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Backyard Vegetable Gardening & Livestock Raising & Sustainable Living

You can also use the flowers in salads if you pick them just after they open, while the stems are still soft.
 
oh.hai.thread. it's been a while.

i moved into a new house few weeks ago so i was a little late planting this spring. but, the first thing i did even before unpacking was plant my garden. have 3 tomato plants, 6 different kinds of peppers, 2 japanese eggplant, 2 cucumber and a ton of herbs. yes, i went pepper crazy this year, but i really like peppers and i'll end up freezing a bunch for chilli during football season.

pretty pumped on my new space. planted in the front yard since the house faces east and the sun just dominates the garden from sunrise until about 2pm.

the new house also has a pear and fig tree in the front yard and 2 blueberry bushes in the back.

and i dug a bitchin fire pit.

i like beer.
 
Thai basil is delicious used abundantly with a white fish cooked with something like thai hot pepper or comparable hot pepper. It made for pho soup but that was mentioned, and I also use leaves in strips to make refreshing simple salads mixed with lettuce and onion and sometimes nuts or orange slices.
 
I have just sowed 100 trichocereus pachanoi cactus seeds and sealed em up. I pasteurized some cactus soil mix containing perlite and put them in mini pots in a wide plastic tray (which I cleaned with some diluted bleach) poured a bit of filtered water over them, put the lid on and taped it shut. I placed them in a very shady windowsill. They will be for indoors as I don't think they could handle the rainy Seattle weather. Hope to see some little guys in a month or so.
 
Awesome on the cacti.
I didn't know you could grow from seed (i figured it happens in nature but didnt know how feasible it is at home)
I started with 2 cuttings about 5 years ago and now have about 50.
Still need to get on a computer and post some garden picz
I don't see how to post pics from mobile.
 
Watermelon vines growing like crazy and starting to flower a lot, cherry tomato plant has tons of tomatoes starting to grow. Blueberry bushes were growing a lot but then have seemed to stop, I’m not sure if the sun is too hot or what’s going on. I'm not expecting them to flower much if at all as it's the first year but not realyl sure why green growth has halted. Going to test the PH this weekend.

Will try to take pictures this weekend
 
^Photos would be awesome :)

I would love the room to grow pumpkins again, because pumpkin is one thing I use a lot of in the kitchen. At one of my old places a few years ago I grew some Jap pumpkins and it was sensational because they were beautifully ripe and I could give them away to friends. They last ages when you store them too. Same story with spuds too... use a lot of them. One day.
 
yes, pics.

mass people got thai basil. mine made it through whatever its problem was and is looking good again. watermelons would be awesome. i was about to say it doesn't really feel like fruit climate here, but you live in nyc.

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first backyard vegetable eaten! highlight of my day. month.

i read someone complaining about their zucchini plant flowering. the flowers dying off. no zucchini. more flowers. no zucchini ever. maybe that was in this thread. anyway, my zucchini sucks. the first flower just fell off the eggplant. if eggplant comes out, things will be looking grim for the zucchini.

are your plants bigger now, beagleboy?
 
I have a garden with some healthy survivors, although not all my seedlings made it. A bunch of snap pea plants are climbing around the fence of the garden, and and my lettuce plants are doing fine, I pretty much already have more than enough to eat. I also have a thai basil, a couple cucumber plants, a tomato plant, and a mix of hot peppers: cayenne, habanero, and pepperonci, and couple of small but healthy parsley plants. A marjoram and lemon balm plant survived a New England winter as well.

Has anyone tried growing kale or mustard greens from seed? All my seedlings of these died when I transplanted them outside, so I am going to try starting some more of them from seed outside in pots to separate them from weeds until they are big enough to transplant into the ground.
 
I'm jealous, it's too slow to warm up here. There were frost warnings in the surrounding areas in the last week or so. I have some potato plants that are about the size of my hand spread out. Everything else is just little seedlings, and some hasn't made it out of the ground yet. I've been meaning to buy some tomato plants, hopefully I can still buy some. It's going to be a while before I get anything edible.

Klue, what do you use pumpkin for? I've heard that it's thought of being a more savory food compared to here, where it's mostly for desserts. I like pumpkin, and wouldn't mind finding ways to use it more often!
 
Ate my first cucumber today.
They are the pickling type so it wasn't really as sweet as I like.

I am harvesting collard greens soon and mustard greens.

Touchnstuff I have grown them successfully from seed outside.
Although I will say care must be taken to get the correct seed depth.
Too deep and they won't make it, too shallow and well they just can't stay moist.
I find that raking in some compost within the top inch or so of soil will help keep my heavy soil from forming a crust which seeds have trouble breaking.

I overseed and come back and thin them out.
Then I will transplant the ones I have thinned. In my case I watered them in really well and got a rain and a few made it! They were just bare root.
So bonus plants!

As far as zucchini goes I have so damn many I can't give em all away.
I pulled the soil up into almost a 2x2' bed with compost and granular humate incorporated.
If they are making flowers and not setting fruit then you might have a bug problem or pollination problem.
Do some scouting and use google to find someone with a similar problem.

Ate ny first ear of sweet corn today.
GMO seed straight from Monsatan.(monsanto)
And it was fire.
 
BlueIV said:
Klue, what do you use pumpkin for? I've heard that it's thought of being a more savory food compared to here, where it's mostly for desserts. I like pumpkin, and wouldn't mind finding ways to use it more often!
Click to expand...

I love using butternut pumpkin/ butternut squash for soup. So easy to make and delicious. But have also been buying Jap pumpkin to bake in the oven with with other vegetables to have with a piece of steak or fish for dinner. My dad used to bake a delicious curry with pumpkin and my mum would use roasted pumpkin slices to make a warm salad.

Can't say I have had pumpkin pie as its not popular here as far as I know. That's interesting though :)
 
Usually I just have soup from a can, and have never made it myself. I've been meaning to making my own sometime though, maybe I'll start with pumpkin :)
I didn't realize pumpkin was good on it's own, I like roasted butternut squash so I'll try the same with pumpkin.

I've had pumpkin cake, donuts, cookies, and of course pie. It's about time I expanded to the savory dishes - although I will probably have to wait a few months for non-canned stuff :)
 
BlueIV said:
Usually I just have soup from a can, and have never made it myself. I've been meaning to making my own sometime though, maybe I'll start with pumpkin :)
I didn't realize pumpkin was good on it's own, I like roasted butternut squash so I'll try the same with pumpkin.

I've had pumpkin cake, donuts, cookies, and of course pie. It's about time I expanded to the savory dishes - although I will probably have to wait a few months for non-canned stuff :)
Click to expand...

Don't forget to wash and roast the pumpkin seeds with a bit of salt. Delicous
 
Here is what we are dealing with in the ground at the moment (apart from a big rosemary in a different part of the garden).

Rosemary (it is covered in powdery mildew that has gotten better since applications of chamomile tea spray. Hard to get rid of and from what I read is better taking preventative measures), thyme, mint that is going nuts and wants to take over curly parsley covers the herbs there.

The tomatoes in this section are self sown and I am really curious why they are doing so well. I will post a photo of one of the tomatoes I bought that is nearly dead. Different varieties and genetics are the answers but I would love to know more in anyone knows?

And can you spot the ginger that sprouted from a left over knob that was dried out in the pantry? :)

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Here it is in all its fungal disease-ridden glory.

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I need to re-mulch this whole bed. I have half a bail of the mulch I used left but its winter and thing haven't been drying out and the weeds are slow at the moment.
 


My experiment with the haybale gardens is a 50/50 success/fail. The tomatoes are ecstatic to be there, the cucumbers are just OK with it and the basil and the medicinals are not happy at all.



Apricot tree is loaded this year.

 
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