Can anyone recommend a good fertilizer for veggies?[/quote I know H put eggs and fish in holes before planting, but not sure for which veggies. I believe he did fish last year as well, but not eggs.
Can anyone recommend a good fertilizer for veggies?[/quote I know H put eggs and fish in holes before planting, but not sure for which veggies. I believe he did fish last year as well, but not eggs.
Not really helpful, but an anecdote. As a teenager, I planted a bunch of tulips. I put bone meal in with each one. I was all sorts of excited for spring, until I came home from school and my dog had dug every single one up. He was old, nearly blind, but he still found all the bone meal. He left the tulip bulbs though, so I poked them back into the holes and still had tulips in the spring.
Post by 2curlydogs on May 31, 2019 10:07:23 GMT -5
I'm here to brag about our lawn and you get a bonus pic of my dog.
No fertilizer, no herbicides, no pesticides, no watering. We mow high and only as frequently as we have to with a mulching lawnmower (so we leave the clippings).
We hand weed any super-invasive weeds like dock and canadian thistle. We leave the dandelions and clover. Look how green and lovely it is!
In other news, we recently planted some native st. john's wort out front under our native redbud. I need to finish planning what else to put in that bed. We used to have a crab apple tree and a matting cypress, but both died (not in the same year).
We got it for $20 at a community event. My borough is big on rain gardens and reducing runoff because we have a major creek next to us (and a history of industrialization). Said creek runs to a river, which runs to the ocean eventually (obviously).
We set up the rain barrel after the threat of frost is over. We remove a section of the downspout from the gutters and place the barrel there. It has a screen on top to catch debris, and we use mosquito dunks to keep it from breeding mosquitos. Then we use it to water plants. The end. We don't run out of water in the barrel pretty much ever since we live in the northeast/MidAtlantic, so it rains up to several times a week here.
We bought a new house last year, it has two huge garden beds, (roughly 8’x6’). We are in Portland, OR. They are shaded in the morning and then full sun after about 3pm.
First box, I was thinking of planting a few peonies and wildflower perennials (seeds?) I just want an easy and pretty box that doesn’t need much work.
I’m going to fill the other one with veggies/fruits. We have deer, bunnies and squirrels and I’m not worried about them eating the food, it makes me happy to have them in the yard.
Currently both boxes are full of weeds. I want to get dirt this week, we’ll pick it up from a local garden shop.
1. Should I pull all the weeds? Can I cut them with the edger, or do I need to pull them out by the root? Should I put that black weed blocker cloth down first, then cover with fresh dirt?
2. What kind of dirt do I need to get? Just regular potting soil? And do I want to fill the garden beds up to the top of the wall, or leave a few inches down from the top of the wall?
3. What are easy things that will grow well without a lot of attention? I’ve only grown strawberries so far.
@ My younger daughter and I sampled the first produce from our garden today, a pea pod apiece. I don't predict a high yield of peas (or anything else for that matter) but it is fun for both of us to see something happening after we started everything from seeds.
thejen626, re. weeding it all depends. It's definitely best to remove weeds by the roots, but also the most time-consuming. If you don't want to do that, you can use weed barrier, but then you also want to make sure your soil is deep enough that your veggies can root without running into the barrier. Depth needed depends on plant type. My planters are anywhere from about 6" deep to over 12".
Potting soil is great, but will cost a lot if you're starting from scratch and have several beds to fill. Those bags that look so big at the store don't actually go very far. I started with some top soil and then added compost and potting soil. Top soil likely has more weeds in it, though.
Re. what specifically to plant, do you have a Cooperative Extension (usually university-affiliated) or community garden resource?
Jen, I'm not sure when the next class is, but east multnomah soil district gives free sustainable gardening classes. For native plants Portland Nursery has a good selection, there's some other nurseries that specialize in natives around town too.
Do you know how many hours of sun approximately? If it's less than 6, I'd see how shade plants do first. For plant inspiration, I like Great Plant Picks/Rainyside and Paghat's Garden. Some of my favorites are oregon oxalis for groundcover, western bleeding heart, and columbine. Not native, but japenese anemone take very little care (low care = less water, fertilizer, etc) and put out beautiful flowers in the fall.
I had a (non-native) black barlow columbine drop seedlings all over my veggie beds, so if you'd like some I'm happy to meet you somewhere. I've never watered or tended this plant at all and it's been very happy. It does spread starts in shady places, but they're easy to pull if you don't like where they go.
Eta: nasturtium! Pop some seeds in the corners of your beds. They famously thrive on neglect and they're edible.
thejen626 we have done a mix of 1/3 each of potting mix, blended mint compost and pumice. H would shovel and mix it together in the bed of the truck but it's a total PITA.
We have always had patchy grass and I hate grass so we just planted some clover and moss to fill in.
We live in about a 1/4 acre in the city but we have a huge amount of native fruit trees and bushes and many butterfly and bird friendly bushes.
Our major issue is we’ve had an insane amount of rain in the past year (like the most since they started tracking it in the 1800s) and our neighbor keeps draining her pool and pond into our yard and it’s never drying out. It’s very shady too (we have 20 or so trees) so we’ve been trying to find plants that love water and shade that are native.
Post by cattledogkisses on Jun 13, 2019 9:23:35 GMT -5
Is this a good place to ask what could eating my zinnia seedlings? As soon as the first two leaves pop up, something eats them down to the ground. I've done two plantings now and have nothing to show for it, which is really bumming me out.
Nothing else in my garden is being touched, just the zinnias for some reason.