grew came from a renegade plant from a previous season, and if it's possible it might have been a hybrid, cuz i didn't remember having that shape in the past. if that make sense.

ok, i'm gonna plant some seeds soon and try the bottle thing :)
 
even though i've lived in florida most of my adult life, i never caught on the bassackwards way growing seasons are here until the past 3-4 yrs. i grew up mostly in northern new england which, comparatively, is frozen tundra.
this years garden project will be fruit trees. asian pears and lemons are my top picks. i'm def addicted to asian pears and at $2 each i'm hoping to have good luck w/ them. i use a lot of lemons for all kinds of things and they're not cheap either.
i usually grow many different types of herbs and have a lot of jasmine, azaleas, wisteria, crape myrtles cuz they're easy and relatively low maintainence.
the dirt here sucks, useless sugar sand crap, so raised beds are common and everything has to be in the ground by february or it'll burn up or the bugs will eat it before you can harvest.

damn swamp... grumble, grumble... ;)
-izzy
 
^I would LOVE to have a lemon tree.
When summer rolls around I CRAVE lemons! I will eat and drink lemon everything......

I can't believe planting it all by Feb!! Wow!
We are JUST now getting buds on our trees-
I am very excited!
 
Ooooh I've always wanted a lemon tree too!! I don't even really like citrus flavour, I just love the tree :D
 
Fig tree is my first order of business once we move. As far as gardening goes, I have a decent green thumb, for the green :) In my experience, PH levels are the most important thing! PH levels off, and plants will not grow to their potential. Thats my advice for the day...:)
 
^^ My parents have a fig tree on their farm, and really, nothing beats fresh figs off the tree *droooool* :)
 
Green Thumbs help! My snake plant looks like crap.

My other gave me this snake plant.
snake%20plant,%20sansevieria.jpg

^ like this one.
But it won't stand up. It keeps falling over and looking all droopy and crappy. But it seems otherwise healthy. My attempts to train it to grow more upwards have failed with the tie sliding down the plant.
What else can I do?
Maybe does it need a bigger pot?
 
What you have there is an African species of succulent in the genus Sanseveiria. That means two things... that it likes to be on the dry side of moist, and as much sun as possible.


Do you keep it inside? It should be doing okay if it's in a sunny spot (think windowsill). By droopy and crappy it's hard to imagine exactly what it's symptoms of crappyness are. If it is browning on the edge of the leaf and/or has brown spots on the leaves, it could be a fungal disease from too much water. By you saying 'droopy' I am imagining a plant that is suffering from what is called etoliation, where the leaves stretch to make the most of a small amount of available light.


Solution: Pot it into a bigger pot with a sandy potting mix (one for cactus or succulents), more sun, less water.. and when you water it, take it outside and water all the foliage. To stop the plant falling over, you could certainly have a layer of stones or gravel for an inch or two on top of the potting mix. This will look pretty good and stop it tilting over.


Or; throw it in the bin and buy something better for your local environment :D
 
I forget to water, A LOT. So I thought this would be a good one. And the leaves aren't brown other than where the cats might nibble. (Stupidz catz its no foodz!)
I have t in the sunniest place we have.
I kinda wanna try to save it since it was from my mom and supposed to reduce allergies.
 
I am a degreed Botanist so plants are supposed to be pretty much my life. However, I have never worked in the field, though I do farm (rice, corn, peppers and various trees).

I love to garden though and have a wide and varied palette. Not sure though how to give advice though I will be happy to on specific plants.
 
Bump.

It's finally cool enough for me to plant something in my vegie patch. Feb rains have come and the day time tempertures are no longer hot enough to cook the tomatoes on the vine. I can pretty much grow what ever I like from now until about November. The winter's here are dry though so my rainwater tank comes into good use.

I planted some bok choy, chinese cabbage and broccoli 4 weeks ago and we have already started to harvest the bok choy. The lemon tree is fully loaded too. Forr such a small tree I usually get at least 20-30 lemons a season. I will probably give it a good prune once I have have harvested the last ones and replant it straight into the garden bed.

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This tomatoe vine started off as a stray weed in an empty pot. I think it may have seeded from the compost I mixed in.

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Neighbours banana tree is mocking me on a daily basis from just over my fence. I am tempted to raid it soon as he is a proper cock.
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Most of my backyard I planted myself after leveling at with an excuvator 3 years ago. I used alot of cuttings from only a handfull of initial plants.

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UGH! I am so jealous of all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to have a house with a yard, or at least some sort of dwelling with room for a small indoor garden. I have a total green thumb, and so does my grandma, and I always help her out with her vegetable garden in the summer. I have no idea why more people don't have them - it's so freakin delicious!

I want to grow peas, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, watermelon, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, pears, and a few other things, as long as the climate and space I live in are permitting. I plan to have a huge flower garden as well with Tropicana roses as the feature (my favorite flower of all time!), and I want lots of climbing flowers all over my house!

I'd also like to grow a bunch of house plants, including a really big philodendron winding along the wall/ceiling. I took a course called Herbaceous Ornamental Plants II and discovered all sorts of stuff I love. My house is going to look like a jungle with cats stalking around in it... :D Ideally, one day, I would like to have a small greenhouse attached to my house. I'd really like to grow some orchids. I definitely plan on growing some smokables as well...
 
This thread is awesome. So many food plants that I have never heard of before.

At the moment I have a tiny back yard but I have packed it full with:
Chilli(Red Habeneros and Brown Habeneros, Bird Eyes, Pequins, and Hopefully a Rocotto) Agaves, Aloe species, Catha Edulis, Herbs (mint, dill, oregano, basil, rosemary and fennell) and Citronella and Wormword. There was also Lemon, Mandarin and Pomegranate trees growing there already. And I have a 5 year old Frangipani that I grew from a cutting. I did have a cherry tomato bush and a butter nut pumpkin but these became too big for the space I had them in so they had to die.

Because I'm renting I keep a lot of my stuff in pots, which has turned out well because I will be taking them with me to a new property next month.

Klue what brand of potting mix do you recommend? I have had so many shit experiences with potting mix that I dont trust any of them any more. I use some loamy soil from my parents farm that has old sheep manure broken down into it already. It seems to work but it is a long drive to get hold of.
 
justsayknow said:
Klue what brand of potting mix do you recommend? I have had so many shit experiences with potting mix that I dont trust any of them any more. I use some loamy soil from my parents farm that has old sheep manure broken down into it already. It seems to work but it is a long drive to get hold of.
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I don't really know what brands would be available on the west coast, but I wouldn't recommend a specific brand anyway. The way they are designed, the best (and most expensive) are 'premium' by Australian Standards by how much Peat Moss they have in them. So, the most expensive premium ones are always going to be the best.

If you want to experiment making your own mixes things you could add would be:

Peat Moss
Wetting agent granules
Water crystals
Slow release fertilizer
Trace elements

I have had heaps of success making my own mixes. I wouldn't use 'soil' as such, I buy cheap, bulk potting mixes that are based on composted pine bark. Same as the premium stuff, but I add all the goodies to them.

It's in no way sustainable or organic though, something I want to change eventually.


Good work on your herbs and succulents, green the world mate :)
 
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